Month: February 2023

By PAUL J. WEBER and DAVID SHARP Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Widespread power outages in the Texas capital stretched into a third day Friday for thousands of residents following a winter storm that was spiraling into a management crisis as city leaders remained unable to say when all the lights would come back

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — The Olympic flame is going for a sail. Instead of arriving overland the symbolic flame alighting the 2024 Paris Games will take to the seas from its birthplace in Greece. Paris organizers say it will travel across the Mediterranean aboard a three-masted tall ship and arrive in the French port of

By DEREK GATOPOULOS Associated Press ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s government is seeking to ban a far-right political party led by a jailed former lawmaker from participating in a general election later this year. The 42-year-old Ilias Kasidiaris founded the Greek National Party two years ago. He is serving a sentence of 13 years and

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Appearing before a federal judge after pleading guilty to a felony charge in the deadly Capitol riot, former West Virginia lawmaker Derrick Evans expressed remorse for letting down his family and his community, saying he made a “crucial mistake.” Less than a year

By HOPE YEN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 50 businesses and nonprofits including rideshare companies Uber and Lyft and industrial giant 3M are pledging millions of dollars in initiatives to stem a crisis in road fatalities under a new federal effort. The effort announced Friday is part of the Department of Transportation’s “Call to

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Police say a bus has overturned in northeastern Slovenia, killing three people and injuring several others. The accident happened around 5 a.m. on Friday near the town of Murska Sobota. Police say an investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash. Photos from the scene show the bus on

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey has railed against a group of Western countries that temporarily shut their consulates in Istanbul, for a second day. On Friday Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused nine countries of failing to share information on the security threat that led to the closures and also accused them of aiming to cause

By SUSIE BLANN Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Top European Union officials were due to meet Friday in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of support for the country as it battles to counter Russia’s invasion and strives to join the EU as well as NATO. European Commission President Ursula von

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A landmark exhibition on slavery in the Dutch colonial era that was first staged at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is going on display at the United Nations in New York. The Rijksmuseum announced Friday that the show, titled “Slavery. Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery,” will

By NICOLE WINFIELD and DENG MACHOL Associated Press JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Pope Francis, on a novel ecumenical peace mission to the world’s youngest country, warned South Sudan’s political leaders on Friday that history will judge them harshly if they continue to drag their feet implementing a 2018 peace accord. Accompanying him to the

By KRUTIKA PATHI Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — Trading in shares in troubled Adani Enterprises gyrated Friday as the flagship company of India’s second-largest conglomerate tumbled 30% and then rebounded after more than a week of heavy losses that have cost it tens of billions of dollars in market value. The debacle, which led

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — A huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon sailed across the U.S. on Friday, drawing severe Pentagon accusations of spying on sensitive military sites despite China’s firm denials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U.S.-China tensions. Aside from the government response,

BERLIN (AP) — Police say one boy was killed and another seriously injured when they were hit by a freight train in western Germany. The boys, ages 9 and 10, were hit by the train in Recklinghausen, in the Ruhr industrial region, on Thursday evening. The elder boy died while the younger was taken to

By MUNIR AHMED Associated Press ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s military says security forces have killed two insurgents during a raid of a militant hideout in a former Pakistani Taliban stronghold near the border with Afghanistan. Friday’s shootout in North Waziristan, a district of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, came days after a suicide bomber attacked

By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court has sentenced a former justice minister, Cho Kuk, to two years in prison, after he was found guilty of creating fake credentials to help his children get into prestigious schools, a scandal that rocked the country’s previous government and sparked huge

By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer LeBron James is soon going to be in the NBA record books as the most prolific scorer ever. But for all his accomplishments on the basketball court, it is James’ ambitious pursuits off-the-court that may ultimately distinguish his legacy from other superstar athletes’. James co-founded an entertainment company, bought

By SAMYA KULLAB Associated Press BELARUS BORDER, Ukraine (AP) — The reconnaissance drones fly several times a day from Ukrainian positions deep inside the thick forest that marches across the border into Belarus, a close Russian ally, scouring sky and land for signs of trouble on the other side. Ukrainian units are monitoring the 1,000-kilometer

By ILAN BEN ZION Associated Press BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — An ivory spoon dating back 2,700 years that was recently repatriated to the Palestinian Authority from the United States has sparked a dispute with Israel’s new far-right government over the cultural heritage in the occupied West Bank. The clash brings into focus the political

By SAMY MAGDY Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — The United States has stepped up pressure on Middle East allies to expel the Wagner Group, a military contractor with close ties to Russia’s president, from chaos-stricken Libya and Sudan where it expanded in recent years, regional officials told The Associated Press. The U.S. effort described by

By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street’s rally hit a wall after a surprisingly strong jobs report fueled worries about inflation and higher interest rates. The S&P 500 fell 1% Friday, its first drop in four days, though it took an up-and-down route to get there. The bond market was

BY JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The ongoing trial of a U.S. citizen charged with serving as a sniper and weapons trainer for the Islamic State group is a reminder of the enduring and far-reaching fallout of a war that drew tens of thousands of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq. Jurors

By STEPHEN GROVES and AMANCAI BIRABEN Associated Press PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — The conversation between a state senator and a legislative aide started with a seemingly routine discussion about a bill. It suddenly spiraled as the senator allegedly harassed the aide because she had vaccinated her young child, plunging the Senate into a political drama

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN Associated Press PUERTO PEÑASCO, Mexico (AP) — Mexico plans to power up the first phase of a huge solar energy project in April near a beach town popular with tourists making the short drive from the United States. Once completed, the full $1.6 billion project will have a generating capacity of 1,000

HONG KONG (AP) — Travel between Hong Kong and China will no longer require COVID-19 PCR tests nor be held to a daily limit as both places seek to drive economic growth. Hong Kong’s tourism industry has suffered since 2019 after months of sometimes violent political strife, as well as harsh entry restrictions implemented during

By STEVE PEOPLES, THOMAS BEAUMONT and ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may be months away from publicly declaring his presidential intentions, but his potential rivals aren’t holding back. No fewer than a half dozen Republicans eyeing the White House have begun actively courting top political operatives in

By SHEIKH SAALIQ Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — Utkarsh Saxena and Ananya Kotia’s love story began just like any other college romance. Except no one else knew about the gay couple’s relationship. It was 2008. Homosexuality was yet to gain a degree of acceptance in deeply conservative India, with many gay couples facing stigma

By SYLVIA HUI Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss will join the former leaders of Australia and Belgium at a conference in Tokyo later this month to call for a tougher international approach to China. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international group of lawmakers, said Friday that Truss will

By PAUL WISEMAN AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers added a robust 517,000 jobs in January, a surprisingly strong gain in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to slow growth and tame inflation with higher interest rates. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, a new half-century low. Friday’s government report added

By ZEN SOO AP Technology Writer HONG KONG (AP) — A grinding crackdown that wiped billions of dollars of value off Chinese technology companies is easing, but the once-freewheeling industry is bracing for much slower growth ahead. Analysts say China’s easing of restrictions on companies like e-commerce giant Alibaba and online games company Tencent and

HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. (AP) — Authorities searching for three aspiring rappers who have been missing for nearly two weeks found “multiple bodies” Thursday at a vacant Detroit-area apartment building. State police cautioned that the identities of the bodies had not been confirmed. “Please remember all victims have families, and we don’t have the luxury of

By JULIE WATSON and BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police in Culver City, California, on Thursday released body camera footage showing events before officers shot an unarmed man diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the back last year in the Los Angeles suburb. They also released audio recordings of his estranged wife telling