Month: June 2023

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s electoral watchdog says about 14,000 people were prevented from voting in last month’s local elections because of a new law requiring voters to show photo identification. The Electoral Commission said Friday that 0.25% of people who went to polling stations were unable to cast ballots because they didn’t have the right

By JEROME PUGMIRE AP Sports Writer PARIS (AP) — The Olympic flame for the 2024 Paris Games will pass through 64 departments and 400 towns over 68 days before the cauldron is lit. Organizers announced the route for the torch relay at a Paris university. Organizing committee president Tony Estanguet says “the torch relay plays

DETROIT (AP) — Honda is recalling nearly 1.2 million vehicles in the U.S. because the rear view camera image may not appear on the dashboard screen. The recall covers certain Odyssey minivans from 2018 to 2023, as well as Pilot SUVs from 2019 to 2022 and Passport SUVs from 2019 to 2023. Honda says in

By DAVID RISING Associated Press BANGKOK (AP) — An American aircraft carrier is due to make a port call in Vietnam on Sunday. The rare visit by one of the U.S. Navy’s biggest ships comes as Washington and Beijing step up efforts to bolster ties with Southeast Asian nations. The USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered

By SOPHENG CHEANG Associated Press PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Pro-government Cambodian lawmakers have unanimously approved changes to the country’s election law that will ban anyone who fails to vote from running as a candidate in future elections. All National Assembly members belong to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, and critics say the

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s parliament has approved plans to attract more skilled workers to Europe’s biggest economy and help address labor shortages in a growing number of professions. Lawmakers voted on Friday in favor of the legislation, which foresees a “points system” taking into account professional experience and other factors, along the lines of systems

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s top prosecuting authority says it has approved the extradition of a Danish national accused of involvement in an arms smuggling case in India 28 years ago, but that a court of law must make the final decision. Niels Holck has admitted taking part in dropping assault rifles, rocket launchers and

By DAVID BRANDT AP Baseball Writer PHOENIX (AP) — The percentage of Black players in Major League Baseball has been on the decline for decades, but prospects at MLB’s Draft Combine this week think that may soon change. Several highly touted Black players are hoping to become the next Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts or Andrew

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME Associated Press JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Authorities in South Africa say at least 31 people are believed to have died in a gas explosion in a disused mine shaft that happened last month but is only now coming to light. The suspected illegal miners are believed to have died on May 18 and

By LAURA UNGAR AP Science Writer Dr. Kylie Cooper chokes up thinking about the patients she left behind in Idaho. One who often comes to mind is Kayla Smith. Smith said she chose to end a desperately wanted pregnancy last year after discovering her fetus had potentially deadly heart defects and other problems. But Idaho

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — The governor of Japan’s southern prefecture of Okinawa has called for more diplomatic efforts toward peace on the 78th anniversary of one of World War II’s bloodiest battles. Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki says a new military building on the islands has residents fearing becoming embroiled in regional

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese city government says an explosion at a steel mill has killed four people and left five hospitalized with injuries. The Emergency Management Bureau in Yingkou, east of Beijing, said a blast furnace exploded Thursday morning at the Yingkou Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. It said cause was under investigation, but

By The Associated Press For months, the outspoken millionaire head of the Wagner private mercenary force bombarded Russia’s military leaders with expletive-ridden insults in a rift that has weakened the country’s forces amid the war in Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin accused them of not providing him with munitions in the key battle for the eastern city

BERLIN (AP) — The German parliament has approved the construction of a memorial in Berlin to the Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted under the Nazis. The country’s culture minister hopes the plan will help end their status as “forgotten victims.” On Thursday evening, lawmakers backed a motion formally calling on the government to support construction of the

By DÁNICA COTO Associated Press SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Cindy has formed behind Tropical Storm Bret. Forecasters say it’s the first time there are two storms in the tropical Atlantic in June since record keeping began. The historic event signals an early and aggressive start to the Atlantic hurricane season that

By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Another drop for stocks helped drag Wall Street to its first losing week in the last six. The S&P 500 closed 0.8% lower Friday, pulling back further from last week when it reached its highest level in more than a year. The Dow dropped 218

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Four Thai nationals have been charged with human trafficking in a Malaysian court over the 2015 discovery of mass graves and human trafficking camps at the country’s border with Thailand. Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution said in a statement that the four were among 10 Thai citizens the government had sought

BERLIN (AP) — Storms and heavy rain across a large swath of Germany have flooded roads and forced the closure of some major railway routes, but there is no immediate word of any injuries. Germany’s national weather service had warned earlier this week of severe storms with significant amounts of rainfall, which hit on Thursday.

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — When Berlin Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal first talked about his dream of building Germany’s biggest Jewish educational and cultural complex since the Holocaust, most people who heard about the plan were skeptical. But five years after the groundbreaking, Teichtal, a Berlin rabbi and head of the local Chabad

By MATTHEW PERRONE AP Health Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — A powerful animal sedative in the illicit drug supply is complicating the U.S. response to the opioid crisis, scrambling longstanding methods for reversing overdoses and treating addiction. Xylazine can cause severe skin wounds, but whether it is leading to more deaths — as suggested by officials

By DEREK GATOPOULOS Associated Press ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greeks heading to the polls Sunday for a second general election in five weeks, with conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis expected to win reelection by a large margin. Opinion polls suggest the 55-year-old Mitsotakis and his center-right New Democracy party maintain a strong lead, unaffected by a

By HAVEN DALEY Associated Press LOS GATOS, Calif. (AP) — At Tyler Malek’s ice cream parlors, one cook’s trash is another chef’s frosty treat. The head ice cream maker at the Portland, Oregon-based Salt & Straw uses the whey leftover from yogurt makers in upstate New York to make his lemon curd flavor. For chocolate

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s government says it will take legal action against Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, for failing to remove undesirable and harmful content from its social media platform. The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission says Facebook has been plagued by “a significant volume of undesirable content” relating to sensitive issues on

By JACK JEFFERY Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — Saudi Arabia is hosting its biggest Hajj pilgrimage in three years, starting Monday. But for many pilgrims, and for many others who couldn’t make it, global inflation and economic crises made it more of a strain to carry out Islam’s spiritual trip of a lifetime. Mohammed, a

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM and TASSANEE VEJPONGSA The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Interstate 95 reopened Friday less than two weeks after a deadly collapse in Philadelphia, a quicker-than-expected rebuild to get traffic flowing again on a heavily traveled stretch of the East Coast’s main north-south highway. Workers put the finishing touches on an interim six-lane

By KELVIN CHAN AP Business Writer Twitter needs to do more work to fall in line with the European Union’s tough new digital rulebook, a top EU official said after overseeing a “stress test” of the company’s systems in Silicon Valley. European Commissioner Thierry Breton said late Thursday that he noted the “strong commitment of

By HUIZHONG WU Associated Press TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A disbarred Chinese human rights lawyer has been forced to move 13 times in two months as part of a pattern of harassment against him and three other prominent rights advocates in Beijing that is further squeezing the country’s battered civil rights community. Wang Quanzhang said

By WILL WEISSERT and MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence used a Friday gathering of some of the nation’s leading Christian conservatives to urge his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination to support a 15-week federal abortion ban at minimum. The exhortation at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s

By SCOTT SONNER Associated Press RENO, Nev. (AP) — Environmentalists, ranchers and others have fought for years against lithium mining ventures in Nevada. Yet opposition to mining one particular desert tract for the silvery white metal used in electric car batteries is coming from unusual quarters: space. An ancient Nevada lakebed beckons as a vast

By BEN FINLEY Associated Press NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The fatal implosion of the Titan submersible has drawn attention to the murkily regulated waters of deep-sea exploration. It’s a space where laws and maritime conventions can be sidestepped by entrepreneurs who operate in international waters. Salvatore Mercogliano is a history professor at Campbell University in

By COLLEEN LONG and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is warning that Republicans seeking a nationwide ban on abortion won’t stop there. He is urging supporters to channel their outrage into mobilizing votes for Democrats in 2024. Just a mile from where Biden rallied reproductive rights supporters on the eve

By DÁNICA COTO Associated Press PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A gang rampaged through the Cite Soleil slum, killing and raping and setting fire to hundreds of wood-and-tin homes. Forced out of the neighborhood, one family of four lived on the streets of Port-au-Prince until they were struck by a truck as they slept. Two brothers,

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A suspected Russian diplomat is apparently squatting on the site of Moscow’s proposed new embassy in Canberra that the Australian government has vetoed. Parliament passed emergency legislation last week blocking Russia’s lease on security grounds. Russia is expected to try to overturn that legislation in court.

By RIAZAT BUTT Associated Press MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Muslim pilgrims streamed into the holy city of Mecca on Friday ahead of the start of Hajj next week, as the annual pilgrimage returns to its monumental scale after three years of heavy restrictions because of the coronavirus pandemic. Saudi officials say close to 1.5