Month: July 2023

By NICK PERRY Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s commitment to remaining nuclear-free means it won’t play a role in Australia’s defense plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, the leaders from both countries said Wednesday. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made his first official visit to New Zealand since becoming leader last year

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s population has declined in all of its 47 prefectures for the first time in a record drop, while its population of foreign residents reached a new high of almost 3 million people, highlighting the increasing role that non-Japanese people play in the shrinking and aging country.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Observant visitors to the area around the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday afternoon were treated to a unusual sight: an unmistakable funnel cloud extending diagonally from the sky and seemingly almost reaching the tip of the Capitol dome itself. The funnel cloud never touched down on the ground and therefore can’t be

By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks held steady Wednesday after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to their highest level in more than two decades, just as Wall Street expected. The S&P 500 slipped 0.71, or less than 0.1%, to 4,566.75, remaining near a 15-month high. The Dow Jones Industrial

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — NatWest, one of Britain’s biggest banks, says its chief executive has left her job after discussing personal details of a client — the populist politician Nigel Farage — with a journalist. The bank said Alison Rose was leaving Wednesday “by mutual consent.” The surprise early-morning statement came

By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The truce that stopped the bloodshed in the Korean War turns 70 years old on Thursday and the two Koreas are marking the anniversary in starkly different ways, underscoring their deepening nuclear tensions. North Korea has invited delegations from China and Russia as it prepares

By NICK EL HAJJ Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia, the new home of some of soccer’s biggest stars and a co-owner of professional golf, is proving to be no less ambitious when it comes to another global pastime – the $180 billion-a-year video game industry. Last September, the Saudi sovereign

By SAMYA KULLAB Associated Press DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) — The horrors of war arrive through the night at a hospital in eastern Ukraine, a procession of stretchers bearing limp bodies whisked from the front line. The soldiers come with bandaged limbs soaked in blood, faces blackened with shrapnel fragments and stunned eyes fixed on the

By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) — Workers for corporations owned by Michael Jackson had no legal obligation to protect children from the pop star, an attorney told an appeals court Wednesday. Jackson estate lawyer Jonathan Steinsapir pushed back against a tentative decision by California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal, which said

By LEAH WILLINGHAM Associated Press WELCH, W.Va. (AP) — Months after the last newspaper closed in a declining coal community in West Virginia, residents say they are already experiencing challenges getting and sharing information. In March, The Welch News in McDowell County weekly became another one of the thousands of U.S. newspapers that have shuttered

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer The water temperature around the tip of Florida has hit triple digits — hot tub levels — two days in a row. Meteorologists say it could be the hottest seawater ever measured, although some questions about the reading remain. Scientists are already devastating effects from prolonged hot water surrounding

By LEAH WILLINGHAM Associated Press WELCH, W.Va. (AP) — Months after the last newspaper closed in a declining coal community in West Virginia, residents say they are already experiencing challenges getting and sharing information. In March, The Welch News in McDowell County weekly became another one of the thousands of U.S. newspapers that have shuttered

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate Wednesday for the 11th time in 17 months as part of its ongoing drive to curb inflation. But it provided little guidance about when — or whether — it might hike rates again. Wednesday’s move raised the Fed’s

PERTH, Australia (AP) — Volunteers worked frantically on a second day Wednesday to save dozens of pilot whales that have stranded themselves on a beach in Western Australia, but more than 50 have already died. Nearly 100 long-finned pilot whales, stranded themselves Tuesday on the beach by the city of Albany, on the southern tip

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, faced new challenges on the eve of a scheduled court appearance Wednesday in which he’s set to plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors on tax and gun charges. On Capitol Hill, where Republicans are ramping up their investigations of the

By JIM GOMEZ Associated Press MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Typhoon Doksuri has lashed northern Philippine provinces with ferocious wind and rain, leaving at least six people dead and displacing thousands of others as it blew roofs off houses, flooded low-lying villages and triggered dozens of landslides. Schools and workplaces were shut as a precaution. Tens

By NICK PERRY Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting the tiny kingdom of Tonga as the United States continues to increase its diplomatic efforts in the Pacific while China’s influence in the region grows. Home to just over 100,000 people, Tonga last year was the site of

By JOE REEDY AP Sports Writer SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro says the network could take on a sports league as a minority partner as the network continues its transition from a cable channel to a digital company. Pitaro made those comments during a seminar on Sunday. Pitaro declined to say

By RALPH D. RUSSO AP College Football Writer Senators Joe Manchin and Tommy Tuberville introduced a college sports bill that would require athletes to disclose how much they money make from name, image and likeness deals, regulate collectives and agents and put restrictions in transferring players. The bipartisan action is the second to come out

WINDSOR, Nova Scotia (AP) — Canadian police say the body of a child who went missing when the province of Nova Scotia was hit with extreme flooding has been recovered. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police also confirmed that human remains found on Monday were those of a second missing child. The two children were travelling

By JAY COHEN AP Sports Writer CHICAGO (AP) — Rocky Wirtz, who won three Stanley Cup titles as owner of the Chicago Blackhawks and presided over the team during one of the NHL’s biggest scandals, has died. He was 70. The Blackhawks called Wirtz’s death a “sudden passing.” No further details were provided. NHL Commissioner

By JOE REEDY AP Sports Writer Justin Herbert is set to become the NFL’s highest-paid quarterback by annual salary, agreeing to a five-year, $262.5 million extension with the Los Angeles Chargers on Tuesday. Herbert’s total value and $52.5 million average per season surpasses the $260 million, five-year extension Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson signed three months ago.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The last report submitted by a panel of outside experts has raised further questions about the Mexican military’s role in the 2014 disappearance of 43 students. The panelists said in the report presented on Tuesday that they had located photos of two bodies with the heads or hands bound in a

By PAOLA FLORES and DANIEL POLITI Associated Press LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia is interested in obtaining Iranian drone technology to protect its borders and combat smuggling and drug trafficking, the Andean country’s Defense Minister Edmundo Novillo confirmed Tuesday, a day after Argentina demanded information on the opaque agreement sealed between Iran and Bolivia

BOSTON (AP) — A nearly 500-year-old manuscript signed by the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés in 1527 has been returned to the Archivo General de la Nación de México – Mexico’s national archives in Mexico City. U.S. officials said the manuscript is a payment order signed by Cortés on April 27, 1527, authorizing the purchase of

By LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — A gynecologist who sexually abused vulnerable and trusting patients for over two decades at prestigious New York hospitals cried before he was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison by a federal judge who called his crimes unprecedented. The sentence for Robert Hadden, 64, was a

By WALTER BERRY and TERRY TANG Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — Longtime Phoenix residents know that sweltering Julys are to be expected, but no one could have predicted the brutal heat wave that has enveloped the country’s fifth largest city this summer. Phoenix this month shattered its record for consecutive days in which the temperature

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — West Africa has recorded over 1,800 terrorist attacks in the first six months of the year resulting in nearly 4,600 deaths with dire humanitarian consequences. And a top regional official says that’s just “a snippet of the horrendous impact of insecurity.” Omar Touray told the

By COLLEEN SLEVIN Associated Press GREELEY, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado police officer on trial for putting a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train says she didn’t realize that another officer had parked it on the tracks. Jordan Steinke testified Tuesday that she didn’t notice the tracks

By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday vacated the military conviction of Bowe Bergdahl, a former U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty to desertion after he left his post and was captured in Afghanistan and tortured by the Taliban. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton

PARIS (AP) — Ensconced in a glass cage lined with bamboo shoots, the first panda ever born in France bid ‘’adieu’’ to the French zoo where it grew up and set off Tuesday for its new home in China. Named Yuan Meng, the 120-kilogram (264-pound) panda peered out of the cage as staff at the

HONOLULU (AP) — A boat that washed ashore in Hawaii has been identified as belonging to a California mariner who ran into trouble while sailing from San Diego to Mexico. KHON-TV reports the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed the boat owner sent a distress call seven months ago. He was rescued, and the boat was left