Month: July 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — A digital poetry archive in Utah, slam poetry workshops in South Carolina and creative writing programs in New Mexico are among the initiatives being supported by more than $1 million in grants from the Academy of American Poets. On Tuesday, the academy announced its 2023 Fellowships, contributions of $50,000 each to

By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein drama “Maestro,” Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley movie, Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” David Fincher’s “The Killer” and Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” will be making their world debuts at the Venice International Film Festival this fall. Organizers announced the lineup Tuesday for the 80th edition of the festival, which

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and TARA COPP Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military says a Russian fighter jet flew close to a U.S. drone over Syria and fired flares at it, striking the American aircraft and damaging it. An Air Force commander says Sunday’s incident was an attempt by the Russians to knock

By MARÍA TERESA HERNÁNDEZ Associated Press OAXACA, México (AP) — Leticia Santiago carries her ancestral heritage wherever she goes. Every time she addresses the crowds during the Guelaguetza, the biggest cultural event in southwestern Mexico, her words, her garments and her skin reveal a clue about the town where she was proudly born. The 35-year-old

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Fires raging through forests, mountain villages and towns in northern Algeria have left at least 34 people dead, with 23 of them in the coastal region of Bejaia, according to authorities and a local radio station keeping track of the grim toll. The blazes were being drastically curtailed. The Interior Ministry

By ISABEL DEBRE and JULIA FRANKEL Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — Thousands of Israeli doctors have walked out of work while labor leaders are threatening a general strike and senior justices have rushed home from a trip abroad. Tuesday’s developments followed a day after the government approved a law weakening the country’s Supreme Court. Critics

BEIJING (AP) — China’s ceremonial legislation has endorsed the promotion of Pan Gongsheng to serve as central bank governor. The widely anticipated announcement was the final major appointment of the ruling Communist Party’s once-a-decade change of power. Pan is a deputy central bank governor and veteran of China’s state-owned banking industry. He succeeds Yi Gang,

By ALANA BENSON of NerdWallet The total cost of being a Taylor Swift fan can be steep — there’s not just the ticket price, but also the cost of friendship bracelet supplies, costumes and merch. Most fans of most things (think: sports teams or comic books) are happy to plunk down some money to show

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s house speaker says that a vote expected in Parliament later this week to select a new prime minister will be postponed, adding to growing uncertainty over when a new government can take office, more than two months after the general election. House of Representatives Speaker Wan Muhamad Noor Matha told reporters

PARIS (AP) — The torch that will be used to carry the Olympic flame around France and on its final leg at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Games next July is a sleek silver-colored steel cylinder gracefully tapered at both ends that is being made in limited numbers to save resources. Paris organizers

By SAMY MAGDY The Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says a salvage team has begun siphoning oil out of the decaying oil tanker moored off the coast of Yemen. For years, many organizations have warned that the neglected vessel, known as SOF Safer, may cause a major oil spill or

MADRID (AP) — Chances to form a government have dwindled for Spain’s conservative Popular Party after its election win after two small regional parties refused to lend their support due to the potential presence of the far-right Vox party in the cabinet. Alberto Nuñez Feijóo’s right-of-center Popular Party won the most votes in Sunday´s ballot

By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Russia and China are sending government delegations to North Korea this week for events marking the 70th anniversary of the armistice that halted fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. The visits suggest North Korea is further opening up after years of pandemic isolation and is

RHODES, Greece (AP) — A third successive heat wave in Greece pushed temperatures back above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) across parts of the country following more nighttime evacuations from fires that have raged out of control for days. The latest evacuations orders were issued on the islands of Corfu and Evia. A blaze

By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban has announced that all beauty salons in Afghanistan must now close as a one-month deadline ended, despite rare public opposition to the edict. A spokesman for the Taliban-run Virtue and Vice Ministry did not say whether it would use force against salons that do not

By THOMAS ADAMSON Associated Press PARIS (AP) — U.S. first lady Jill Biden attended a flag-raising ceremony at UNESCO in Paris on Tuesday, marking Washington’s official reentry into the U.N. agency after a controversial five-year hiatus. The Stars and Stripes was hoisted up outside UNESCO’s headquarters with the Eiffel Tower on the skyline to rousing

By FELIPE DANA Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.N. atomic watchdog says its monitors at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant report seeing anti-personnel mines around the site. The report comes as Kyiv pursues a counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s entrenched forces after 17 months of war. The IAEA says having mines at the

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgian media say a jury has found six people guilty of terrorist murder for extremist attacks in 2016 that killed 32 people, Belgium’s worst peacetime violence. Among those convicted was Salah Abdeslam, who is already serving a life sentence in France for his role in the 2015 attacks on Paris. Both the

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The European Union will look at helping fund the costly transportation of grain out of Ukraine after Russia halted a deal that allowed Black Sea exports vital to global food security. EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said Tuesday that he will investigate transport funding after

By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s Constitutional Court has overturned the impeachment of the public safety minister ousted over a Halloween crowd surge that killed nearly 160 people last October at a nightlife district in the capital, Seoul. The court’s decision Tuesday allows Lee Sang-min to return as the

By JON GAMBRELL Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Houston woman known online as the “Sassy Trucker” has been stuck in Dubai for weeks after an altercation at a car rental agency. It’s the latest case showing the limits of speech in this skyscraper-studded city-state. The case against 29-year-old Tierra Young Allen

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press BURG, Germany (AP) — Two teachers in eastern Germany tried to counter the far-right activities of students at their small town high school. They counseled bullies who threatened to beat up immigrant classmates. They gave more lessons about their country’s Nazi past. They invited in a Black rapper to talk

By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writer BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets retreated Wednesday after Wall Street hit a 15-month high ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting that traders hope will end with the final increase in this interest rate cycle. Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul declined. Oil prices retreated. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P

By HANNA ARHIROVA and LORI HINNANT Associated Press ODESA, Ukraine (AP) — Tetiana Khlapova’s hand trembled as she recorded the wreckage of Odesa’s devastated Transfiguration Cathedral on her cellphone and cursed Russia, her native land. Khlapova was raised in Ukraine and had always dreamed of living in the seaside city. But not as the war

By LUKE VARGAS Associated Press HAMILTON, New Zealand (AP) — When New Zealand kicked off the Women’s World Cup opener against Norway last week, just three of the 23 Football Ferns traced their roots to the Indigenous Maori people. By contrast, when the Kiwis hosted the Women’s Rugby World Cup last year, more than half

By PATRICK WHITTLE Associated Press PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Voters in Maine will likely be the ones to decide whether to restore long removed language about the state’s obligations to Native American tribes to printed versions of its constitution. The Maine Legislature is poised to give its final approval on Tuesday to a proposal to

By MARK THIESSEN Associated Press ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Friends and family are remembering the three passengers and pilot killed when a helicopter crashed on Alaska’s remote North Slope late last week. Among those killed were a respected scientist who was adept at ice carving, a North Dakota native who became so smitten with Alaska

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer The fingerprints of climate change are all over the intense heat waves gripping the globe this month, a new study finds. Researchers say the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing buildup of warming gases in the air. These

By DAVID SHARP Associated Press AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine is poised to launch an offshore wind program that would meet clean energy goals and produce enough power for about 900,000 homes from floating wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine. The legislation was endorsed by lawmakers on Tuesday. It calls for requests for proposals

By JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press PARIS (AP) — For the mayor of Paris, the city’s journey to next year’s Olympic Games included an epiphany born of brutality: the slaughter of 17 people by gunmen acting in the names of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Anne Hidalgo says the 2015 attacks at a provocative satirical