Month: December 2023

MADRID (AP) — A senior Spanish official says the deployment of two Spanish surveillance planes to watch for migrant boats heading on the treacherous route from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands has enabled authorities to stop 59 canoes from Senegal and Gambia. The vessels carried around 7,200 migrants over the past two months. Spanish

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Jurors on Friday began their second day of deliberations to decide how much Rudy Giuliani must pay two former Georgia election workers for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election that led to a barrage of racist threats and upended their lives.

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA telescope has captured the biggest solar flare in years, which temporarily knocked out radio communication on Earth. The sun spit out the huge flare on Thursday, resulting in two hours of radio interference in parts of the U.S. and other sunlit parts

NEW YORK (AP) — A small explosion at an electrical facility caused a momentary power outage in New York City. Lights flickered, a subway line was disrupted and some elevators and escalators briefly stopped running. The brief outage just before midnight Thursday affected most of the city. The president of the power utility Con Edison,

By EMMA BURROWS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Moldova and Georgia celebrated after European Union leaders buoyed their aspirations to join the 27 member nation bloc by removing key hurdles on their long path toward membership. Lawmakers in both the Moldovan and Georgian parliaments waved EU flags and played the bloc’s anthem at the opening

By SAM MEDNICK Associated Press DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — A court of the West African regional bloc has ordered the release and reinstatement of Niger’s democratically elected president. The legal team of President Mohamed Bazoum said on Friday that the ECOWAS Court of Justice ruled that Bazoum and his family were arbitrarily detained after mutinous

By DANIEL SHAILER Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — Guatemala violated Indigenous rights by permitting a huge nickel mine on tribal land almost two decades ago, according to a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Friday’s landmark verdict marks a monumental step in a four-decade struggle for Indigenous land rights and a bitter

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry’s victory against Mirror Group Newspapers on Friday over what a British judge called “habitual” illegal activity is a landmark moment in the long and twisting saga of lawbreaking by Britain’s tabloid press. Judge Timothy Fancourt ruled that Mirror newspapers had hired private investigators to snoop

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press BREDA, Netherlands (AP) — A paradox at the heart of the Netherlands’ permissive pot policy has gone up in smoke in two Dutch cities as “coffeeshops” began selling the country’s first legally cultivated cannabis. The move is part of an experiment to regulate the pot trade in the Netherlands. But

By ALICIA RANCILIO Associated Press The wandering Jack Reacher, created by novelist Lee Child, returns in a second season of “Reacher” on Prime Video. Alan Ritchson stars as the former Army intelligence officer who prefers to travel America with just a toothbrush, never staying in one place long enough to form attachments. In season two,

MESQUITE, Texas (AP) — Police in Mesquite, Texas, say an officer investigating a stolen vehicle fatally shot a 19-year-old man who was in another vehicle. Police say in a statement that the officer saw the stolen vehicle being followed by a second vehicle and stopping at a convenience store early Thursday. Police say the officer

By JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Dozens of migrants have crossed into Finland hours before the reclosure of two southern crossing points on the border with Russia as the Nordic country experiences an influx of asylum-seekers. The Vaalimaa and Niirala crossings had reopened briefly Thursday after being shut down at the

By BRIAN WITTE Associated Press ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says a long-term agreement between the Baltimore Orioles and the Maryland Stadium Authority for a new lease at Camden Yards is moving forward for a vote by state officials next week. The governor announced the agreement is slated to go before the

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — A number of European Union leaders are trying to use mounting concern about civilian deaths in Israel’s military offensive against Hamas to rally their partners around a united call for a ceasefire in Gaza. EU support for the move increased following a U.N. vote this week. But

NEW YORK (AP) — Bill Maher has had a few second thoughts, or at least some variations on the first ones. Next June, Simon & Schuster will publish “What This Comedian Said Will Shock You,” in which the outspoken host of HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” revisits some of his on-air commentary. The publisher

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Two private companies have announced a partnership to release mosquitoes across the Caribbean bred with a bacterium that blocks the dengue virus as the region fights a record number of cases. Friday’s announcement was made by Orbit Services Partners Inc., a company registered in Barbados, and Verily, a San

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Authorities say a small plane crashed on a western North Carolina highway and caught fire, but the two people on board escaped life-threatening injuries. The Federal Aviation Administration says a single-engine Diamond DA-40 crashed on Interstate 26 near Asheville Regional Airport around 8:15 p.m. Thursday with two people on board. WLOS-TV

Associated Press The United Methodist Church has been undergoing a major upheaval as more than 7,000 congregations across the country, one quarter of the total, decided whether to leave the denomination or remain United Methodist. This splintering resulted from a long-simmering debate over theological differences and the role of LGBTQ people in the church. WHY

By BASSEM MROUE Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says he has discussed with Israeli officials the volatile situation along the Lebanon-Israel border. He added that a “negotiated outcome” is the best way to reassure residents of northern Israel. Sullivan said in Jerusalem on Friday that Washington won’t tolerate threats

By PETER SMITH Associated Press A quarter of U.S. congregations in the United Methodist Church have received permission to leave the denomination during a five-year window, closing this month, that authorized departures for congregations over disputes involving the church’s LGBTQ-related policies. This year alone, 5,641 congregations received permission from their regional conferences to leave the

By GEROLD ROZENBLAD Associated Press PARAMARIBO, Suriname (AP) — Suriname’s former dictator will face a final verdict this month in the years-long judicial process over the 1982 killings of 15 political opponents that deeply scarred the South American country. Desi Bouterse and two dozen others were accused of rounding up well-known people including lawyers, journalists

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s parliament has approved plans to raise the country’s levy on carbon dioxide emissions from fuel by more than previously planned next month. The move is part of a deal to resolve a budget crisis. The CO2 price will rise to 45 euros or about $49 per ton of emissions from the

MADRID (AP) — Spanish police say they have arrested 14 workers at one of the country’s main tourist airports on suspicion of stealing items from checked-in luggage. Police seized allegedly stolen items worth almost 2 million euros ($2.2 million) from the group of employees at the largest airport in Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands. A

By ELIZABETH AYOOLA of NerdWallet As you plan your holiday giving, you may be thinking about adding service workers to your list of recipients. But holiday tips raise lots of questions: Whom should you tip extra during the holidays? How big of a tip should you give? Does the tip need to be in cash?

ROME (AP) — Short-term rental platform Airbnb has agreed to pay 576 million euros ($621 million) to settle a years-long dispute over unpaid taxes in Italy but won’t try to recover the money from its hosts. Airbnb said in a statement on Wednesday that it was working on introducing new tools that would allow hosts

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Polish prime minister and a top EU leader say that the European Union will by year’s end transfer to Poland the first 5 billion euros in funding that was frozen over democratic backsliding under the previous government in Warsaw. The 5 billion euros is part of a larger bloc of money

By GRANT PECK Associated Press BANGKOK (AP) — Reports from Myanmar say there is continuing fighting in the northeastof the country between the military government and an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups. That is even though China announced that the two sides had reached agreement on a cease-fire at meetings it had brokered. Clashes

By BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry has won his phone hacking lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mirror and was awarded over 140,000 pounds ($180,000) in the first of his several lawsuits against the tabloids to go to trial. Justice Timothy Fancourt in the High Court found on Friday that

By JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A prosecutor in Denmark says authorities are holding two people in custody and four others are the target of a terrorism investigation. The case coincides with one arrest in the Netherlands and several in Germany of alleged Hamas members. Denmark hasn’t said there is a

By JUSTIN SPIKE Associated Press BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s prime minister says he will have plenty of opportunities in the future to interrupt Ukraine’s process of joining the European Union despite a historic decision Thursday to move forward with bringing Kyiv into the bloc. Viktor Orbán’s comments to Hungarian state radio on Friday came

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch court has rejected a request by a group of human rights organizations to order a halt to the transfer to Israel of parts for F-35 fighter jets. The organizations went to court on Dec. 4 arguing that delivery of parts for F-35 jets makes the Netherlands complicit in

LONDON (AP) — U.K. police say they are “relieved and overjoyed” that a teenager found walking along a road in southwestern France is a British boy who went missing six years ago. Greater Manchester Police said the teen claiming to be Alex Batty had held a video call with his grandmother and “she is content

BEIJING (AP) — China has defended controversial cash bounties offered for Hong Kong dissidents who have fled abroad that have been heavily criticized by foreign governments and human rights groups. Rewards of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) have been offered for information leading to the capture of 13 opposition figures accused of violating the

PARIS (AP) — French maritime authorities say they rescued more than 60 migrants attempting to cross the English Channel overnight Friday but that one of them died. Another person was rescued in critical condition and flown by helicopter to a hospital in the French port of Calais, maritime authorities said in a statement. The person

By DASHA LITVINOVA Associated Press TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Allies of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny say penitentiary officials are reporting that earlier this month he was moved from the region where he was serving time, but have still not disclosed where he is. Navalny’s lawyers haven’t seen him since Dec. 6, his spokesperson