Month: April 2024

By ADAM BEAM Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s population increased in 2023 for the first time in three years. The California Department of Finance released a population estimate on Tuesday showing the state gained just over 67,000 people in 2023 for a total population of more than 39.1 million. It’s the first population

By CIARÁN GILES Associated Press MADRID (AP) — Marjane Satrapi, the acclaimed Iranian-French filmmaker and cartoonist, has won the 2024 Princess of Asturias Foundation award for communication and humanities. The Spanish organization said Satrapi was an essential voice in the defense of human rights and freedom. She is best-known for her monochrome autobiographical cartoon book

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Pay and benefits for America’s workers grew more quickly in the first three months of this year, a trend that could contribute to higher inflation and raise concerns about the future path of price increases at the Federal Reserve. Compensation as measured by the government’s Employment

MILAN (AP) — A former Italian foreign minister has been convicted and sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for his role in the sale of an apartment in Monte Carlo inherited by his right-wing party. Gianfranco Fini is a former leader of the Italian Social Movement, which he moved away from its

By ERIK VERDUZCO and JEFFREY COLLINS Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Police in North Carolina say a shootout that killed four law enforcement officers and wounded four others began as officers approached a home to serve a warrant for a felon wanted for possessing a firearm. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings says some of

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Six years after being forced out as as national security adviser, H.R McMaster is releasing a book about his brief, contentious time in the Trump administration. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Tuesday that “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the

By THALIA BEATY Associated Press Some 170 foundations, donors and advisors have signed on to a pledge started by the nonprofit Democracy Fund to make their grants earlier this Election Year. A small portion of the billions spent around the November election will go to nonprofits working to boost voter participation and access to voting.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Chinese coast guard ships have fired water cannons at two Philippine patrol vessels near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, causing minor damage to one vessel, in the latest flareup in an increasingly tense territorial conflict. There were no immediate reports of injuries in the incident Tuesday off Scarborough

By TODD RICHMOND Associated Press Wildlife researchers say the wolf population on a remote Lake Superior island is stable. But they announced Tuesday that the moose population had declined by 14% from last year. Scientists have conducted an annual survey of Isle Royale’s wolves and moose since 1958. The only break was in 2021, when

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani police say gunmen have fatally shot a police officer assigned to protect polio workers in the northwest. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only countries where the spread of polio has never been stopped. Police said Tuesday that the gunmen fired at team working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing the

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Tuesday to launch an incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering from the 7-month-long war. Netanyahu said Israel would enter Rafah to destroy Hamas’ battalions there “with or without a deal.” Israel and Hamas are

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Telegraph newspaper group is back up for sale after a takeover bid by a United Arab Emirates-backed consortium collapsed. Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund RedBird IMI says it is withdrawing from its proposed acquisition of the Telegraph Media Group, which owns the right-leaning Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and The Spectator

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s hush money trial will resume with testimony from the third prosecution witness, Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts. Cohen used one to buy the silence of porn performer Stormy Daniels. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, which he denies. The

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Authorities in Kazakhstan have arrested a former interior minister in connection with deadly unrest that gripped the country in 2022, Kazakh news media reported Tuesday. The Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Monday that the former minister was detained on charges of “abuse of power and official authority resulting in grave consequences”

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO AP Retail Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart is launching its biggest store-label food brand in 20 years in terms of its breadth of items. It’s an attempt to appeal to younger customers who are not brand loyal and want chef-inspired foods priced more affordably. The country’s largest retail said Tuesday that

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A senior military official in Cambodia says the huge explosion over the weekend that killed 20 soldiers at an army base in the country’s southwest appears to have been an accident caused by mishandling of ammunition by troops. The Saturday afternoon blast in Kampong Speu province also destroyed military vehicles

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s new government will include a former intelligence chief who has fostered close ties with Russia and is sanctioned by the United States. Prime Minister-designate Milos Vucevic said on Tuesday that Aleksandar Vulin will serve as one of several vice-premiers. Serbia’s new government is expected to be voted into office in

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Twenty years after Poland joined the European Union, its finance minister says the country is still not ready to adopt the euro currency. The finance minister in the pro-European Union government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that membership of the eurozone, the currency union of 20 EU members, was not

BEIJING (AP) — China’s Foreign Ministry says rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah made “encouraging progress” in recent talks in China’s capital on promoting reconciliation. Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian gave few details at a daily briefing Tuesday, but the meeting in Beijing is China’s latest attempt to position itself as broker in the Middle East

By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press LONDON (AP) — King Charles III will return to public duties on Tuesday when he visits a cancer treatment charity, beginning his carefully managed comeback after the monarch’s own cancer diagnosis sidelined him for three months. The event marks the king’s first formal public engagement since Feb. 6, when Buckingham

LONDON (AP) — London police say a man wielding a sword attacked members of the public and two police officers on Tuesday in the east London community of Hainault before being arrested.  The incident is not being treated as terror-related.  Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan says this must have been “a terrifying incident for those

By NICOLAS GARRIGA Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Paris police have evicted migrants from a makeshift tent camp next to City Hall, the latest clear-out that aid groups allege is a campaign of ’’social cleansing″ ahead of the Summer Olympics. In a pre-dawn operation, police woke around 100 teenage boys and young men from West

By RONALD BLUM AP Sports Writer NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Soccer Federation and its Mexican counterpart dropped their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup on Monday and said they will focus on trying to host the 2031 tournament. The decision left a proposal from Brazil and a joint Germany-Netherlands-Belgium plan

By The Associated Press Officials from Hamas have left Cairo after talks with Egyptian officials on a new cease-fire proposal in Gaza, Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera News satellite channel said Tuesday. The channel, which has close ties with Egyptian security agencies, said a Hamas delegation will return to Cairo with a written response to the cease-fire

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Taliban official says a gunman opened fire inside a mosque in western Afghanistan, killing at least six people as they were praying. Local media reports and a former president of Afghanistan say the mosque was frequented by members of the country’s Shiite Muslim minority. A spokesman for the Taliban Interior Ministry

SHANGHAI (AP) — The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab. Virologist Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post on Monday that he and his team were suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the

By ARIEL GILREATH of The Hechinger Report NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Last summer, Derrika Richard felt stuck. She didn’t have enough money to afford child care for her three youngest children, ages 1, 2 and 3. Yet the demands of caring for them on a daily basis made it impossible for Richard, a hairstylist, to

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s taking control of its oil from U.S. and British companies is taught in schools and celebrated every year. The 1938 nationalization is a point of pride for millions, including President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The popular president hails from the oil industry’s heartland. And 16

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico took control of its most precious natural resource by seizing the oil sector from U.S. companies in a move that’s taught to schoolchildren and celebrated as a great patriotic victory. The front-runner in the June 2 presidential election is an environmental engineer who helped produce the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental

By EDNA TARIGAN Associated Press JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Microsoft will invest $1.7 billion over the next four years in new cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Indonesia — the single largest investment in Microsoft’s 29-year history in the country. That’s according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who was visiting the country and met Indonesian

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Mexico is taking Ecuador to the top U.N. court, accusing the nation of violating international law by storming the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest a former vice president who had just been granted asylum in Mexico. The April 5 raid, hours after Mexico granted asylum to former Vice President

By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly rose Tuesday, as investors kept their eyes on potentially market-moving reports expected later this week. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 jumped 1.0% to 38,300.49 in afternoon trading, coming back from a national holiday. Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.2% to 7,655.60. South Korea’s Kospi added

By GRACEY WAKARI Associated Press MANADO, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s Mount Ruang volcano has erupted for a second time in two weeks, spewing ash more than a mile into the sky, closing an airport and peppering nearby villages with debris. The alert level of the volcano on Sulawesi Island was again raised to the highest

By JOHN CARUCCI and JOCELYN NOVECK Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Ralph Lauren has been known for many a grand fashion show over the years: taking over Central Park for a sumptuous anniversary celebration, for example, or staging a runway show amid his eye-popping classic car collection. But for his Fall/Holiday 2024 collection, he

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says his governing party’s major defeat in last weekend’s by-elections was largely due to a political fundraising scandal and that he will not resign or replace party executives to take responsibility. Kishida said Tuesday he will instead push anti-corruption measures and political

By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SEATTLE (AP) — Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, faces sentencing in a Seattle courtroom. U.S. prosecutors are asking a judge on Tuesday to give him a three-year prison term for allowing rampant money laundering on the platform. Zhao pleaded guilty and stepped down as

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations’ top court is ruling Tuesday on a request by Nicaragua for judges to order Germany to halt military aid to Israel, arguing that Berlin’s support enables acts of genocide and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza. Nicaragua’s case is the latest

By RIAZAT BUTT Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Around 30 men are crammed into a Kabul classroom, part of the debut student cohort at a Taliban-run institute training tourism and hospitality professionals. It’s a motley crew. One student is a model. Another is 17 and has no job history. The students vary in age,

By CLAIRE RUSH and GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized check for $1.3 billion above his head. The 46-year-old immigrant’s luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier

By JIM VERTUNO, CEDAR ATTANASIO, JAKE OFFENHARTZ and JONATHAN MATTISE Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — As upcoming commencement ceremonies grew closer Tuesday, universities across the U.S. grappled with how to clear out encampments of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, with some continuing negotiations and others turning to force and ultimatums that have resulted in arrests and clashes

By STEPHANY MATAT Associated Press WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Jordan Vassallo is lukewarm about casting her first presidential ballot for President Joe Biden in November. But when the 18-year-old senior at Jupiter High School in Florida thinks about the things she cares about, she says her vote for the Democratic incumbent is an

By CAROLYN THOMPSON Associated Press BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Voters are casting ballots in a special election to fill the upstate New York congressional seat vacated earlier this year by Democrat Brian Higgins. The race for the 26th Congressional District features state Sen. Timothy Kennedy, a Democrat viewed by many as Higgins’ natural successor, and

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — The final list of almost 40 new plays and musicals vying for Tony Award nominations this year are ready and hoping for their closeups. Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Renée Elise Goldsberry will announce nominees for the 26 competitive Tony Awards on Tuesday morning. The spring

By MICHAEL R. SISAK, JENNIFER PELTZ, JAKE OFFENHARTZ and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The first week of testimony at Donald Trump’s hush money trial was the scene-setter for jurors: Manhattan prosecutors portrayed what they say was an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by burying negative stories. Now prosecutors

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi lawmakers are expected to vote this week on a proposal that would expand Medicaid coverage to tens of thousands more people, but it includes a work requirement that might not win federal approval. House and Senate negotiators submitted a plan moments before a Monday