Month: February 2024

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron will sign a bilateral security agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday in Paris as part of a trip that will also go through Germany, the French presidency said in a statement. It did not release specific details about the agreement, to be signed at the Elysee

By PAN PYLAS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — The British economy fell into recession at the end of 2023 as output shrank more than anticipated in the final three months of the year. The Office for National Statistics said Thursday that economic activity, as measured by gross domestic product, declined by 0.3% in the fourth

By TOM ODULA and DESMOND TIRO Associated Press LOISABA CONSERVANCY, Kenya (AP) — Conservationists in Kenya are celebrating as rhinos were returned to a grassy plateau that hasn’t seen them in decades. The successful move of 21 eastern black rhinos to a new home will give them space to breed and could help increase the

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Anthony Albanese has become the first Australian prime minister to get engaged while in office, revealing Thursday that his partner accepted his marriage proposal on Valentine’s Day. He and Jodie Haydon, a financial services professional, have been together for three years. Albanese said he proposed on

By ELAINE KURTENBACH AP Business Writer BANGKOK (AP) — Shares advanced in Asia on Friday, with Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index trading near a record high, 34 years after it peaked and then plunged with the collapse of Japan’s financial bubble. U.S. futures were lower after stocks on Wall Street set another record following some

By WAFAA SHURAFA, BASSEM MROUE and MELANIE LIDMAN Associated Press RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, hours after Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex. The Israeli army said it was seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas. The

By MOHAMMED ZAATARI and BASSEM MROUE Associated Press NABATIYEH, Lebanon (AP) — The civilian death toll from two Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon has risen to 10, Lebanese state media reported Thursday, making the previous day the deadliest in more than four months of cross-border exchanges. Israel’s military said it killed a senior commander with the

By SHEIKH SAALIQ Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s top court has struck down a controversial election funding system that allowed individuals and companies to send unlimited donations to political parties without the need to disclose donor identity. A five-judge constitution bench on the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that “electoral bonds” are “unconstitutional” and

By VICTORIA MILKO Associated Press JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A wealthy ex-general with ties to both Indonesia’s popular outgoing president and its dictatorial past looks set to be its next leader. He’s promised to continue the outgoing president’s widely popular policies, but his human rights record has activists and some analysts concerned about the future

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Another private U.S. company took a shot at the moon Thursday, launching a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its mark and came crashing back. NASA, the main sponsor with experiments on board, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as

By JACK DURA Associated Press BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A trial is scheduled to begin Thursday in North Dakota’s years-old lawsuit seeking $38 million from the federal government for policing protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016-17. The state filed the lawsuit in 2019, followed by years of legal wrangling before a judge set

By BERNAT ARMANGUE and TARA COPP Associated Press ABOARD THE USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (AP) — Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its accompanying warships have spent four months straight at sea defending against ballistic missiles and flying attack drones fired by Iranian-backed Houthis, and are now more regularly also defending

By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press LONDON (AP) — What a difference a few decades can make. Queen Camilla, once seen as the scourge of the House of Windsor, the woman at the heart of King Charles III’s doomed marriage to the late Princess Diana, has emerged as one of the monarchy’s most prominent emissaries. With

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — The former mother-in-law of the woman who opened fire at a Houston megachurch tried for years to alert authorities and others, including church staff, about her ex-daughter-in-law’s mental health struggles, she said Wednesday. But Walli Carranza said nothing came of her actions. Carranza said she believes

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, SCOTT McFETRIDGE and JOSH FUNK Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The mass shooting that unfolded amid throngs of people at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration, killing one person and wounding almost two dozen others, appeared to stem from a dispute between several people, authorities said Thursday. Police Chief

By ACACIA CORONADO Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday voiced concerns over a Texas law that would give police broad authority to arrest migrants on charges of illegal entry starting in March, saying it would be a “nightmare” if the U.S. became a patchwork of states enforcing different immigration laws.

By DAVID SHARP and NICK PERRY Associated Press AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine state police are defending their search last fall for a gunman who had just killed 18 people, saying they didn’t rush to search woods surrounding his abandoned car because they feared an ambush. It took police two days to find the body

By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The National Rifle Association and its ex-CEO were caught “with their hands in the cookie jar,” a lawyer with the New York Attorney General’s Office said Thursday, at the conclusion of a civil trial accusing the gun rights group’s executives of wildly misspending millions of dollars

By RAF CASERT Associated Press LEDEGEM, Belgium (AP) — On a farm in northern Belgium, not far from the hundreds of tractors blocking Europe’s second-biggest port to demand more respect for farmers, Bart Dochy was switching on his computer, waiting for a government program to load with maps of his land next to empty digital

By DAVID SHARP Associated Press PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s vaunted independent voters are becoming scarcer as Super Tuesday approaches. Unenrolled voters represented the state’s largest voting bloc for more than three decades and contributed to the state’s political identity in a place with a reputation for pragmatic moderation. But that distinction no longer holds.

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer MUNICH (AP) — Long regarded as a celebration of the U.S.-led post-World War II international order, the Munich Security Conference this year will be more of a reflection of America’s political turmoil. The annual event kicks off Friday after former President Donald Trump threatened not to come to the

By STEPHEN GROVES and MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate’s border proposal was one of the toughest bipartisan bills to emerge on the issue in decades. Yet it quickly collapsed when Republicans — galvanized by Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee — rejected the compromise as insufficient. Now Democrats see