Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 33
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's caretaker prime minister on Friday asked Iran to help secure a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah and appeared to urge it to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border. As a top adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei visited Lebanon for talks, Lebanese officials said an American proposal for a cease-fire deal had been passed on to Hezbollah, aiming to end 13 months of exchanges of fire between Israel and the group. Iran is a m...
SINGAPORE (AP) — United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told a gathering of top security officials Saturday that war with China was neither imminent nor unavoidable, despite rapidly escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, stressing the importance of renewed dialogue between him and his Chinese counterpart in avoiding "miscalculations and misunderstandings." Austin's comments at the Shangri-La defense forum in Singapore came the day after he met for more than an hour on the sidelines with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun, t...
CAIRO (AP) — Hamas said Saturday it was reviewing a new Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, as Egypt intensified efforts to broker a deal to end the months-long war and stave off a planned Israeli ground offensive into the southern city of Rafah. Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya gave no details of Israel's offer, but said it was in response to a Hamas proposal two weeks ago. Negotiations earlier this month centered on a six-week cease-fire proposal and the release of 40 civilian and sick hostages in exchange for freeing hundreds of...
HANGZHOU, China (AP) — In the first Asian Games since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, two teams of athletes are arriving in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, looking very different. One, sent from Afghanistan where women are now banned by the Taliban from participating in sports, consists of about 130 all-male athletes, who will participate in 17 different sports, including volleyball, judo and wrestling, Atel Mashwani, a Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Afghanistan's Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press. Another, competing...
UTHAI SAWAN, Thailand (AP) — A former police officer facing a drug charge burst into a day care center Thursday in Thailand, killing dozens of preschoolers and teachers and then shooting more people as he fled. At least 36 people were slain in the deadliest rampage in the nation's history. The assailant, who was fired earlier this year, took his own life after killing his wife and child at home. Photos taken by first responders showed the school's floor littered with the tiny bodies of children still on their blankets, where they had been t...
BANGKOK (AP) — The official global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing 6 million — underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over. The milestone is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,997,994 as of Sunday afternoon. Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two yea...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Violence receded Friday in the capital of the Solomon Islands, but the government showed no signs of addressing the underlying grievances that sparked two days of riots, including concerns about the country's increasing links with China. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare sought to deflect attention from domestic issues by blaming outside interference for stirring up the protesters, with a thinly veiled reference to Taiwan and the United States. External pressures were a "very big ... influence. I d...
VIENNA (AP) — The United Nations' atomic watchdog hasn't been able to access data important to monitoring Iran's nuclear program since late February when the Islamic Republic started restricting international inspections of its facilities, the agency said Monday. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in a confidential document distributed to member countries and seen by The Associated Press that it has "not had access to the data from its online enrichment monitors and electronic seals, or had access to the measurement recordings r...
BERLIN (AP) — Collective sighs of relief could be heard from many European capitals Saturday after U.S. President Joe Biden made clear in his first major foreign policy address since taking office that he rejected the "America First" and transactional approach of his predecessor and urged cooperation among Western allies. At the same time, politicians and observers cautioned that some of the sources of tension from Donald Trump's presidency remained and that the allies have serious work ahead of them, once Biden's honeymoon is over. "Biden g...
The human and economic toll of the lockdowns against the coronavirus mounted Thursday as India struggled to feed the multitudes, Italy shut down most of its industry, and a record-shattering 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in a single week. As the number of infections worldwide reached a half-million and deaths climbed past 23,000, the damage to people's livelihoods and their well-being from the effort to flatten the rising curve started to come into focus. In India, where the country's 1.3 billion people were under...
BERLIN (AP) — One of Germany's richest families, which owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Pret A Manger and other international brands, is giving millions to support Holocaust survivors as it seeks to atone for its use of forced laborers during the Nazi era and its enthusiastic support of Adolf Hitler, The Associated Press has learned. In addition to 5 million euros ($5.5 million) being given to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to help thousands of elderly survivors around the world, the Reimann family's JAB Investors c...
TASIILAQ, Greenland (AP) — From a helicopter, Greenland's brilliant white ice and dark mountains make the desolation seem to go on forever. And the few people who live here — its whole population wouldn't fill a football stadium — are poor, with a high rate of substance abuse and suicide. One scientist called it the "end of the planet." When U.S. President Donald Trump floated the idea of buying Greenland, it was met with derision, seen as an awkward and inappropriate approach of an erstwhile ally. But it might also be an Aladdin's Cave of oil,...
BERLIN (AP) — The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island's ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic. Greenland, the world's largest island, is a semi-autonomous Danish territory between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that has 82% of its surface covered in ice. The area of the Greenland ice sheet that is showing indications of melt has been growing daily, and hit a record 56.5% for this year on Wednesday, said Ruth Mottram, a...
BERLIN (AP) — German authorities on Tuesday handed over to Israel some 5,000 documents kept by a confidant of Franz Kafka, a trove whose plight could have been plucked from one of the author's surreal stories. The papers returned include a postcard from Kafka from 1910 and personal documents kept by Max Brod, which experts say provide a window into Europe's literary and cultural scene in the early 20th century. They are among some 40,000 documents, including manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks and other writings that once belonged to Brod, w...
BERLIN (AP) — European and American investigators have broken up one of the world's largest online criminal marketplaces for drugs, hacking tools and financial-theft wares a series of raids in the United States and Germany, authorities said Friday. Three German men, ages 31, 22 and 29, were arrested after the raids in three southern states on allegations they operated the so-called "Wall Street Market" darknet platform, which hosted some 5,400 sellers and more than 1 million customer accounts, Frankfurt prosecutor Georg Ungefuk told r...
MUNICH (AP) — Europeans need to do more than talk if they want to preserve a deal meant to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States, Iran's foreign minister said Sunday, slamming Washington as the "biggest source of destabilization" in the Middle East. Mohammad Javad Zarif told a gathering of world leaders, top defense officials and diplomats that a barter-type system known as INSTEX set up last month by France, Germany and Britain to allow businesses to skirt direct financial transactions...
MUNICH (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel drew lengthy applause Saturday for her spirited defense of a multilateral approach to global affairs and support for Europe's decision to stand by a nuclear deal with Iran. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was not among the impressed, however, and he doubled down on American criticism of Europe. Merkel's comments at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of world leaders and top global defense and foreign policy officials, followed days of acrimony between the U.S. and Europe over I...
BERLIN (AP) — German authorities raided Deutsche Bank's headquarters Thursday amid suspicions that its employees helped clients set up offshore companies that were used to launder hundreds of millions of euros. About 170 police officers, investigators and prosecutors swooped in on the bank's offices in Frankfurt and premises in nearby Eschborn and Gross-Umstadt at 10 a.m. (0900 GMT), seizing electronic and paper records. The investigation emerged from an analysis of documents leaked from tax havens in recent years, including the 2016 "Panama P...
BERLIN (AP) — A Moroccan man convicted of helping Mohamed Atta and the other Hamburg-based Sept. 11 suicide pilots as they plotted attacks on New York and Washington was deported Monday from Germany to his homeland. German authorities confirmed that Mounir el Motassadeq was aboard a plane that had taken off from Frankfurt airport in the evening. El Motassadeq was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization and accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the 9/11 attacks in 2001. "It's a good feel...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Oil prices rose to a 10-day high Thursday after Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company announced it was temporarily halting crude shipments through a strategic Red Sea shipping lane after Yemen's Shiite rebels attacked two tankers in the strait the previous day. Futures for Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, hit $74.83 per barrel before falling back in later day trading to $73.99, up 6 cents. The spike came after Saudi Aramco, the kingdom's oil giant, said it was stopping all oil shipments through t...
BERLIN (AP) — The steady drum of anti-German rhetoric from the United States, one of the country's traditionally closest friends, has people wondering whether to get ready for a messy breakup. First, it was then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign trail contention that Chancellor Angela Merkel was "ruining Germany" with her decision to allow in more than 1 million asylum-seekers in 2015 and 2016. Then, as president, came his repeated criticism of the German export surplus with a focus on its popular car brands like Mercedes, BMW and V...
GREGORY KATZ and DAVID RISINGWINDSOR, England (AP) — Nothing quite captured the trans-Atlantic nature of Saturday's royal wedding as much as the guest preacher whose sermon brought American flair to a very English church service. The Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, the first black leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States, was hand-picked by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to address their 600 wedding guests. The bishop's sermon on the theme of love, delivered with energy and studded with quotes from the bible, Martin Luther King Jr. an...
If British marketers are to be believed, nothing is a better royal wedding tribute than a limited-edition bucket of fried chicken chased with a bottle or two of Royal Wedding pale ale. Estimates are that consumers will spend between 40 million pounds to 70 million pounds ($54 million to $94 million) on royal wedding-related merchandise, including commemorative mugs, plates, coins and posters. If you're tucking in to watch the wedding from home but want to feel "part of" it you can enjoy a bowl of "Wedding Rings" cereal, featuring Prince Harry...
BERLIN (AP) — A Berlin museum has returned ancient wooden masks, an idol and other spiritually significant artifacts plundered from graves by an explorer to indigenous Alaskans, ending an odyssey in which many of the items were thought forever lost. The masks, carved from spruce or hemlock, are daubed with red pigment — a traditional tincture made of seal oil, human blood and powder from a stone that indicate they were used in burial ceremonies by tribes in the Chugach area of Alaska. One mask comes to a sharp point at the top, symbolizing the...
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A self-taught Danish engineer was convicted of murder Wednesday for luring a Swedish journalist on to his homemade submarine, then torturing and killing her before dismembering her body and dumping it at sea in a sensational case that has gripped Scandinavia. Peter Madsen, 47, was sentenced in Copenhagen City Court to life in prison for killing Kim Wall, a 30-year-old freelance reporter, after bringing her aboard his submarine with the promise of an interview last summer. "We are talking about a cynical and planned s...
