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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The circumstances surrounding the death of ex-One Direction singer Liam Payne were suspicious and possibly involved drugs, though there was no sign of a third party being involved, Argentine prosecutors said Thursday. Payne, 31, who died on Wednesday, first shot to fame as a teenager and grappled with the pressures of global stardom. As the news ricocheted around the world, fans and media swarmed the Casa Sur Hotel in the chic Palermo neighborhood of Argentina's capital where Payne was found dead after plunging f...
Joe Biden's withdrawal from the U.S. presidential race injects greater uncertainty into the world at a time when Western leaders are grappling with wars in Ukraine and Gaza, a more assertive China in Asia and the rise of the far right in Europe. During a five-decade career in politics, Biden developed extensive personal relationships with multiple foreign leaders that none of the potential replacements on the Democratic ticket can match. After his announcement, messages of support and gratitude for his years of public service poured in from nea...
QUSRA, West Bank (AP) — When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants' deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank. Overnight, the territory was closed off. Towns were raided, curfews imposed, teenagers arrested, detainees beaten, and villages stormed by Jewish vigilantes. With the world's attention on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, the violence of war has also erupted in the West Bank. Israeli settler attacks have surged at an u...
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they'd be safe in a church. Nearly half of the crowded strip's 2.3 million inhabitants are under 18, and children account for 40% of those killed so far in the w...
JERUSALEM (AP) — How many Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war between Israel and Hamas started? With Israel besieging and bombing territory at a scale never seen before, arriving at a precise answer isn't easy. Cell service is spotty. Internet and power are out. Airstrikes have pulverized roads and leveled neighborhoods, slowing rescue work. Doctors scribble on notepads in overflowing morgues and hospital halls, struggling to account for bodies trapped under rubble and tossed in hastily dug mass graves. The chaos h...
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Doctors hamstrung by dwindling medical supplies rushed Wednesday to save people badly wounded in a massive blast at a Gaza City hospital the day before, performing surgery – often without anesthesia – on patients lying on floors, as Israel kept up its attacks on the besieged territory. The Hamas militant group blamed Israel for the massive blast at the al-Ahli Hospital — saying nearly 500 died — while Israel blamed a rocket misfired by other Palestinian militants. Public outrage over the hospital carnage spread th...
JERUSALEM (AP) — Death threats forced Irish pop singer Sinead O'Connor to call off a peace concert in Jerusalem in the summer of 1997. At the time, a young man named Itamar Ben-Gvir took credit for the campaign against her. Today, he is Israel's national security minister. The transformation of Ben-Gvir from a fringe Israeli extremist trying to take down O'Connor's coexistence-themed concert to a powerful minster overseeing the Israeli police force reflects the dramatic rise of Israel's far-right. O'Connor, a spirited singer and frequent source...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Talks to revive Tehran's tattered nuclear accord with world powers in Vienna ended Monday as the parties closed a final text and key negotiators prepared to consult with their capitals, diplomats said. After 16 months of torturous on-and-off indirect negotiations to restore the deal, the European Union's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell suggested there was no more room for negotiation on the draft now on the table. A final decision on whether the most significant nonproliferation pact in the last quarter c...
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog warned Tuesday that the restrictions faced by his inspectors in Iran threaten to give the world only a "very blurred image" of Tehran's program as it enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. Speaking in a wide-ranging interview to The Associated Press, Rafael Mariano Grossi said he wanted to tell Iran that there was "no way around" his inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency if the Islamic Republic wanted to be "a respected c...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Some of the foreign contractors who powered the logistics of America's "forever war" in Afghanistan now find themselves stranded on an unending layover in Dubai without a way to get home. After nearly two decades, the rapid U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has upended the lives of thousands of private security contractors from some of the world's poorest countries — not the hired guns but the hired hands who serviced the American war effort. For years, they toiled in the shadows as cleaners, cooks, con...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — At least four ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates broadcast warnings Tuesday that they had lost control of their steering under unclear circumstances as authorities reported "an incident" was underway in the area. It wasn't immediately clear what was happening off the coast of Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman. The vessels — oil tankers called Queen Ematha, the Golden Brilliant, Jag Pooja and Abyss — announced around the same time via their Automatic Identification System trackers that they were "not...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Cafes across several Gulf Arab states started selling coffee and other cold drinks in baby bottles this month, kicking off a new trend that has elicited excitement, confusion — and backlash. The fad began at Einstein Cafe, a slick dessert chain with branches across the region, from Dubai to Kuwait to Bahrain. Instead of ordinary paper cups, the cafe, inspired by pictures of trendy-looking bottles shared on social media, decided to serve its thick milky drinks in plastic baby bottles. Although the fra...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — One of Saudi Arabia's most prominent political activists was released from prison Wednesday, her family said, after serving nearly three years on charges that sparked an international uproar over the kingdom's human rights record. Loujain al-Hathloul, who pushed to end a ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to almost six years in prison last December under a broad counterterrorism law. Held for 1001 days, with time in pre-trial detention and solitary confinement, she was a...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran began enriching uranium Monday to levels unseen since its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and also seized a South Korean-flagged tanker near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, a double-barreled challenge to the West that further raised Mideast tensions. Both decisions appeared aimed at increasing Tehran's leverage in the waning days in office for President Donald Trump, whose unilateral withdrawal from the atomic accord in 2018 began a series of escalating incidents. Increasing enrichment at its u...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Tens of thousands of Muslims, from Pakistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian territories, poured out of prayer services to join anti-France protests on Friday, as the French president's vow to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad continues to roil the Muslim world. Hardline Islamic groups across the region have seized on the the French government's staunch secularist stance as an affront to Islam, rallying their supporters and stirring up rage. Demonstrations in Pakistan's capital Islamabad t...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The World Food Program won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its efforts to combat hunger amid the coronavirus pandemic, recognition that shines light on vulnerable communities across the Middle East and Africa that the U.N. agency seeks to help, those starving and living in war zones that may rarely get the world's attention. From Yemen to South Sudan, food insecurity is a growing scourge, made worse by a mixture of military conflict, environmental disaster and the economic fallout of the pandemic. Last yea...
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The party was going strong: traditional music blared, families cheered, throngs of revelers danced. Then, police burst in. Officers kicked out guests, slapped hefty fines — even locked up the tuxedoed groom and singers. In recent weeks, such unhappy endings to long-awaited weddings have become a common story in the Arab world, as resurgent coronavirus caseloads trigger tough police action. Still, in a region where marriage is the cornerstone of society — the gateway to independence and the only cultu...
CAIRO (AP) — Karim Hegazi spends his days in a Cairo clinic taking care of animals long considered a menace in Egypt. Stray dogs roam in almost every Cairo neighborhood — lurking in construction sites, scavenging through trash and howling nightly atop parked cars. The government says there's around 15 million of them. They bite some 200,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and spread rabies, one of the world's most lethal diseases. And if that wasn't reason enough to feel revulsion toward dogs, a famous Islamic say...
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — As Egypt marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Suez Canal, marine biologists are bemoaning one of the famed waterway's lesser known legacies — the invasion of hundreds of non-native species, including toxic jellyfish and aggressive lionfish. The canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, revolutionized maritime travel by creating a direct shipping route between the East and the West. But over the years, the invasive species have driven native marine life toward extinction and altered the del...
CAIRO (AP) — Archaeologists in Egypt have unveiled two new artifacts from antiquity, a rare statue of one of the country's most famous pharaohs and a diminutive ancient sphinx. Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities announced that a pink granite statue of celebrated ancient ruler Ramses II was found last week, describing the artifact as "one of the rarest archaeological discoveries." Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the three-and-a-half-foot statue was crafted in a style that ancient Egyptians used to portr...
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel ushered in its Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday in memory of the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in World War II, as leaders voiced concerns about a rising tide of anti-Semitism worldwide. In moving speeches to hundreds of Israeli politicians and Holocaust survivors at the country's national Holocaust memorial, Israel's ceremonial president warned the government against warming up to far-right parties in Europe, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed to last weekend's deadly s...
YEHUD, Israel (AP) — An Israeli spacecraft crashed into the moon Thursday just moments before touchdown, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately funded lunar landing. The spacecraft lost communication with ground control during its final descent. Moments later, the mission was declared a failure. "We definitely crashed on the surface of the moon," said Opher Doron of Israel Aerospace Industries. He said the spacecraft's engine turned off shortly before landing, and scientists were still trying to figure out the c...
JERUSALEM (AP) — The team behind the Israeli spacecraft that crashed into the moon moments before touchdown was working Friday to try and piece together what derailed the ambitious mission, which sought to make history as the first privately funded lunar landing. SpaceIL, the start-up that worked for over eight years to get the spacecraft off the ground, revealed that a technical glitch triggered a "chain of events" that caused the spacecraft's engine to malfunction Thursday just 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) above the moon, making it "...
BEIRUT (AP) — President Donald Trump's move to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights turns the tables on decades of U.S. diplomacy and international law and threatens to further inflame regional tensions. It is unlikely, though, to have much impact on the actual status of the territory, where Israel acts with full military control despite the lack of international recognition for its annexation 38 years ago. A look at the Golan Heights: ___ WHAT IS ITS POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE? The Golan Heights is a...
