Sorted by date Results 1 - 22 of 22
PARIS (AP) — A coalition of the French left won the most seats in high-stakes legislative elections, according to final results early Monday, beating back a far-right surge but failing to win a majority. The outcome left France facing the stunning prospect of a hung parliament and threatened political paralysis in a pillar of the European Union and Olympic host country. That could rattle markets and the French economy, the EU's second-largest, and have far-ranging implications for the war in Ukraine, global diplomacy and Europe's economic s...
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The first shock wave shattered aisles stacked almost to the ceiling with home improvement products. The next Russian bomb streaked down like a comet seconds later, unleashing flames that left the megastore an ashen shell. A third bomb failed to detonate when it landed behind the Epicenter shopping complex in Kharkiv. Investigators hope it will help them trace the supply chain for the latest generation of retrofitted Russian "glide bombs" that are laying waste to eastern Ukraine. The Soviet-era bombs are adapted on the ch...
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian civilians woke long before dawn in the bitter cold, lined up for the single toilet and were loaded at gunpoint into the livestock trailer. They spent the next 12 hours or more digging trenches on the front lines for Russian soldiers. Many were forced to wear overlarge Russian military uniforms that could make them a target, and a former city administrator trudged around in boots five sizes too big. By the end of the day, their hands curled into icy claws. Nearby, in the occupied region of Z...
Throughout Mariupol, Russian workers are tearing down bombed-out buildings at a rate of at least one a day, hauling away shattered bodies with the debris. Russian military convoys are rumbling down the broad avenues of what is swiftly becoming a garrison city, and Russian soldiers, builders, administrators and doctors are replacing the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have died or left. Many of the city's Ukrainian street names are reverting to Soviet ones, with the Avenue of Peace that cuts through Mariupol to be labeled Lenin Avenue. Even...
AVDIIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — In the trenches of eastern Ukraine, across the tense contact lines with Russia-backed separatists, a soldier's calm verges on numbness after a sniper's bullet recently killed one of the 50 or so men under his command. It is the sort of thing that has happened from time to time in the eight years Ivan Skuratovskyi's been deployed up and down the 250-mile (400-kilometer) front line — a member of the Ukrainian army in a war he never imagined when he enlisted in 2013. He grieves, but death and conflict have become an inesca...
PARIS (AP) — Rarely in recent years has the Kremlin been so popular with European visitors. French President Emmanuel Macron arrives Monday. The Hungarian prime minister visited last week. And in days to come, the German chancellor will be there, too. All are hoping to get through to President Vladimir Putin, the man who singlehandedly shapes Russia's course amid its military buildup near Ukraine and whose designs are a mystery even for his own narrow inner circle. "The priority for me on the Ukrainian question is dialogue with Russia and d...
CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Guinea's best hope for coronavirus patients lies inside a neglected yellow shed on the grounds of its main hospital: an oxygen plant that has never been turned on. The plant was part of a hospital renovation funded by international donors responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa a few years ago. But the foreign technicians and supplies needed to complete the job can't get in under Guinea's coronavirus lockdowns — even though dozens of Chinese technicians came in on a charter flight last month to work at the cou...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Setting the stage for a possible power struggle with President Donald Trump, governors around the U.S. began sketching out plans Tuesday to reopen their economies in a slow and methodical process so as to prevent the coronavirus from rebounding with tragic consequences. In Italy, Spain and other places around Europe where infections and deaths have begun stabilizing, the process is already underway, with certain businesses and industries allowed to start back up in a calibrated effort by politicians to balance public health a...
MADRID, Spain (AP) — Tens of millions of students stayed home on three continents, security forces went on standby to guard against large gatherings of people, and bars, restaurants and offices closed Friday to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus edged ever closer to the world's power centers, with positive tests for the Canadian prime minister's wife, a top aide to Iran's supreme leader, a Brazilian official who met with President Donald Trump, and an Australian Cabinet minister who met with U.S. Attorney General William B...
CAIRO (AP) — A boat from Libya carrying 86 migrants sank in the Mediterranean and left only three survivors, authorities said Thursday, after an airstrike on a detention center near the Libyan capital killed dozens of others. The twin tragedies illustrate the almost unthinkable choice facing those who have reached the North Africa coast while seeking a better life in Europe: Risk a hazardous sea voyage in a flimsy, rubber-sided boat, or face being crammed into a detention center, where some of the migrants say they have been forced to a...
PARIS (AP) — More than 40,000 people have been intercepted in the Mediterranean and taken to detention camps and torture houses under a European migration policy that is responsible for crimes against humanity, according to a legal document Monday asking the International Criminal Court to take the case. Citing public European Union documents, statements from the French president, the German chancellor and other top European Union officials, the document alleges that European Union officials are knowingly responsible for deaths at land and s...
PARIS (AP) — Fueled by a lattice of centuries-old timbers, the fire moved hungrily across Notre Dame's rooftop toward the cathedral's iconic spire. It belched yellow smoke, spitting out gritty particles of wood, stone, lead and iron and wanted more. Far below, their vision obscured by fumes and tears, firefighters, priests and municipal workers passed treasures hand-to-hand, hoping the speed of desperation could outrun the flames. They had 66 minutes. The first alarm sounded at 6:20 p.m., silencing the priest and a few hundred worshippers a...
PARIS (AP) — A massive fire engulfed the upper reaches of Paris' soaring Notre Dame Cathedral as it was undergoing renovations Monday, threatening one of the greatest architectural treasures of the Western world as tourists and Parisians looked on aghast from the streets below. The blaze collapsed the cathedral's spire and spread to one of its landmark rectangular towers, but Paris fire chief Jean-Claude Gallet said the church's structure had been saved after firefighters managed to stop the fire spreading to the northern belfry. The 1...
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — One by one, five to a grave, the coffins are buried in the red earth of this ill-kept corner of a South African cemetery. The scrawl on the cheap wood attests to their anonymity: "Unknown B/Male." These men were migrants from elsewhere in Africa with next to nothing who sought a living in the thriving underground economy of Gauteng province, a name that roughly translates to "land of gold." Instead of fortune, many found death, their bodies unnamed and unclaimed — more than 4,300 in Gauteng between 2014 and 2017 alone. Som...
PARIS (AP) — Algeria's deadly expulsions of migrants into the Sahara Desert have nearly ground to a halt after widespread condemnation and the abrupt firing of two top security officials. The expulsions to the desert borders that Algeria shares with Niger and Mali have all but ended since The Associated Press reported less than three weeks ago that more than 13,000 people, including women and children, had been dropped off in the stark, dangerous region since May 2017, according to officials with the U.N.'s International Organization for Migrat...
PARIS (AP) — France has flagged more than 78,000 people as security threats in a database intended to let European police share information on the continent's most dangerous residents — more than all other European countries put together — according to an analysis by The Associated Press. A German parliamentarian, Andrej Hunko, was the first to raise the alarm about potential misuse of the Schengen Information System database in a question to his country's Interior Ministry about "discreet checks" — secret international checks on people...
PARIS (AP) — The weapons stockpile in his hideout and the Islamic State fighter covering his getaway with a spray of gunfire were signs of a deadly plot to come, a Belgian prosecutor argued Thursday in the trial of the man who was once Europe's most wanted fugitive. Salah Abdeslam refused to attend the final day of his trial in Brussels for a March 15, 2016, shootout with police that ultimately led to his capture. He left his prison cell in France on Monday — the first public glimpse of the man linked to plots in Paris and Brussels that kil...
The mass shooting in Las Vegas is the deadliest in modern U.S. history, but is it terrorism? While much will hinge on the motives of a white gunman attacking a mostly-white country music crowd, that uncomfortable question also hits at some of America's most divisive issues: race, religion and politics. The FBI said Monday that the 64-year-old shooter, identified as U.S. citizen Stephen Paddock, had no connection to an international terrorist group. The Islamic State group earlier claimed responsibility, saying Paddock was a recent convert. But...
PARIS (AP) — Researchers say Islamic State supporters have found an ephemeral platform to share propaganda: Using Instagram's "stories" feature, which causes posts to disappear in 24 hours. With successive military defeats in Iraq and Syria, many of its recruits dead or on the run and its Twitter and Facebook accounts being shut down, the group's propaganda drive is increasingly homemade. But a recent analysis found the networks of people inspired by the group remain strong elsewhere. The software analysis identified more than 50,000 a...
RIPOLL, Spain (AP) — A missing imam and a house that exploded days ago became the focus Saturday of the investigation into an extremist cell responsible for two deadly attacks in Barcelona and a nearby resort, as authorities narrowed in on who radicalized a group of young men in northeastern Spain. Investigators searched the home of Abdelbaki Es Satty, an imam who in June abruptly quit working at a mosque in the town of Ripoll, the home of the Islamic radicals behind the attacks that killed 14 people and wounded over 120 in the last few d...
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A cell of at least nine extremists meticulously plotted to combine vehicles and explosives in a direct hit on tourists, and managed to carry off most of their deadly plan, killing 14 people, authorities said Friday. Police in Spain and France pressed a manhunt for any remaining members of the group, which Islamic State claimed as its own. Only flawed bomb construction avoided a more devastating attack, authorities said after taking a closer look at a blast Wednesday evening in the town of Alcanar that was first w...
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — Faced with a diminishing number of fighters, the Islamic State group is relying on retrofitted commercial drones to guide suicide car bombers to their targets and to launch small-scale airstrikes on Iraqi forces. The extremist group is spending freely on drone technology as it faces pressure from coalition forces, hacking store-bought machines, applying rigorous testing protocols and mimicking tactics used by U.S. unmanned aircraft. In all, a half-dozen storehouses IS used to make and modify drones have been found recently i...
