AP World News

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia plans to spend a larger share of its foreign aid on its neighbors in Asia and the Pacific islands after the United States announced major cuts to development and humanitarian aid abroad. Three-quarters of Australia’s total overseas development aid will directly benefit the Indo-Pacific region,

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra easily survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament on Wednesday, following a two-day debate in which rivals charged that she has mismanaged the country and let her father, a former prime minister, control her administration. Opposition lawmakers argued that she has been unduly influenced by her father, former

By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s truth commission concluded the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins. The landmark report released Wednesday followed

By SAMY MAGDY Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — Aid groups in Sudan said on Tuesday at least 54 people were killed in a military airstrike on a local market in the country’s western region. The strike on Monday on the village of Tora caused a huge fire, according to Adam Rejal, a spokesman for the

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peruvian President Dina Boluarte said Tuesday the country will hold general elections one year from now in an effort to end years of instability. The deeply unpopular Boularte said the April 2026 polls will elect a new president, 130 deputies and 60 senators. The bicameral election system has not been used

By JOVANA GEC and DUSAN STOJANOVIC Associated Press BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Ivana Ilic Sunderic had never heard anything quite so alarming and disturbing at a protest as the sound that broke a commemorative silence during a huge anti-government rally in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. “It was quiet and peaceful and then we heard something we

By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Wind-driven wildfires that were among South Korea’s worst ever have ravaged the country’s southern regions, killing 24 people, destroying more than 200 structures and forcing 27,000 residents to evacuate, officials said Wednesday. The death toll included a pilot who died after a

By JILL LAWLESS, EMMA BURROWS and NICHOLAS RICCARDI Associated Press LONDON (AP) — As wake-up calls go, the alarms don’t get much louder. Allies of the United States see the group chat between top U.S. officials about a planned attack in Yemen that accidentally included a journalist as a jaw-dropping security breach which casts doubt

By YURAS KARMANAU Associated Press TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko was sworn in Tuesday to a seventh term, and he mocked those who derided him as “Europe’s last dictator” by saying his country has more democracy “than those who cast themselves as its models.” “Half of the world is dreaming about

By ANDREW WILKS Associated Press ISTANBUL (AP) — The head of Turkey’s main opposition party visited jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Tuesday after six nights of massive protests calling for his release. Imamoglu, arrested on March 19 on corruption charges, is seen as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 22-year rule. His

By MATTHEW LEE, FARNOUSH AMIRI and STEPHEN GROVES Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Mike Huckabee, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, attempted to distance himself Tuesday from his past controversial statements about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, pledging on Capitol Hill to “carry out the president’s priorities, not mine.”

By THOMAS ADAMSON Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Gérard Depardieu won’t just be facing two women who accuse him of sexual assault when he walks into a Paris courtroom on Monday. France’s most famous male actor will also be confronting a nation long criticized for failing to address sexual violence — particularly when committed by

By JULIA FRANKEL Associated Press HEBRON, West Bank (AP) — Only a few weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on a stage in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for the film “No Other Land,” a documentary depicting his West Bank village’s struggle against Israel’s occupation. On Tuesday, Ballal – his face bruised and clothes still spotted

By HANNA ARHIROVA Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States said Tuesday that it had reached a tentative agreement for Ukraine and Russia to stop fighting and ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea in separate talks with both sides, but many details were unresolved, and the Kremlin made the deal conditional on

By TIA GOLDENBERG Associated Press TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s parliament on Tuesday passed a state budget, a move that shores up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition and grants the embattled leader the chance at months of political stability even as public pressure mounts over the war in Gaza. The budget vote was

By MARÍA TERESA HERNÁNDEZ Associated Press TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — Ana Esquivel no longer feels like her heart stops every time she sees a police officer. “We’ve been told that they won’t harass or mistreat us here, but back home, if a male name is spotted on your ID, you could spend the night detained,”

By KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH Associated Press SMARDEN, England (AP) — One malnourished lioness had spent her life confined to an apartment. Another was so shell-shocked she could barely walk. They are among five traumatized lions rescued from the war zone in Ukraine who are settling into a new home in England after an international effort to

By SYLVIE CORBET and JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press PARIS (AP) — French actor Gérard Depardieu acknowledged Tuesday that he aggressively subjected a woman who accuses him of sexual assault to vulgar and heated language and that he grabbed her hips but denied that his behavior was sexual as he testified for the first time at

By The Associated Press In the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities released a Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary “ No Other Land,” a day after he was beaten by Jewish settlers and detained by soldiers. Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians were accused of throwing stones at a settler, allegations they deny. Palestinians and

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — The Unification Church in Japan was ordered dissolved by a court Tuesday after a government request spurred by the investigation into the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The South Korea-based church said it was considering an immediate appeal of the Tokyo District Court’s revocation

By JULIA FRANKEL Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film “ No Other Land ” on Monday in the occupied West Bank before he was detained by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses. The filmmaker Hamdan

By MARIAM FAM Associated Press DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Sahar Diab had visited Damascus’ famed Umayyad Mosque previously. But as the Syrian lawyer went there to pray during her country’s first Ramadan after the end of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule, she felt something new, something priceless: A sense of ease. “The rituals have become

By ELÉONORE HUGHES Associated Press RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court justices wrapped up a first day of proceedings Tuesday to determine whether former President Jair Bolsonaro and close allies will stand trial on five counts, including attempting to stage a coup, without reaching a decision. Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet charged

By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press NUUK, Greenland (AP) — Lisa Sólrun Christiansen gets up at 4 a.m. most days and gets to work knitting thick wool sweaters coveted by buyers around the world for their warmth and colorful patterns celebrating Greenland’s traditional Inuit culture. Her morning routine includes a quick check of the news, but

By MAURICIO SAVARESE Associated Press SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s government on Monday apologized to families of victims of the country’s military dictatorship whose remains could be among those found in a clandestine mass grave 35 years ago. Dozens of families are still waiting to know whether their parents, children, siblings and friends are in

By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — In the latest twist in South Korea’s ongoing political crisis, the country’s Constitutional Court reinstated Prime Minister Han Duck-soo as acting leader, overturning his impeachment by opposition lawmakers three months ago. The court’s ruling on Monday marks just one front in the deepening turmoil as

By WAFAA SHURAFA, EDITH M. LEDERER and LEE KEATH Associated Press DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The United Nations said Monday it will “reduce its footprint” in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli tank strike hit one of its compounds last week, killing one staffer from Bulgaria and wounding five other employees. The world

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — South Sudan is teetering on the edge of renewed civil war, the top U.N. official in the world’s youngest nation warned on Monday, lamenting the government’s sudden postponement of the latest peace effort. Calling the situation unfolding in the country “dire,” Nicholas Haysom said international

By TINO TESTORIDES and COSTAS KANTOURIS Associated Press SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — Thousands of protesters marched through North Macedonia’s capital Skopje late Monday to demand greater accountability over a nightclub fire that killed 59 people and injured scores of others. Demonstrators marched past government offices and parliament and applauded medical staff at a nearby

By MARCOS ALEMÁN Associated Press SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government filed a legal action Monday in El Salvador aimed at freeing 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States who are being held in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison. Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans,