AP World News

MOSCOW (AP) — Zurab Tsereteli, a prominent Georgian-Russian sculptor known for colossal, often controversial, monuments, died early on Tuesday at 91. His assistant Sergei Shagulashvili told Russia’s state news agency Tass that Tsereteli suffered cardiac arrest. Tsereteli was born on January 4, 1934, in Georgia, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time,

By FARNOUSH AMIRI, MATTHEW LEE and ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a massive overhaul of the State Department on Tuesday, with plans to reduce staff in the U.S. by 15% while closing and consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide as part of the Trump administration’s “America First”

By JOSEPH WILSON and SUMAN NAISHADHAM Associated Press BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Hundreds of people packed into a Barcelona church on Tuesday to mourn a Spanish family of five who died earlier this month in a sightseeing helicopter crash in New York City and whose bodies were laid to rest in Spain. As church bells

By ALMUDENA CALATRAVA and ISABEL DEBRE Associated Press BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Jorge Mario Bergoglio, born in Buenos Aires, never set foot in his homeland after becoming Pope Francis in 2013. That left many of the faithful in Argentina feeling puzzled and snubbed by the world’s first Latin American pope. The question of why

By ELENA BECATOROS Associated Press ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s prime minister on Tuesday announced 1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) in financial benefits for lower-income households and the public investment program, after the country became one of the few European Union members to post a budget surplus in 2024. Only six of the EU’s 27

By ILLIA NOVIKOV and AAMER MADHANI Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday pushed back at the idea of Ukraine ceding territory to Russia as part of any potential peace agreement, a day before American, European and Ukrainian officials are set for high-level talks in London. During similar talks last week

By WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMY MAGDY Associated Press DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 17 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and destroyed bulldozers and other heavy equipment that had been supplied by mediators to clear rubble. Separate strikes killed two people in Lebanon. Also on Tuesday,

By RAJESH ROY and SHEIKH SAALIQ Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday called for enhanced engagement with India and said the South Asian country should buy more defense equipment and energy from the U.S. and allow Washington greater access to its market, lending momentum to an expected bilateral

By ARIEL SCHALIT and TIA GOLDENBERG Associated Press HADERA, Israel (AP) — Israeli police on Tuesday were scouring the coast for a swimmer they fear may have been attacked by a shark in an area that has long seen close encounters between marine predators and beachgoers who sometimes seek them out. A shiver of endangered

By AIJAZ HUSSAIN Associated Press SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Gunmen shot and killed at least 26 tourists Tuesday at a resort in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said, in what appeared to be a major shift in a regional conflict in which tourists have largely been spared. Police blamed militants fighting against Indian rule for the attack

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Few moments in Pope Francis’ papacy better exemplify his understanding of climate change and the need to address it than the rain-soaked Mass he celebrated in Tacloban, Philippines, in 2015. Wearing one of the cheap plastic yellow ponchos that were handed out to the faithful, Francis

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and STELLA MARTANY Associated Press BAGHDAD (AP) — The death of Pope Francis has sent shockwaves through Iraq’s Christian community, where his presence once brought hope after one of the darkest chapters in the country’s recent history. His 2021 visit to Iraq, the first ever by a pope, came after years of

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australians began voting Tuesday in general elections as the death of Pope Francis led to a cancellation of campaign events. Polling stations opened to voters who, for a variety of reasons, will be unable to vote on May 3. Around half the votes are expected to

By The Associated Press Pope Francis ’ funeral has been set for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, and a viewing of his body will begin on Wednesday in St. Peter’s Basilica, days after the popular pontiff died of a stroke at age 88. He is currently lying in state in the Santa

By NICOLE WINFIELD and COLLEEN BARRY Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis was thankful that he was able to greet throngs of people in St. Peter’s Square on Easter, a day before he died, though he initially had some doubts given his poor health, Vatican News reported Tuesday. The Argentine pontiff, who had

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Eighty years after the Holocaust, more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive but 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years — meaning time is running out to hear the voices of the last generation who suffered through one of the worst atrocities

By JON GAMBRELL Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program will move Wednesday to what’s known as the “expert level” — a sign analysts say shows that the talks are moving forward rapidly. However, experts not involved in the talks who

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cardinal Kevin Farrell remembers the day Pope Francis asked him to be the camerlengo, the Vatican official who runs the Holy See after the death of one pope and before the election of another. They were flying back to Rome from the 2019 World Youth Day

By The Associated Press A change in popes — through death or resignation — is a complicated process, with centuries-old rituals involving the transition in leadership for both the spiritual head of the global Catholic Church and the Vatican’s head of state. These are the need-to-know terms — some of them in Latin — to

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press VATICAN CITY (AP) — As Amazonian bishops gathered at the Vatican on Oct. 21, 2019, a man entered a nearby church after dawn and stole three Indigenous statues brought to Rome for the occasion. He threw them into the Tiber River in a videotaped protest to denounce what he called

By ISABEL DEBRE Associated Press BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The faithful in Pope Francis’ hometown lit candles in the church where he found God as a teenager, packed the cathedral where he spoke as archbishop and prayed Monday in the neighborhoods where he earned fame as the “slum bishop.” For millions of Argentines, Francis

By WAFAA SHURAFA and BASSEM MROUE Associated Press DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — In the last 18 months of his life, Pope Francis had a frequent evening ritual: He would call the lone Catholic church in the Gaza Strip to see how people huddled inside were coping with a devastating war. That small act

CAIRO (AP) — The main Palestinian rescue service in Gaza on Monday condemned Israel’s probe into the killings of 15 medical workers last month, calling it a “fabricated investigation.” The army announced the results of its investigation on Sunday, saying it had found “professional failures” and dismissing a deputy commander in what it described as

By MARCOS ALEMAN and MATT BROWN Associated Press SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Four House Democrats have traveled to El Salvador to call attention to the plight of a man the Trump administration deported to a Salvadoran prison and has refused to help return — even after the Supreme Court ruled that it was

By TARA COPP and ERIC TUCKER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House expressed support Monday for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following media reports that he shared sensitive military details in another Signal messaging chat, this time with his wife and brother. Neither the White House nor Hegseth denied that he had shared such

BY SAMY MAGDY Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — A paramilitary group in Sudan attacked a city in the western Darfur region, killing more than 30 people, an activist group said, in the latest deadly offensive on an area that is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and

By GRANT PECK Associated Press BANGKOK (AP) — Transnational organized crime groups in East and Southeast Asia are spreading their lucrative scam operations across the globe in response to increased crackdowns by authorities, according to a U.N. report issued on Monday. For several years, scam compounds have proliferated in Southeast Asia, especially in border areas

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88. Here are the key things to know about the death of the Argentine pontiff, history’s first from Latin America, who presided over the Catholic Church for more than 12 years. The timing and cause of Pope Francis’ death Francis died

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A popular saying in Vatican circles is that if you “enter a conclave as pope, you leave as a cardinal.” It implies the sacred and secretive process is no popularity contest or campaign, but rather the divinely inspired election of Christ’s Vicar on Earth by the princes of the church. Still,

By ILLIA NOVIKOV Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks during the 30-hour Easter ceasefire unilaterally declared by President Vladimir Putin over the weekend killed three people in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, a regional official said Monday. Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of Kherson’s administration, wrote on Telegram that the casualties occurred over the last