AP World News

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — Most U.S. allies at NATO endorse President Donald Trump’s demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs and are ready to ramp up security spending even more, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday. “There’s broad support,” Rutte told reporters after chairing a

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s liberal-led legislature overwhelmingly passed bills Thursday to launch special investigations into former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived imposition of martial law in December and criminal allegations against his wife, targeting the ousted conservative a day after his liberal successor took office. The National Assembly also passed a bill

By RAJESH ROY Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — India will start counting its vast population in a mammoth exercise starting next year. The first census in 16 years will be conducted digitally and include controversial questions about caste for the first time since independence. The Home Ministry announced plans to conduct a two-stage count

By VASILISA STEPANENKO Associated Press PRYLUKY, Ukraine (AP) — At least five people, including a 1-year-old child, his mother and grandmother, were killed Thursday in a nighttime Russian drone attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky, officials said. Six drones hit a residential area in the city shortly before dawn, injuring nine others, according

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN Associated Press TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China issued warrants Thursday for 20 Taiwanese people it said carried out hacking missions in the Chinese mainland on behalf of the island’s ruling party, while separately banning dealings with a Taiwanese company whose owners mainland authorities called “hardcore Taiwan independence supporters.” Police in the southern

By MEGAN JANETSKY and MARÍA VERZA Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — In his campaign for Mexico’s Supreme Court, Hugo Aguilar sent a simple message: He would be the one to finally give Indigenous Mexicans a voice at one of the highest levels of government. “It’s our turn as Indigenous people … to make decisions

By SEUNG MIN KIM, KIRSTEN GRIESHABER and GEIR MOULSON Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, even as Germany’s new chancellor appealed to him as the “key person in the world”

By The Associated Press President Donald Trump cited a range of reasons for placing 19 countries under new travel bans or restrictions in the U.S. They include allegations of lax screening of travelers, “a significant terrorist presence” in its territory, a government that wasn’t cooperative enough in accepting deported citizens or residents who were prone

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and FARNOUSH AMIRI Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday resurrected a hallmark policy of his first term, announcing that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from visiting the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions. The ban takes effect Monday at 12:01 a.m., a

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza because it was not linked to the release of hostages, saying it would embolden Hamas militants. All 14 other members of the council voted in favor

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and LINDSAY WHITEHURST Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must give more than 100 migrants sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador a chance to challenge their deportations. U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to

By ABBY SEWELL Associated Press DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria’s new government has agreed to give inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog access to suspected former nuclear sites immediately, the agency’s head told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, spoke in an exclusive interview in Damascus,

By HANNA ARHIROVA and MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin told him “very strongly” in a phone call Wednesday that he will respond to Ukraine’s weekend drone attack on Russian airfields as the deadlock over the war drags on. Trump said in a social

By JULIA FRANKEL Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel signed defense contracts worth nearly $15 billion last year, surpassing its all-time record, the country’s defense ministry said Wednesday, even as international outrage mounts over the war in Gaza. Over half the deals were with European countries. The contracts — a 13% increase from 2023, itself

By SAM METZ Associated Press MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) — Sudan’s former prime minister on Wednesday dismissed the military’s moves to form a new government as “fake,” saying its recent victories in recapturing the capital Khartoum and other territory will not end the country’s two-year civil war. In a rare interview with The Associated Press, Abdalla

By GRAHAM LEE BREWER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Miguel Guimaraes Vasquez fought for years to protect his homeland in the Peruvian Amazon from deforestation related to the cocaine trade, even laboring under death threats from drug traffickers. A leader in an Indigenous rights group, Vasquez said such efforts were long supported by financial

By AIJAZ RAHI Associated Press BENGALURU, India (AP) — At least 11 people are dead and more than 30 injured after a stampede on Wednesday as crowds tried to enter a cricket stadium in southern India’s Karnataka state, authorities said. The crush happened as tens of thousands of cricket fans gathered outside the M. Chinnaswamy

By JON GAMBRELL Associated Press Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press on Wednesday show seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at a Russian air base in eastern Siberia, one of the targets Ukraine said it struck with drones in one of the most daring covert operations of the war. The photos provided by Planet

By KAREL JANICEK Associated Press PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech Republic’s government signed a deal on Wednesday with the state-run South Korean KHNP power utility to build two nuclear reactors in the country. The contract between the dominant power company CEZ, where the Czech state has a majority stake, and KHNP was signed just a

By KEN MORITSUGU and KANIS LEUNG Associated Press BEIJING (AP) — For most Chinese, the 36th anniversary of a bloody crackdown that ended pro-democracy protests in China passed like any other weekday. And that’s just how the ruling Communist Party wants it. Security was tight Wednesday around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where weeks of student-led protests

By WAFAA SHURAFA Associated Press DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli- and U.S.-backed group paused food delivery at its three distribution sites in the Gaza Strip after health officials said dozens of Palestinians were killed in a series of shootings near the sites this week. Israeli strikes across the territory, meanwhile, killed 26

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch opposition parties called Wednesday for fresh elections as soon as possible, a day after anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders sparked the collapse of the country’s four-party coalition government. Prime Minister Dick Schoof’s 11-month-old administration fell apart when Wilders withdrew his Party for Freedom ministers. Schoof

By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Before Erin Patterson’s in-laws and their relatives arrived at her home for lunch, she bought pricey ingredients, consulted friends about recipes and sent her children out to a movie. Then, the Australian woman served them a dish containing poisonous death cap mushrooms — a meal

By ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL Associated Press HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam abolished its long-standing two-child limit Tuesday to try and reverse declining birth rates and ease the pressures of an aging population. The National Assembly passed amendments scrapping rules that limit families to having one or two children, state media Vietnam News Agency reported Wednesday. The

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — Ukraine’s president on Wednesday urged Western backers to speed up deliveries of air defense systems to counter Russian missile strikes and to help boost weapons production. The emphasis should be on U.S.-made Patriot systems, President Volodymyr Zelenskky told a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at NATO headquarters

By FOSTER KLUG Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Images from the election of South Korea’s new president, liberal Lee Jae-myung, are everything you’d expect to see in one of the world’s most vibrant democracies. Peaceful. Orderly. And, because this is South Korea, compulsively eye-catching, with crowds singing raucously along to blaring K-pop, dancers

By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Winning a tense election that capped off months of political turmoil, new South Korean President Lee Jae-myung described his victory as the start of the country’s return to normalcy following the crisis sparked by then-conservative leader Yoon Suk Yeol’s imposition of martial

By JON GAMBRELL Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday criticized an initial proposal from the United States in negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, though he stopped short of entirely rejecting the idea of agreement with Washington. The remarks by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei colored in the red

COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — More than 20,000 residents were being evacuated from part of Cologne’s city center on Wednesday as specialists prepared to defuse three unexploded U.S. bombs from World War II that were unearthed earlier this week. Even 80 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs dropped during wartime air raids are

By SAM MEDNICK and LEE KEATH Associated Press TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Shootings have erupted nearly daily since last week in the Gaza Strip in the vicinity of new hubs where desperate Palestinians are being directed to collect food. Witnesses say nearby Israeli troops have opened fire. Hospital officials say at least 80 people