Month: September 2021

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s government says the coronavirus state of emergency will end Thursday to help rejuvenate the economy as infections slow. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that virus restrictions will be eased gradually. With the lifting, Japan will be free of emergency requirements for the first time in more

By MIKE CORDER Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — As Europe’s economic powerhouse Germany embarks on the task of piecing together a new ruling coalition after Sunday’s knife-edge election, observers need only look to its neighbors, Belgium and the Netherlands, to see how tricky the process can be. Parties in the Netherlands have been

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s newly elected lawmakers are holding their first meetings as their parties digest the fallout of the election that reduced outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bloc to its worst-ever result. The lawmakers on Tuesday will start the process of putting together a new government. The narrow winner of Sunday’s parliamentary election was the

BEIJING (AP) — Two American siblings have returned home after China lifted an exit ban following Canada’s release of a top Chinese tech executive wanted in the U.S. on fraud charges. The State Department says Cynthia and Victor Liu returned to the U.S. after consular staff in Shanghai helped facilitate their departure. It says the

By HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired a short-range missile into the sea at nearly the same moment its U.N. diplomat was decrying the U.S.’s “hostile policy” against it. The actions were an apparent return to its pattern of mixing weapons displays with peace overtures to wrest concessions. The

The Swedish news agency TT says an explosion in an apartment building in central Goteborg in Sweden has injured up to 20 people. The explosion took place in the early hours of the morning, and rescue services are still working to extinguish fires that spread to several apartments. The cause of the explosion is still

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Animal rights groups have welcomed the South Korean president’s offer to look into banning consumption of dog meat. Eating dog meat is neither legal nor explicitly banned in South Korea. Restaurants that serve it are a dwindling business as younger people find it less appetizing, but some people oppose a

By SALLY HO Associated Press More than a year after Black Lives Matter protests launched a worldwide reckoning about the centuries of racism that Black people continue to face, reparations emerged — unevenly — as a high-profile issue at this year’s largest gathering of world leaders. To address slavery and colonialism, officials from South Africa,