AP-National

By SYLVIE CORBET and ELAINE GANLEY Associated Press PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron says a contentious immigration bill backed by the far right is imperfect and needs some fixes but is “what the French wanted.” He said Wednesday it doesn’t represent a far-right victory and is “the fruit of a compromise” after his

By JOSEF FEDERMAN, WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMY MAGDY Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Wednesday said it had uncovered a major Hamas command center in the heart of Gaza City, inflicting what it described as a serious blow to the Islamic militant group as pressure grows on Israel to scale back its

By HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States has flown long-range bombers for joint drills with South Korea and Japan in a show of force against North Korea. The B-1B bombers’ flyover on Wednesday comes days after North Korea performed its first intercontinental ballistic missile test in five months. South

By SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press PARIS (AP) — A Rwandan doctor has been sentenced by a Paris court to 24 years in prison for his role in the 1994 genocide in his home country. Sosthene Munyemana has been found guilty on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and helping prepare a genocide. His lawyers said

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union negotiators have clinched a deal on the main parts of an overhaul of the bloc’s outdated asylum rules. Wednesday’s breakthrough paves the way for a definitive agreement to be reached before EU-wide elections in June. After a night of negotiations on the Pact on Asylum

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Filmmakers and movie festival organizers from around the world have called on Iranian authorities to drop all charges against two Iranian film directors and lift their travel ban. According to PEN America, Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha had planned to travel to Paris in September for post-production on their

By STAN CHOE and ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writers NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks in the U.S., Japan and Germany have risen 20% or more. The U.S. economy grew by more than 5% over the summer. Bitcoin recovered from its “crypto winter” and rose above $40,000. But for all those big numbers, one shrinking number

By PAUL WISEMAN and KEN SWEET AP Business Writers The tide turned against inflation. Artificial intelligence went mainstream — for good or ill. Labor unions capitalized on their growing might to win more generous pay and benefits. Elon Musk renamed and rebranded the social media platform Twitter, removed guardrails against phony or obscene posts and

By KELVIN CHAN AP Business Writer Tesla has found itself locked in an increasingly bitter dispute with union workers in Sweden and neighboring countries. The electric car maker’s CEO Elon Musk is staunchly anti-union. The showdown pits Musk against the strongly held labor ideals of Scandinavian countries. None of Tesla’s workers anywhere in the world

By ELAINE KURTENBACH AP Business Writer BANGKOK (AP) — Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Friday after several strong profit reports helped Wall Street claw back most of its sharp loss from day before. Benchmarks fell in Hong Kong and Bangkok but rose elsewhere in the region. U.S. futures fell while oil prices advanced.

Abortion is going to be a major issue in the U.S. again in 2024, the second full year after the nation’s top court ended a right to abortion and making it largely a state issue. After prevailing on seven straight statewide ballot questions, abortion rights supporters are looking to ask voters to enshrine abortion rights

By GERALD IMRAY Associated Press CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — More than 300 firefighters have been battling a blaze on the slopes of a mountain near Cape Town in South Africa for a second day. Emergency services say five firefighters had been injured and two were taken to the hospital. Residents were evacuated from

BY ROD McGUIRK Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian court has ordered Airbnb to pay a 15 million Australian dollar ($10 million) fine, and the accommodation rental company could pay as much again in compensating customers who had been unaware they were being charged in U.S. rather than Australian dollars. Airbnb admitted making

By TAIWO ADEBAYO Associated Press OMO FOREST RESERVE, Nigeria (AP) — Men in dusty workwear trudge through a thicket, making their way up a hill where sprawling plantations lay tucked in a Nigerian rainforest whose trees have been hacked away to make room for cocoa bound for places like Europe and the U.S. Kehinde Kumayon

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI and GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated Press Ever since the nation’s highest court ended abortion rights more than a year ago, vaguely worded bans enacted in some Republican-controlled states have caused bewilderment over how exceptions should be applied. Supporters have touted these exemptions, tucked inside statutes restricting abortion, as sufficient enough to protect the

By TAIWO ADEBAYO Associated Press OMO FOREST RESERVE, Nigeria (AP) — Habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat, a casualty of the world’s appetite for chocolate. Deforestation driven by planting cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, is whittling down Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest in southwestern Nigeria

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press One of Pennsylvania’s leading natural gas companies is poised to drill and frack in the rural community where it was banned for a dozen years for polluting the water supply. Coterra Energy Inc. has won permission from state environmental regulators to drill 11 gas wells underneath a 9-square-mile rectangle in

By MICHAEL HILL Associated Press MENANDS, N.Y. (AP) — Kaine is a big, buoyant dog looking for a home. But lately, he’s spending a lot of time at the office. Animal shelters around the U.S. are bursting at the seams amid the rising cost of living, so the gray and white 7-year-old has been staying

By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A few years back, Sage Brook Carbone was attending a powwow at the Mashantucket Western Pequot reservation in Connecticut when she noticed signs in the Pequot language. Carbone, a citizen of the Northern Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, thought back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she

By JENNIFER PELTZ and DAVID A. LIEB Associated Press Some states that stockpiled millions of masks and other personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic are now throwing the items away. An Associated Press investigation found that at least 15 states have tossed out some of the PPE items because they are expiring or have