AP-National

By ELAINE KURTENBACH AP Business Writer BANGKOK (AP) — Shares advanced in Asia on Friday, with Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index trading near a record high, 34 years after it peaked and then plunged with the collapse of Japan’s financial bubble. U.S. futures were lower after stocks on Wall Street set another record following some

By WAFAA SHURAFA, BASSEM MROUE and MELANIE LIDMAN Associated Press RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, hours after Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex. The Israeli army said it was seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas. The

By MOHAMMED ZAATARI and BASSEM MROUE Associated Press NABATIYEH, Lebanon (AP) — The civilian death toll from two Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon has risen to 10, Lebanese state media reported Thursday, making the previous day the deadliest in more than four months of cross-border exchanges. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for

By SHEIKH SAALIQ Associated Press NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s top court has struck down a controversial election funding system that allowed individuals and companies to send unlimited donations to political parties without the need to disclose donor identity. A five-judge constitution bench on the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that “electoral bonds” are “unconstitutional” and

By VICTORIA MILKO Associated Press JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A wealthy ex-general with ties to both Indonesia’s popular outgoing president and its dictatorial past looks set to be its next leader. He’s promised to continue the outgoing president’s widely popular policies, but his human rights record has activists and some analysts concerned about the future

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Another private U.S. company took a shot at the moon Thursday, launching a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its mark and came crashing back. NASA, the main sponsor with experiments on board, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as

By JACK DURA Associated Press BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A trial began Thursday in North Dakota’s nearly five-year-old lawsuit seeking $38 million from the federal government for policing protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017. The state filed the lawsuit in 2019, followed by years of legal wrangling before a judge set

By BERNAT ARMANGUE and TARA COPP Associated Press ABOARD THE USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (AP) — Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its accompanying warships have spent four months straight at sea defending against ballistic missiles and flying attack drones fired by Iranian-backed Houthis, and are now more regularly also defending

By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press LONDON (AP) — What a difference a few decades can make. Queen Camilla, once seen as the scourge of the House of Windsor, the woman at the heart of King Charles III’s doomed marriage to the late Princess Diana, has emerged as one of the monarchy’s most prominent emissaries. With

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — The former mother-in-law of the woman who opened fire at a Houston megachurch tried for years to alert authorities and others, including church staff, about her ex-daughter-in-law’s mental health struggles, she said Wednesday. But Walli Carranza said nothing came of her actions. Carranza said she believes

By ACACIA CORONADO Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge has voiced concerns over a Texas law that would give police broad authority to arrest migrants on charges of illegal entry starting in March. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said Thursday that it would be a “nightmare” if the nation became a patchwork

By DAVID SHARP and NICK PERRY Associated Press AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine state police are defending their search last fall for a gunman who had just killed 18 people, saying they didn’t rush to search woods surrounding his abandoned car because they feared an ambush. It took police two days to find the body

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, SCOTT McFETRIDGE and JOSH FUNK Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The mass shooting that unfolded amid throngs of people at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration, killing one person and wounding almost two dozen others, appeared to stem from a dispute between several people, authorities said Thursday. Police Chief

By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The National Rifle Association and its ex-CEO were caught “with their hands in the cookie jar,” a lawyer with the New York Attorney General’s Office said Thursday, at the conclusion of a civil trial accusing the gun rights group’s executives of wildly misspending millions of dollars

By RAF CASERT Associated Press LEDEGEM, Belgium (AP) — On a farm in northern Belgium, not far from the hundreds of tractors blocking Europe’s second-biggest port to demand more respect for farmers, Bart Dochy was switching on his computer, waiting for a government program to load with maps of his land next to empty digital

By DAVID SHARP Associated Press PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s vaunted independent voters are becoming scarcer as Super Tuesday approaches. Unenrolled voters represented the state’s largest voting bloc for more than three decades and contributed to the state’s political identity in a place with a reputation for pragmatic moderation. But that distinction no longer holds.

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer MUNICH (AP) — Long regarded as a celebration of the U.S.-led post-World War II international order, the Munich Security Conference this year will be more of a reflection of America’s political turmoil. The annual event kicks off Friday after former President Donald Trump threatened not to come to the

By STEPHEN GROVES and MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate’s border proposal was one of the toughest bipartisan bills to emerge on the issue in decades. Yet it quickly collapsed when Republicans — galvanized by Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee — rejected the compromise as insufficient. Now Democrats see

By KATE BRUMBACK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the witness stand Thursday and forcefully pushed back against what she described as “lies” about her romantic relationship with a special prosecutor during an extraordinary hearing over misconduct allegations that threaten to upend one of four

By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS Associated Press ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece on Thursday became the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex civil marriage, despite opposition from the influential, socially conservative Greek Church. A cross-party majority of 176 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament voted late Thursday in favor of the landmark bill drafted by Prime Minister