AP National News

By TARA COPP and LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Chinese balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon said Wednesday. When similar balloons passed over U.S. territory on four occasions during the Trump and

By GARY D. ROBERTSON Associated Press RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal appeals court has sided again with North Carolina’s attorney general in a lawsuit involving a libel law that a district attorney sought to use to attempt to prosecute Josh Stein over a 2020 campaign commercial. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s lower house of parliament has given final approval to a new law on judicial accountability that the government believes will meet European Union expectations and help unfreeze billions of euros in pandemic recovery funds. Brussels has not released the funds amid a dragging dispute over Poland’s regulations that give the

By JILL LAWLESS and SILVIE CORBET Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought Western support for his country in surprise visits to Britain and France on Wednesday, pushing for fighter jets to battle Russian invaders in a dramatic speech to the U.K. Parliament, and then flying to Paris to meet the French

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — The aid group Doctors Without Borders says two of its employees have been killed in an attack on their vehicle in northwestern Burkina Faso. The organization, which is also known by its French acronym MSF, said gunmen fired on an MSF vehicle as it was traveling between  Dedougou and Touga.

By ROB GILLIES Associated Press A city bus crashed into a day care center north of Montreal on Wednesday, killing two children and injuring six, authorities said. The driver was arrested and charged with first degree murder. A neighbor who ran to the center in Laval, Quebec, said she saw children screaming and crying and

By SARAH RANKIN Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s economic development agency says it has at least 1,700 emails and documents pertaining to talks about the possibility of a Ford Motor Co. battery plant landing at a Danville-area megasite. But it won’t release any of them under the state’s public records law. The Associated

By MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Voters who kept three Pittsburgh-area Pennsylvania House seats in Democratic hands this week effectively also flipped control away from the Republican majority that has run the chamber for more than a decade. The results on Tuesday put the House among just a handful of legislative bodies

By STAN CHOE and DAMIAN J. TROISE AP Business Writers NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street gave back some of its recent gains as uncertainty about interest rates and inflation continued to reign. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% Wednesday, the Nasdaq fell 1.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back 0.6%. The losses followed

By FARNOUSH AMIRI and BARBARA ORTUTAY Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Twitter executives conceded Wednesday they made a mistake by blocking a story about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, from the social media platform in the run-up to the 2020 election, but adamantly denied Republican assertions they were pressured by Democrats and law enforcement

By STEFANIE DAZIO Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — California could reinstate voting rights to felons while they are in prison in a major expansion of suffrage for incarcerated people if a bill currently before the state legislature passes despite an uphill battle. California would join Maine and Vermont, as well as the District of

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE and EDMAR BARROS ALTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian authorities have launched an operation to reclaim Yanomami Indigenous territory from thousands of illegal gold miners who have contaminated rivers and brought famine and disease to one of the most isolated populations of the world. On Tuesday, federal agents destroyed a helicopter, an

By GARY D. ROBERTSON and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM Associated Press RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A bill increasing punishments for violent protests following the 2020 demonstrations over George Floyd’s murder passed the House despite harsh criticism from social justice advocates. Some bipartisan support for Wednesday’s measure signals a potential override of any veto by Democratic Gov. Roy

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Authorities in Jamaica say they have charged a police officer with abducting and raping a woman following a traffic stop. A statement from the Jamaica Constabulary Force Wednesday says it happened in late January. It says the officer allegedly demanded money in exchange for not prosecuting the woman for

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI and JONATHAN MATTISE Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A top Tennessee Republican lawmaker says the state should stop accepting the nearly $1.8 billion of federal K-12 education dollars that help provide support for low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities. House Speaker Cameron Sexton told The Associated Press that he

MIDWEST CITY, Okla. (AP) — Federal authorities say more than 200 shotguns have been found in a dumpster outside an Oklahoma firearms dealer. A search warrant by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Oklahoma says 236 imported .20 gauge shotguns were found behind International

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Haiti’s human rights office says another journalist has been kidnapped in an area of the capital controlled by a gang. The Office of Citizen Protection identified the journalist as Jean Thony Lorthé, who works for Radio Vision 2000. Local media reported that Lorthé was going to a funeral with

By JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s privatized economic development office has finalized an agreement that will infuse another $237 million into Honda’s massive battery plant project in the state. The Japanese automaker envisions the project, being built jointly with LG Energy Solution of South Korea, transforming Ohio into its North

By KELVIN CHAN AP Business Writer LONDON (AP) — Microsoft’s stalled $68.7 billion deal to buy video game company Activision Blizzard has hit a fresh hurdle in the United Kingdom, where the antitrust watchdog said Wednesday that it will stifle competition and hurt gamers. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said its in-depth investigation found that

By EDDIE PELLS AP National Writer DENVER (AP) — More than 27 months since it was greenlighted by Congress, the panel established to investigate the inner workings of the U.S. Olympic structure has yet to conduct a formal interview because of bureaucratic red tape and slow action from the same lawmakers who had expressed a