AP National News

By ADEL OMRAN and NOHA ELHENNAWY Associated Press TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libya’s former interior minister has announced his bid to run for president in the much-anticipated elections next month that face growing uncertainty. The former minister submitted his candidacy papers on Thursday in the capital of Tripoli. He says his political platform envisages a

By RUSS BYNUM and JEFFREY COLLINS Associated Press BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery has testified that he fired his shotgun in self-defense. Travis McMichael said he made a split-second, life-or-death decision when Arbery grabbed his gun and tried to take it away. Now he’s expected to return to the

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgarian military prosecutors have indicted a group of serving and retired military officials on charges of spying for Russia. The indictment filed in a military court on Thursday accuses six people of collecting and passing classified information to a foreign country. Prosecutors said they include a former senior official in Bulgaria’s

By PAN PYLAS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — The British government has came under fire for scrapping a long-planned high-speed rail line to the northern English city of Leeds as part of a package of revisions that potentially reduces costs by tens of billions of pounds. Critics argue that the scaling back of plans will

By TOM MURPHY AP Health Writer The U.S. government will pay drugmaker Pfizer $5.29 billion for 10 million treatment courses of its potential COVID-19 treatment if regulators authorize it. Pfizer asked U.S. regulators on Tuesday to authorize emergency use of its experimental pill, which has been shown to significantly cut the rate of hospitalizations and

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Sweden’s top soccer leagues have signed an Amnesty International protest that gives “a red card to FIFA” and demands that the governing body stand up for the rights of migrant workers in Qatar during next year’s World Cup. Swedish Professional Soccer Leagues chairman Jens T. Andersson says “we can put pressure

By FARAI MUTSAKA Associated Press PONGARA NATIONAL PARK, Gabon (AP) — Gabon remains the “last stronghold” of African forest elephants, new research shows, as loss of habitat and poaching have made the pachyderms a critically endangered species. A survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Gabon’s parks agency released Thursday reports that the country has

The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government will pay drugmaker Pfizer $5.29 billion for 10 million treatment courses of its potential COVID-19 treatment if regulators approve it. Pfizer asked U.S. regulators on Tuesday to authorize the experimental pill, which has been shown to significantly cut the rate of hospitalizations and deaths among

By DAVID KEYTON and JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Members of Afghanistan’s women’s youth development soccer team have arrived in Britain after being flown from Pakistan with the help of a New York rabbi, a U.K. soccer club and Kim Kardashian West. A plane carrying more than 30 teenage players and their families,

By DANIEL NIEMANN and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Cologne, Germany has held a service of penance for cases of sexual abuse by clergy. The auxiliary bishop serving as the archdiocese’s interim administrator said the ritual was not intended as an absolution for the perpetrators but a

By NOHA ELHENNAWY Associated Press CAIRO (AP) — Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, have arrived in Cairo for the first time in 15 years, hoping to promote tolerance and cement bilateral ties. The royal couple received a formal welcome on Thursday by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Charles and Camilla then headed to a

MIAMI (AP) — A 23-year-old woman called her former high school teacher a “monster,” cursed at him and then clapped as he was handcuffed and led from a Miami-Dade courtroom. Seventy-two-year-old retired teacher Tom Privett pleaded guilty to sexually battering the woman when she was a teen. His sentence also includes two years of house

By HUIZHONG WU Associated Press TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — An email purportedly from a Chinese professional tennis player that a Chinese state media outlet posted on Twitter has increased concerns about her safety as the sport’s biggest stars and others abroad call for information about her well-being and whereabouts. Women’s Tennis Association chairman and CEO

By JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press LYON, France (AP) — Shedding her anonymity in an interview with The Associated Press, the wife of the former president of Interpol who disappeared and was imprisoned in China has now chosen for the first time to show her face. Grace Meng agreed to be filmed and photographed without the

By FRANK JORDANS Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers have approved new measures to rein in record coronavirus infections after the head of Germany’s disease control agency warned the country could face a “really terrible Christmas.” The measures passed in the Bundestag on Thursday includes requirements for employees to prove they are vaccinated, recovered

By MICHAEL BALSAMO Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is giving $139 million to police departments across the U.S. as part of a grant program that would bring on more than 1,000 new officers. The grant funding announced Thursday comes through the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and will be

By ROSALIE MURPHY of NerdWallet Many small businesses close within a few years of opening. If that’s true for yours, work with a lawyer or financial adviser to make sure you shut down correctly. Take time to care for yourself and mourn the loss. Then, perform a postmortem to understand what mistakes you made, what

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s Central Bank has cut interest rates by 1 percentage point a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke out against high borrowing rates. It comes despite soaring consumer prices that have pinched families and businesses. The Central Bank’s monetary committee announced Thursday that it was reducing the policy rate to

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. (AP) — Jurors in the “Unite the Right” civil trial are set to hear closing arguments in a lawsuit that seeks to hold white nationalists accountable for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville in 2017. Lawyers for nine people hurt or emotionally scarred over two days of chaos allege the defendants conspired to

By DALATOU MAMANE Associated Press NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — At least 25 people were killed by unidentified gunmen in an attack earlier this week in southwest Niger, the government said on Wednesday. It is the latest in a string of violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group in the conflict-ridden West African nation,