AP National News

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s defense minister has hailed joint war games with China this week as a sign of increasingly close military cooperation, and vowed to further bolster it. Sergei Shoigu flew to China to attend the drills that wrapped up Friday in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. He noted

By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press ROME (AP) — Intense heat baking Italy is creeping northward towards the popular tourist destination of Florence while wildfires charred the country’s south, and Spain appears headed for an all-time record high temperature as a heat wave keeps southern Europe in a fiery hold. Italy saw temperatures in places upwards

BERLIN (AP) — Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk says he hopes to start producing cars at its new factory outside Berlin in October. The U.S. company had originally planned to begin manufacturing its electric cars at the “Gigafactory” in the east of the German capital in July. But legal challenges and problems getting

By PAN PYLAS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Confirmation that the Taliban captured the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand province has particular resonance in Britain. For much of the past 20 years, British troops tried to keep the province from falling into into the hands of the Taliban. The vast majority of the U.K.’s 457 casualties

By KELVIN CHAN Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A young man who killed five people and then took his own life in Britain’s first mass shooting in over a decade had complained online about difficulties meeting women and being “beaten down” by life. Police said Friday the motive for the shootings was unclear but there

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities have expanded a state of emergency in northeast Siberia to bring in outside resources to combat wildfires that have engulfed the vast region. Russian Emergencies Minister Yevgeny Zinichev declared the state of emergency for Sakha-Yakutia. The move should help organize the transfer of firefighting resources

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS Associated Press NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Lekulutu Nsima says he’s a “lucky man” after receiving his first Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine shot against COVID-19. The 33 year-old asylum seeker said that in his native Congo, the government only procured a handful of vaccine doses for one of Africa’s most populous nations, and those are

By EILEEN NG Associated Press KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Embattled Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has acknowledged he may have lost majority support in Parliament but says he will seek the backing of opposition parties to keep his government from collapsing and promised to hold elections next year. Muhyiddin has pledged to test support

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria’s official news agency APS says a prosecutor has ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the mob killing of a man accused of setting fires that devastated the region. Wildfires in Algeria have killed at least 69 people through the mountainous Berber region. The killing took place in Larbaa Nath

By CARA ANNA Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United States says it’s sending a special envoy to Ethiopia as the fast-moving conflict in the Tigray region has spread into neighboring regions and Ethiopia’s government calls on all able citizens to stop the resurgent Tigray forces “once and for all.” The widening war in

By SARA RATHNER of NerdWallet The threat of COVID-19 still looms, but Americans are getting back out there and once again spending on travel, dining out, entertainment and commuting. If you spent much of the past year and a half at home, the cost of going out can surprise you, especially if your values, money

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — Russia has refused to renew a visa for a BBC journalist in Moscow — an effective expulsion amid simmering tensions with Britain. The U.K. government and the BBC on Friday condemned the move as assault on media freedom. Russia’s state Rossiya 24 TV station said Sarah Rainsford

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A new fire has broken out on Greece’s island of Evia but south from the area where a massive wildfire decimated forests, torched homes and still smoldered 10 days after it started. Greece’s fire department said four water-dropping aircraft and six helicopters were sent to control the new fire in central

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s defense minister has visited a Tokyo shrine viewed by China and both Koreas as a symbol of Japanese wartime aggression to pray for the war dead just days before the nation marks the 76th anniversary of its World War II defeat. Victims of Japanese actions during

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Carnival cruise on which 27 people tested positive for COVID-19 just before the ship made a stop in Belize City this week is headed back to Galveston, Texas. The Belize Tourism Board said in a statement earlier this week the positive cases were among 26 crew members and one passenger

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Chelsea Clinton has a full schedule of books coming in 2022. The daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is continuing her popular “She Persisted” children’s series with “She Persisted in Science: Brilliant Women Who Made a Difference.” Chelsea

By ASHRAF SWEILAM Associated Press EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) — Egyptian officials say that a roadside bomb has exploded in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, killing seven members of the security forces. The dead included an officer, and six others were wounded. The troops were riding an armored vehicle on Thursday when the

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian officials say a second person has died following an explosion on a city bus about 280 miles south of Moscow. They said Friday that the blast injured another 20 people. Authorities said Thursday’s explosion in Voronezh was caused by leaky gas equipment on the bus and no trace of chemical explosives

BERLIN (AP) — Germany on Friday commemorated 60 years since the day East German authorities started building the Berlin Wall, where at least 140 people were killed over three decades trying to flee to the West. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called its construction in 1961 the “beginning of the end” for the communist regime. The

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Police say a Malaysian air force officer went on a shooting rampage Friday, killing three colleagues before turning the gun on himself. They say the shootings occurred at a security post on an air force base in eastern Sarawak state, and that they are still investigating the motive. A police