News

By MIKE SILVERMAN Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Twenty-one tons of sand are transforming the Brooklyn Academy of Music into a day at a beach for the staging of the global warming opera Sun and Sea.” The hourlong opera that features singers sitting or lying on beach blankets under a hot sun. With light

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Kristin Chenoweth, Julie Taymor and Lin-Manuel Miranda welcomed back boisterous audiences to “Wicked,” “The Lion King” and “Hamilton” for the first time since the start of the pandemic, marking Tuesday as the unofficial return of Broadway. Chenoweth surprised the crowd at “Wicked” by appearing onstage

BERLIN (AP) — A German court has ruled that a small far-right party can continue to put up election posters with the slogan “Hang the Greens” that authorities in an eastern city ordered removed. However, the court said Tuesday that the posters put up by the tiny III. Weg (Third Way) party must be kept

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken has endured a second day of harsh bipartisan criticism of the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal. As he testified on Tuesday, a new intelligence estimate warned that al-Qaida could begin to threaten the U.S. from Afghanistan within one or two years. Democrats

By LLAZAR SEMINI Associated Press TIRANA, Albania (AP) — In her last trip in the western Balkans as a German chancellor, Angela Merkel visited Albania to urge the leaders of six western Balkan nations gathered there to strengthen their regional cooperation in their strive for European Union membership. The western Balkan states are at different

By VANESSA GERA Associated Press WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Warsaw’s Jewish community has buried an unidentified Holocaust victim whose remains were discovered in a building that was within the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Poland’s chief rabbi said “we are here as the family for a person we don’t know.” The bones were wrapped

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Massive government relief passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic moved millions of Americans out of poverty last year, even as the official poverty rate increased slightly. That’s according to Census Bureau reports released Tuesday. The official poverty measure showed an increase of 1 percentage point in

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A judge has suspended Minnesota’s new stricter standards on when police can use deadly force, halting a change in state law that followed the death of George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police. The new standards, passed by the Legislature in 2020, raised the bar on officers to justify

Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Poet Patricia Smith has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, a $100,000 honor handed out by the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. Previous winners include W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan and the current poet laureate, Joy Harjo. Smith is known for such collections as “Blood Dazzler” and “Incendiary Art,”

LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) — A 22-year-old U.S. Marine from Indiana has been remembered as a hero during a funeral in his hometown. Corporal Humberto Sanchez was among 13 U.S. service members killed in August in a suicide bombing at Afghanistan’s Kabul airport during the U.S.-led evacuation. Former Vice President Mike Pence was among the mourners

By KATHY GANNON Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s new foreign minister says the Taliban governing the country remain committed to not allowing militants to use their territory to launch attacks. But he refused to say when or if the country’s new rulers would create a more inclusive government. Amir Khan Mutaqi repeated several

By MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press A task force of outside experts has found no evidence of political interference in the 2020 census numbers used for divvying up congressional seats among the U.S. states. The American Statistical Association task force also said Tuesday that it had encountered no irregularities indicating the figures are unfit for use