Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Chris Knayzeh was in a town overlooking Lebanon’s capital when he heard the rumbling aftershock of the 2020 Beirut port blast. Hundreds of tons of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrates had exploded, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands. Already struggling with the country’s economic collapse, the sight of the
Continue ReadingAssociated Press Western governments eagerly approved and even pushed for the adoption of South Korean children for decades, despite evidence that adoption agencies were aggressively competing for kids, pressuring mothers and bribing hospitals, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found. Now adults, many of those children have since discovered that their adoption paperwork
Continue ReadingBy Ebony Davis and Fredreka Schouten, CNN (CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris sought to capitalize on the star power of Oprah Winfrey and a host of Hollywood celebrities to help her win over persuadable voters during an online rally Thursday night that ranged from participants’ searing accounts of personal loss and trauma to the Democrat’s unguarded
Continue ReadingAssociated Press Yooree Kim marched into a police station in Paris and told an officer she wanted to report a crime. Forty years ago, she said, she was kidnapped from the other side of the world, and the French government endorsed it. She wept as she described years spent piecing it together, stymied at every
Continue ReadingAP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — When he wasn’t working on mystery stories, and he completed hundreds, G.K. Chesterton liked to think of new ways to tell them. Detective fiction had grown a little dull, the British author wrote in a rarely seen letter from the 1930s published this week in The Strand, which
Continue ReadingAssociated Press CACONDE, Brazil (AP) — Silvio Almeida’s coffee plantation sits at an ideal altitude on a Brazilian hillside, whose clay-rich soil does well at retaining moisture from rainfall and a nearby reservoir. Lately, though, water is scarce on Almeida’s modest farm in Caconde, a town in one of Sao Paulo state’s key growing regions.
Continue ReadingAP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — A record-setting week for Wall Street closed on a quieter note Friday, as U.S. stocks drifted around the highs they hit during a worldwide rally the day before. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% from its record, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile,
Continue ReadingAssociated Press IGUALA, Mexico (AP) — On Sept. 26, 2014, dozens of students from a teachers college in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero disappeared. After years of obfuscation and delays, government officials determined that they had been abducted by local, state and federal authorities, including the military. Since then, the investigation has seemingly come
Continue ReadingAssociated Press COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Two years ago, tens of thousands of Sri Lankans rose up against their president and forced him to flee the country. As the country prepares for its first election since then, many say they’re still waiting for change. As Sri Lanka sank into economic collapse in 2022, people
Continue ReadingAssociated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Six years after a teenage Greta Thunberg walked out of school in a solitary climate protest outside of the Swedish parliament, young people around the world staged fresh marches and said their protests are not being sufficiently acted upon. Emissions of heat-trapping gases and temperatures have been rising and
Continue ReadingAssociated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Going into November’s election, neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has a decisive edge with the public on the economy, turning an issue that was once a clear strength for Trump into the equivalent of a political jump ball. About 4 in 10 registered voters say Republican Trump would do
Continue ReadingAssociated Press MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In-person voting for this year’s presidential election began Friday, a milestone that kicked off a six-week sprint to Election Day after a summer of political turmoil. Voters lined up to cast their ballots in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia, the states with the first early in-person voting opportunities. About a
Continue ReadingAssociated Press SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant. That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby
Continue ReadingAssociated Press SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant. That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby
Continue ReadingAssociated Press SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant. That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby
Continue ReadingAssociated Press SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant. That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby
Continue ReadingAssociated Press A paid passenger on an expedition to the Titanic with the company that owned the Titan submersible testified before a U.S. Coast Guard investigatory panel Friday that the mission he took part in was aborted due to an apparent mechanical failure. The Titan submersible imploded last year while on another trip to the
Continue ReadingAssociated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are scrambling to ensure that the U.S. Secret Service has enough money and resources to keep the nation’s presidential candidates safe amid repeated threats of violence. It’s unclear, though, how much they can do with only weeks before the election, or if additional dollars would make an immediate difference.
Continue ReadingAssociated Press TIXTLA, México (AP) — Clemente Rodríguez has been documenting the long search for his missing son with tattoos. First, it was an ink drawing of a turtle — a symbol of 19-year-old Christian Rodríguez’s school — with a smaller turtle on its shell. Then, an image of Mexico’s patron saint, the Virgin of
Continue ReadingAssociated Press COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina has put inmate Freddie Owens to death in the state’s first execution in more than a decade. Friday’s execution came after an unintended 13-year pause on capital punishment in South Carolina that came about because prison officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections. Owens was
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