AP National News

Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the front-line town of Vuhledar, perched atop a tactically significant hill in eastern Ukraine, after more than two years of grinding battle, military officials said Wednesday. Vuhledar, a town Ukrainian forces fought tooth and nail to keep, is the latest urban settlement to fall

Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — The United Kingdom and the European Union say they will strengthen their relationship after the damage caused by Brexit. They plan to set a working agenda and to hold a series of meetings including at the highest level on issues like economic growth, energy, security and migration. U.K. Prime Minister

Associated Press ROME (AP) — Pope Francis’ big Catholic reform project has opened with widespread calls for women to take up more positions of responsibility in the church topping the agenda. But in a status report Wednesday night, the Vatican’s doctrine chief said the debate was veering away from ordaining women as deacons to alternative

Associated Press COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Three Swedish nationals have been arrested in connection with two predawn explosions in the vicinity of the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen. Police say the blasts early Wednesday were likely caused by hand grenades. No one was injured. They say it’s unclear whether the target was the Israeli Embassy, which

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani officials say security forces have killed at lest six insurgents in a raid on their hideout in the country’s restive southwest. They said the raid targeted a hideout of the Baloch Liberation Army in Harnai, a district in Balochistan province. It wasn’t immediately clear when the raid took place. The interior

Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — When Israel bombed buildings outside the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, Mohamed Arkadan and his team rushed to an emergency unlike anything they had ever seen. About a dozen apartments had collapsed onto the hillside they once overlooked, burying more than 100 people. Even after 17 years with the civil

Associated Press KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan (AP) — An approaching typhoon bringing strong winds and torrential rainfall to Taiwan has killed two people and injured more than 100 people over the past few days while forcing thousands to evacuate from low-lying or mountainous areas. Fire officials said Wednesday at least 102 people were injured and two people

Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Israel pressed forward on two fronts Wednesday, pursuing a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah that left eight Israeli soldiers dead and conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children. As Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack a day earlier, the region braced for further escalation.

Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaum has begun her presidency the same way her predecessor concluded his: with a morning media briefing known in Mexico as a mañanera from the National Palace. Though analysts agree that Sheinbaum will try to create her own brand, she will inevitably be compared to former President Andrés

Associated Press CORTELEONA E GENZONE, Italy (AP) — One of Giovanni Airoli’s sows tested positive for African swine fever in late August. Within a week, all 6,200 sows, piglets and fattening pigs on his farm south of Milan were slaughtered under strict protocols to halt the disease threatening Italy’s 20 billion euro industry for prosciutto,

Associated Press ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Let the chunk-off begin. Voting started Wednesday in the annual Fat Bear Week contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, with viewers picking their favorite among a dozen brown bears fattened up to survive the winter. The contest, which is in its 10th year, celebrates the resiliency of

Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee state authorities are investigating the company that owns a plastics factory where 11 workers were swept away by cataclysmic flooding unleashed by Hurricane Helene. A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson said Wednesday that the agency is investigating allegations involving Impact Plastics at the direction of the local prosecutor.

Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — What lies beneath the Great Lakes’ waves is largely unknown, but there’s a new push to learn more about thousands of shipwrecks, underwater infrastructure and the impacts of climate change on the bottom of the world’s largest freshwater system. Only 15% of the lakes’ bottom has been mapped, according

Associated Press KAMITUGA, Congo (AP) — It’s been four months since Sifa Kunguja recovered from mpox, but as a sex worker, she said, she’s still struggling to regain clients, with fear and stigma driving away people who’ve heard she had the virus. “It’s risky work,” Kunguja, 40, said from her small home in eastern Congo.

Associated Press KOJIMA, Japan (AP) — Denim — that All-American fabric — is all about being Japanese in the town of Kojima. The town’s main road is named Jeans Street, with real pairs of pants flapping like flags overhead. The area boasts about 40 jeans manufacturers and stores. Japanese jeans tend to be high-end, dark

Associated Press LAN SAK, Thailand (AP) — The bodies of almost two dozen young students and teachers who died in a bus fire in a suburb of Bangkok have been returned to central Thailand, where they began their ill-fated school field trip. Friends, relatives and Buddhist monks waited past midnight for the last of several

Associated Press ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Isolated and without electricity or phone service since Hurricane Helene inflicted devastation across the Southeast nearly a week ago, residents in the mountains of western North Carolina are relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating and coping. At the town square in Black Mountain, local leaders stood atop a picnic

Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Hurricane Helene, the growing conflict in the Mideast and a dockworkers strike are looming over the final weeks of the American presidential campaign. They could help shape the public mood as voters decide between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. How events shake out and how the candidates respond

AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks edged higher in a quiet Wednesday, and Treasury yields rose following an encouraging update on the job market’s strength. The S&P 500 finished virtually unchanged, a day after sliding from its record on worries about a possible widening of the fighting in the Middle East. The

Associated Press AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris handed out meals, embraced a shaken family and surveyed Hurricane Helene’s “extraordinary” path of destruction through Georgia on Wednesday as she left the campaign trail to pledge federal help and personally take in scenes of toppled trees, damaged homes and lives upended. She visited Augusta,