AP National News

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization and its partners said they hope to provide Africa with about 30% of the COVID-19 vaccines the continent needs by February, badly missing the 60% vaccination coverage goal that African leaders had once hoped for this year. At a press briefing Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called

By NOMAAN MERCHANT Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The general who leads U.S. efforts to thwart foreign-based cyberattacks, and punish those responsible, says he’s mounting a “surge” to fight incursions that have debilitated government agencies and companies responsible for critical infrastructure. In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Gen. Paul Nakasone broadly described “an

By JACQUES BILLEAUD Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — A judge has declared a mistrial at the trial of the founders of the lucrative classified site Backpage.com on charges of facilitating prostitution and laundering money. U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich said Tuesday prosecutors had too many references to child sex trafficking in a case where no

By MICHAEL BALSAMO Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Tuesday it is curtailing federal agents’ use of “no-knock” warrants — which allow law enforcement agents to enter a home without announcing their presence — and would also prohibit its agents from using chokeholds in most circumstances. The updated policy follows the March

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Novels that explore historical injustices, the nature of consciousness and the dizzying impact of the internet are among six finalists for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction. Three books by American authors are on the shortlist announced Tuesday for the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize: Patricia Lockwood’s social media-steeped

By KATE BRUMBACK Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a statewide civil rights investigation into Georgia prisons, citing particular concern about violence. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the department’s civil rights division, said the investigation will be comprehensive but will focus on “harm to prisoners resulting

Apple has released a critical software patch to fix a security vulnerability that could allow hackers to directly infect iPhones and other Apple devices without any involvement of the owner. Here’s how to update various Apple devices, according to the company’s website.

By MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday sought to parry bipartisan congressional criticism of the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, as new intelligence estimates warned that al-Qaida could soon again use Afghan soil to plot attacks on the United States. Blinken had mixed results in attempting to

By MIKE SILVERMAN Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — How do you turn a performance space in Brooklyn into a day at the beach? Answer: Truck in 21 tons of sand from New Jersey in 50-pound bags and dump them out onto the floor — all 840 of them. That’s how the production crew at

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Theater royalty — in the form of 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

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. But the administrative court in Chemnitz said Tuesday that the posters put up by the tiny III. Weg (Third Way) party

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — A Turkish drone base in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus could increase safety risks for thousands of commercial flights that cross the airspace around the eastern Mediterranean island, a flight safety group warned Tuesday. FSF-Med, an NGO affiliated with the Washington, D.C.-based International Flight Safety Foundation, said the planned

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 LLAZAR SEMINI Associated Press TIRANA, Albania (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Albania on Tuesday to urge the leaders of the six western Balkan states to strengthen their regional cooperation in their strive for European Union membership. Merkel hailed the cooperation intiative, saying “the more cooperation you have, the stronger the Berlin Process

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

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, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The official poverty measure rose 1 percentage point in 2020, with 11.4% of Americans living

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

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Officials at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant have acknowledged they neglected to investigate the cause of faulty exhaust filters that are key to preventing radioactive pollution, after being forced to replace them twice. Representatives of the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, made the revelation Monday

Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Patricia Smith has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, a $100,000 honor presented 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,” a Pulitzer

By KATHY GANNON Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s new foreign minister said Tuesday that 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. Without other political