AP National News

By EILEEN NG and ROD McGUIRK Associated Press KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Chinese Premier Li Qiang has received a red-carpet welcome in Malaysia on the last leg of a regional tour. Li will celebrate a half-century of diplomatic ties between the two nations. Li is the first Chinese premier to visit Malaysia since 2015.

By EDDIE PELLS AP National Writer Sprinting great Michael Johnson is launching a track league that looks to assemble nearly 100 of the sport’s top performers four times a year to compete for $12.6 million in prize money over the season. The league, Grand Slam Track, will launch next April with plans for one event

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — Hungary has lifted its veto on Mark Rutte becoming the next head of NATO. The move came after the Dutch prime minister gave written guarantees that he would not force Hungary to take part NATO’s new plans to provide support to Ukraine. Rutte’s assurances remove a major

By The Associated Press Bob Schul, the only American distance runner to win gold in the 5,000 meters at the Olympics, has died. He was 86. His death on Sunday was announced by Miami University in Ohio, where Schul shined on the track and was inducted into the school’s hall of fame in 1973. No

By EMMA BURROWS Associated Press A university professor has been jailed in Estonia after being found guilty of spying for Russia. Viacheslav Morozov, a Russian citizen, taught at the Baltic country’s most prestigious university. He was sentenced to six years and three months in prison for collecting information about Estonia’s defense and security policy and

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — Three of six South Dakota players from a baseball team made up of high school-aged players who were charged as adults last summer with rape have pleaded guilty to a lesser felony charge. KELO-TV reports that two former members of the American Legion team from Mitchell pleaded guilty Monday to

By TERRY TANG Associated Press For more than one-and-a-half centuries, the Juneteenth holiday has been sacred to many Black communities. It marks the day in 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out they had been freed — after the end of the Civil War, and two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Since

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A fire has broken out at an office building belonging to Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the third in a little over a month to hit the drugmaker. There were no reports of injuries, and police say the blaze is under control. The cause of the fire is being investigated. A company

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Jesse Plemons is less a chameleon than a singular presence that can be dialed to disturbing or sweet. Whether good or bad, Plemons’ characters tend to be sincerely themselves — a product, maybe, of the sensitivity with which he approaches each part. Since his breakthrough

By The Associated Press Extreme heat alerts affected tens of millions of people in the United States on Tuesday as cities including Chicago broke records at the start of a week of sweltering weather. Midwestern states started to bake Monday in what the National Weather Service called a dangerous and long duration heat wave expected

By KEN SWEET AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Apple is discontinuing its buy now, pay later service known as Apple Pay Later barely a year after its initial launch in the U.S., and will rely on companies who already dominate the industry like Affirm and Klarna. It’s an acknowledgement from a company known

By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer Jeff Nichols had dreamt of making a film about a 1960s motorcycle clubs for over 20 years. The obsession started in his brother’s apartment, when he first cracked open Danny Lyon’s book “The Bikeriders,” a New Journalism-style account of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club in the mid-1960s. He could

By LORNE COOK Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — Hungary’s populist government says its presidency of the European Union will be held under the motto “Make Europe Great Again.” But Budapest is playing down any parallels with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the United States. EU Affairs Minister János Bóka said Tuesday that “I don’t know

By MAE ANDERSON AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Small businesses are increasingly concerned about payment fraud. In a recent survey from KeyBank, 44% of small business owners said they worried about unauthorized transactions or unauthorized electric fund transfers; 37% were concerned about identity theft; 28% said malware and ransomware attacks were their biggest