Month: June 2023

By MEAD GRUVER Associated Press CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — James Watt, the Reagan administration’s sharp-tongued, pro-development interior secretary who was admired by conservatives but ran afoul of environmentalists, Beach Boys fans and eventually the president, has died. He was 85. Watt died in Arizona on May 27, son Eric Watt said in a statement Thursday.

By ADRIAN SAINZ Associated Press MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee man pleaded guilty Friday to helping two other men charged with fatally shooting rapper Young Dolph in a daytime ambush at a Memphis bakery. Jermarcus Johnson, 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of accessory after the fact. Judge Lee Coffee approved a plea deal

MILAN (AP) — Silvio Berlusconi’s doctors say the former Italian premier was admitted to a Milan hospital for planned medical checks related to his chronic leukemia. Berlusconi’s doctors said in a statement on Friday that the tests being conducted at San Raffaele Hospital had been moved up “as part of normal practice in medicine.” They

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s parliament has approved a revision to an immigration and refugee law that will allow the forced repatriation of asylum seekers after they are denied refugee status twice, a change that rights activists say could lead to their persecution at home. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s governing coalition

By SCOTT BAUER Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher won’t run for U.S. Senate in 2024 against Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, leaving an open GOP field with no declared candidates in the battleground state. Gallagher was the highest profile Republican said to be considering a run against Baldwin,

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Moscow will deploy some of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus next month, a move that the Belarusian opposition described as an attempt to blackmail the West. Putin said during Friday’s meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that work on building facilities for the nuclear weapons

By SUZAN FRASER Associated Press ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s president has appointed a former U.S.-based bank executive to head the central bank. The appointment Friday is sending the strongest signal yet that Recep Tayyip Erdogan might pivot from his unusual economic policies that many blame for a worsening cost-of-living crisis. The 41-year-old Erkan is

By GRANT PECK Associated Press BANGKOK (AP) — A U.N. agency says Myanmar’s military government has rescinded its approval for international organizations to distribute food, shelter and medicines to thousands of residents in cyclone-hit areas in the country’s west. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the suspension of aid activities could

By MICHAEL BIESECKER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — A grainy black-and-white gunsight video Russia released this week to bolster a claim its military blew up some of Ukraine’s most fearsome tanks actually documented the destruction of a tractor, according to a visual analysis by The Associated Press. The Russian Embassy in Washington announced Monday on

The Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A cartoonist’s lawyer says Iranian authorities have summoned and arrested her over posts on her Instagram account. Mohammad Moghimi said in a tweet Friday that his client, Atena Farghadani, a painter, cartoonist and former political prisoner, was summoned to the Evin courthouse in Tehran and arrested.

By AHMAD MANTASH Associated Press KFAR CHOUBA, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli soldiers have fired tear gas to disperse scores of stone-throwing protesters along the border with Lebanon, leaving some demonstrators and troops with breathing problems. Friday’s tension near the Lebanese village of Kfar Chouba began earlier this week over Israeli digging in the area that

By PETER SMITH Associated Press PITTSBURGH (AP) — One by one over the past two weeks, members of Jewish congregations in Pittsburgh have come to the witness stand in federal court and relived the horror of that October morning, when a gunman used high-powered weapons to kill 11 worshippers and badly injure others. Police officers

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish government official says the bodies of two migrants were found on a beach in southeastern Spain after 132 other people arrived in two boats. The official in the city of Almería says the two died while trying to swim to the coast and were victims of criminal human smuggling gangs.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg said Friday she will no longer be able to skip classes as a way to draw attention to climate change because she is graduating from high school. Thunberg, 20, started staging Friday protests outside the Swedish parliament building during school hours in 2018. Teenagers from around the

By JEFF AMY and BILL BARROW Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — A right-wing Republican Party faction in Georgia is seeking to punish GOP officials it considers ideological traitors by banning them from future primary ballots. The plan could be voted on at the state Republican convention, which opens Friday in Columbus. Donald Trump is supposed

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United Nations World Food Program says it is temporarily suspending food aid to Ethiopia because its supplies are being diverted. The announcement on Friday came a day after the United States Agency for International Development said it was doing the same. Some 20 million of Ethiopia’s 120 million people rely