Russian strikes kill at least 8 civilians as fierce fighting continues in Ukraine's south and east
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks on 11 regions across Ukraine overnight killed at least eight civilians and wounded others, authorities said Saturday, as fierce fighting continues in Ukraine's attempts to dislodge Russian forces from territory they have occupied.
The regional prosecutor’s office in the eastern Donetsk region said that at least four people, including a married couple, were killed as Russian forces on Friday night shelled the settlement of Niu-York, south of the city of Bakhmut — the site of the war’s longest and bloodiest battle until it fell to Moscow in May. Three other Niu-York residents were hospitalized.
Also on Saturday morning, Ukraine’s interior ministry said that two civilians died as Russian forces Friday struck Kostiantynivka, a city in the Donetsk region, from multiple rocket launchers. In a post on its official Telegram channel, the ministry said that another civilian was wounded in the same attack, which also destroyed 20 private homes, cars and a gas pipeline.
Two people were also killed near the northern city of Chernihiv, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Russian border, as Russian cruise missiles destroyed the local cultural center and damaged apartment blocks, the regional military administration reported on Saturday morning. It did not specify the exact time of the attack, saying only it took place within the previous 24 hours.
Three civilians were wounded as Russian troops overnight shelled a town neighboring the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, local Gov. Serhiy Lysak reported Saturday.
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Protesters try to storm Baghdad's Green Zone over the burning of Quran and Iraqi flag in Denmark
BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq's government, early Saturday following reports an ultranationalist group burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Copenhagen.
Security forces pushed back protesters, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy.
The protest came two days after people angered by the planned burning of the Islamic holy book in Sweden stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. Protesters occupied the diplomatic post for several hours, waving flags and signs showing the influential Iraqi Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and setting a small fire. The embassy staff had been evacuated a day earlier.
Hours later, Iraq’s prime minister cut diplomatic ties with Sweden in protest over the desecration of the Quran.
An Iraqi asylum-seeker who burned a copy of the Quran during a demonstration last month in Stockholm had threatened to do the same thing again Thursday but ultimately stopped short of setting fire to the book. He did, however, kick and step on it, and did the same with an Iraqi flag and a photo of Sadr and of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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He came face to face with an alleged serial killer. 12 years later, his tip helped crack the case
NEW YORK (AP) — In the winter of 2010, shortly after police discovered the remains of his roommate and three other women buried on a remote stretch of Long Island shoreline, Dave Schaller provided detectives with a description of the person he believed to be the killer.
More crucially, Schaller told them about his truck.
The man they were looking for was a towering, Frankenstein-like figure with an “empty gaze” who drove a first-generation Chrysler Avalanche, Schaller recalled telling investigators. The man’s size stuck out, as did his unusual pick-up truck, which he’d used to flee the house Schaller shared with Amber Costello.
On that night, Schaller said he came home to find the stranger threatening Costello, an occasional sex worker, who had locked herself in the bathroom. The two men came to blows, with the hulking intruder eventually leaving in the truck.
Prosecutors say Costello was last seen alive on Sept. 2, 2010, as she left her home to meet that same client. A witness saw a dark-colored truck drive by the house again shortly after she left.
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Nervous Republicans turn to New Hampshire in hopes of stopping Trump
HUDSON, N.H. (AP) — They acknowledge Donald Trump's dominance, but weary Republicans across New Hampshire — even inside the governor's office — are fighting to stop the former president from winning the first-in-the-nation primary.
For now, however, they're relying on little more than hope and prayers.
Look no further than Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president, who repeatedly appealed to voters' faith this week as he tried to resurrect his anemic presidential campaign while courting a few dozen voters in a former state lawmaker's backyard.
“I truly do believe that different times call for different leadership,” Pence told his modest crowd. “I know you all are going to do your job, because I have faith. I have faith in the American people.”
More than a dozen high-profile Republicans are looking to New Hampshire, the state long known for shining on political underdogs, to help stop Trump's march toward a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination. But so far, none has cracked the veneer of inevitability that has followed Trump through the early states on the presidential primary calendar despite — or perhaps because of — his mounting legal challenges.
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As he leaves Phoenix's blistering sun, AP's climate news director reflects on desert life
PHOENIX (AP) — I blink, and the edges of my eyelids feel like they are being singed. My cheeks burn as if they are being pressed with a hot iron ready to tackle a pile of wrinkled shirts. It is 4 p.m. I look at my 12-year-old son, whose face is flushed. He lets out a groan and puts his hand on his forehead to shield his eyes from the blistering sun.
It is 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius).
My family knows being in temperatures like this is dangerous. We've lived here for four years. This time, though, we are outside for only a few minutes to conduct an important experiment: How long will it take to cook a quesadilla on the sidewalk?
Such is life these days in Phoenix, one of the hottest cities in the world. But for us, this summer is our last here; this weekend, I’m moving with my family to New York for my job as — wait for it — The Associated Press’ global climate and environment news director.
Working with AP journalists around the globe on climate change stories, as I have for the past year since taking on this role, I recognize the irony. I'm leaving a city that is having a major climate change moment during a summer we may remember as an inflection point in both in the advancement of global warming and its devastating extreme weather impacts and the developed world’s consciousness of what is happening. Developing countries have long been hit particularly hard by climate change.
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Sick of hearing about record heat? Scientists say those numbers paint the story of a warming world
The summer of 2023 is behaving like a broken record about broken records.
Nearly every major climate-tracking organization proclaimed June the hottest June ever. Then July 4 became the globe's hottest day, albeit unofficially, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. It was quickly overtaken by July 5 and July 6. Next came the hottest week, a tad more official, stamped into the books by the World Meteorological Organization and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
With a summer of extreme weather records dominating the news, meteorologists and scientists say records like these give a glimpse of the big picture: a warming planet caused by climate change. It's a picture that comes in the vibrant reds and purples representing heat on daily weather maps online, in newspapers and on television.
Beyond the maps and the numbers are real harms that kill. More than 100 people have died in heat waves in the United States and India so far this summer.
Records are crucial for people designing infrastructure and working in agriculture because they need to plan for the worst scenarios, said Russell Vose, climate analysis group director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He also chairs a committee on national records.
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Barbie mania sweeps Latin America, but sometimes takes on a darker tone
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Latin America is taking Barbie mania to an extreme, with everything from pink-colored tacos and pastries, commercial planes bearing the Barbie logo, political ads and even Barbie-themed protests.
But it’s not all high heels and pom-poms: Barbie mania in the region has taken on a darker, macabre tone.
In Peru, anti-government demonstrators this week dressed up two women in pink and put them in giant Barbie boxes in the main square of Lima, the capital, to protest current President Dina Boluarte, under whose administration police have often clashed with protesters.
One actress, whose box was labeled “Barbie Dictator,” held a pink gun. The doll, according to the box legend, “includes tear gas and dum-dum bullets.” Another protester’s box was labeled “Genocidal Barbie.”
Meanwhile, stores, street vendors and restaurants throughout Latin America are offering up all sorts of Barbie-themed goodies.
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Fierce protests have been rocking Israel for months. What's fueling them?
JERUSALEM (AP) — Oceans of Israeli flags, steady drumbeats, cries of “Democracy!” Water cannons, police on horseback, protesters dragged off the ground.
For seven straight months, tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in the most sustained and intense demonstrations the country has ever seen.
The protesters are part of a grassroots movement that rose out of opposition to a contentious judicial overhaul spearheaded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies.
The overhaul calls for sweeping changes aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary, from limiting the Supreme Court's ability to challenge parliamentary decisions, to changing the way judges are selected.
While the government says the overhaul is needed to reduce the powers of unelected judges, protesters, who make up a wide cross section of Israeli society, say the overhaul will push Israel toward autocracy.
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A man lies in a Kenya morgue. His family says he's one of at least 35 shot dead by police this month
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — At the morgue, the bullet was still lodged in Douglas Kalasinga’s head. His family said they couldn’t afford an autopsy. At least 35 civilians have been shot dead by police in Kenya this month during protests over new taxes and the rising cost of living, and Kalasinga’s loved ones believe he’s one of them.
“It is as if the police wanted to kill him because they aimed straight at his head,” his uncle, David Wangila, told The Associated Press on Friday.
An interior ministry spokesperson referred requests for comment to the police, who didn’t respond.
Wangila said the 27-year-old was struck on Thursday while at work, pushing a handcart of water cans instead of taking part in the national demonstrations called by the political opposition.
As his family viewed his body, Kenyan human rights groups raised a chorus of outrage.
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Tony Bennett left his heart to generations of music fans
NEW YORK (AP) — What do Paul McCartney, Queen Latifah, Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder have in common?
Oh, and Aretha Franklin, k.d. lang, Bono and Billy Joel. Not to mention Carrie Underwood, Judy Garland, John Legend and Placido Domingo. And let's not forget...
Stop. Listing all of the musicians who performed duets with Tony Bennett would take up our remaining space. His place in music history is already secure.
Bennett, who died at 95 on Friday, was indeed “the last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century,” as Charles J. Gans wrote for The Associated Press. Yet that summation befits a man frozen in time, consigned to a specific era, and Tony Bennett was anything but that.
Instead, Bennett transcended generations in a way few musicians have.
The Associated Press
