DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi court has sentenced a doctoral student to 34 years in prison for spreading “rumors” and retweeting dissidents, according to court documents obtained Thursday, a decision that has drawn growing global condemnation.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Russian cargo ship that Ukraine alleges holds stolen wheat from territory seized by Moscow appears to have reached the Syrian port of Tartus, according to satellite images analyzed Thursday by The Associated Press.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israel raided the offices of several Palestinian advocacy groups it had previously blacklisted as terrorist organizations early Thursday, sealing entrances and declaring them closed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last week’s attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national for plotting to murder former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Tehran’s contemporary art museum has issued an apology and temporarily closed to handle a pest infestation, raising concerns after footage of insects scuttling across world-famous work spread widely on social media.
ALONG THE JORDAN RIVER (AP) — Kristen Burckhartt felt overwhelmed. She needed time to reflect, to let it sink in that she had just briefly soaked her feet in the water where Jesus is said to have been baptized, in the Jordan River.
GENEVA (AP) — Europe's embrace of millions of Ukrainians who fled Russia's invasion showed that it's possible to welcome large numbers of asylum-seekers, and the approach should be replicated to receive those fleeing other nations, the head of the U.N.
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's president on Thursday appointed a caretaker governor of the central bank, the president's office said, a day after the bank's chief resigned amid a grinding economic crisis triggered by Russia's war on Ukraine.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Dubai court has found that a cargo ship's mishandled peroxide caused an explosion at the city-state's busy Jebel Ali port in 2021, a blast that was felt through the emirate, a state-linked newspaper reported Thursday.
MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — A judge refused to grant bail Thursday to the man accused of trying to kill Salman Rushdie as the acclaimed author prepared to give a talk in western New York.
Hadi Matar, 24, appeared in a western New York courtroom after a grand jury indicted him on charges that he rushed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and stabbed Rushdie multiple times in front of a horrified crowd.
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Turkey's leader and the U.N. chief met in Ukraine with President Volodymr Zelenskyy on Thursday in a high-powered bid to ratchet down a war raging for nearly six months. But little immediate progress was reported.
MADRID (AP) — Mexico forward Jesús “Tecatito” Corona is expected to miss the World Cup after breaking his left leg while training with Sevilla on Thursday, the Spanish club said.
Sevilla said Tecatito broke his left fibula and ruptured ankle ligaments and will be out for four to five months.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A bombing at a mosque in the Afghan capital of Kabul during evening prayers killed at least 21 people, including a prominent cleric, and wounded at least 33 others, eyewitnesses and police said Thursday.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s central bank on Thursday lowered its key interest rate despite inflation surging to nearly 80% and making it difficult for people to buy what they need, falling in line with the unorthodox economic views of the country's president.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Wildfires raging in the forests of eastern Algeria have killed at least 37 people and wounded 161 others, the civil protection department of the North African country said Thursday.
LONDON (AP) — New coronavirus cases reported globally dropped nearly a quarter in the last week while deaths fell 6% but were still higher in parts of Asia, according to a report Thursday on the pandemic by the World Health Organization.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek authorities say another sailboat carrying dozens of migrants arrived Thursday at Kythera, the third in just under two days to make it to the southern island that isn't on the usual route for asylum-seekers trying to reach the European Union.
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Emirates airline will suspend all flights to Nigeria from September 1 because the West African country has failed to repatriate millions of dollars of its funds, the Dubai-based airline announced on Thursday.
ZURICH (AP) — World Cup ticket sales have reached 2.45 million, FIFA said Thursday, with more than 500,000 seats still available three months before the tournament starts in Qatar.
FIFA said 520,000 tickets were bought in a first-come, first-served phase of sales that closed this week.
BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israel's prime minister Thursday that he condemns any attempts to deny or downplay the Holocaust, offering reassurance after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sparked outrage with remarks to that effect earlier this week.
Dressed in traditional Cossack clothing, Oleksandr Usyk followed up his face-off with Anthony Joshua by performing a Ukrainian resistance song on stage.
Clapping his hands rhythmically, Usyk — with a horseshoe mustache and those steely eyes of his — broke into “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna,” a song from 1875 inspired by Ukraine’s 18th-century struggle for independence and now chanted in defiance amid the war with Russia.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria denied on Wednesday it is holding U.S. journalist Austin Tice or other Americans after President Joe Biden accused the Syrian government of detaining him.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Damascus “denies it had kidnapped or is holding any American citizen on its territories.”
MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in western New York said in an interview that he was surprised to learn the accomplished author had survived the attack.
BEIRUT (AP) — Syria is not safe yet for millions of refugees to start going back home, a Canadian minister cautioned during a visit to Lebanon on Wednesday. He spoke days after Lebanese officials announced a plan to start returning 15,000 Syrian refugees to their war-shattered country every month.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic relations and dispatch ambassadors for the first time in years, the latest step in months of reconciliation between the two countries, the Israeli prime minister's office said Wednesday.
BEIRUT (AP) — The stabbing of author Salman Rushdie has laid bare divisions in Lebanon's Shiite Muslim community, pitting a few denouncing the violence against fervent followers of the Iran-backed Shiite militant Hezbollah group who have praised the attack.
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s central bank governor resigned Wednesday as the Middle East's most populous nation struggles to curb inflation triggered by Russia's war in Ukraine, high oil prices and a drop in tourism.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Two sailboats carrying dozens of migrants arrived on a southern Greek island early Wednesday, with the first one running aground on rocks. Nobody was reported injured or missing.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s caretaker prime minister called a meeting of senior political leaders and party representatives Wednesday, seeking a way out of a monthslong crisis amid a power struggle between rival Shiite blocs.
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's chancellor said Wednesday that he was “disgusted by the outrageous remarks" made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin, accusing Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians over the years.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — In the Brazilian Amazon these days, it's nearly impossible to run for office talking up the environment.
More common is a scene like this: A candidate for Congress parades a helicopter — the symbol of illegal gold mining — painted with the Brazilian flag, through the streets of the Amazon city of Boa Vista.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after America's tumultuous and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, assessments of its impact are divided — and largely along partisan lines.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Dubai International Airport saw a surge in passengers over the first half of 2022 as pandemic restrictions eased and the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Qatar will further boost traffic to the city-state’s second airfield, its chief executive said Wednesday.
MADRID (AP) — While vacationers might enjoy the Mediterranean Sea's summer warmth, climate scientists are warning of dire consequences for its marine life as it burns up in a series of severe heat waves.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — To Enas Taleb, the headline felt like a spiteful punch line.
“Why women are fatter than men in the Arab world,” it read in bold, above a photograph of the Iraqi actress waving onstage at an arts festival.
BERLIN (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed no regret Tuesday for the deadly attack by Palestinian militants on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics a half century ago, countering that Israel had committed “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians over the years.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Explosions and fires ripped through an ammunition depot in Russian-occupied Crimea on Tuesday in the second suspected Ukrainian attack on the peninsula in just over a week, forcing the evacuation of more than 3,000 people.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a wartime deal appears to have ended up in Syria — even as Damascus remains a close ally of Moscow, satellite images analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press show.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran said Tuesday it submitted a “written response” to what has been described as a final roadmap to restore its tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency offered no details on the substance of its response, but suggested that Tehran still wouldn't take the European Union-mediated proposal, despite warnings there would be no more negotiations.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Massive incentives for clean energy in the U.S. law signed Tuesday by President Joe Biden should reduce future global warming “not a lot, but not insignificantly either,” according to a climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the package.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have accepted an invition from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet Thursday to review the deal allowing Ukrainian grain to be shipped to world markets to help alleviate the global grain crisis and discuss ways to end the six-month-old war.
JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip (AP) — A Palestinian human rights group and an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday that an explosion in a cemetery that killed five Palestinian children during the latest flare-up in Gaza was caused by an Israeli airstrike and not an errant Palestinian rocket.