Fierce battles in eastern Ukraine have thrown a new spotlight on Russia's Wagner Group, a private military company led by a rogue millionaire with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors and other mourners commemorated the 78th anniversary Friday of the Nazi German death camp's liberation, some expressing horror that war has again shattered peace in Europe and the lesson of Never Again is being forgotten.
MOSCOW (AP) — A former Russian Orthodox monk, who denied that the coronavirus existed and defied the Kremlin, was handed a seven-year prison sentence Friday.
Nikolai Romanov, 67, who was known as Father Sergiy until his excommunication by the Russian Orthodox Church, urged his followers to disobey the Russian government's lockdown measures and spread conspiracy theories about a global plot to control the masses.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Treasury chief said Friday that taming inflation is more important than cutting taxes, resisting calls from some in the governing Conservative Party for immediate tax breaks for businesses and voters.
MADRID (AP) — A counterterrorism intelligence unit on Friday questioned a suspect accused of killing a Catholic church officer with a machete and wounding four more people, including a priest, in the southern city of Algeciras, Spain's national police agency said.
MADRID (AP) — A spate of gender-based violence, coupled with the early release of several sex offenders, has increased pressure on Spain's left-wing government, which strongly plays up its feminist credentials, to do more to protect women from abuse.
BERLIN (AP) — Germany commemorated the victims of Nazi persecution on the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, placing a focus Friday on people who were incarcerated and killed because of their sexual orientations and gender identities.
MADRID (AP) — Police in Spain discovered a bomb-making workshop in the home of a 74-year-old man charged with terrorism for sending six letters containing explosives to high-profile diplomatic and government targets, the Spanish Interior Ministry said Friday.
LONDON (AP) — A pop-up urinal crushed a man to death in London’s theater district Friday, police said.
Firefighters used a winch to free the man after he became trapped under a hydraulic urinal at Cambridge Circus, a busy intersection in the city’s West End.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — The foreign ministers of France and the Netherlands visited a NATO battlegroup at a base in Romania Friday and later agreed to bolster their ties amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Turkey summoned the Danish ambassador and accused Denmark of endorsing a “hate crime” after an anti-Islam activist on Friday burned two copies of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, in a solitary protest in Copenhagen.
PRAGUE (AP) — Czechs started voting Friday for a new president, choosing between a retired army general and a populist billionaire in a two-day runoff election to succeed controversy-courting Milos Zeman in the largely ceremonial post.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A new barrage of Russian shelling killed at least 10 Ukrainian civilians and wounded 20 others in a day, the office of Ukraine's president said Friday as the country worked to recover from an earlier wave of Russian missile strikes and drone attacks.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s government on Friday survived, as expected, a no-confidence vote following a motion by the country’s opposition leader over a wiretapping scandal that has stung the center-right governing party in the run-up to elections.
TOKYO (AP) — A senior EU official said Friday that Russia has taken its war against Ukraine to “a different stage” by making indiscriminate attacks on civilians and non-military targets, while criticizing Moscow for triggering recent moves by Germany and the United States to send advanced tanks to Ukraine.
JAN 20-26, 2023
From skiing in Austria and Italy to military exercises in Romania and haute couture fashion shows in Paris, this photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published in the past week by The Associated Press from Europe and Africa.
TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares advanced Friday, tracking a rally on Wall Street following reports suggesting the economy and corporate profits may be doing better than feared.
In Tokyo, data showed the core consumer price index was up 4.3%, slightly higher than expected at 4.2%, and higher than the Bank of Japan’s target of 2%.
NEW YORK (AP) — An Islamic extremist who killed eight people with a speeding truck in a 2017 rampage on a popular New York City bike path was convicted Thursday of federal crimes and could face the death penalty.
ALGECIRAS, Spain (AP) — Spanish police on Thursday raided the home of a young Moroccan man held over the machete attacks at two Catholic churches the previous night that left a church officer dead and a priest injured in the southern city of Algeciras.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. special operations forces have killed a senior Islamic State group official and 10 other terrorist operatives in remote northern Somalia, the Biden administration announced Thursday.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired more missiles and self-exploding drones at nearly a dozen Ukrainian provinces early Thursday, causing the first war-related death in Kyiv this year and killing at least 11 people overall, according to Ukrainian authorities.
LONDON (AP) — A lawyer for Eva Green alleged Thursday that producers of a collapsed film tried to damage the French actress’ reputation by depicting her as a “diva.”
The performer, who played Vesper Lynd in James Bond thriller “Casino Royale,” is suing producers for a $1 million fee she says she is owed for “A Patriot."
PARIS (AP) — The experimentalism and audacity of 1980s club kids inspired Valentino, one of the last high-octane shows of this Paris Fashion Week couture season.
Thousands of fans lined the Pont Alexandre III bridge on a chilly Wednesday night to scream as their idols went in and out — from K-pop star Suga of BTS fame to Anne Hathaway and Kylie Minogue — some of whom danced into early Thursday.
Shares of Chevron climbed Thursday after the oil company announced that it would repurchase $75 billion of its stock, one of the largest-ever stock buyback plans.
The company’s board also approved an increase of about 6% in its quarterly dividend, to $1.51 per share.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s foreign minister on Thursday accused Sweden of being complicit in a "hate and racist” crime for failing to prevent weekend protests in Stockholm by an anti-Islam and pro-Kurdish groups.
BERLIN (AP) — A 33-year-old man arrested on suspicion of fatally stabbing two teenagers and injuring five other passengers on a train in northern Germany had been released from pretrial detention a week ago and had previous criminal convictions, investigating officials said Thursday.
From Washington to Berlin to Kyiv, a Western decision to send battle tanks to Ukraine was hailed enthusiastically.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Germany apologized on Thursday for using a leopard emoji in a jibe at Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Twitter that ended up offending some Africans.
BRUSSELS (AP) — A Ukrainian human rights lawyer who shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize called Thursday for more international investigative and legal help to deal with the staggering amount of war crimes cases since Russia invaded its neighbor almost a year ago.
BRUSSELS (AP) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday that antisemitism is on the rise in the Western world and urged the European Union to ensure that Jews can live safely on the continent where the Holocaust took place.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Days after India blocked a BBC documentary that examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during 2002 anti-Muslim riots and banned people from sharing it online, authorities were scrambling to halt screenings of the program at colleges and restrict clips of it on social media, a move that has been decried by critics as an assault on press freedom.
PARIS (AP) — The French foreign ministry said Thursday it is recalling its ambassador to Burkina Faso for consultations, one day after Paris decided to withdraw troops from the West African country following a demand by its military rulers.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Andrew Tate, the influential internet personality who is detained in Romania on suspicion of organized crime and human trafficking, appeared at prosecutors' offices on Thursday for a second day as forensic examinations continue of digital devices that have been confiscated in the case, an official said.
BERLIN (AP) — SAP said Thursday that it is cutting up to 3,000 jobs worldwide, or about 2.5% of its workforce, after a sharp drop in profits at Europe’s biggest software company.
It comes amid a broader wave of job cuts in the technology industry, including mass layoffs at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other tech giants in recent weeks.