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RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Ahmed Qureia, a former Palestinian prime minister and one of the architects of interim peace deals with Israel, has died at age 85. A key player in the 1993 Oslo peace accords, Qureia witnessed the rise of the dream of Palestinian statehood that surged during the negotiations. But he also saw those hopes recede, with the prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict […]

BENGALURU, India (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is urging other leading economies to move faster in resolving debt crises that threaten a growing number of countries. Yellen made the comments in a meeting Thursday with India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, on the sidelines of a meeting of financial leaders of the Group of 20 major economies, the Treasury Department said in a statement. Yellen thanked India for its […]

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers reopened a key border crossing with Pakistan Thursday, allowing thousands of trucks carrying desperately needed food and other items to creep forward for the first time in days, officials said. The jam at the Torkham crossing between the two nations began to ease after Islamabad sent a high-level delegation to Kabul to discuss a range of issues, including the Taliban’s closure of the […]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Abu Dhabi’s state gas company expects to raise up to $2 billion by selling 4% of its shares in an initial public offering, the company said Thursday. It said the price range for the previously announced sale of over 3 billion shares has been set at 2.25 to 2.34 Emirati dirhams, valuing the company at up to $50.8 billion. The subscription period begins Thursday, […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — An 11-year-old girl in Cambodia has died from bird flu in the country’s first known human H5N1 infection since 2014, health officials said. Bird flu, also known as avian influenza, normally spreads in poultry and wasn’t deemed a threat to people until a 1997 outbreak among visitors to live poultry markets in Hong Kong. Most human cases worldwide have involved direct contact with infected poultry, […]

For Russia, it’s been a year of bold charges and bombardments, humiliating retreats and grinding sieges. Ukraine has countered with fierce resistance, surprising counteroffensives and unexpected hit-and-run strikes. Now, on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion that has killed tens of thousands and reduced cities to ruins, both sides are preparing for a potentially even more disastrous phase that lies ahead. Russia recently intensified its push to capture all of Ukraine’s […]

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — A brutal winter storm that trapped drivers on icy roads, blacked out hundreds of thousands of homes, grounded airplanes and closed schools across much of the country was poised to slam California Thursday. “We are in for a VERY busy week!” the National Weather Service bureau in San Diego tweeted. “We have issued warnings for damaging winds, heavy mountain snow, highly hazardous boating conditions and the […]

BEIRUT (AP) — The Islamic State group has carried out its deadliest attacks in more than a year, killing dozens of civilians and security officers in the deserts of central Syria, even as people of northern Syria have been digging out of the wreckage from the region’s devastating earthquake. The bloodshed was a reminder of the persistent threat from IS, whose sleeper cells still terrorize populations nearly four years after […]

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Palestinian militants in Gaza launched rockets at southern Israel and Israeli aircraft struck targets in the coastal enclave early Thursday after a deadly gun battle with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank killed 10 Palestinians. A 66-year-old man died after the raid from tear gas inhalation. The bloodshed extends one of the deadliest periods in years between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, […]