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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden built his 2020 White House run around promises to beat Donald Trump “like a drum.” As Biden gears up for an expected reelection campaign, he insists he can do it again. But what if Trump isn’t next year’s Republican nominee? Though the GOP primary race is only just beginning, a general election pitting Biden against any other Republican could look very different from one […]

PARIS (AP) — The lower house of France’s parliament debated a contested pension bill aimed at raising the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64 during what was expected to be lawmakers’ last discussion on the proposal before sending the legislation to the Senate. President Emmanuel Macron’s government has vowed to go ahead with the reform despite nationwide protests and strikes and opinion polls consistently showing a majority of French […]

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with representatives of LGBTQ groups Friday and offered an apology over discriminatory remarks made by his former aide that sparked nationwide outrage and calls for the government to ensure equal rights. Former Kishida aide Masayoshi Arai’s comments to reporters earlier this month that he wouldn’t want to live next to LGBTQ people and that citizens would flee Japan if same-sex marriages […]

GENEVA (AP) — Chinese envoys have defended Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong and Muslim minorities in an unusual public confrontation with human rights advocates at a U.N. meeting. During the meeting of the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the officials also rejected complaints that China’s ruling Communist Party hampered the global response to COVID-19 by hiding information. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government faces accusations that abuses have […]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi sovereign wealth fund now holds 8.26% of the stock in the video game maker Nintendo, making it the largest outside investor in the Japanese gaming company, a company filing said Friday. The investment comes as part of efforts by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from oil, including billions already spent on video game firms. The fund […]

For the U.S. cities and towns that have challenged their 2020 census population figures because they say residents were overlooked during the nation’s last head count, victories have been mostly small. But small turned out to be big for tiny Whiteville, Tennessee. Of the dozen or so municipalities that have appealed and had the results made public by the U.S. Census Bureau, the biggest gain so far has been 1,958 […]

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s Carnival is back. Glittery and outrageous costumes are once again being prepared. Samba songs will ring out ’til dawn at Rio de Janeiro’s sold-out parade grounds. Hundreds of raucous, roaming parties will flood the streets. And working-class communities will be buoyed, emotionally and economically, by the renewed revelry. The COVID-19 pandemic last year prompted Rio to delay Carnival by two months, and watered down […]

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Months after Russian forces occupied the region of Kherson in eastern Ukraine last year, they started paying visits to the home of a Ukrainian woman and her Russian husband. They smashed their refrigerator and demanded possession of their car. One day, they seized the wife and her teenage daughter, put pillowcases over their heads and led them away. The woman was locked up for days, her […]

BERLIN (AP) — Thousands of flights to and from German airports were canceled Friday as workers walked out to press their demands for inflation-busting pay increases. The strikes at seven German airports, including Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg, affected almost 300,000 passengers and forced airlines to cancel more than 2,300 flights. Christine Behle of the Verdi labor union told public broadcaster RBB-Inforadio that failure to reach a meaningful deal with employers […]