March 23, 2025 7:13 am
The Taliban say the U.S. has lifted bounties on three senior Taliban figures, including the interior minister who also heads a powerful network blamed for bloody attacks against Afghanistan’s former Western-backed government. Sirajuddin Haqqani no longer appears on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice website, although the FBI website on Sunday still featured a wanted poster for him. Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said the U.S. government had revoked the bounties placed on Haqqani, Abdul Aziz Haqqani, and Yahya Haqqani. Other Taliban officials hailed the developments as the beginning of normalization.
March 23, 2025 7:10 am
Wildfires forced a mandatory evacuation in one North Carolina county as emergency crews fought separate fires in an area of the state still recovering from Hurricane Helene, while South Carolina’s governor declared an emergency in response to a growing wildfire. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety issued a mandatory evacuation Saturday night for parts of Polk County in western North Carolina. The agency warns residents could be trapped, injured, or killed if they remain in the impacted areas. In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster has declared a state of emergency as part of an effort to stop a blaze in Pickens County called the Table Rock Fire that started Friday in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
March 23, 2025 7:05 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — At least seven people were killed after Russia launched a barrage of drones across Ukraine overnight on Sunday, according to local Ukrainian officials and emergency services. Sunday’s overnight attacks occurred ahead of expected ceasefire negotiations in Saudi Arabia in which Ukraine and Russia are expected to hold indirect U.S.-mediated talks. Extended sounds of explosions were heard in the early hours of the night across Kyiv as the air raid blared for over five hours. Russian drones and debris from shot-down drones, which were flying at lower altitudes to evade air defenses, fell on residential buildings across the Ukrainian capital
March 23, 2025 7:02 am
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has appeared on a hospital balcony to bless the crowd in his first public outing in five weeks and ahead of his release after surviving a life-threatening bout of pneumonia. The 88-year-old pope gave a thumbs up and acknowledged the crowd after he was wheeled out onto the balcony overlooking the main entry of Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where hundreds of people had gathered on a brilliant Sunday morning. Chants of “Viva il papa!” and “Papa Francesco” erupted from the crowd.
March 23, 2025 6:57 am
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump attended the NCAA wrestling championships for the second time in three years. Saturday night’s trip was the latest example of how he has mostly limited travel early in his new term to trips built around sports events. Trump arrived at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia to a standing ovation and chants of USA! USA! In the two-plus months since returning to the White House, Trump has attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500 in Florida. While president-elect, he went to a UFC fight in New York.
March 23, 2025 5:05 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has been reinstated as the acting president as the Constitutional Court overturned his impeachment. Han, South Korea’s No. 2 official, had become acting leader after President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached over his imposition of martial law in December. Han thanked the court after Monday’s ruling and said he would attend to the most urgent matters. He also called for national unity. The court ruled 7-1 that Parliament didn’t have a a quorum to pass the impeachment motion, that the accusations against Han weren’t against the law or that they weren’t serious enough to remove him from office. Many experts said the ruling on Han didn’t signal how the court would rule on Yoon’s impeachment.
March 23, 2025 3:54 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in two Pennsylvania state legislative districts will elect new members in special elections Tuesday. Democrats are defending a state House seat on friendly turf with control of the deadlocked chamber on the line, while Republicans look to pad their advantage in the state Senate in a reliably GOP district. In the state House, voters in District 35 will elect a replacement for Democratic state Rep. Matt Gergely, whose death in January left the parties tied at 101 seats each. Democrats won a slim majority of state House seats in 2022 for the first time in more than a decade and have had to defend their narrow advantage in a series of special elections since then.
March 22, 2025 4:23 am
George Foreman has died, his family says. The fearsome heavyweight who lost the “Rumble in the Jungle” to Muhammad Ali before authoring an inspiring second act as a 45-year-old champion and a successful businessman was 76. A native Texan, Foreman began his boxing career as an Olympic gold medalist who inspired fear as he climbed to the peak of the heavyweight division by stopping Joe Frazier in 1973. His formidable aura evaporated a year later when Ali pulled off one of the most audacious victories in boxing history in Zaire, baiting and taunting Foreman into losing his belt in one of the greatest fights ever staged.
March 22, 2025 4:21 am
A lawsuit filed by Voice of America reporters, some unions and a press freedom group charged the Trump administration with unlawfully shutting down the news outlet. They said the demise of the agency, which has beamed news into countries around the world for decades, would be a boon to authoritarian regimes that back censorship. The administration, working largely through representative Kari Lake, has described the outlet as filled with “rot” that needs to be stripped to the core. Republicans have long complained that the agency, ordered by Congress to report news objectively, is instead dominated by liberal propaganda.
March 22, 2025 4:17 am
MIAMI (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security says it will revoke legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in about a month. The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022. They arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.
