World

The award-winning Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been sentenced to eight years in prison and lashings just ahead of his planned trip to the Cannes film festival, his lawyer told The Associated Press Thursday. Rasoulof, 51, known for his film “There Is No Evil,” has become the latest artist targeted in a widening crackdown on all dissent in the Islamic Republic following years of mass protests, including over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini. Iranian authorities haven’t acknowledged the sentence but Rasoulof and other artists had co-signed a letter urging authorities to “put your gun down” amid demonstrations over a 2022 building collapse that killed at least 29 people in the southwestern city of Abadan. In the time since then, artists, athletes, celebrities and others have been calle...

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that U.S. weapons have begun to arrive in Ukraine. Zelenskyy voiced the urgency of accelerating the process due to advancing Russian forces attempting to exploit the situation. He also mentioned the lack of significant positive developments in timely support for the Ukrainian army. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that vital U.S. weapons were starting to arrive in Ukraine in small amounts.  He said that the process needed to move faster. This is the result of advancing Russian forces trying to take advantage. REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: UKRAINE’S ZELENSKYY OPENS UP ON US AID, ISRAEL, TRUMP Zelenskyy spoke during a joint news conference in Kyiv alongside visiting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Mo...

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to outline his vision for Europe to become a more assertive global power against a backdrop of war in Ukraine and other security and economic challenges, in a speech on Thursday ahead of pivotal European Parliament elections in June. The French president plans to focus on strategic and geopolitical issues in Europe, including defense, the economy, protecting the environment and safeguarding democracy, his advisers said. Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its third year, is expected to be the main theme of the speech Macron will deliver at Paris’ Sorbonne University on Thursday. France has been a firm supporter of Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, and Macron has often clashed with other Western leaders as he has insisted that Euro...

An aspiring challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán renewed his calls for change Friday as he led a protest of several thousand people demanding a more robust child protection system and the resignation of Orbán’s government. The demonstrators gathered outside Hungary’s Interior Ministry in Budapest and called for its head, Sándor Pintér, to step down over what they see as his failure to prevent the sexual abuse of children in state-run institutions, a crime which has led to political upheaval in Hungary in recent months. HUNGARY PM ORBÁN BLASTS ‘WESTERN WORLD,’ CALLS FOR TRUMP VICTORY Peter Magyar, a 43-year-old lawyer who has emerged as a new voice of opposition to Hungary’s right-wing government, took aim at Orbán’s portrayal of himself as a defender of families and traditi...

The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah is claiming to have shot down an Israeli drone that was on a combat mission, a report says.  Hezbollah said in a statement that the drone, which was “waging its attacks on our steadfast people,” was brought down in the Al Aishiyeh area of southern Lebanon near the country’s border with Israel, according to Reuters.  It reportedly described the drone as a Hermes 450 made by Israel-based weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.  “A surface-to-air missile was launched at a remote manned aircraft of the air force that was operating in the skies of Lebanon, as a result the vehicle was hit and fell in Lebanese territory,” the Israeli Defense Forces later said in a statement. “The incident is being investigated.”  AGITATOR BEHIND ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ CHANTS IN CHI...

LONDON (AP) — A law that will enable Britain to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda suffered a setback on Wednesday after Parliament’s upper chamber pressed its attempt to amend the contentious legislation. The House of Lords inserted amendments into the Safety of Rwanda Bill, sending it back to the lower House of Commons in a process known as parliamentary ping-pong. KEY PIECE OF UK GOVERNMENT’S PLAN TO SEND MIGRANTS TO RWANDA EXPECTED TO BECOME LAW The government had hoped members of the Lords would stop blocking the bill on Wednesday, relenting to the parliamentary rule that the unelected Lords ultimately can’t overrule the elected Commons. The Lords’ resistance underlines the strength of opposition in the upper house, where the governing Conservative Party does not ha...

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A Belarusian hacker activist group claims to have infiltrated computers at the country’s largest fertilizer plant to pressure the government to release political prisoners. The state-run Grodno Azot plant has made no comment on the claim by the Belarusian Cyber-Partisans group to have done damage including destroying backup systems and encrypted internal mail, document flow and hundreds of PCs. However, the company’s website has been unavailable since Wednesday, the day the group claimed the attack. A POLITICAL PRISONER IN BELARUS SMUGGLES OUT ACCOUNT OF BEATINGS AFTER WRITING ON TOILET PAPER Group coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told The Associated Press from New York on Friday that because the plant works with dangerous substances including ammonia the attack was...

The Metropolitan Police in London face accusations that they capitulated to radical pro-Hamas activists last weekend by threatening to arrest a British Jew because his presence was deemed provocative to a mob of anti-Israel protesters. A shocking video published by the British Campaign Against Antisemitism from the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel march shows a Metropolitan Police officer ordering Gideon Falter, the CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, not to cross a street because of his “openly Jewish” appearance. Falter was returning from a Saturday synagogue service and was wearing a kippah, or skullcap. The London cop even threatened Falter with arrest. He accused Falter of “a breach of peace with all these other people.” Falter was with five other people, some of whom were also wearin...

The U.S. and Italy agreed to coordinate efforts to counter misinformation and fake news from foreign governments. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani reached this agreement during a meeting on Capri Island. Belgium recently announced a probe into alleged Russian efforts to influence an upcoming European Parliamentary election. The United States and Italy agreed on Wednesday to coordinate efforts to counter the spread of misinformation and fake news articles by foreign governments. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani agreed on the new pact during a meeting on the sidelines of a three-day meeting of Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers on the island of Capri. The U.S. last year released an in...

A top U.S. Air Force commander believes Houthi rebels in Yemen may be low on weapon supplies as American and allied strikes on the group have eroded their capabilities. U.S. Forces Central Command Commander Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich told reporters last week that American retaliatory strikes on the Iran-backed Houthi military group have “certainly affected their behavior” and possibly helped to deplete their weapon supplies, according to a report in the Associated Press. “The challenge for us is understanding what the denominator was at the beginning. In other words, what did they have on hand to start with? We obviously know how much we have struck and we have assessments of how successful those strikes were,” Grynkewich said. US, COALITION FORCES DEFEAT HOUTHIS’ ‘LARGE-SCALE ATTACK’ IN ...