AP National News

Associated Press QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — As Christmas approaches and people decorate their homes with lights, Ecuadoreans are getting some relief from the severe power cuts that have hounded the country this year with President Daniel Noboa saying there will be no power rationing for residential areas – for the time being. But some of

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Santa Claus has arrived in Rio de Janeiro — under water. Starting on Saturday, he’ll be spotted at AquaRio Marine Aquarium swimming with sharks during their daily fish feeding sessions as part of the city’s Christmas festivities. Nine-year-old Guilherme Martins Matos said he’d seen Santa — or at least an

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s coast guard says it continues to search for survivors or victims of a speedboat that capsized carrying migrants off the eastern Greek island of Rhodes. The capsizing, the result of the boat’s maneuvering to evade a patrol vessel, according to authorities, left eight confirmed dead. A total of 18 migrants,

Associated Press Federal officials have joined with the state of Arizona to begin fulfilling a settlement agreement that was reached with the Hopi Tribe nearly three decades ago. Officials on Friday filed condemnation documents to start transferring dozens of square miles of state land into trust for the Hopi. Tribal leaders called it a historic

AP National Writer STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — In a time of incessant change, Penn State linebacker Dominic DeLuca is a throwback. The former walk-on’s team might be one too. DeLuca was guaranteed nothing when he arrived on campus nearly four years ago without the promise of a scholarship or much of anything else. He

Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — After days of threats and demands, Donald Trump had little to show for it once lawmakers passed a budget deal in the early hours of Saturday, narrowly averting a pre-Christmas government shutdown. The president-elect successfully pushed House Republicans to jettison some spending, but he failed to achieve his central goal

Associated Press KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — A ferry overloaded with people returning home for Christmas capsized on the Busira River in northeastern Congo, leaving 38 people confirmed dead and over 100 others missing, officials and eyewitnesses said Saturday. Twenty people have been rescued so far. The sinking of the ferry late Friday came less than

Associated Press The 14-year old student killed at a Wisconsin Christian school this week is remembered as a talented teenager who shared her gifts of music and art with many. Funeral services were held Saturday morning for Rubi Patricia Vergara. She was shot and killed along with teacher Erin West Monday by a fellow student

AP Congressional Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the most turbulent sessions of Congress in the modern era is about to make way for the next one. Midnight passage of the government shutdown package put in sharp focus the political fault lines emerging in Washington, as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, House

AP Technology Writer Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26. Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August.

Associated Press GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Guyana’s government has formally protested to Venezuela following the completion by Venezuela’s armed forces of a bridge built on a remote river island shared by both countries. Work on the bridge, which links Venezuela’s mainland to a military base, has caused a decades-old row over border lines in the

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Four women and a 9-year-old boy were killed and 200 people were injured when a man drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg — an attack that has left Germans mourning the victims and with a shaken sense of security. How did the

Associated Press TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albania’s prime minister said Saturday the government will shut down the video service TikTok for one year, blaming it for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children. Albanian authorities held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents following the stabbing death of a teenager in mid-November by another teen after

Associated Press Blake Lively has accused her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of the movie and a subsequent effort to “destroy” her reputation in a legal complaint. The complaint obtained by The Associated Press, which The New York Times reported was filed Friday with the

Associated Press BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is drawing a direct link between immigration and an attack in Germany where a man drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people and injuring 200 others. Orbán on Saturday also implied that the 27-nation bloc’s migration policies

Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed a bill into law Saturday that averts a government shutdown, bringing a final close to days of upheaval after Congress approved a temporary funding plan just past the deadline and refused President-elect Donald Trump’s core debt demands in the package. The deal funds the government at

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The Pakistani Taliban says it carried out a deadly attack on a military checkpoint in the country’s northwest. It’s the militant group’s latest assault on troops in the restive province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan. The group said it killed 35 soldiers and injured 15 others in an early Saturday