WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday was set to make his first major political foray since taking office, campaigning for a fellow moderate Democrat whose race for Virginia governor could serve as a test of Biden's own strength and coattails.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The chair of former President Donald Trump's inaugural committee who faces charges he secretly worked as an agent for the the United Arab Emirates to influence Trump’s foreign policy was ordered released from jail Friday on $250 million bail.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Nancy Pelosi raised a glass to Liz Cheney, it was the most unlikely of toasts.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — As drought- and wind-driven wildfires have become more dangerous across the American West in recent years, firefighters have tried to become smarter in how they prepare.

SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — Firefighters have ended their mission in clearing debris from the collapsed Surfside condo building Friday, officials said, while police and forensic specialists continue their work to identify human remains in the disaster.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to India and Kuwait next week for talks on China, the coronavirus and Afghanistan, the State Department said Friday.

CHICAGO (AP) — The days of practicing law for the mob-busting prosecutor turned point man for pushing Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election may be over.

They panic if a balloon pops. They hold dying family members. They push their wounded bodies to heal and scroll longingly through photos and videos of their lost loved ones. Behind the statistics and the political blame game over rising gun violence are the victims.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarusian authorities on Friday announced the closure of 15 nongovernmental organizations, part of a sweeping crackdown on independent media and civil society activists that includes shutting dozens of NGOs.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Janša on Friday accused a European Union official of being a liar in the wake of the publication this week of an annual report on adherence to the rule of law in the bloc that highlighted democratic challenges in the Balkan nation.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The bust of a Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader that had been displayed prominently inside of the Tennessee Capitol for decades was removed from its pedestal on Friday.

BERLIN (AP) — The far-right Alternative for Germany party failed in an attempt Friday to unseat the left-wing governor of an eastern German state, a long-shot bid that opponents denounced as political theater.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Prosecutors in El Salvador have issued an arrest warrant for former president Salvador Sánchez Cerén on charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's national railway operator estimated on Friday that last week's flooding caused damage worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) to its network, offering another glimpse of the extent of the devastation.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia on Friday garnered enough international support to defer for two years an attempt by the United Nations’ cultural organization to downgrade the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status because of damage caused by climate change.

TOKYO (AP) — The athletes of the Tokyo Olympics stepped into the world of Japanese comics and graphic novels when manga was featured prominently in the opening ceremony on Friday.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The top international official in Bosnia on Friday banned denial of genocide in the Balkan country to counter attempts by Bosnia’s Serbs to deny the scope of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Europe's only post-World War II genocide.

TOKYO (AP) — Ghostly airports, devoid of bustle. Cavernous arenas where no crowds will roar. Stringent rules that are spottily enforced — and spottily ignored. Complaints over restrictions, including comparisons to Nazi Germany. Worries about outsiders causing superspreader events. And a gen…

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — A new study suggests that a Sinopharm vaccine offers poor protection from COVID-19 among the elderly, raising questions for dozens of countries that have given the Chinese company’s shots to their most vulnerable populations.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Thousands of Eritrean refugees are increasingly caught in the middle of the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where witnesses and U.N. officials say forces have attacked their camps, abducted or killed some of the residents, and stolen their food and possessions.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban say they don’t want to monopolize power, but they insist there won’t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed.

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made a rare visit to Tibet as authorities tighten controls over the Himalayan region’s traditional Buddhist culture, accompanied by an accelerated drive for economic development and modernized infrastructure.

BLY, Ore. (AP) — The nation's largest wildfire raged through southern Oregon on Friday but crews were scaling back some night operations as hard work and weaker winds helped reduce the spread of flames even as wildfires continued to threaten homes in neighboring California.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Unfazed by Republican threats of a boycott, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Thursday that a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection will take on its “deadly serious” work whether Republicans participate or not.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The mainly female volunteers who fan out across Mexico to hunt for the bodies of murdered relatives are themselves increasingly being killed, putting to the test the government’s promise to help them in their quest for a final shred of justice: a chance to mourn.

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) — The hometown of slain Haitian President Jovenel Moïse prepared to receive his body on Friday for a private funeral amid heavy security following violent protests and fears of political volatility in the Caribbean nation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former police chief in Maryland and Virginia, J. Thomas Manger, is the new chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, congressional officials announced Thursday. Manger will take charge of the department in the aftermath of the violent Jan. 6 insurrection in which supporters of fo…

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council on Thursday rejected a resolution put forward by Russia and China that would have immediately stripped the powers of the international high representative overseeing implementation of the 1995 peace agreement that ended the devastating war in B…

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — He has given his DNA, talks frequently with the medical examiner and search team, and even reluctantly visited the site of the collapsed Surfside condo, to see for himself what is being done to find his big sister.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A few years ago, a Sydney scientist noticed a sulfur-crested cockatoo opening his trash bin. Not every resident would be thrilled, but ornithologist Richard Major was impressed by the ingenuity.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats are raising new concerns about the thoroughness of the FBI's background investigation into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after the FBI revealed that it had received thousands of tips and had provided “all relevant” ones to the White House counsel's office.

BOSTON (AP) — The Florida company whose software was exploited in the devastating Fourth of July weekend ransomware attack, Kaseya, has received a universal key that will decrypt all of the more than 1,000 businesses and public organizations crippled in the global incident.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The longtime leader of Belarus vowed Thursday to continue a crackdown on civil society activists he regards as “bandits and foreign agents.”

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials said Thursday they now have evidence of an untreatable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military launched several airstrikes this week in support of Afghan government forces fighting Taliban insurgents, including in the strategically important province of Kandahar, officials said Thursday.

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) — A priest told mourners at a memorial service Thursday for slain President Jovenel Moïse that too much blood is being shed in Haiti as authorities warned of more violence ahead of his funeral.

The discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada have prompted renewed calls for a reckoning over the traumatic legacy of similar schools in the United States — and in particular by the churches that operated many of them.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection “will do the job it set out to do” despite Republicans’ vow to boycott the probe.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A U.S. Senate panel deadlocked Thursday on President Joe Biden’s pick to oversee vast government-owned lands in the West, as Democrats stood united behind a nominee whose credibility was assailed by Republicans over her links to a 1989 environmental sabotage case.

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) — A priest told mourners at a memorial service Thursday for slain President Jovenel Moïse that too much blood is being shed in Haiti as authorities warned of more violence ahead of his funeral.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is tired of ringing doorbells.

The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to allow in thousands more of the Afghans who worked alongside Americans in the Afghanistan war, citing the urgency of protecting those on-the-ground allies from Taliban retaliation as the U.S. military withdrawal enters its final weeks.

BERLIN (AP) — With just months to go before her 16-year leadership of Germany ends, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday defended her efforts to promote gender equality and curb climate change but expressed regret that some decisions, in hindsight, were made too late.

CINCINNATI (AP) — Federal authorities say Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. has agreed to a settlement that calls for the company to fully cooperate and pay a $230 million fine as part of a sweeping bribery scheme.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Daimler AG's luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz says it is stepping up its transition to electric cars, doubling the planned share of sales by 2025 and sketching out a market scenario in which new car sales would “in essence” be fully electric by the end of the decade.

BONN, Germany (AP) — Germany's national weather service said Thursday that regions hit by deadly floods last week could see more heavy rain this weekend.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Abby Finkenauer, a former congresswoman, is running for Republican Chuck Grassley's U.S. Senate seat, hoping her blue-collar credentials will propel her forward in a state that has grown more conservative over the years.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The overwhelming majority of Americans -- about 8 in 10 -- favor plans to increase funding for roads, bridges and ports and for pipes that supply drinking water. But that's about as far as Democrats and Republicans intersect on infrastructure, according to a new poll from T…

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency cybersecurity meeting Thursday to weigh possible government action after reports that his cellphone and those of government ministers may have been targeted by spyware.

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that new coronavirus infections in Germany are once again rising at a worrying pace. She appealed to reluctant citizens to get vaccinated and urged compatriots more enthusiastic about the jabs to help persuade others.

NAPLES, Italy (AP) — With forest fires raging in the U.S. and Russia and floods devastating parts of Western Europe, environment and energy ministers from the Group of 20 industrialized countries gathered Thursday for two days of talks ahead of November’s crucial climate change conference.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Former South African president Jacob Zuma will be allowed to leave prison Thursday to attend his brother’s funeral.

PARIS (AP) — After months of government silence, leading rights organizations and grassroots groups took France’s first class-action lawsuit targeting the nation’s powerful police machine to the highest administrative authority Thursday, to fix what they contend is a culture of systemic disc…

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Commemorations have begun Thursday to mark 10 years since Norway’s worst ever peacetime slaughter.

MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of wildfires engulf broad expanses of Russia each year, destroying forests and shrouding territories in acrid smoke.

CINCINNATI (AP) — President Joe Biden expressed pointed frustration over the slowing COVID-19 vaccination rate in the U.S. and pleaded that it's "gigantically important” for Americans to step up and get inoculated against the virus as it surges once again.

TOKYO (AP) — The simple act of taking a knee felt like something more monumental when it happened on Olympic soccer pitches in Japan on the opening night of action.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A judge is expected to delve into the jury selection process at a hearing Thursday for the upcoming murder trial of three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was chased and shot after he was spotted running in a Georgia neighborhood.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi attorney general’s office is expected to file briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to outline the state’s arguments in a case that could upend nearly 50 years of court rulings on abortion rights nationwide.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police on Thursday arrested five trade union members and a court denied bail for four editors and journalists held on charges of endangering national security, as part of a widening crackdown on dissent in the city.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two Republicans tapped by House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy to sit on a committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, a decision the Republican denounced as “an egregious abuse of power.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans rejected an effort to begin debate on the big infrastructure deal that a bipartisan group of senators brokered with President Joe Biden, but pressure was mounting as supporters insisted they just needed more time before another vote possibly next week.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's administration is beginning to make $3 billion in economic development grants available to communities — a tenfold increase in the program paid for by this year's COVID-19 relief bill.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Smoke from wildfires in the western U.S. and Canada is blanketing much of the continent, including thousands of miles away on the East Coast. And experts say the phenomenon is becoming more common as human-caused global warming stokes bigger and more intense blazes.

GARDNERVILLE, Nev. (AP) — A Northern California wildfire crossed into Nevada, prompting new evacuations, but better weather has been helping crews battling the nation’s largest blaze in southern Oregon.