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Pelosi departs Taiwan after visit that fueled US-China rift
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departed Taiwan on Wednesday after meeting with the president and other officials in a visit that heightened tensions with China.
Pelosi and five other members of Congress were headed to South Korea, the next stop on an Asia tour that also includes Singapore, Malaysia and Japan.
In Taiwan, she said her delegation was showing their commitment to the self-governing island that China claims and says must come under its control.
China staged military drills after her arrival and called her visit a provocation that infringes on its sovereignty.
Kansas voters resoundingly protect their access to abortion
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Kansas voters on Tuesday sent a resounding message about their desire to protect abortion rights, rejecting a ballot measure in a conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban the procedure outright.
It was the first test of voter sentiment after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, providing an unexpected result with potential implications for the coming midterm elections.
While it was just one state, the heavy turnout for an August primary that typically favors Republicans was a major victory for abortion rights advocates. With most of the vote counted, they were prevailing by roughly 20 percentage points, with the turnout approaching what's typical for a fall election for governor.
The vote also provided a dash of hope for Democrats nationwide grasping for a game-changer during an election year otherwise filled with dark omens for their prospects in November.
"This vote makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions," President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Takeaways: Abortion backlash in Kansas, Greitens' collapse
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In one of the biggest days of this year's primary campaign season, voters rejected a measure that would have made it easier to restrict abortion rights in red-state Kansas and repudiated a scandal-tarred former governor seeking a U.S. Senate seat in Missouri.
Meanwhile, a Republican congressman who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection lost to a Trump-backed opponent early Wednesday, while two other impeachment-supporting House Republicans awaited results in their primaries in Washington state.
In Michigan, a political newcomer emerged from the state's messy Republican gubernatorial primary, setting up a rare woman-vs.-woman general election matchup between conservative commentator Tudor Dixon and incumbent Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Ship with Ukrainian grain cleared to travel to Lebanon
ISTANBUL (AP) -- Turkey's defense ministry says the first grain ship carrying Ukrainian corn is preparing to cross through Istanbul's Bosporus Strait and travel onto its final destination, Lebanon.
The ministry said an inspection team finished its review aboard the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni. The delegation included officials from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations. The Razoni is anchored off Istanbul's coast in the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Bosporus. The Razoni sounded its horn as the inspection teams left the ship.
The Razoni, which the United Nations says is carrying 26,527 tons of corn, set sail Monday from Odesa on Ukraine's Black Sea coast.
Pictures tweeted by the Ministry of Defense showed an inspector reaching into an open container and touching the grain.
Cold showers, no lights: Europe saves as Russian gas wanes
PARIS (AP) -- Fanning out like urban guerrillas through Paris' darkened streets well after midnight, the anti-waste activists shinny up walls and drain pipes, reaching for switches to turn off the lights.
Click. Click. Click.
One by one, the outdoor lights that stores had left on are extinguished. It's one small but symbolic step in a giant leap of energy saving that Europe is trying to make as it rushes to wean itself off natural gas and oil from Russia so factories aren't forced to close and homes stay heated and powered.
Engineer Kevin Ha and his equally nimble friends had been acting against wasteful businesses in Paris long before Russia started cutting energy supplies to Europe in a battle of wills over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. As such, the campaigners were precursors of the energy economy drive becoming all the rage in France, Germany and elsewhere. Their message -- that everyone can contribute -- is almost word-for-word what public officials from cabinet ministers to mayors are saying now, too.
"Everyone can have a positive impact at their own level, by adopting good practices, by doing the right things to reduce their overall energy footprint," the 30-year-old Ha said on a recent night of light-extinguishing on the Champs-Elysees boulevard.
EXPLAINER: A look at the missile that killed al-Qaida leader
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For a year, U.S. officials have been saying that taking out a terrorist threat in Afghanistan with no American troops on the ground would be difficult but not impossible. Last weekend, the U.S. did just that -- killing al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri with a CIA drone strike.
Other high-profile airstrikes in the past had inadvertently killed innocent civilians. In this case, the U.S. carefully chose to use a type of Hellfire missile that greatly minimized the chance of other casualties. Although U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed which variant of the Hellfire was used, experts and others familiar with counterterrorism operations said a likely option was the highly secretive Hellfire R9X -- know by various nicknames, including the "knife bomb" or the "flying Ginsu."
That potential use of the R9X, said Klon Kitchen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former intelligence analyst, suggests the U.S. wanted to kill al-Zawahri with "limited likelihood of collateral death and destruction and for other relevant political reasons."
China blocks some Taiwan imports; avoids chip disruption
BEIJING (AP) -- China blocked imports of citrus and fish from Taiwan in retaliation for a visit by a top American lawmaker, Nancy Pelosi, but has avoided disrupting one of the world's most important technology and manufacturing relationships.
The two sides, which split in 1949 after a civil war, have no official relations but multibillion-dollar business ties, especially in the flow of Taiwanese-made processor chips needed by Chinese factories that assemble the world's smartphones and other electronics.
They built that business while Beijing threatened for decades to enforce the ruling Communist Party's claim to the island by attacking.
Two-way trade soared 26% last year to $328.3 billion. Taiwan, which produces half the world's processor chips and has technology the mainland can't match, said sales to Chinese factories rose 24.4% to $104.3 billion.
"The global economy cannot function without chips that are made in either Taiwan or China," said Carl B. Weinberg of High-Frequency Economics in a report.
Clergy, bags of cash set off new sectarian brawl in Lebanon
BEIRUT (AP) -- A Lebanese archbishop who carried more than $460,000 from Israel to Lebanon is at the center of the latest sectarian showdown in crisis-hit Lebanon, and the case could even spill over into presidential politics.
The situation has ramped up discord between two powerful political camps: Lebanon's Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group and the Maronite Church.
The clergyman was briefly detained last month by Lebanese border agents who confiscated 20 suitcases stuffed with cash and medicine, arguing he violated Lebanon's strict laws against normalization with Israel.
Hezbollah's opponents say the Iran-backed group has sway over Lebanese institutions and security agencies, and have used them to target the Maronite Church. The archbishop, Moussa el-Hajj, is a senior member of the Maronite Church, whose patriarch has become increasingly critical of the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its growing influence in Lebanon.
Much of the Christian community saw the archbishop's detention as an attack on the church.
Atlanta's image challenged facts of 1906 race massacre
ATLANTA (AP) -- Everyone who moves through downtown Atlanta today passes places where innocent Black men and women were pulled from trolleys, shot in their workplaces, chased through the streets and beaten to death by a mob of 10,000 white men and boys.
But few have been taught about the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, which shaped the city's geography, economy, society and power structure in lasting ways. Much like the Red Summer of 1919 in the South and Northeast and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in Oklahoma would years later, the white-on-Black violence in Atlanta shattered dreams of racial harmony and forced thousands from their homes.
A grassroots coalition is working to restore Atlanta's killings and their legacy to public memory. Historic markers and tours are planned for this September's anniversary. A one-act play will be performed simultaneously at group dinners across the city. Organizers are seeking 500 hosts, with the ambitious goal of seating 5,000 people to discuss the lasting effects.
These activists say the massacre doesn't fit comfortably in Atlanta's "cradle of the civil rights movement" narrative, but they insist on truth-telling as some politicians push to ignore the nation's history of racial violence.
Mislabeled a riot, the killings of at least 25 Black people and the destruction of Black-owned businesses had a specific purpose: thwarting their economic success and voting power before African-Americans could claim equal status, said King Williams, a journalist who gives tours describing what happened.