top-stories

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian fighter jets flew dangerously close to several U.S. drone aircraft over Syria on Wednesday, setting off flares and forcing the MQ-9 Reapers to take evasive maneuvers, the Air Force said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has decided to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine and is expected to announce on Friday that the Pentagon will send thousands as part of the latest military aid package for the war effort against Russia, according to people familiar with the decision.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The U.S. citizenship test is being updated, and some immigrants and advocates worry the changes will hurt test-takers with lower levels of English proficiency.

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — The mercenary leader who led a short-lived mutiny against the Kremlin is in Russia and his Wagner troops are in their field camps, the president of Belarus said Thursday, raising new questions about the deal that ended the extraordinary challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A father who was preparing to walk his eldest daughter down the aisle. An aspiring actor who appeared as an extra in the “Creed” movie franchise. A teenager who tried to help a wounded friend. These are the stories of those killed in the all-too-familiar thrum of another mass shooting.

BEIJING (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to tell Chinese officials Washington wants healthy economic competition but will defend U.S. trade curbs imposed on security grounds and express concern about Beijing’s export controls on metals used in semiconductors and solar panels, a senior Treasury official said Thursday.

Earth’s average temperature on Wednesday remained at an unofficial record high set the day before, the latest grim milestone in a week that has seen series of climate-change-driven extremes.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against a man charged with kidnapping a Memphis, Tennessee, school teacher during an early-morning run and killing her.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired cruise missiles Thursday at a western Ukraine city far from the front line of the war, killing at least five people in an apartment building in what officials said was the heaviest attack on civilian areas of Lviv since the Kremlin’s forces invaded the country last year.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Two firefighters were killed battling a blaze that began when cars caught fire deep inside a cargo ship carrying 5,000 cars at a New Jersey port, Newark’s fire chief said Thursday.