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LONDON (AP) — Betty Boothroyd, the first — and so far only — female speaker of Britain’s House of Commons, has died, parliamentary authorities said Monday. She was 93. Boothroyd, who presided over the Commons’ often raucous debates with no-nonsense humor between 1992 and 2000, died Sunday at a hospital in Cambridge, southern England. Born in Dewsbury, northern England, in 1929, Boothroyd worked as a dancer in a chorus line […]

MOSCOW (AP) — Gleb Pavlovsky, a Soviet-era dissident who served as a Kremlin political consultant helping burnish President Vladimir Putin’s image, has died, his family said Monday. He was 71. Pavlovsky worked as a top adviser for the Kremlin for 15 years and was widely seen as one of the key architects of Russia’s post-Soviet political system. Pavlovsky’s death was reported by his family on his messaging app channel. The […]

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — A planned concert by Slovenia’s popular bank Laibach in Ukraine next month has been cancelled after the group angered Ukrainians by remarks interpreted to suggest that Kiyv was a client state fighting a war for its Western masters. The iconic band known for using military-style imagery and totalitarian symbols, was due to perform in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on March 31. The band said the concert aimed […]

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan will seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow in 2024, becoming the first high-profile candidate to jump into the battleground state race. In a video announcing her campaign, Slotkin says that the nation seems “to be living crisis to crisis” but that there “are certain things that should be really simple, like living a middle-class life […]

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Each of the three frontrunners in Nigeria’s hotly contested presidential election claimed they are on the path to victory Monday, as preliminary results trickled in two days after Africa’s most populous nation went to the polls. Only one of Nigeria’s 36 states has officially announced results, with the ruling party’s Bola Tinubu winning by a wide margin in Ekiti state, yet each party said it was […]

Bolor-Erdene Battsengel wants to transform Mongolia into a “digital first” country — and help young people, especially girls in this sparsely populated nation of 3.3 million, to learn how to code. During her time with Mongolia’s digital development and communications authority, including a year as vice minister, Battsengel, 30, worked on digitizing the country’s government services so people in remote areas don’t have to spend long days traveling and waiting […]

TOKYO (AP) — Japan is easing its coronavirus border measures for tourists from China beginning Wednesday by testing only random passengers, a top government spokesman said Monday. Since December, Japan has been testing all travelers from mainland China at four designated airports on grounds of surging infections in that country and a lack of information. Visitors from China are also required to show a proof of pre-boarding negative test. Chief […]

BERLIN (AP) — The German government said Monday that it wants to set up a new power line network to connect its own offshore wind parks with those of its North Sea neighbors in order to eliminate bottlenecks in the European energy market. Governments in northwestern Europe are hoping that wind power at sea will provide a large share of their future clean energy needs. Germany in particular needs to […]

BERLIN (AP) — The German government on Monday pushed back against a demand by the country’s data protection commissioner to take down its Facebook page over data privacy concerns. The commissioner, Ulrich Kelber, said Wednesday that he had given the government’s press office four weeks to shut down the page. “All public agencies have a responsibility to uphold the law in exemplary fashion,” Kelber said. “The result of my assessments […]