WASHINGTON — Hanwha Defense USA (HDUSA) said Tuesday it will acquire a controlling stake in Hanwha Philly Shipyard, part of a broader internal restructuring aimed at strengthening the South Korean conglomerate's U.S. naval shipbuilding operations. Under a restructuring plan announced in September, Hanwha Systems Co. will sell its 60 percent stake in the shipyard to Hanwha Defense USA Shipbuilding LLC, a joint venture involving HDUSA and Hanwha FutureProof. Hanwha Ocean Co. will retain its 40 percent stake. HDUSA said the move will bring the Philadelphia-based shipyard under its leadership as Hanwha seeks to transform the facility into a dual-use shipyard capable of building vessels for the U.S. Navy and commercial customers. "As HDUSA continues to grow its multi-domain presence across the U.S., bringing the Philly Shipyard under HDUSA will further align our government and commercial shipbuilding efforts," HDUSA President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Michael Coulter said in a statement. Retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Tom Anderson, president of U.S. shipbuilding at HDUSA, will oversee

WASHINGTON — China is unlikely to mediate a potential summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, U.S. experts assessed Tuesday, amid Trump's past signals to resume dialogue with Pyongyang. Sydney Seiler, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) who previously served as the national intelligence officer for North Korea, made the assessment during a CSIS podcast, arguing that neither Pyongyang nor other key players see an urgent need for renewed U.S.-North Korea talks. "But none of them is feeling a sense of urgency, to include obviously Kim Jong-un, that the U.S. and DPRK need to talk right now," Seiler said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "In fact, there's much to be accomplished by refusing to talk," he added, suggesting that Pyongyang could gain leverage by increasing Washington's eagerness for negotiations. Seiler expressed skepticism that Beijing would play a role in bringing Trump and Kim together or "coaching" Kim. "I just don't see Xi Jinping taking

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said it attacked a boat it accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, killing five people, as the Trump administration continues its campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America. The latest attack brings the number of people who have been killed by the U.S. military's boat strikes to at least 240 in more than 70 strikes. The Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in September 2025. As with most of the military’s statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes and that “intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narcotrafficking.” The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. A video posted on X showed a small boat in the water before it was enveloped by an explosion. President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and he has sought to justify the attacks as a necessary esc

MOSCOW — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that the Middle East can solve its problems without the involvement of the United States. "I believe we are capable of resolving our problems in the region without relying on the United States," Pezeshkian said at a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of a summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Moscow. "Our trade is expanding and growing day by day. U.S. actions in the region make it easier for U.S. to move towards greater multilateralism and strengthen our cooperation with you and other countries subject to unilateral U.S. sanctions," he told Putin. Putin said he discussed the war with Pezeshkian, expressing hope that the situation would improve. "We spoke earlier, one-on-one, about the situation in the region -- a situation that, undoubtedly, cannot help but cause concern," he said, adding that he hoped it would "evolve in a positive direction." Pezeshkian said he was confident the will existed on both sides to expand cooperation in science, industry, culture, security and milit

JOINT BASE ANDREWS — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would respect the results of the U.S. midterm elections "if they're honest," in what appeared to be a fresh bid to sow doubt ahead of next week's crucial vote. Trump has ramped up his baseless, years-old claims of mass voter fraud as polls show Republicans could lose control of Congress in Tuesday's elections. "I will, if they're honest elections," Trump told reporters when asked if he would respect the results of the midterms, as he headed on a campaign trip to Texas. The 80-year-old president also gave a guarded pledge to work with the rival Democrats if Republicans lose their grip on the House of Representatives and Senate. "We'll figure a way. Look, I have strong veto. I hope that that won't be the case, but if it is, that's happened before with many presidents," Trump said at Joint Base Andrews near Washington. "You have strong veto, and you end up working on deals." Republicans fear a Democrat "blue wave" in the midterms as voters punish them over inflation stoked by oil prices that have soared since Trump launched his war

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced a $1 million reward for information about voter fraud, in a fresh bid to sow doubt ahead of the U.S. midterms and push his false claim about winning the 2020 election. "Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. The president gave no details of how the reward would be funded or administered. With the November 3 elections just eight days away, polls show Democrats pulling ahead as Republicans fight to retain control of both chambers of Congress. A Democratic victory would threaten to stall Trump's agenda and expose his administration to congressional investigations during his final two years in office. Trump has repeatedly made baseless allegations about election fraud, including his claim that he won the 2020 presidential election. Studies have consistently found voter fraud exceptionally rare, particularly voting by non-citizens, which is already ille

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said he would ban the term artificial intelligence in documents and everything else, as he questioned why the Wall Street Journal was not using his preferred term, super intelligence. "When will The Wall Street Journal start calling Artificial Intelligence (AI), a very bad and inaccurate name, SI (Super Intelligence), the name which virtually everyone else is using, or soon will be," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, “AI/Artificial Intelligence,” in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy."

One of the seven Cornell University students disciplined in connection with an alleged 2024 gang rape at a fraternity house returned to campus this fall after a three-semester suspension and was placed in a co-ed dorm with a roommate who had no idea about his past, according to a professor familiar with the housing arrangement. University housing officials then left the accused student in that shared room for two weeks after the woman who made the allegation filed a lawsuit in September publicly accusing him of rape , psychology professor Corinna Loeckenhoff said at a Faculty Senate meeting. Meanwhile, Cornell students shared the accused student’s name and dorm location on social media. “This was a clear security risk,” Loeckenhoff told Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff at the Oct. 14 meeting, according to a recording obtained by The Associated Press. “Cornell’s own records show that, at the very least, he admitted to taking drugs and having sex with an intoxicated person,” Loeckenhoff said. “Why was Housing Services not aware of this? They had no clue until the shocked

NEW YORK — Wall Street is ticking higher Tuesday as stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry support the market, at least for now. The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent and pulled within 1.3 percent of its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 27 points, or 0.1 percent, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9 percent higher. The majority of stocks within the S&P 500 were falling, but gains for several influential AI stocks made up for that. Such stocks have been swerving for weeks on worries about whether their boom is under threat because of how expensive it’s become for companies to borrow money to build data centers and buy more AI chips. Broadcom climbed 3.3 percent after announcing a $63 billion financing deal where several Wall Street firms will help Anthropic get access to Broadcom's XPU AI accelerators and networking solutions. Elsewhere in the industry, Advanced Micro Devices rose 4 percent and was one of the strongest forces pushing up on the S&P 500 after Broadcom. CoreWeave, a company that’s borrowed money to buy

Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet are expected to report accelerating cloud growth this week, but turbulence in global markets and mounting concerns over the cost of financing AI investments are clouding the outlook. Investors are pressing for evidence that the AI boom can deliver swift returns to justify its enormous price tag. Rising bond yields at AI cloud providers such as CoreWeave and record costs to insure Meta Platform's debt have amplified concerns about how the massive AI infrastructure buildout is being funded, particularly as higher U.S. interest rates loom. Market turmoil has rekindled warnings of an AI bubble from investors, including hedge fund Citadel's founder Ken Griffin, and pushed companies to delay their IPOs. An expected Democratic sweep of the U.S. midterm elections could spell more trouble for data centers that are already a target of protests over their impact on power grids, electricity bills and the environment. China's tech-stock boom has unravelled, wiping out about $480 billion in market value in less than four months as concerns over AI demand and spending an

KHERSON, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine began observing a localized ceasefire in a devastated southern Ukrainian city on Tuesday, ahead of a planned humanitarian mission the White House said was brokered by U.S. first lady Melania Trump. Moscow kept up its deadly missile attacks on other cities in the meantime. Meanwhile, Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, officials said, in their first known direct contact since shortly after Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, 2022. Many Western officials have accused Putin of masterminding a campaign of disruption across Europe and have sought to diplomatically isolate the Russian leader. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb later spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Zelenskyy's office. A ceasefire takes hold in a southern Ukraine city, officials say A local pause in fighting started at 3 a.m. to allow an aid mission into the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky this week. Food and medical supplie

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will be joined by one of his potential successors on Tuesday as he tries to keep Texas, which hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office in 32 years, in the Republican column in next week's midterm elections. The president will appear in Corpus Christi and Lubbock in his effort to boost Republican Ken Paxton's competitive U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat James Talarico. Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to help Trump show off a newly arrived oil tanker filled with Venezuelan crude to be processed in Texas refineries, according to a congressional aide and two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Rubio’s schedule ahead of a public announcement. The events mark Trump's third swing through Texas since holding a first-of-its-kind midterm convention in Dallas in September, a sign of the significance he's putting on a state that has spent decades as a Republican stronghold. However, Talarico has made the race competitive, capitalizing on a difficult political environment for Republicans and Paxton's history of ethic

KINSHASA — Africa's latest outbreak of Ebola has passed 10,000 confirmed cases, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congolese health authorities said on Tuesday, with almost 5,000 fatalities. According to the DRC's figures, 10,060 people have been infected and 4,887 have died since the virus was first detected in May in the vast central African country's deadliest outbreak in its history. Cases have likewise been detected in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, with the World Health Organization warning that Africa faces a "complex" task to contain an outbreak spanning the east, west and center of the continent. While some 2,684 have recovered from the virus in the DRC, the epidemic's fatality rate appears to be close to 50 percent, according to the Congolese National Institute of Public Health. Among the many challenges facing the response is the lack of any approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the epidemic. After spreading under the radar for weeks, the virus was first detected in the northeastern Congolese province of It

ROME — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday denounced any religious justification for wars raging around the world, saying “there is no such thing as a holy war.” “Only peace is holy,” Leo said in a video-message to a gathering of religious leaders in the Italian hilltop town of Assisi. The American pope was supposed to have presided over the gathering in person, but had to cancel his participation as he recovers from Oct. 13 lung cancer surgery. Instead, Leo sent a videotaped message that was broadcast to the delegates, who included the Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as Muslim, Buddhist and other Christian leaders. They were in Assisi, the birthplace of the peace-loving St. Francis, to mark the 40th anniversary of a landmark interfaith peace meeting called by St. John Paul II. That encounter, controversial at the time because it featured leaders of different faiths praying together, spawned a movement of interreligious peace appeals and gatherings. In his message, the American pope denounced the “troubling revival of

DNA connects serial killer Ted Bundy to the death of another Utah teenager, authorities announced Tuesday, exactly 52 years after her body was discovered in the woods by a hunter. Bundy has been dead since 1989, but the tally of his confirmed victims continues to grow due to advances in DNA testing. He killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states in the 1970s, and many more escaped or survived with injuries. Investigators are satisfied that Bundy was responsible for killing 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith in 1974, a death that had long been listed as a cold case, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said at a news conference. They were able to close the case by making crucial connections with DNA found on Smith and Laura Aime, another Bundy victim whose case was resolved last April in Utah County. Bundy's DNA was on file in Florida, where he was convicted and ultimately executed. Besides that evidence, Smith’s death showed hallmarks of Bundy’s “pattern, motive, means and opportunity,” Olson said. Decades-old evidence was key to the case Utah's state crime lab got new techno

Washington has suspended visa-free entry for Chinese visitors to the Northern Mariana Islands amid allegations of birth tourism and people smuggling in the US territory. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Monday the suspension of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Economic Vitality and Security Travel Authorization Program. US Senator Mike Lee hailed the move on social media, calling the program a "Biden-era loophole for Chinese birth tourism" and praising the Trump administration for having "closed" the pathway. The program, also known as EVS-TAP, allowed pre-screened Chinese nationals to visit the islands for up to 14 days without a US visa. Under the new decision, existing authorizations will be cancelled from October 30, although Chinese nationals already in the Pacific Ocean territory may complete their authorized stays. More than 3,000 Chinese nationals entered under EVS-TAP in financial year 2025. The DHS said it had found "good cause" to suspend the program as "PRC [People's Republic of China] nationals are almost certainly exploiting EVS-TAP". It

BRASILIA — Defeated right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro left Brazil and is traveling to the United States despite a court order banning him from exiting the country, U.S. media reported Tuesday. The son of jailed ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro lost the presidential election Sunday to incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and refused to concede defeat. The right-wing senator on Monday said a Supreme Court justice had ordered him to hand over his passports. Bolsonaro is under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering, and with his election loss is also set to lose parliamentary immunity. The 45-year-old was traveling to Florida, CNN reported, citing an anonymous official source. Other U.S. media confirmed he was heading to the country. The U.S. State Department said Tuesday it would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family, without confirming his travel plans. A police source told AFP that the senator's Brazilian and diplomatic passports had been canceled, adding that "there is no formal record of Flavio Bolsonaro leaving the country." But he has held Italian national

JERUSALEM — Israel's wartime election appeared deadlocked on Tuesday, exit polls showed, a potential setback for veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the projections hold, with neither side having a clear path to power but rival Gadi Eisenkot's larger bloc potentially giving him the first chance to form a government. The stalemate could yet work in Netanyahu's favour, allowing him to remain in power in a caretaker capacity while parties try to forge a governing coalition. Turnout was 77.7 percent, Israel's Central Elections Committee said, the highest in more than two decades and around 7 percentage points higher than in the previous election in 2022. Israel's three major networks updated their exit polls, giving Eisenkot's bloc a two-seat edge over Netanyahu's Likud-led camp, at 52-50. The remaining 18 seats were allocated to unaligned Arab parties in the exit polls. But Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, has all but ruled out forming a government with them, complicating his path to a majority despite his bloc's lead. Some Israeli media outlets, including pro-Netanyahu Chann

Georgia Chappels runs free community haircuts to help those feeling the impact of rising costs.

One mother said Halloween outfits are "completely extortionate" as families pick up free alternatives.

Some families say they cannot afford to stockpile in line with the government's advice.

Welsh Finance Minister Elin Jones has called for a spending plan that "finally treats us fairly".

The Echo project was partly set up in response to the cost of living crisis, say organisers.

When everyone is showing off their career success stories online, it’s easy to feel they’re doing better than you. Not so fast, says Lydia Spencer-Elliott. Harry Kane’s Ballon d’Or speech highlighted the importance of putting in the hard work when no one is watching – and experts agree.

Former Liverpool great Xabi Alonso returns to Anfield as Chelsea manager for the first time

The storm has brought powerful winds and torrential rain to Andhra Pradesh, disrupting electricity and transport, while authorities warn of coastal flooding and further heavy rainfall

Once a magnet for international visitors, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is struggling to regain its tourism industry as Myanmar's civil conflict drags on. For local communities, the stakes go beyond livelihoods to the survival of centuries-old traditions.

PARIS, France - Climate change must be declared a "global health emergency" to shape governments' policies after heat caused three million deaths between 2016 and 2023, a report in The Lancet said Wednesday.

Israel elections & Bibi vs Gadi: In alignment with a majority of the Israeli public, both Netanyahu and Eisenkot explicitly oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state

An Indiana couple successfully secured an $82,020 judgment against a contractor for breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentations. Tasked with property repairs, the contractor failed to deliver promised materials and left payments for roofing supplies unaccounted for, ultimately leading to a lawsuit. The court held him personally liable, underscoring the importance of accountability in construction agreements and the serious consequences of dishonest practices.

Japan is witnessing a dramatic transformation in its marine ecosystems as rising ocean temperatures prompt fish species to migrate northward. An extensive research effort involving the analysis of water samples has revealed profound implications for local fisheries, economies, and the overall health of marine life. With the introduction of new species, traditional fishing methods may need to evolve, underscoring the crucial role of environmental DNA in monitoring these biodiversity changes.

The 34-year-old shared a now-deleted Instagram Story showing an IV in her arm and a hospital wristband, suggesting that sushi or passionfruit may have triggered the reaction.

BHUBANESWAR/HYDERABAD, India - Trees crashed onto highways, electricity poles were uprooted and thousands took shelter against Arnab, a powerful cyclone which made landfall on India's east coast on Wednesday, authorities said.

A team of researchers has made a groundbreaking achievement by replicating the color-shifting glass of the ancient Roman Lycurgus Cup. Created 1,600 years ago, this unique glass displays stunning optical effects thanks to its tiny gold and silver nanoparticles. Their rigorous experimentation with both ancient and modern techniques opens doors for scientific advancements, extending beyond mere artistic creation. A modern sculpture inspired by this historic artifact will soon be unveiled.

The outage prevents organizations from filing the Federal Election Commission's 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which show how much political groups and others are spending on specific races

His claim came as exit polls following Tuesday’s election showed Netanyahu’s Likud-led bloc locked in a close contest with the opposition alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot.

Real Madrid striker Kylian Mbappé has apologised for remarks about a viral meme that likened him to Mao Zedong after a furious backlash in China cost him promotional deals and exposure.