BEIRUT (AP) – In a Middle East torn apart by war and conflict, fighters are increasingly using food as a weapon of war. Millions of people across countries like Syria, Yemen and Iraq are gripped by hunger, struggling to survive with little help from the outside world. Children suffer from …

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – The teenager who used an “affluenza” defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck was booked into a Texas juvenile detention center following his deportation from Mexico on Thursday, more than a month after he and his mother fled the U.S. as prosecutors investigated whether he had …

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – As the digital advertising market booms and demand for smartphones wanes, Alphabet Inc. could soon dethrone Apple as the world’s most valuable company. If it happens, Alphabet will move to the head of the class just five months after Google reorganized itself under the holding company. …

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) – The leaders of Cyprus, Greece and Israel pledged on Thursday to work together to seize opportunities emerging from newly found offshore gas reserves in order to bolster stability and security in a region wracked by conflict. The talks in the Cypriot capital are the first tripartite …

GENEVA (AP) – Declaring that the Zika virus is “spreading explosively,” chief of the World Health Organization announced that it will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts on Monday to decide if the virus outbreak should be declared an international health emergency. At a special meeting Thursday in Geneva, …

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) – When a delegation of South Sudanese rebels returned to the government-controlled capital Juba last month after two years of war, Nyajok Koat thought she would finally return to the home she fled when the fighting began. But more than a month later, prospects of her …

STOCKHOLM (AP) – Interior Minister Anders Ygeman says Sweden could deport between 60,000 and 80,000 asylum-seekers in coming years. Ygeman told newspaper Dagens Industri that since about 45 percent of asylum applications are currently rejected, the country must get ready to send back tens of thousands of the 163,000 who …

BERLIN (AP) – It’s a change of heart that Iraqi immigrant Sekvan Agho never saw coming. Agho was among the wave of nearly 1.1 million asylum-seekers who came to Germany last year seeking a new life, making his way from his native Iraq to Turkey, then across the seas to …

NEW YORK (AP) – Alibaba is hoping its better-than-expected third-quarter results help reassure investors worried about the state of the Chinese economy. The Chinese e-commerce powerhouse third-quarter net income jumped ahead of analyst expectations as mobile shopping continued to grow and Chinese customers snapped up items during the holidays. The …

ROME (AP) – In Italy, family is considered so sacred that marriage is lauded in the Constitution. But what kind of family? That has become a bitterly divisive question in a nation where the Vatican packs considerable political weight and where gays have grown impatient as other traditionally Catholic European …