A couple who kept their young children inside what officials described as a “house of horrors” for three and a half years, claiming they were protecting them from the COVID-19 pandemic, have been sentenced. In April 2025, police in Oviedo, Spain confirmed they rescued three children — a 10-year-old and 8-year-old twins — from a home in the area over three years after they were locked up following the final wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents Christian Steffen, 54, and Melissa Ann Steffen, 49, were arrested and charged with domestic violence with habitual psychological abuse, child abandonment and illegal detention....

Israel sent Iron Dome anti-missile batteries and personnel to operate them to the United Arab Emirates to defend the country during the Iran war, the U.S. ambassador to the country said Tuesday. The comments by Mike Huckabee underline the growing defense relationship between Israel and the UAE, countries long suspicious of Iran, as a shaky ceasefire still holds in the Iran war. However, the narrow Strait of Hormuz remains in Tehran’s chokehold and negotiations between the U.S. and Iran appear at a standstill for the moment — raising the risk of the conflict breaking out again. Huckabee, a Baptist minister,...

Two national agencies fighting corruption in Ukraine have named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff as an official suspect in a major graft investigation. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office announced late Monday that Andriy Yermak is suspected in an alleged 460-million-hryvnia ($10.5 million) money-laundering scheme. Investigators said in an announcement on the Telegram messaging app that the investigation is ongoing. The move is a step short of formally charging Yermak, who resigned in November. He was the country’s lead negotiator in talks with the U.S and left during the scandal that brought the...

Forty years. That’s how long Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been in power. The 81-year-old will be sworn in Tuesday to extend his presidency over a further five-year term that may well be his last — although not necessarily the last for the Museveni family. The president’s son and presumptive heir, army chief Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, oversaw dayslong rehearsals of the military parade that will animate the eighth inauguration of Museveni, with Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets flying noisily over official ceremonial grounds in Kampala, the Ugandan capital. Many Ugandans now accept that Museveni’s presidency — the only one that millions...

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer doubled down Tuesday on his resolve to stay in office, despite calls to step down. Starmer told Cabinet ministers that he took responsibility for devastating losses that his center-left Labour Party suffered in last week’s local elections across the U.K., but he would fight on. Starmer said there’s a process to oust a leader and that hadn’t been triggered. “The country expects us to get on with governing,” he said. ”That is what I am doing and what we must do.” THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. LONDON (AP) —...

The last remaining passengers on a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak disembarked Monday and boarded flights to more than 20 countries to enter quarantine. A French woman was the latest to be confirmed as infected, while an American was suspected of infection after initial testing. Passengers began flying home aboard military and government planes Sunday after the MV Hondius anchored in the Canary Islands. Personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks escorted the travelers from ship to shore in Tenerife, an effort that concluded Monday. “If they stayed longer on the ship, the situation could have...

Passengers evacuated from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship began flying home aboard military and government planes Sunday after the vessel anchored in the Canary Islands, with one American testing positive and a French traveler developing symptoms for the pathogen aboard their separate aircraft. One the 17 American passengers evacuated from the MV Hondius tested positive for the hantavirus but is not showing any symptoms, U.S. health officials said late Sunday. Earlier, one of the five French passengers developed symptoms on their flight home, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said in a statement, and all were put into strict isolation with plans...

A man in Michigan who got married and then ran over his best friend that same day, killing him, after an alcohol-fueled argument was sentenced Monday to at least 30 years in prison. “The only thing I can do for the rest of my life is express my apology and remorse. … I will forever be sorry,” James Shirah said in Genesee County court. Shirah, 24, was driving when his vehicle struck Terry Taylor Jr. in Flint, about an hour’s drive northwest of Detroit, on Aug. 30, 2024. He and Savanah Collier were married earlier that day and the celebration...

Federal agents are investigating the deaths of six people thought to be immigrants found inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the border with Mexico in Laredo, Texas, on Sunday as a “potential human smuggling event.” A Union Pacific employee found the bodies of six people inside a shipping container Sunday afternoon, said Jose Baeza, the Laredo Police Department public information officer. Dr. Corinne Stern, the Webb County medical examiner, is conducting autopsies and completed one for a 29-year-old Mexican woman who died of hyperthermia, or heat stroke. “I’ve ruled that an accidental death,” she said,...