JAKARTA (AP) -- A jet carrying 62 people lost contact with air traffic controllers minutes after taking off from Indonesia’s capital on a domestic flight on Saturday, and debris found by fishermen was being examined to see if it was from the missing plane, officials said. Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said Sriwijaya Air’s Flight SJ182 was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2:36 p.m. The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radar four minutes later, after the pilot

WILMINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Joe Biden says that President Donald Trump isn't “fit for the job,” but he repeatedly refused to endorse growing Democratic calls to impeach him a second time. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to members of her chamber that lawmakers could move as early as next week to impeach Trump for inciting a violent mob that overran the US Capitol if the president didn’t “immediately” resign. Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader C

Asian shares were mostly higher Friday on hopes for additional economic stimulus after President-elect Joe Biden takes office.  A new state of emergency in the Tokyo region to combat surging coronavirus cases did little to dampen market optimism. The benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 2.4 percent to close at 28,139.03, its highest finish in more than 30 years.  The emergency declaration, announced by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga for Tokyo and nearby areas, asks people to stay home and ref

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers into hiding, in a stunning attempt to overturn America’s presidential election, undercut the nation’s democracy and keep Democrat Joe Biden from replacing Trump in the White House. The nation’s elected representatives scrambled to crouch under desks and don gas masks, while police futilely tried to barricade the building, one of the most jarring scenes

The European Union's medicines agency gave the green light Wednesday to Moderna Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine, a decision that gives the 27-nation bloc a second vaccine to use in the desperate battle to tame the virus rampaging across the continent. The approval recommendation by the European Medicines Agency's human medicines committee -- which must be rubber stamped by the EU's executive commission -- comes amid high rates of infections in many EU countries and strong criticism of the slow pace of

A British judge on Wednesday denied bail to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, who has been jailed in Britain since 2019 as he fights extradition to the United States. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ordered Assange to remain in prison while the courts consider an appeal by US authorities against a decision not to extradite him. On Monday, the judge rejected an American request to send Assange to the US to face espionage charges over WikiLeaks' publication of secret military documents a deca

Nearly two weeks after most other European Union nations, the Netherlands on Wednesday began its COVID-19 vaccination program, with nursing home staff and front-line workers in hospitals first in line for the shot. Sanna Elkadiri, a nurse at a nursing home for people with dementia, was the first to receive a shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mass vaccination center in Veghel, 120 kilometers southeast of the capital, Amsterdam. “This is a very important moment for me as a person wh

BEIJING (AP) -- China's best-known entrepreneur, e-commerce billionaire Jack Ma, made his fortune by taking big risks. The former English teacher founded Alibaba Group in 1999, when China had few internet users. Online payments service Alipay launched five years later, before regulators said such businesses would be allowed. Both long shots grew to dominate their industries. Ma's latest gambit backfired after he called regulators too conservative in an Oct. 24 speech and urged them to be more

The former head of state-owned China Huarong Asset Management Co. Ltd. was sentenced to death Tuesday for bribe taking in one of the harshest punishments for economic crimes in recent years. Lai Xiaomin, 58, was also found guilty by the Second Intermediate People's Court of Tianjin of lesser charges including corruption and bigamy. Life sentences and suspended death sentences commuted to life after two years are frequently handed down in corruption cases, but death sentences without the chan

President Donald Trump pressured Georgia's Republican secretary of state to "find" enough votes to overturn Joe Biden's win in the state's presidential election, repeatedly citing disproven claims of fraud and raising the prospect of a "criminal offense" if officials did not change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation. The phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday was the latest step in an unprecedented effort by a sitting pre

Norwegian officials insisted Monday that there was "still hope" in finding survivors in air pockets five days after a landslide killed at least seven people as it carried away homes in a village north of the capital. Three people are still missing. Police spokesman Roger Pettersen said search efforts in the landslide-hit village of Ask, 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of Oslo, are still considered "a rescue operation." But only bodies have been found in the last few days.

Iranian state television has acknowledged that Tehran seized a South Korean-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. The report on Monday alleged that the MT Hankuk Chemi had been stopped by Iranian authorities over alleged "oil pollution" in the Persian Gulf and the strait. The semiofficial Fars news agency said Iran's Revolutionary Guard's naval forces seized the ship. Satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed the MT Hankuk Chemi off the port of Bandar Abbas on Monday aftern

The center-right government in Greece named the country's first openly gay minister in a cabinet reshuffle Monday. Nicholas Yatromanolakis, 44, was named as the new deputy minister of culture after being promoted from the position of general secretary at the ministry. The government retained its ministers of health and finance and most other key positions in the reshuffle. Greece is reeling from the impact of the pandemic that caused a spike in deaths in the fall and is expected to have ca

The marriage of carmakers PSA Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is built on the promise of cost-savings in the capital-hungry industry, but what remains to be seen is if it will be able to preserve jobs and heritage brands in a global market still suffering from the pandemic. PSA Peugeot shareholders on Monday overwhelmingly approved the deal to create the world's fourth-largest carmaker, to be called Stellantis, with the capacity to produce 8.7 million cars a year, behind Volkswagen, Toyot

A British judge on Monday rejected the United States' request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges, saying he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh US prison conditions. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that extradition would be "oppressive" because of Assange's mental health. She said Assange was "a depressed and sometimes despairing man" who had the "intellect and determination" to circumvent any suicide preventi