NATO chief: Alliance faces biggest challenge since WWII

MADRID (AP) — NATO leaders were sitting down Wednesday to try to turn an urgent sense of purpose triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into action — and to patch up any cracks in their unity over money and mission. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was...

Macron says Russia can't win in Ukraine after strike on mall

KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) — France's president denounced Russia’s fiery airstrike on a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine as a “new war crime” Tuesday and vowed the West's support for Kyiv would not waver, saying Moscow “cannot and should not win" the war. The strike, which...

Live updates | Spain's king hosts NATO leaders' gala dinner

MADRID (AP) — The Latest on the G-7 summit, the annual meeting of the leading democratic economies, which this year is being held in the Bavarian Alps in Germany; and on the NATO summit in Madrid, where leaders begin gathering later Tuesday: ___ Russia’s war on...

Turkey lifts its objections to Sweden, Finland joining NATO

MADRID (AP) — Turkey agreed Tuesday to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, a breakthrough in an impasse clouding a leaders’ summit in Madrid amid Europe’s worst security crisis in decades triggered by the war in Ukraine. After urgent top-level talks,...

Biden, NATO to beef up force posture amid Russian aggression

MADRID (AP) — President Joe Biden opened his three-day visit to a NATO summit Tuesday by pledging to beef up the American military presence in Europe as he denounced Russia’s Vladimir Putin for trying to “wipe out” Ukrainian culture in the ongoing war in eastern Europe. ...

Finnish president says Turkey agrees to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO

2 men missing in floods in northwest Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP) — Two people were missing after heavy rains and floods hit northwestern Turkey. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Tuesday that one of the missing men is a digger operator who was swept away by floods in Duzce province and the other a resident in a village in...

EXPLAINER: NATO holds summit with gaze on Russia — and China

MADRID (AP) — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked NATO back to first principles. Seven decades after it was founded, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is meeting in Madrid this week with an urgent need to reassert its original mission: preventing Russian aggression...

Live updates | Erdogan adamant on Sweden, Finland NATO bids

ELMAU, Germany (AP) — The Latest on the G-7 summit, the annual meeting of the leading democratic economies, which this year is being held in the Bavarian Alps in Germany; and on the summit of NATO leaders that will start on Tuesday in Madrid: ___ Turkey’s president...

NATO to boost rapid reaction force, Ukraine military support

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO allies will decide at a summit this week to increase the strength of their rapid reaction force nearly eightfold to 300,000 troops as part of their response to an “era of strategic competition," the military alliance's secretary-general said Monday. The NATO...