LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — She says she was let down at every step. By a partner who abandoned her when she was pregnant. By a health service that denied her a legal abortion. And by a justice system that sent her to a maximum-security prison for illegally terminating her pregnancy on her own.

Violet Zulu, a house cleaner in Zambia earning $40 a month, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2024 after representing herself in court with little understanding of the consequences of her actions. She didn’t see her two children or other family members for nearly two years.

After word of her case reached international rights groups that helped her file an appeal, Zulu was freed last month. Activists say she represents many women in Africa who take desperate decisions when facing barriers to legal abortion services.

Her story has drawn little sympathy in her southern African nation, where parts of society view abortion harshly. Her own mother said she agreed with her daughter’s prison sentence, but said it should have been shorter.

Zulu spoke with The Associated Press as she pieces her life together again at the age of 26.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Abdul-Razzaq Ahmad Saryoul began publishing books in Syria in 2003 but he used to abstain from participating in the annual International Damascus Book Fair because of tight measures by the country’s security agencies and bans on many books under Bashar Assad’s rule.

In the first post-Assad book fair to be held in Damascus, which wrapped up Monday, Saryoul was surprised when he was issued a permit the day he applied to take part without being asked what his books are about. The wide range of titles available made this year’s fair “unprecedented,” he said.

Another publisher, Salah Sorakji, was proud to offer Kurdish books in the Syrian capital for the first time in decades. During the Assad era, ethnic Kurds suffered from discrimination, including bans on their language.

The first book fair since Assad was unseated in December 2024 witnessed high turnout, with state media reporting that 250,000 people attended on the first day, Feb. 6, trekking out to fairgrounds where it was held about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the city center. The fair’s director, Ahmad Naasan, said about 500 publishing companies from some 35 countries took part.

GENEVA (AP) — Iran’s top diplomat met with the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Monday, ahead of a second round of negotiations with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and said he would also meet with Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi of Oman, which is hosting the U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva on Tuesday.

“I am in Geneva with real ideas to achieve a fair and equitable deal,” Araghchi wrote on X. “What is not on the table: submission before threats.”

As U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an additional aircraft carrier to the region, Iran on Monday launched a second naval drill in weeks, state TV reported. It said the drill would test Iran’s intelligence and operational capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israeli prosecutors said Monday that they plan to charge a settler in the killing of a Palestinian activist during a confrontation that was caught on video, opening a rare prosecution of violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Attacks from settlers and home demolitions by authorities have spiked dramatically over the past two years, but the death in July of Awdah Hathaleen has drawn particular attention due to his involvement in the 2025 Oscar-winning film “No Other Land,” which chronicled Palestinian villagers’ fight to stay on their land. The case also stands out because the confrontation between Palestinians and Yinon Levi, an internationally sanctioned settler, was captured on video from multiple vantage points.

In a video that family members say was taken by Hathaleen himself, Levi could be seen firing toward the person holding the camera. Another showed Levi firing two shots without showing where the bullets struck.

An Israeli judge released Levi from custody six months ago, citing a lack of evidence that he fired the shots that killed Hathaleen.

Israel’s State Attorney General’s office confirmed in a statement Monday that it had initiated proceedings to indict Levi. It did not specify the charges.

SYDNEY (AP) — A man accused of killing 15 people in a mass shooting at a Jewish festival on Sydney’s Bondi Beach appeared in court Monday for the first time since his release from the hospital.

Naveed Akram appeared in Sydney’s Downing Center Local Court via a video link from the maximum security Goulburn Correctional Center 200 kilometers (120 miles) away.

He did not enter pleas to the charges against him, including murder and committing a terrorist act. The brief court appearance focused on extending a gag order that suppresses the identities of victims and survivors of the attack who have not chosen to identify themselves publicly.

CONCORDIA, Mexico (AP) — Deep in the coastal mountains above the sparkling Pacific resort of Mazatlan, towns spaced along a twisting road appear nearly deserted, the quiet broken only by the occasional passing truck.

It was near one of these towns, Panuco, that 10 employees of a Canadian-owned silver and gold mine were abducted in late January. The bodies of five were located nearby and five more await identification.

Most residents of these towns have fled out of fear as two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have been locked in battle since September 2024, said Fermín Labrador, a 68-year-old from the nearby village of Chirimoyos. Others, he said, were “invited” to leave.

The abduction of the mine workers under still unclear circumstances has raised fears locally and more widely generated questions about the security improvements touted by President Claudia Sheinbaum. She signaled her more aggressive stance toward drug cartels in Sinaloa with captures and drug seizures after she took office in late 2024. It has been one year since she sent 10,000 National Guard troops to the northern border to try to head off U.S. tariffs over the cartels’ fentanyl trafficking, much of which comes from Sinaloa.

In January, Sheinbaum held up a sharp decline in homicide rates last year as evidence that her security strategy was working.

“What these kinds of episodes do is demolish the federal government’s narrative that insists that little by little they are getting control of the situation,” said security analyst David Saucedo. He said Sheinbaum had tried to “manage the conflict” while the Sinaloa Cartel’s internal war spread and split the state by obliging people “to take a side with one of the two groups.”

Japan’s economy expanded at an anemic 0.2% annual pace in the last quarter, the government reported Monday, with growth for all of 2025 at just 1.1%.

Private consumption rose at a 0.4% annualized pace in October-December, but that was offset by a 1.1% drop in exports, the latest seasonally adjusted preliminary data show.

Japan’s export-reliant economy has been shaken by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but has been growing at a lackluster pace for years. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is expected to roll out policies to help revive the economy after a landslide victory in a general election earlier this month.

Takaichi has promised to spend more and to suspend Japan’s sales tax on food, among other measures.

The detection of a newly identified recombinant mpox virus containing genetic material from two known strains underscores the need for continued genomic surveillance, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday, as the overall global public health risk assessment remains unchanged.

The smell hits you before you even see the tents. In the al-Taawun camp, wedged between Yarmouk Stadium and al-Sahaba Street in central Gaza City, the line between human habitation and human waste has been erased.

Forced to flee their homes by Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, 765 families have set up makeshift shelters directly on top of and adjacent to an enormous solid waste dump. Here, amid mountains of rotting garbage, they are fighting a losing battle against disease, pests and the psychological horror of living in filth.

Fayez al-Jadi, a father who has been displaced 12 times since the war began, said the conditions are stripping them of their humanity.

“The rats eat the tents from underneath,” al-Jadi told Al Jazeera. “They walk on our faces while we sleep. My daughter is 18 months old. A rat ran right over her face. Every day, she has gastroenteritis, vomiting, diarrhoea or malnutrition.”

Al-Jadi’s plea is not for a luxury accommodation, just a mere 40 to 50 metres (130ft to 164ft) of clean space to live in, he said. “We want to live like human beings.”

Current and former United Nations staffers have spoken out in defence of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, after she faced attacks from a pro-Israeli NGO and several European government officials.

Albanese – who, like all special rapporteurs, is appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but is not a UN staff member – has been subjected to repeated attacks from pro-Israeli figures and bodies, with one of the most fervent critics being UN Watch, a pro-Israel NGO.

The UN Watch, which is not a UN body, spread an edited clip of Albanese, 48, speaking at the Doha Forum earlier this month, in which the NGO falsely said she had called Israel “the common enemy of humanity”.

Albanese’s actual words were: “We now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy and the respect of fundamental freedoms is the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom.”

FOR NEARLY A YEAR, Canadians have been discussing the danger posed by the United States. The anxiety shows up everywhere—online forums, polling questions, and in the unusually blunt asides from officials. This is good. We need to get in the habit of having hard conversations about who threatens us, the extent of that threat, and what we can and must do if we are to survive as an independent country.

For CANADA, the diagnosis of the US administration is not academic. It is the difference between managing a relationship with a flawed but crucial ally and planning a campaign of resistance against a powerful neighbour no longer reliably constrained by its domestic institutions.

Unfortunately, we see signs of deference everywhere.

Congress has effectively abandoned its role in holding the president to account. It has failed to uphold its power of the purse on things like international development assistance, bowing to the administration’s decision to simply not spend the money. The loss of that funding has already led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition. It has failed to uphold congressional power to declare war, ignoring military actions in the Caribbean that culminated in the unlawful capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian president. It declined to act when the administration sidestepped the Senate’s confirmation power by allowing Elon Musk to wield cabinet-level authority without ever being confirmed. Congress has also largely demurred in defence of its power to regulate import tariffs. It is, in effect, a presidential lapdog.

LONDON — Two of the world’s biggest trading blocs are cautiously eyeing closer ties to short-circuit Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The European Union and a 12-nation Indo-Pacific bloc are opening talks to explore proposals to form one of the largest global economic alliances, multiple people with knowledge of the talks told POLITICO.

Canada is spearheading the discussions after Prime Minister Mark Carney called on middle powers to buck trade war coercion last month, days after Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Denmark’s European allies if it didn’t cede Greenland.

Ottawa is “championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership [CPTPP] and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people,” Carney told world leaders and the global business elite in Davos.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has backed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's leadership during a visit to Budapest. Nationalist leader Orban faces a strong opposition challenge ahead of elections in April.

Rubio endorsed Orban's efforts to secure a fifth consecutive term despite lagging in the polls, praising his rapport with the US leader.

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar launched his party's election campaign in Budapest on Sunday, promising to restore Hungary's Western orientation amid concerns about democratic backsliding.

A former insider in Orban's nationalist Fidesz party, Magyar broke with former colleagues to quickly form the center-right Tisza party. Independent polls show he holds a significant lead ahead of the vote on April 12.