At EU summit in March, German and Austrian chancellors criticized Josep Borrell privately while publicly agreeing to calling for a cease-fire ..read more

The European Commission is pushing for the post-pandemic recovery fund not to be repeated — as well as for conditions on financing of poorer regions ..read more

SACRAMENTO, California — Steve Garvey, the former baseball superstar turned Republican candidate, has managed to raise millions in recent weeks for his longshot bid for California’s open Senate seat — and it’s costing him. Garvey raised $3.4 million from mid-February through the end of March, and, as federal filings show, it cost him over $1 million to do it, between digital ads, direct mail, commission costs and venue fees. Even with his improved numbers — his best showing yet, leaving him with $1.6 million in cash — Garvey faces an incredibly steep climb to seize the seat previously held by ..read more

OAKLAND, California — Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price will face a recall vote in the latest test for a national movement to overhaul the criminal justice system. County officials confirmed on Monday that Price’s opponents had submitted enough valid signatures to trigger a vote later this year. It was a close call: While recall supporters turned in tens of thousands more raw signatures than needed last month, a random sample to confirm their validity was inconclusive and the county went to a protracted full count. In the end, proponents got about 1,600 more valid signatures than ..read more

NEW YORK — Nine potential jurors in Donald Trump’s hush money trial cleared an initial round of vetting Monday, as the first-ever criminal trial of a former president kicked off in a Manhattan courtroom. The small group is about a quarter of the total number of people who, in the coming days, must be deemed qualified to serve on the jury based on a detailed questionnaire designed to root out bias. Then, prosecutors and lawyers for Trump will further whittle that field to a 12-member jury plus a handful of alternates. But before jury selection could even begin on Monday, the start of the histo ..read more

ALBANY, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $237 billion budget agreement with state lawmakers on Monday with a message: The doubters were wrong. The governor waded this year into politically nettlesome issues like housing, public safety and support for the thousands of migrants who have arrived in the state over the last two years. In the end, Hochul largely got what she wanted from the state Legislature despite calls for greater support for low-income renters and skepticism from her fellow Democrats over increasing penalties for people who steal from retail stores and assault workers ..read more

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Idaho to begin broadly enforcing a new state law barring many forms of gender-affirming care for minors, at least for now. The high court, which sharply reined in a lower court decision that had blocked Idaho from enforcing the law, left in place protections for such treatments for two anonymous teenagers whose families filed suit to block it. The impact of the ruling for other transgender minors seeking treatment but aren’t plaintiffs in the challenge is murky, because they could potentially try to join the pending lawsuit or file suits of their own. The c ..read more

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government are increasingly wielding strong-arm tactics to subdue political opponents and critics of the ruling Hindu-nationalist party ahead of the nationwide elections that begin this week. A decade into power, and on the cusp of securing five more years, the Modi government is reversing India’s decadeslong commitment to multiparty democracy and secularism. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has brought corruption charges against many officials from its main rival, the Congress Party, but few convictions. Dozens of politicians from othe ..read more

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military chief said Monday that his country will respond to Iran’s weekend attack, but he did not elaborate on when and how as world leaders urged against retaliation, trying to avoid a spiral of violence in the Middle East. The Iranian attack on Saturday came in response to a suspected Israeli strike two weeks earlier on an Iranian consular building in the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed two Iranian generals. It marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution ..read more

SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters of the war in Gaza shut down iconic bridges and roads from coast to coast on Monday, snarling traffic for hours as commuters were stranded in their cars. The demonstrations in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere came after top Democratic officials, including President Joe Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, expressed their “ironclad” support for Israel following Iran’s missile and drone attacks on the country over the weekend. On San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, protesters chained themselves to stationary vehicles in what the state highway pat ..read more