AP Investigations

‘US doesn’t see me as an American’: Thousands of adoptees live in limbo without citizenship

The United States has brought hundreds of thousands of children from abroad to be adopted by American families.

Right-wing influencers hyped anti-Ukraine videos made by a TV producer also funded by Russian media

Tech firms remove social media accounts of a Russian drone factory after an AP investigation

His country trained him to fight. Then he turned against it. More like him are doing the same

A South Korean adoptee needed answers about the past. She got them — just not the ones she wanted

More News

Trump’s small-dollar donor fundraising is beset by confusion and fatigue

Donald Trump’s contributions from small-dollar donors have plummeted since his last bid for the White House, presenting the former president with a financial challenge as he attempts to keep pace with Democrats’ fundraising machine.

Africans recruited to work in Russia say they were duped into building drones for use in Ukraine

Russia is recruiting young African women to work at a factory producing drones for use in Ukraine amid a labor shortage.

Trump has long blasted China’s trade practices. His ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles were printed there

Thousands of copies of Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA” Bible were printed in China, a country that the former president has repeatedly accused of stealing American jobs and engaging in unfair trade practices.

How Tucson police handled a death like George Floyd’s when leaders thought it would never happen

Like many American cities, in June 2020 Tucson was struggling with the murder of George Floyd. What protesters didn’t know was that their city had two undisclosed deaths of Latino men who — like Floyd — said they could not breathe after officers pinned them face down.

A series of deaths and the ‘Big Fight': Uncovering police force in one Midwestern city

Police leaders called the training “routine” when one recruit died and another was badly injured at their academy.

South Korean woman sues government and adoption agency after her kidnapped daughter was sent abroad

A 70-year-old South Korean woman on Monday sued her government, an adoption agency, and an orphanage over the adoption of her daughter, who was sent to the United States in 1976, months after she was kidnapped at age four.

Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea. What happens when they burst open?

Most of the world’s everyday goods and raw materials moved over long distances are packed in large metal boxes the size of tractor-trailers and stacked on ships.

Policing group says officers must change how and when they use physical force on US streets

An influential group of law enforcement leaders is pushing police departments to change how officers subdue people so they avoid “consistent blind spots” in the use of physical force that contribute to civilian deaths.

Western nations were desperate for Korean babies. Now many adoptees believe they were stolen

Western governments ignored widespread fraud in South Korean adoptions and sometimes pressured the country to keep the kids coming, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found.

These South Koreans were adopted as babies. Now they’re discovering their past was a lie

The South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to satiate intense demand for adoptable babies in the West, despite years of evidence they were being procured through questionable or downright unscrupulous means, an investigation led by The Associated Press has

New CIA workplace assault case emerges as spy agency shields extent of sexual misconduct in ranks

A veteran CIA officer is facing assault and battery charges accusing him of drunkenly groping a woman and forcibly kissing her during an impromptu party in the office last year celebrating his 50th birthday.

Elite prosecutor misused position by offering Justice Department card in DUI stop, watchdog finds

A Justice Department watchdog found one of the nation’s most prolific federal narcotics prosecutors flouted ethics rules last year when he drunkenly handed his business card to Florida police investigating a hit-and-run crash.

Tennessee family’s lawsuit says video long kept from them shows police force, not drugs, killed son

A Tennessee mother whose son was having a seizure in his apartment says in a new lawsuit that police and paramedics subjected him to “inhumane acts of violence.”

DNA on weapons implicates ex-U.S. Green Beret in attempted Venezuelan coup, federal officials say

Federal investigators say they have uncovered the DNA of a former U.S. Green Beret on some of the 60 automatic weapons he allegedly smuggled from Florida to South America as part of a failed 2020 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Prisoners fight against working in heat on former slave plantation, raising hope for change in South

As daily temperatures hit record highs across much of the South, a federal judge has taken an unusual step, challenging the treatment of mostly Black incarcerated workers in the fields.

Secret DEA files show agents joked about rape in a WhatsApp chat. Then one of them was accused of it

A group of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents boasted in a WhatsApp chat of their “world debauchery tour,” shared lurid images of their latest sexual conquests and at one point even joked about “forcible anal rape.”

In Georgia, conservatives seek to have voters removed from rolls without official challenges

Conservative activists in Georgia and other states are using a new software tool as part of a broader effort to scrub voters from the rolls.

Shot in 1.6 seconds: Video raises questions about how trooper avoided charges in Black man’s death

Dash camera video and investigative documents are raising new questions about the fatal shooting of a Black motorist by a Georgia state trooper nearly four years ago.

Politician who pushed Philippines natural gas boom is behind firm that planned to profit

An influential politician in the Philippines, who has been a cheerleader for natural gas power, is behind a company that planned to make a fortune from it, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Russia obliterates Ukraine’s front-line towns faster with hacked bombs and expanded air base network

Russia is intensifying its use of cheap glide bombs to lay waste to cities in eastern Ukraine. The latest generation of the retrofitted weapons have devastated Kharkiv, Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar and Vovchansk.

The war in Gaza has wiped out entire Palestinian families. AP documents 60 who lost dozens or more

Israeli airstrikes are eradicating entire Palestinian families in Gaza, sometimes generations at a time, to a degree never seen before in previous conflicts there.

AI experimentation is high risk, high reward for low-profile political campaigns

Text, photos, videos and audio created using artificial intelligence are increasingly making their way into campaigns for state and local office.

Italy’s migrant jails are squalid and chaotic. A young man from Guinea was desperate to escape

The suicide of a young man from Guinea inside one of Italy’s migrant detention centers has shined a spotlight on the squalid, chaotic conditions.

Stuck at sea for years, a sailor’s plight highlights a surge in shipowner abandonment

The United Nations over the last decade has logged an increasing number of crew members abandoned by shipowners around the world.

Trump TV: Internet broadcaster beams the ex-president’s message directly to his MAGA faithful

In less than a decade, Right Side Broadcasting Network has gone from an upstart internet broadcaster to a major player in Donald Trump’s universe, amassing more than 2 million subscribers on its YouTube channel and on Rumble.

Lara Trump is taking the reins and reshaping the RNC in her father-in-law’s image

Lara Trump became co-chair of the Republican National Committee in March, culminating efforts by her father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, and his allies to shake up the party’s governing body.

US prisoners are being assigned dangerous jobs. But what happens if they are hurt or killed?

An Associated Press investigation into prison labor in the United States found that prisoners who are hurt or killed on the job are often being denied the rights and protections offered to other American workers.

Risks of handcuffing someone facedown long known; people die when police training fails to keep up

For decades, police across the United States have been warned that the common tactic of handcuffing someone facedown could turn deadly if officers pin them on the ground with too much pressure or for too long.

AP Investigation: In hundreds of deadly police encounters, officers broke multiple safety guidelines

An Associated Press investigation found that police across the U.S. violated well-known guidelines for safely restraining people in hundreds of fatal encounters that didn’t involve a firearm.

‘They tortured us': Rohingya survivors of fatal capsize say captain raped girls, purposely sank boat

In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat that was carrying Rohingya refugees when it capsized off Indonesia.