LEO CORREA

A Palestinian man carves an olive-wood sculpture of Jesus Christ at the Zacharia workshop before Holy Week celebrations in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
PHOTO ESSAY: Workshops empty, Bethlehem carvers fret over second Easter with no tourists
Bethlehem workshops where carvers toil over small pieces of olive wood sit empty these days.

On most Easters the shops lining the streets of the town known as Jesus’s birthplace would be bustling with tourists.
 
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Israel,Thursday, March 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Israel’s antisemitism conference draws Europe’s far-right leaders to Jerusalem
 
People stand outside their homes at a residential area as members of the new security forces take part in an operation to detain, according to the state media, militiamen affiliated with ousted president Bashar Assad in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
AP PHOTOS: Syria’s new security forces conduct sweeps in Homs, looking for ousted Assad’s loyalists
Syria’s new security forces have deployed in tanks in the city of Homs to search for militia members and former soldiers loyal to ousted President Bashar Assad who have refused to surrender their weapons.
 
Razor and barbed wires are strung along a wall of the infamous Saydnaya military prison on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
AP PHOTOS: Glimpses of horror emerge inside Syria’s Saydnaya prison, dubbed ‘The Slaughterhouse’
A coarse, heavy rope lies on the ground, tied into a hangman’s noose.
 
Syrian fighters aims their weapons in direction of suspected looters at a residential complex of former Bashar Assad's military officers at the village of Husseiniyeh, in the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Syrian rebel force deploys to a village near Damascus to stop looters
A rebel force has deployed to a village in southeastern Damascus to stop looters who swarmed a residential complex in the area and set some apartments on fire.
 
Lilach Almog talks about the Hamas attack on the police department in her city on Oct. 7, 2023, during an interview at her apartment in Sderot, Israel, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. Almog, who lives across from the police station that was destroyed during the attack, witnessed the movements of the Hamas militants and Israeli forces from her bedroom window. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A year later, Israeli survivors reflect on the lingering toll of Oct. 7
One year after the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants, survivors reflect on that day’s lingering toll. They hid in bedrooms, bomb shelters, safe rooms and even beneath trees as Hamas militants poured across the border.
 
Israeli soldiers move next to buildings destroyed by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
AP PHOTOS: A visit to Gaza reveals rubble, tunnels and new asphalt along Egypt’s border
The escorted tour on Friday was a rare glimpse of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah and the Philadelphi corridor, the narrow strip that borders Egypt and which Israeli troops seized in May. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel must keep control of it under any cease-fire deal, a demand rejected
 
Members of the Druze minority attend a memorial ceremony, Monday, July 29, 2024, for the children and teens, killed in a rocket strike at a soccer field over the weekend in the village of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Netanyahu vows retaliation against Hezbollah after weekend strike as US warns against escalation
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel’s response would be “severe” as he blamed Hezbollah for a weekend rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 children.
 
U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, left, talks to Robt Pellech, manager of the containers department of Ashdod port as they visit the area where cargo ships arrive, carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza Strip, in Ashdod, Israel, Thursday, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Head of US aid agency says Israel has pledged to improve safety for humanitarian workers in Gaza
The head of the U.S. agency overseeing American humanitarian assistance worldwide says Israel has agreed to use an improved system across the Gaza Strip to ensure humanitarian workers and aid can more safely move around.
 
U.S. Army soldiers gestures as trucks loaded with humanitarian aid arrive at the U.S.-built floating pier Trident before reaching the beach on the coast of the Gaza Strip, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
US military shows reporters pier project in Gaza as it takes another stab at aid delivery
A $230 million pier project that the U.S. has built on the coast of Gaza to deliver badly needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza is running again. The project has faced many setbacks since it was built.
 
Members of the U.S. Air Force fly over the Mediterranean Sea toward the coast to drop humanitarian aid over Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
AP reporters aboard a US military plane watch small batches of aid airdropped on a destroyed Gaza
Two Associated Press journalists aboard an American aid flight to Gaza observed the wreckage to the strip’s north as the plane delivered much-needed food aid to Palestinians below.
 
Amadou Altine Ndiaye stands for a portrait in the village of Yawara Dieri, in the Matam region of Senegal, Saturday, April 15, 2023. The 48 year-old herder, who had cattle and sheep present at his birth, says that he was born into pastoralism, and since then he has known only that. For Ndiaye, who began tending to his family's flock when he was just 8 years old, his profession is also an inherited tradition. "It's a source of pride. ... We Fulanis would be lost if we had to change our method of pastoralism because those who haven't studied couldn't adapt to modern methods," he says. "The best thing is to continue with our know-how." (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
AP PHOTOS: The faces of pastoralists in Senegal, where connection to animals is key
“It’s a profession, but it’s also an inherited tradition,” says Amadou Altine Ndiaye, 48, who began tending to his family’s flock when he was 8. “It’s a source of pride.”
 
Dieynaba Toure, 46, milks a cow at the compound of her family in the village of Anndiare, in the Matam region of Senegal, Wednesday, April 12, 2023. Overall, per-person meat consumption in Senegal is among the lowest in the world. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
AP PHOTOS: Pastoralists in Senegal raise livestock much as their ancestors did centuries ago
As the Sahara Desert encroaches ever southward, the amount of arable land for animals to graze decreases each year. That’s putting extra pressure on pastoralist herders. Among them is Amadou Altine Ndiaye, who earlier this year made a 170-kilometer (106-mile) trek in search of more verdant land for
 
Brazil becoming coronavirus hot spot as testing falters
Latin America’s largest nation is veering closer to becoming one of the world’s coronavirus hot spots.
 
Indigenous leader in Brazil’s Amazon tries to thwart loggers
Much of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is done illegally. Landgrabbers burn areas to clear land for agriculture and loggers encroach on national forests and indigenous reserves.