MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (AP) — Donald Trump surrounded himself with leaders from Nikki Haley’s home state in a show of strength ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

Trump was joined at a rally at the NHU Arena in Manchester Saturday night by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, the state’s lieutenant governor and a slew of other senior officials, including the state’s attorney general, treasurer and House speaker. The statewide officials, along with U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson, William Timmons and Russell Fry appeared on stage with Trump.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is preparing to use a new method of execution: nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, who survived the state’s previous attempt to put him to death by lethal injection in 2022, is scheduled to be put to death Thursday by nitrogen hypoxia. If carried out, it would the first new method of execution since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

The state maintains that nitrogen gas will cause unconsciousness quickly but critics have likened the never-used method of execution to human experimentation.

MOSCOW, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- A Russian charter jet with six people onboard crashed in Afghanistan on its way to Moscow from India via Uzbekistan, Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency confirmed on Sunday.

Russia's Investigation Commission on Sunday launched an investigation into the accident, while Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Russian embassy in Afghanistan is now cooperating with local authorities on the aftermath of the crash.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Moscow-installed officials said Ukrainian shelling killed at least 27 people and wounded 25 on Sunday at a market on the outskirts of Donetsk, a Russian-occupied city in the eastern part of the country.

Among the injured in the suburb of Tekstilshchik were two children, said Denis Pushilin, the local leader.

HOUSTON, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- At least three people were killed and two others injured after a "very chaotic" shooting early Sunday morning at a short-term rental home in the Huston area, U.S. state Texas, authorities said.

There was a gathering with about 10 to 20 people in their 20s at the rental home in Katy, a suburban city of Houston. A quarrel broke out and led to the shooting, leaving at least five people shot, said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

A man and a woman died at the scene, and one died in hospital, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his willingness to visit the North at an unspecified “early date” as the countries continue to align in the face of their separate, intensifying confrontations with the United States.

MOSCOW, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Sunday that NATO's Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises signify a final and irrevocable return to the Cold War schemes.

NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, announced earlier that the exercises, scheduled for next week, will be the largest in decades and will last for several months.

"These exercises are another component of the hybrid war that the West has waged against Russia," Grushko said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — At least 25 people were killed Sunday by shelling at a market on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in Russian-occupied Ukraine, local officials reported Sunday.

A further 20 people were injured in the strike on the suburb of Tekstilshchik, including two children, said Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-installed authorities in Donetsk. He said that the shells had been fired by the Ukrainian military.

Kyiv has not commented on the event and the claims could not be independently verified by The Associated Press.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — An Israeli strike on the Syrian capital on Saturday destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians, Syrian and Iranian state media reported.

The Syrian army said the building in the tightly guarded western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh was entirely destroyed, adding that the Israeli air force fired the missiles while flying over Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli military did not comment.

DUBLIN, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Airlines cancelled 102 flights in and out of Dublin airport on Sunday due to a storm that was forecast to rage for the rest of the day, the airport operator said.

Storm Isha had also forced 24 aborted landings by 1700 GMT, while 27 flights opted to divert to other airports, Dublin Airport said in a post on social media platform X.

TOKYO, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Approval ratings for Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has sunken to a record low in the wake of its slush fund scandal, according to the latest opinion poll.

Public support rate for the LDP dropped to 14.6 pct, down 3.7 percentage points from the previous month, Japanese news agency Jiji Press said in its latest survey.

It marked the lowest rate since the monthly poll started in 1960, excluding periods when the LDP was an opposition party, showed the January survey released on Thursday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street returned to record heights Friday to cap a punishing, two-year round trip dogged by high inflation and worries about a recession that seemed inevitable but hasn’t arrived.