Category: World News

You might be able to find the payment details by logging into your online account or looking at your most recent statement. If you have difficulty finding the information, call your lender’s customer service department.

Understanding the terms of your current auto loan can help you decide if refinancing your car loan will help improve your situation.

2. Find out how much your car is worth

When you refinance your car, the lender considers how much your car is worth. Many cars depreciate in value the moment you drive them off the lot, so your loan balance may exceed your car’s market value. This is sometimes called negative equity or being upside-down. If you’re upside-down on your car loan, it might be difficult to refinance. 

Some lenders specialize in refinancing negative equity, but you might end up with a higher interest rate. If you want to refinance an upside-down auto loan, consider making extra principal payments until you’re no longer in a negative equity position.

Even if you’re not upside-down, you might not be approved for the full amount a lender offers if your car isn’t worth that much—unless you’re applying for a cash-out refinance. 

A cash-out refinance is when you borrow more than your car is worth and receive the difference in cash. For example, if your car is worth $16,000 and you owe $12,000, you might qualify for a cash-out refinance. You might be able to get an auto loan refinance for $15,000. You pay off the outstanding $12,000 and pocket the remaining $3,000.

3. Check your credit

As with other loans, the terms you receive on an auto loan refinance depend largely on your credit history and score. Checking your credit report won’t hurt your credit score, and it can provide insight into what you can realistically expect.

If you have good credit, you’re more likely to get a lower interest rate on your loan. Additionally, you might qualify for a cash-out refinance or be able to refinance an upside-down loan if you have good or excellent credit.

When you have fair or poor credit, you might pay a higher interest rate. So, the loan might cost you more in the long run, especially if you refinance to a longer term. 

By checking your credit, you can see if there are errors you need to correct before applying for a loan refinance, or you can determine whether you need to take steps to improve your credit before moving forward with an auto loan refinance.

4. Gather documentation

The refinance car loan process requires the kind of documentation typically needed for any loan. If you gather the necessary information early on, you can streamline the process, increase the chances of a quick approval and receive your funds faster. Items you typically need include:

• Identifying information (Social Security number, driver’s license number, birth date, address, phone number and email address)
• Pay stubs or other proof of income
• Your vehicle identification number (VIN)
• Vehicle registration information
• Proof of car insurance
• Loan payoff statement from your current lender

Keep this information readily available so you can use it while shopping around for lenders.

Related: What Are the Requirements for Refinancing Your Car? 

5. Compare lenders for the best car refinance rates

Choose three to five lenders and compare their rates and other loan terms. Look for lenders that provide loan quotes using prequalification without a credit check. 

Your prequalification quote isn’t your final interest rate, but you can use the information to compare lenders and choose the best auto refinance loan. Lenders also share your potential borrowing limits and the available term lengths. 

Determine which loan offers you the best chance of reaching your goals. If you want to pay less in interest, refinancing to a lower interest rate and shorter loan term can potentially put hundreds of dollars back in your pocket. On the other hand, if you need a little more breathing room in your budget, you might decide to refinance to a longer term for a lower payment, even if it means an added interest cost.

Related: How to Get Preapproved for a Car Loan

6. Complete your loan application

Once you decide on a lender, fill out the loan application. Your final loan amount and interest rate might be different from your quote, but if you provided accurate information, they shouldn’t drastically vary. 

You can fill out an official loan application with more than one lender, but keep in mind that each lender will use a hard credit inquiry. However, all of the inquiries made for the same type of loan within a 14-day period are considered one inquiry for credit score purposes, so if you decide to complete applications with multiple lenders, try to do so within a short period of time.

After you’re approved, decide whether you agree to the terms. If you do, sign the paperwork and confirm the process for paying off your old car loan. Verify that your original loan is paid off and make arrangements to begin sending payments to your new lender.

KHARKIV, Ukraine — In a mirrored basement studio in this front-line city, seven women are practicing jumping splits.

They’re in their 50s and 60s — some have grandchildren. They wear matching Ukraine T-shirts and shake silvery pompoms to the beat of “She’s A Lady” by Tom Jones.

This is Sunrise, a competitive cheerleading squad. They have embraced this feel-good American sport as a way to cope with extreme stress and anxiety during four years of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine.

“We train no matter what,” says Iryna Nesterenko, the squad’s captain. “When it’s dark, and we’re walking through the street while everything is burning. When there’s no light. I tell my girls: ‘We are the light.’”

Nesterenko, the squad’s captain, explains why they chose Sunrise as their name.

“We used to be fearful of the sunrise,” she says. “The war began at dawn. We were often bombed at dawn. But I did not want us to be afraid. I wanted us to find a way to rejoice.”

Since Ukraine became a modern independent state in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it has embraced American culture. Cheerleading began its rise 20 years ago and has surged in popularity since the full-scale war, says Andriy Bolyak, president of the Cheerleading and Cheer Sport Federation of Ukraine.

He says many squads fled the country after the 2022 Russian invasion.

“As of today, though, we are back to prewar numbers. That’s because we have a lot of new teams,” he says.

Bolyak attributes the rise in cheerleading’s popularity to Ukrainians seeking emotional respite from wartime stress and terror. Only 4% of Ukrainians describe their mental health as good, according to a January survey by Helsi, the largest medical information system in Ukraine.

Bolyak says that though children make up most of the teams, several new ones are composed of women over 50, including Nice Ladies, a team profiled in a 2024 documentary. Like Sunrise, Nice Ladies also hail from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where Bolyak says some of the first national cheerleading competitions were held.

The city is just 20 miles from the Russian border.

“We were bombed every night”

Nesterenko has lived in Kharkiv nearly all her life. She’s 63, a lifelong athlete who used to be a competitive gymnast.

She meets NPR at a Kharkiv tea house, along with two other Sunrise cheerleaders and the team choreographer.

“How can you distract yourself during a war?” Nesterenko asks. “How about exercising with pompoms?”

She sounds lighthearted but the truth is more painful. The war has traumatized every member of the team.

Nesterenko recalls the terrifying first days of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Her home was bombed.

“We hid in the basement for five days,” she says. “Then our food ran out, our cat food ran out, everything ran out.”

She and her husband grabbed their cats and drove west. When they returned in 2023, after Ukrainian troops drove Russian forces out of the Kharkiv region, the city was no longer under imminent threat of occupation. Russia, however, was still constantly attacking.

Nesterenko’s friend Inna Skryl, a chemistry teacher, told her the strikes came like clockwork.

“We were bombed every night at the same time,” Skryl says. “We huddled in the hallways. That pushed me into depression.”

The two friends soon realized everyone in their circle was struggling with extreme stress. Nesterenko saw no end to it.

“You think, tomorrow the war will be over, or in a month, or soon but no no no, we are living with this war.” she says. “So we decided to stop waiting and start living.”

“We will heal you”

In 2024, Nesterenko brought pom-poms to an aerobics class she was teaching to friends. Something clicked.

“We moved as one, like a united Ukraine, everything synchronized,” she says. “And suddenly cheerleading was the only choice.”

Cheerleading became more than a wartime sport to distract Nesterenko and her friends from the war. The team’s first name was Best Friends, Nesterenko says, because the women lifted each other up, sometimes literally.

Halyna Plakhuta, a 63-year-old economist, had been a full-time caretaker during the war and had grown physically fragile. She told Nesterenko she had a bad arm and shaky knees and would make a lousy cheerleader.

“I said, look, is there anything you can do about that?” Plakhuta says. “And she made a star out of me.”

Plakhuta says she can now jump high enough now to impress her young granddaughter, who made good-luck amulets for the team when they competed in the European championships.

Every Monday, Plakhuta joins the other cheerleaders in the basement studio. They include a doctor, an accountant and a beautician who makes the team’s costumes.

Natalia Pivovarova is a 59-year-old accountant. She cared for her bedridden mother as Russian attacks blew out their windows.

Cheerleading, she says, has been the best therapy.

“My friends abroad call me, saying they’re depressed,” she says. “And I say, come to Kharkiv. We will heal you.”

“Our best life”

During a recent rehearsal, the cheerleaders line up behind Nesterenko, who cues a medley for their routine. The first song is by ABBA. The women smile and step forward.

“We are living our best life,” Nesterenko declares. “We may train underground, we may huddle in shelters from bombs, but no matter what, this is going to be our best life.”

A few weeks later, the Sunrise cheerleaders arrive in the capital, Kyiv, for a national competition.

They wear navy-blue leotards and rub glitter on their faces.

“We always compete to win,” Nesterenko says. “But really, we have already won.”

It’s a bit of a joke, since Sunrise is the only team in the over-25 age group competing today. Nesterenko, however, is talking about a symbolic victory, one that helped a group of friends in one of Ukraine’s most bombed cities to flex optimism like a muscle.

“Look around,” she says. “Listen to all that joy.”

The auditorium is filled with cheerleaders who are all decades younger, some as young as the Sunrise squad’s own grandchildren. The cheerleaders shriek and clap loudly as the women of Sunrise run to center stage, ready to shine.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan and Afghanistan traded cross-border attacks overnight, government officials from both countries confirmed to NBC News on Friday, alleging heavy losses on both sides as Pakistan’s defense minister declared “open war” between the two South Asian nations.

Tensions between the two countries, which share a 1,600-mile border, have been simmering for months as they struggle to maintain a Qatar-mediated ceasefire they reached in October, with occasional cross-border skirmishes. Pakistan, which is struggling with a surge in militant attacks since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, says the attackers are using Afghanistan as a base.

The Taliban, which returned to power with the U.S. withdrawal, denies harboring militants.

The fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan threatens to further destabilize a region where terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are trying to remobilize.

The latest violence began Thursday night when the Taliban launched what it called retaliatory attacks on military installations in northwest Pakistan.

Residents and government and military officials in Pakistan’s border areas said heavy fighting started around 8 p.m. local time (10 a.m. ET), causing panic among residents.

“We had to leave our homes in the middle of the night” as Afghan forces fired rockets and mortar shells from across the border, said Dilbar Khan Afridi, a tribesman fleeing the Tirah Valley, a mountainous region in the Khyber district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Hours later, Pakistan said it had struck military targets in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as well as Kandahar and Paktia provinces.

“Pakistani counterstrikes against targets in Afghanistan continue,” a Pakistani government spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, said early Friday on X. Earlier, he said Pakistan had conducted the strikes “in response to unprovoked Afghan attacks.”

There were conflicting claims from the two sides about the damage and casualties they inflicted on each other.

Pakistan said 133 Afghan Taliban had been killed and more than 200 had been wounded, with “many more casualties” estimated. Zaidi did not specify where the casualties occurred. He also said 27 Afghan Taliban posts had been destroyed and nine had been captured.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that eight Taliban fighters had been killed and 11 wounded in Nangarhar province.

He said Afghanistan’s earlier attack on Pakistan killed 55 Pakistani soldiers, some of whose bodies were taken to Afghanistan, and that others were captured alive. Nineteen Pakistani army posts were seized, he said. Zaidi denied the claims.

The Taliban said the attacks Thursday night were in retaliation for Pakistan’s deadly strikes on Afghan border areas Sunday. Pakistan said that those attacks targeted militants and that at least 70 were killed, while Afghanistan said dozens of civilians were killed, including women and children.

Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Friday that since regaining power in 2021, the Taliban had turned Afghanistan into a “proxy for India” — Pakistan’s archrival — and made it a gathering place for militants who started “exporting terrorism.”

“Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Asif said on X. “Now it is open war between us and you.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to protect civilians and “to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, also called for a peaceful resolution. Pakistan and Afghanistan have yet to reach a formal agreement after several rounds of peace talks failed in November.

“This is a terrible dynamic that must stop,” Khalilzad said on X. “Innocent Afghans and Pakistanis are getting injured or killed.”

The latest attacks are a “dangerous escalation” that take the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan into “uncharted territory,” said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Frustrated by Afghanistan’s refusal to disown the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP — a militant group Pakistan blames for much of the violence that is separate from but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban — Pakistan is now attacking not just border areas but cities, and not just militants but the Taliban government that is protecting them, Basit said.

“I think Pakistani patience has run out. It has been four years now,” Basit said. “They have been trying to convince them, and they have been picking up dead bodies of their men, their officers, of civilians, and now they have come to a state where they’re saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”

But the latest attacks have brought the conflict to a new level, he said, and any de-escalation is likely to be temporary “unless a miracle happens.”

With the Taliban lacking conventional capabilities such as an air force or missiles, that could mean sending proxies as suicide bombers in Pakistani cities as the end of winter leads into the peak season for attacks, Basit said.

“I think summer has arrived early in 2026, and we are looking at a bloody summer,” he said.

The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan also has implications far beyond the region, Basit said. Tensions between the two countries strengthen global terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and they are not likely to contain their attacks to South Asia.

“If they get strengthened, that undermines U.S. homeland security as well,” he said.

After a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests that left thousands dead, Iranian authorities are taking the next step to crush dissent: mass arrests.

Tens of thousands of people were arrested during the nationwide unrest, and security forces are still tracking down and detaining people they believe attended protests that called for an end to theocratic rule, according to human rights observers. But in recent weeks, authorities have also targeted specific groups perceived as threats to the regime, including reformist politicians, doctors, lawyers and journalists, rights groups say.

The arrests have not squashed the anti-government sentiment: Protests have broken out on a number of university campuses in recent days, according to state media and videos circulating on social media.

“What they have left is guns, prisons and the revolutionary courts. To kill and imprison people and in this way stay in power,” said Hossein Raeesi, a prominent human rights lawyer who practiced in Iran for 20 years and is now a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday in his State of the Union speech that Iran had killed at least 32,000 protesters.

“They shot them and hung them,” he said. “We stopped them from hanging a lot of them, with the threat of serious violence. But this is some terrible people.”

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) put the number of people killed in the protests at more than 7,000 as of Monday, with nearly 12,000 cases “under review.”

The group says that it verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran and that its data goes through “multiple internal checks.”

The U.S. is conducting a huge military buildup in the Middle East, with Trump not ruling out an attack on Iran even as the two countries hold nuclear talks.

Another round of talks was taking place Thursday in Geneva, while Iran has warned of a significant response to even a limited attack.

But while the regime seeks to hold off that external danger, it appears to be rooting out perceived internal threats.

More than 53,000 people have been arrested since the protests began, HRANA said in its report Monday. The head of Iran’s judiciary, hard-line cleric Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, labeled protesters “terrorists” and called for fast-tracked punishments.

Among the reformists who were swept up were Azar Mansouri, the head of the Reformist Front coalition; Javad Emam, a spokesman for the reformist faction; and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a hostage-taker at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979-turned-regime critic, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The arrests may have also been a message to President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is close to the reformists and had initially mentioned holding talks with protesters, analysts say. Mansouri, Asgharzadeh and Emam were all released on bail two weeks ago, according to the students news agency.

“The reformists themselves — bereft of popular trust — are no longer the real menace,” Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said in an email response to questions. “It is any structure, any network, any embryonic capacity to organize that the regime truly fears.”

The volume of arrests has been so high that thousands of people have spent at least part of their time at “black box detention sites,” off-the-grid locations such as warehouses, truck containers and storage facilities, according to Esfandiar Aban, the director of research at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group.

Detainees at the black box sites, some of whom are seriously wounded, do not receive medical care, do not have access to proper toilet facilities and are not logged in official records, raising the chances of torture or even death, Aban said.

“We get so many texts from people saying: ‘This is the name of my child. We have no idea where they have been for 40 days,’” Aban said in a phone interview. “It’s terrible pressure for the family. They don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”

Some detainees are tortured to get information about other protesters or to get confessions, usually admitting to working with foreign governments, which are often televised, according to Aban, who has documented over 300 confessions carried in various state media outlets since the protests began.

The parents of some protesters who have been arrested have also been pressured to help get confessions, said Moein Khazaeli, a lawyer and human rights researcher with Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based outside the country who offer online legal advice and have monitored the wave of arrests.

“They’ll say, for example, go tell your son to confess and we’ll help him. Otherwise his sentence is execution, or his sentence is 20 years’ imprisonment, or we won’t release him anytime soon,” Khazaeli said, noting that other family members are also threatened with arrest.

He added, “Sometimes they have arrested the father of a detainee and taken him to jail and then bring the guy who’s in jail to show him and say, ‘Look, we’ve got your dad, so sit down and confess.’”

Many lawyers have been prevented from getting involved in cases, said Raeesi, the human rights lawyer based in Canada. Some who have offered their services pro bono on social media or have represented protesters in previous rounds of unrest have been arrested, he said.

Doctors and other medical personnel have also been arrested for providing medical care to protesters, according to human rights groups.

“The government has used different techniques to get rid of the doctors who protest the presence of security forces or who treat the patients” said Homa Fathi, a Canada-based activist and member of the International Independent Physicians and Healthcare Providers Association, who has been in touch with medical personnel in Iran and documented arrests.

“They just wanted people to die. It’s not very complicated. They just wanted to kill people. And if you are treating the people, you are a barrier in their way. It’s unfortunately as cruel and as simple as that.”

Human rights groups have documented the torture of detainees.

“Authorities have subjected detainees to torture and other ill-treatment. Those detained are at serious risk of death in custody, grossly unfair trials, and secret, summary, and arbitrary executions,” Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday.

The torture and ill treatment have included “severe beatings with batons; kicks and punches; sexual and gender-based violence; food deprivation; and psychological torture, such as threats of execution, and denial of medical care to those injured,” the group said.

It is unlikely that the regime will stop the arrests anytime soon, observers say.

“The regime is wielding fear as its principal instrument, hoping to terrify a weary nation into political hibernation,” said Vaez, of the International Crisis Group. “But fear is a blunt tool against a people who have exhausted their patience and, increasingly, their fear of the consequences.”

HAVANA — Cuban soldiers killed four people and wounded six others aboard a Florida-registered speed boat that had entered Cuban waters and opened fire first on soldiers, the Cuban government said Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that he was made aware of the incident with Cuban soldiers and that the U.S. is now gathering its own information to determine if the victims were American citizens or permanent residents.

“We have various different elements of the U.S. government that are trying to identify elements of the story that may not be provided to us now,” Rubio said while at the airport in Basseterre, St. Kitts.

Trump’s top diplomat refused to speculate on what happened, saying that its could be a “wide range of things,” and that the U.S. will not solely rely on what the Cuban authorities have provided thus far.

“Suffice it to say, it is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that. It’s not something that happens every day,” he said.

Earlier, Cuba’s Interior Ministry issued a statement that provided few details about the shooting, but noted that the boat was roughly 1 mile northeast of Cayo Falcones, off Cuba’s north coast.

The government provided the boat’s registration number, but The Associated Press was unable to readily verify details of the boat because boat registrations are not public in the state of Florida.

Officials said one Cuban officer was injured, four suspects killed and six others injured.

It wasn’t immediately known what the boat and its occupants were doing in Cuban waters. In the statement, the ministry said Cuba’s government was “safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.”

The incident comes as tensions simmer between the U.S. and Cuba in the wake of mounting pressure by the Trump administration. The two countries used to collaborate on drug smuggling and other crimes but have since stopped doing so.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said late Wednesday afternoon that he had been briefed on the incident by Rubio. He added that the White House was monitoring the situation, but declined to provide further details.

“Hopefully it’s not as bad as we fear it could be,” Vance said.

James Uthmeier, Florida’s attorney general, said he has ordered prosecutors to work with federal, state and law enforcement partners to start an investigation.

“The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable,” he wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Florida Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez decried the four killings and accused the Cuban government of murder.

“This regime must be relegated to the dust bin of history!” he wrote on X.

It’s not unusual for skirmishes to erupt between Cuba’s Coast Guard and U.S.-flagged speedboats in Cuban waters, but there have been no recent reports of passengers opening fire or being killed.

In past years, some of those U.S.-flagged boats were laden with unidentified items headed toward the island or they were going to pick up Cubans and smuggle them into the U.S.