BEIJING (AP) — China’s burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand the country's orbiting space station, officials said Monday. Monday’s announcement comes amid the background of a rivalry with the U.S. for reaching new milestones in outer space, reflecting their competition for influence on global events.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Explosions rattled Kyiv during daylight Monday as Russian ballistic missiles took aim at the Ukrainian capital, hours after a more common nighttime barrage of the city by drones and cruise missiles. Russian forces fired 11 ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv at about 11:30 a.m., according to Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. All of them were shot down, he said, and puffs of white smoke could be seen in the blue sky over the city from street level.

MILAN (AP) — Police in Venice are investigating the source of a phosphorescent green liquid patch that appeared Sunday in the city’s famed Grand Canal. The governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, posted a photo of the green liquid that spread through the water near the arched Rialto Bridge. The patch was reported by residents.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won reelection Sunday, extending his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade as the country reels from high inflation and the aftermath of an earthquake that leveled entire cities. A third term gives Erdogan, a polarizing populist, an even stronger hand domestically and internationally, and the election results will have implications far beyond the capital of Ankara. Turkey stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and it plays a key role in NATO.

TOKYO (AP) — North Korea has notified neighboring Japan that it plans to launch a satellite in coming days, which may be an attempt to put Pyongyang's first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit. Japan's coast guard said the notice it received from North Korean waterway authorities said the launch window was from May 31 and June 11 and that the launch may affect waters in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and east of the Philippines' Luzon Island.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The two children squinted to see through the thick smoke that hung in the air after a deafening blast shook their small home in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The pair, ages 9 and 10, called out for their father. Only eerie silence followed. Then Olha Hinkina and her brother, Andrii, rushed to the bomb shelter, as they had been taught. When the booms stopped and the smoke cleared, they found their father on the porch — motionless and covered in blood after being struck by a Russian projectile.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A passenger opened an emergency exit door during a plane flight in South Korea on Friday, causing air to blast inside the cabin and slightly injure 12 people, officials said. The plane landed safely. Some people aboard the Asiana Airlines Airbus A321 aircraft tried to stop the person, who was able to partially open the door, the Transport Ministry said.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Russia and Belarus signed a deal Thursday formalizing the deployment of Moscow’s tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of its ally, although control of the weapons remains in the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of the shorter-range weapons in Belarus earlier this year in a move widely seen as a warning to the West as it stepped up military support for Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private military contractor Wagner claimed Thursday that his forces have started pulling out of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine and handing over control to the Russian military, days after he said Wagner troops had captured the ruined city.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 fighters in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, with about 20% of the 50,000 Russian convicts he recruited to fight in the 15-month war dying in the eastern Ukrainian city.