KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s defense minister said Wednesday his country has received the U.S-made Patriot surface-to-air guided missile systems it has long craved and which Kyiv hopes will help shield it from Russian airstrikes during the war. “Today, our beautiful Ukrainian sky becomes more secure because Patriot air defense systems have arrived in Ukraine,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a tweet.

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — It’s a feeble drip, drip, drip from the taps every night in Tunisia for six months. Spigots are cut off for seven hours from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. in state-ordered water rationing in most regions across the country, including Tunis, the capital city. Tunisians are on the front lines of a battle against an increasingly severe drought, now in its fifth year in the north African country, with the government issuing a sudden order to its population to ration their water usage from April to September — or risk fines or jail.

BEIJING (AP) — The death toll from a fire at a Beijing hospital rose to 29, including 26 patients, authorities said Wednesday, and a dozen people had been detained including the hospital's head and her deputy. The fire broke out at the private Changfeng Hospital on Tuesday afternoon and forced dozens of people to evacuate. Some who were trapped had to escape from windows using bedsheets tied together.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country has built its first-ever military spy satellite and that he planned to launch it on an undisclosed date, state media reported Wednesday. Previous missile and rocket tests have demonstrated that North Korea can send satellites into space, but many experts question whether it has cameras sophisticated enough to use for spying from a satellite because only low-resolution images were released after past test launches.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Explosions and heavy gunfire rattled the Sudanese capital in a fifth day of fighting Wednesday after an internationally brokered truce quickly fell apart. The cease-fire failure suggested the two rival generals fighting for control of the country were determined to crush each other in a potentially prolonged conflict.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin visited command posts of his forces fighting in Ukraine for the second time in two months, officials said Tuesday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his latest trip near the front line. The visits — on different days and in different provinces — sought to stiffen the resolve of soldiers as the war approaches its 14th month and as Kyiv readies a possible counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China denied all accusations of an overseas police presence, saying Tuesday that the United States was making “groundless accusations” after U.S. law enforcement arrested two men in New York for establishing a secret police station.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland has begun building a state-of-the-art electronic barrier at its land border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to monitor and counteract any illegal activity, the Polish interior minister said Tuesday. The barrier, which will be equipped with 24-hour monitoring cameras and motion detectors, will run for 130 miles and is due to be completed in the fall.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — The Sudanese army and a rival paramilitary force that have been battling the past four days for control of the country agreed on Tuesday to a 24-hour cease-fire, Arab media reports said. Hopes for at least a pause in the violence came as intensified fighting threatened to spiral even further into chaos. Millions of Sudanese in the capital and in other major cities have been hiding in their homes, caught in the crossfire as the two forces pounded residential areas with artillery and airstrikes and engaged in gunbattles in the street.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin visited command posts of the Kremlin’s forces fighting in Ukraine, officials said Tuesday, as the war approaches its 14th month and Kyiv readies a possible counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons. A video released by the Kremlin and broadcast by Russian state television showed Putin arriving by helicopter at the command post of Russian forces in southern Ukraine's Kherson province and then flying to the headquarters of the Russian National Guard in Luhansk province, which is in the east.