TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China’s military declared Monday it is “ready to fight” after completing three days of large-scale combat exercises around Taiwan that simulated sealing off the island in response to the Taiwanese president’s trip to the U.S. last week. The “combat readiness patrols” named Joint Sword were meant as a warning to self-governing Taiwan, which China claims as its own, China's military said earlier.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Thousands of Israelis led by at least seven Cabinet ministers marched Monday to the evacuated West Bank settlement of Eviatar, in a signal that Israel's government is determined to accelerate settlement building on occupied lands. Eviatar, an unauthorized settlement outpost in the northern West Bank, was evacuated by the previous Israeli government in 2021, 

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli warplanes and artillery struck targets in Syria after militants fired rockets from the northeastern neighbor, as Jewish-Muslim tensions reached a peak Sunday at a volatile Jerusalem shrine with simultaneous religious rituals. Thousands of Jewish worshippers gathered at the city's Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, for a mass priestly benediction prayer service for the Passover holiday. At the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a walled esplanade above the Western Wall, hundreds of Palestinians performed prayers as part of observances during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — Eight people remained missing after the building they lived in exploded and collapsed early Sunday near the port of Marseille, leaving mounds of burning debris hampering rescue operations, officials said. More than 100 firefighters worked against a ticking clock to extinguish flames deep within the rubble of the five-story building, but more than 17 hours later “the situation is not yet stabilized,” Marseille Prosecutor Dominique Laurens said at an evening news conference.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Weekend shelling by Russian forces killed at least seven civilians, Ukrainian officials reported Sunday as Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby used their traditional Easter messages to highlight the war in Ukraine and other conflicts around the world.

LONDON (AP) — King Charles III plans to take a shortcut and smoother ride to Westminster Abbey for his coronation, trimming the procession route his mother took in 1953 as he aims for a more modest event that will include some modern touches, Buckingham Palace said Sunday.

Deep underground in southeastern Ukraine, miners work around the clock extracting coal to power the country’s war effort and to provide civilians with light and heat. The chief engineer of a mining …

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China retaliated for the United States House speaker's meeting with the Taiwanese president by announcing sanctions Friday against the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and other organizations, adding to strains over the self-governed island democracy Beijing claims as part of its territory.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel unleashed rare airstrikes on Lebanon and continued bombarding the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict following days of violence over Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. Later Friday, there were signs that both sides were trying to keep the hostilities in check. Fighting on Israel's northern and southern borders subsided after dawn, and midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem passed peacefully. But two women were killed in a Palestinian attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank near an Israeli settlement just hours later.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Militants in Lebanon fired a heavy barrage of rockets at Israel on Thursday, the Israeli military said, forcing people across Israel's northern frontier into bomb shelters, wounding at least two people and ratcheting up regional tensions a day after Israeli police raided Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site.

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Thursday for peace talks over Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron appealed to him to “bring Russia to its senses,” but Xi gave no indication Beijing would use its leverage as Vladimir Putin's diplomatic partner to press for a settlement. Xi gave no sign China, which declared it had a “no limits friendship” with Moscow before last year's invasion, had changed its stance since calling for peace talks in February.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart on Thursday discussed expanding the economic cooperation and bolstering the defense ties between their nations, which include a plan to deploy Russia's nuclear weapons to Belarus amid the fighting in neighboring Ukraine.

TOKYO (AP) — A missing Japanese army helicopter carrying 10 crew members is believed to have crashed into the sea off a southern island after objects appearing to be aircraft parts were spotted in the area, an official said Thursday. The UH-60JA Black Hawk helicopter disappeared from radar on Thursday afternoon while on a reconnaissance mission north of Miyako island, the head of the Ground Self Defense Force, Yasunori Morishita, said at a news conference.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Long-time Mideast rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia took another significant step toward reconciliation Thursday, formally restoring diplomatic ties after a seven-year rift, affirming the need for regional stability and agreeing to pursue economic cooperation. The agreement was reached in Beijing during a meeting between the Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers, a month after China had brokered an initial reconciliation agreement between the two regional powerhouses.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China vowed reprisals against Taiwan after a meeting between the United States House speaker and the island's president, saying Thursday that the U.S. was on a “wrong and dangerous road.” Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday in a show of U.S. support for the self-governed island, which China claims as its own, along with a bipartisan delegation of more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A man with a hatchet jumped over a wall and invaded a daycare center Wednesday in Brazil, killing four children and wounding at least five others, authorities said. The assailant turned himself in at a police station and did not appear to have any connection with the center, which offers nursery services, preschool education and after-school activities. The dead were between the ages of 5 and 7, authorities said.

BEIRUT (AP) — Suspected Israeli airstrikes in Syria in recent weeks have killed two Iranian military advisers, temporarily put the country’s two largest airports out of service, and raised fears of regional escalation. While Israel has fought a shadow war with Iran in Syria for years, it has intensified recently, with near-daily airstrikes attributed to Israel by Syrian officials over the past week. The escalation of attacks comes after what appears to be a rare infiltration by an armed man from Lebanon into Israel and Iran’s reconciliation with regional rival Saudi Arabia last month.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his wife were welcomed with military honors, tributes and praise in Poland on Wednesday at the start of a state visit meant as a gesture of thanks by Kyiv to its neighbor for its crucial support in Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion.

LONDON (AP) — On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He switched off his phone to shut out the crescendo of urgent, enraged messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia and tried to calm his fast-beating heart.

LONDON (AP) — King Charles III’s wife has been officially identified as Queen Camilla for the first time, with Buckingham Palace using the title on invitations for the monarch’s May 6 coronation. Camilla, who until now has been described as queen consort, is given equal billing on the ornate medieval-style invitations that will be sent to more than 2,000 guests and were unveiled on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will send Ukraine about $500 million in ammunition and equipment and spend more than $2 billion to buy an array of munitions, radar and new weapons to help Kyiv counter drones in the coming months, the Pentagon said Tuesday, as Ukrainian troops gear up for a spring offensive against Russian forces.

VOORSCHOTEN, Netherlands (AP) — A passenger train slammed into a construction crane and derailed near The Hague in the early hours of Tuesday, sending two carriages into a field next to the tracks. One person died and 19 were hospitalized, Dutch emergency services said. Police opened an investigation to establish if any crime was committed. Another independent probe was opened into the cause of the crash.

BEIRUT (AP) — A drone strike carried out by the American-led coalition in northwestern Syria has killed a senior member of the Islamic State group who was in charge of planning attacks in Europe, the United States military said Tuesday. The man killed Monday in the strike was identified by a U.S. military statement as Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri. The military statement added that his death “will temporarily disrupt the organization's ability to plot external attacks.”

TOKYO (AP) — Images captured by a robotic probe inside one of the three melted reactors at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant showed exposed steel bars in the main supporting structure and parts of its thick external concrete wall missing, triggering concerns about its earthquake resistance in case of another major disaster.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Finland joined the NATO military alliance Tuesday, dealing a major blow to Russia with a historic realignment of the continent triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The Nordic country's membership doubles Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance and represents a major change in Europe’s security landscape: The nation adopted neutrality after its defeat by the Soviets in World War II. But its leaders signaled they wanted to join the alliance just months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent a shiver of fear through Moscow’s neighbors.