JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli forces on Thursday killed nine Palestinians — including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman — in the deadliest single incident in the occupied West Bank in two decades, Palestinian officials said. Two rockets were fired from Gaza early Friday and Israel responded with airstrikes on the territory, further escalating tensions. The Israeli military said both Palestinian rockets were intercepted by its Iron Dome missile defense system. It was the first such attack from the militant Hamas-ruled territory since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power and pledged a tough line against Palestinian militancy.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A machete-wielding man killed a sexton and injured a priest in attacks at two churches in the city of Algeciras on Wednesday before being arrested, Spain’s interior ministry said, in what authorities are investigating as a possible act of terrorism. The suspect was arrested in the southern city and is in the custody of Spain’s National Police. The ministry did not identify him. The attack started around 7 p.m. when the armed man went into the San Isidro church and assaulted a priest, who was seriously injured, the ministry said.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Peru's capital and were met with volleys of tear gas and pellets amid clashes with security forces just hours after President Dina Boluarte called for a “truce” in almost two months of protests. The antigovernment protest Tuesday was the largest – and most violent — since last Thursday, when large groups of people, many from remote Andean regions, descended on the capital to demand Boluarte’s resignation, immediate elections and the dissolution of Congress.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Chris Hipkins was sworn in Wednesday as New Zealand's 41st prime minister, following the unexpected resignation last week of Jacinda Ardern. Hipkins, 44, has promised a back-to-basics approach focusing on the economy and what he described as the “pandemic of inflation.” He will have less than nine months before contesting a tough general election, with opinion polls indicating his Labour Party is trailing its conservative opposition.

BERLIN (AP) — After weeks of hesitation that created impatience among Germany's allies, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Wednesday that his government would provide Ukraine with Leopard 2 battle tanks and approve requests by other countries to do the same. The German government said it would initially provide Ukraine with one company of Leopard 2 A6 tanks, or 14 vehicles. The goal is for Germany and its allies to provide Ukraine with 88 of the German-made Leopards, which comprise two battalions.

OMMEREN, Netherlands (AP) — A hand-drawn map with a red letter X purportedly showing the location of a buried stash of precious jewelry looted by Nazis from a blown-up bank vault has sparked a modern-day treasure hunt in a tiny Dutch village more than three-quarters of a century later. Wielding metal detectors, shovels and copies of the map on cellphones, prospectors have descended on Ommeren — population 715 — about 50 miles southeast of Amsterdam to try to dig up a potential World War II trove based on the drawing first published on Jan. 3.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — An earthquake in Nepal rattled villages in remote Himalayan mountains on Tuesday, killing at least one person and injuring many more, officials said. The 5.9 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter in Bajura district hit in the afternoon, sending people fleeing their houses, according to the chief district officer, Puskar Khadka. He said one person was confirmed dead but details were still sketchy because many of the villages are accessible by foot.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Much of Pakistan was left without power for several hours on Monday morning as an energy-saving measure by the government backfired. The outage spread panic and raised questions about the cash-strapped government’s handling of the country's economic crisis. Electricity was turned off during low usage hours overnight to conserve fuel across the country, officials said, leaving technicians unable to boot up the system all at once after daybreak. The outage was reminiscent of a massive blackout in January 2021, attributed at the time to a technical fault in Pakistan's power generation and distribution system.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland said Monday it would ask Berlin for permission to send German-built Leopard tanks to Ukraine, as the government in Warsaw pushes its Western allies to move faster on supplying Kyiv with more military hardware to thwart Russia’s invasion. Germany has hesitated over sending tanks to Ukraine. But Polish officials took heart from the German foreign minister’s remarks on Sunday that Berlin wouldn't seek to stop Poland from providing Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The speaker of Russia's parliament warned Sunday that countries supplying Ukraine with more powerful weapons risked their own destruction, a message that followed new pledges of armored vehicles, air defense systems and other equipment but not the battle tanks Kyiv requested.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia claimed Friday to have captured a village in its intense, monthslong push toward the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, as military analysts cautioned that tanks that may be sent by Kyiv’s Western allies wouldn't be a magic wand in the almost 11-month war. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told a regular media briefing that the village of Klishchiivka, five miles south of Bakhmut, had been “liberated.”

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Thousands of protesters demanding the ouster of President Dina Boluarte poured into Peru’s capital, clashing with police who fired tear gas. Many came from remote regions, where dozens have died in unrest that has gripped the country since Peru’s first leader from a rural Andean background was removed from office last month. The protests have been marked by Peru’s worst political violence in more than two decades and highlighted deep divisions between the country’s urban elite, largely concentrated in Lima, and poor rural areas.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Protesters set fire to the police station and judicial office in the Peruvian town of Macusani Wednesday after two people were killed and another seriously injured by gunfire amid anti-government protests. The deaths were confirmed by Macusani health official Dr. Iván Fernández. They brought to 53 the number of people killed during more than a month of unrest following the ouster of President Pedro Castillo.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces a vast humanitarian catastrophe, as a wave of religiously motivated violence nurtured in Nigeria has swept across the region, targeting Christian populations at an alarming rate in countries like Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, and Niger. Signs of jihadist expansion are also clearly visible in Mozambique, Congo DR, and other countries. This is the disturbing finding of Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List. The list ranks the nations where Christians face the most severe persecution and discrimination.

More than 312 million Christian face high levels of persecution just in the countries on Open Doors’ World Watch List, the organization said Tuesday. Worldwide, the group says, that number is more than 360 million. The World Watch List is Open Doors’ annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians suffer very high or extreme levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. Most of the countries on the list are in Asia and Africa, although some Latin American nations are included. North Korea tops the list, followed by Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea and Libya.

BROVARY, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's interior minister died Wednesday in a helicopter crash near the capital that killed more than a dozen other people, including children, authorities said. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw Ukraine's police and emergency services, is the most senior official to die since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago. His death, along with two others from his ministry, was the second calamity in four days for Ukraine, after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building killed dozens of civilians.

BEIJING (AP) — Hairdresser Wang Lidan is making an emotional Lunar New Year journey from Beijing to her hometown in northeastern China — her first in three years after the government lifted its strict “zero-COVID” policy that kept millions of people at home and sparked protests. The relaxation of restrictions let loose a wave of pent-up travel desire, particularly around China’s most important time for family gatherings. Referred to in China as the Spring Festival, it may be the only time of the year when urban workers return to their hometowns.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook eastern Indonesia and southern Philippines on Wednesday, with no damage immediately reported and no tsunami warning issued. Some residents tried to escape from houses in the Indonesian town of Tobelo in North Maluku province. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake occurred 48 kilometers deep under the sea, centered 154 kilometers northwest of Tobelo.

SYDNEY (AP) — A Qantas flight traveling from New Zealand to Sydney landed safely on a single engine after it issued a mayday call over the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday. Qantas Flight 144 with 145 passengers aboard landed at Sydney Airport from Auckland, New Zealand, after a 3.5-hour flight between the neighboring nations' most populous cities. The Boeing 737-838 “experienced an issue” with one of its two engines about an hour from Sydney, a Qantas statement said.

BEIJING (AP) — China’s population shrank for the first time in decades last year as its birthrate plunged, official figures showed Tuesday, adding to pressure on leaders to keep the economy growing despite an aging workforce and at a time of rising tension with the U.S. Despite the official numbers, some experts believe China's population has been in decline for a few years — a dramatic turn in a country that once sought to control such growth through a one-child policy.

POKHARA, Nepal (AP) — Nepalese authorities on Tuesday began returning to families the bodies of plane crash victims and were sending the aircraft's data recorder to France for analysis as they try to determine what caused the country's deadliest air disaster in 30 years. The flight plummeted into a gorge on Sunday while on approach to the newly opened Pokhara International Airport in the foothills of the Himalayas, killing all 72 aboard.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The final death toll from a weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in southeastern Ukraine reached 44, officials said Tuesday, as the body of another child was pulled from the wreckage. The strike in the city of Dnipro was the war's deadliest attack since the spring on civilians at one location. Those killed in the Saturday afternoon strike included five children, and 79 people were injured, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Under the Taliban, the mannequins in women’s dress shops across the Afghan capital of Kabul are a haunting sight, their heads cloaked in cloth sacks or wrapped in black plastic bags. The hooded mannequins are one symbol of the Taliban’s puritanical rule over Afghanistan. But in a way, they are also a small show of resistance and creativity by Kabul’s dress merchants. Initially, the Taliban wanted the mannequins to be outright beheaded.

POKHARA, Nepal (AP) — Search teams retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders Monday of a passenger plane that plummeted into a gorge on approach to a new airport in the foothills of the Himalayas, officials said, as investigators looked for the cause of Nepal's deadliest plane crash in 30 years. At least 69 of the 72 people aboard were killed, and officials believe the three missing are also dead. Rescuers combed through the debris, scattered down a nearly 1000-foot-deep gorge, for them.

ROME (AP) — Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, Matteo Messina Denaro, a convicted Mafia boss who ordered some of the nation’s most heinous killings, was arrested Monday at a private clinic in Sicily after three decades on the run, Italian paramilitary police said. Messina Denaro was captured at the Palermo clinic where he was receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition, according to Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police force’s special operations squad.