KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian rocket struck a village cafe and store in eastern Ukraine on Thursday and killed at least 50 civilians in one of the deadliest attacks in months, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials in Kyiv. The attack came as Zelenskyy attended a summit of about 50 European leaders in Spain to drum up support from Ukraine's allies.

GENEVA (AP) — Four Western countries floated a proposal Wednesday for the United Nations’ top human rights body to appoint a team of experts to monitor and report on abuses and rights violations in war-wracked Sudan. Britain, Germany, Norway and the United States are leading the call for the Human Rights Council to name a three-person fact-finding mission to look into possible crimes against refugees, women and children, and others in Sudan.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For much of the world, China’s Xinjiang region is notorious, a place where ethnic Uyghurs face forced labor and arbitrary detention. But a group of visiting foreign journalists was left with a decidedly different impression. On a tour in late September sponsored by Beijing, the 22 journalists from 17 countries visited bazaars and chatted with residents over dates and watermelon slices.

Russian air defenses shot down 31 Ukrainian drones during a concerted nighttime attack by Kyiv's forces on border regions, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday, as uncertainty grew over Ukraine's future access to weapons and ammunition from its Western allies.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists in the United States won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their work on quantum dots — particles just a few atoms in diameter that can release very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.

ROME (AP) — A bus carrying foreign tourists including Ukrainians crashed near the Italian city of Venice when it fell from an elevated street Tuesday, killing at least 21 people and injuring 18 others, authorities said. Four of the injured were in serious condition following the accident in the Mestre borough, on the mainland opposite the historic old city of Venice, said Renato Boraso, a Venice city official.

BANGKOK (AP) — A shooter opened fire inside a major shopping mall in the center of Thailand’s capital Tuesday afternoon, killing three people before being apprehended, authorities said. Police said a suspect was apprehended less than an hour after the first reported gunshots at the Siam Paragon Mall, long been seen as one of Bangkok's biggest and most upscale shopping destinations.

TORONTO (AP) — India has told Canada to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats in the country, an official familiar with the matter said Tuesday, ramping up a confrontation between the two countries over Canadian accusations that India may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in suburban Vancouver.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenia's parliament voted Tuesday to join the International Criminal Court, a move that further strains the country's ties with its old ally Russia after the court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin over events in Ukraine.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for studying how electrons zip around the atom during in the tiniest fractions of seconds, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses. The award went to Pierre Agostini, Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz and French-born Anne L’Huillier for their work with the tiny part of each atom that races around the center and that is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Philippe is threatening to unleash heavy rains and flash flooding in the northeastern Caribbean on Monday before eventually spinning north into the open Atlantic, where it could strengthen into a hurricane around midweek, forecasters say.

CIUDAD MADERO, Mexico (AP) — Eleven members of Monica Segura's family were gathered inside the Santa Cruz church in northeast Mexico for the baptism of her 1-year-old nephew when the roof collapsed killing at least 11 people. Segura and others were near a side of the church when the roof fell Sunday and managed to escape with relatively minor injuries. Her 10-year-old daughter was buried in the rubble and remained in intensive care Monday, among 13 people who were still hospitalized.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and that could be used to develop other shots in the future.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has inaugurated Southeast Asia’s first high-speed railway, which begins its commercial operations on Monday, a key project under China’s Belt and Road …

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish warplanes carried out airstrikes on suspected Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq on Sunday following a suicide attack on a government building in the Turkish capital, Turkey's defense ministry announced. Some 20 targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were “destroyed” in the latest aerial operation, including caves, shelters and depots, the ministry said, adding that a large number of PKK operatives were “neutralized” in the strikes.

Tens of thousands of now-homeless people have streamed into Armenia from the separatist region of Nagorno-Kaerabakh, controlled by its emboldened adversary, Azerbaijan. Swarms of protesters are filling the streets of the Armenian capital of Yerevan, demanding the prime minister's ouster. Relations with Russia, an old ally and protector, have frayed amid mutual accusations.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in the heart of the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Sunday A second assailant was killed in a shootout with police, the interior minister said.

China's factory activity in September recorded its first expansion in six months, an official survey said Saturday, providing another sign that the world's second-largest economy is gradually improving after its post-pandemic malaise.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday insisted that the residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed a year ago “made their choice — to be with their Fatherland.”

LONDON (AP) — British police on Friday made their second arrest over the cutting down of a 300-year-old tree near the Roman landmark of Hadrian’s Wall in the northeast of England. Hours after a 16-year-old was freed on bail, Northumbria Police said a man in his 60s was arrested and is being questioned in custody.

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of people celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 54 people and wounding nearly 70 others, authorities said, in one of the country's deadliest attacks targeting civilians in months.

BEIRUT (AP) — The swift fall of the Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani troops and the exodus of much of its population has stunned the large Armenian diaspora around the world. Traumatized by a widely acknowledged genocide a century ago, they fear the erasure of what they consider a central and beloved part of their historic homeland.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — More than 70% of Nagorno-Karabakh's original population has fled to Armenia as the region's separatist government said it will dissolve itself and the unrecognized republic inside Azerbaijan will cease to exist by year’s end after a three-decade bid for independence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin’s effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (AP) — A powerful explosion in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, killed a teenage boy Thursday and injured at least 162 people following a fire caused by a lightning strike, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Health said.