In a race against the clock on the high seas, an expanding international armada of ships and airplanes searched Tuesday for a submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic. U.S. Coast Guard officials said the search covered 10,000 square miles but turned up no sign of the lost sub known as the Titan.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Bret chugged toward the eastern Caribbean on Tuesday as the region prepared itself for an unusually early storm and the torrential rains that are forecast. Bret had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was moving across the Atlantic Ocean at 21 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, which warned that it's been unable to get "a better handle on the system’s intensity and size.”

BEIJING (AP) — The United States and China may be back to talking at a high level, but their battle for global power and influence remains unchecked and mutual suspicion still runs deep. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken set low goals for his visit to Beijing this week, and he met them. About the most the rivals can hope for these days is to stop things from getting much worse.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian air defenses downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia early Tuesday, most of them in the Kyiv region, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the country’s air protection after almost 16 months of war.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A man with an axe attacked random diners at three neighboring Chinese restaurants in New Zealand, wounding four people, police and witnesses said. Police said the man began the attack at about 9 p.m. Monday in the north Auckland suburb of Albany.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Bret formed in the central Atlantic Ocean on Monday, with forecasters saying it could pose a hurricane threat to the eastern Caribbean by Thursday and the Dominican Republic and Haiti by the weekend. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Bret had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph at 5 p.m. Monday as it moved west across the Atlantic at 21 mph.

CAIRO (AP) — The United Nations called on countries in the Middle East and Europe on Monday to ramp up aid efforts in Sudan to address the deepening humanitarian crisis. Sudan has been rocked by fighting for more than two months as the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces battle for control of the country.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Kremlin's spokesman said Monday that U.N. aid workers who want to visit areas ravaged by the recent Kakhova dam collapse in southern Ukraine can’t go there because fighting in the war makes it unsafe. The United Nations rebuked Moscow on Sunday for allegedly denying aid workers access to Russia-occupied areas where residents are stranded amid “devastating destruction.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Islamic extremists drove up to the American missionary's home in Niger under the cover of evening, gunning down two guards who stood watch. Jeff Woodke recalls seeing the muzzle blasts and hearing the screams before being thrown into a pickup truck that then sped away. So began more than six years of captivity, a period in which he says he was beaten, locked in chains for hours a day and pressured repeatedly to convert to Islam and endured self-imposed hunger strikes.

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and said they agreed to “stabilize” badly deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but America’s top diplomat left Beijing with his biggest ask rebuffed: better communications between their militaries. After meeting Xi, Blinken said China is not ready to resume military-to-military contacts, something the U.S. considers crucial to avoid miscalculation and conflict, particularly over Taiwan.

MELEKHOVO, Russia (AP) — Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny went on trial Monday on new charges of extremism that could keep him behind bars for decades. The trial opened at a maximum security penal colony in Melekhovo, 150 miles east of Moscow, where Navalny, 47, is serving a nine-year sentence for fraud and contempt of court — charges he says are politically motivated. Soon after it began, the judge ruled to close the trial despite Navalny's call to keep it open.

JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military raided the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, striking the refugee camp with helicopter gunships. The Israeli military said that helicopters fired at Palestinian gunmen as security forces tried to extract damaged vehicles from the camp.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine are suffering high numbers of military casualties as Ukraine fights to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas in the early stages of its counteroffensive, British officials said Sunday. Russian losses are probably at their highest level since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March, U.K. military officials said in their regular assessment.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Top North Korean officials vowed to push for a second attempt to launch a spy satellite as they called their country’s first, and failed, launch last month “the most serious” shortcoming this year and harshly criticized those responsible, state media reported Monday. In late May, a North Korean rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite crashed soon after liftoff, posing a setback to leader Kim Jong Un’s push to acquire a space-based surveillance system to better monitor the United States and South Korea.

MANDVI, India (AP) — Cyclone Biparjoy knocked out power and threw shipping containers into the sea in western India on Friday before aiming its lashing winds and rain at part of Pakistan that suffered devastating floods last year. A man and his son died trying to save their livestock in Gujarat state, where the storm came ashore late Thursday after more than 180,000 people took shelter in the two countries.

MALILIPOT, Philippines (AP) — Nearly 20,000 people have fled from an erupting Philippine volcano and taken shelter in schools, disrupting education for thousands of students, many of whom are having classes in chapels and tents or under trees, officials said Friday.

BERLIN (AP) — A large mass of rock slid down a mountainside above a Swiss village that was evacuated last month, stopping just short of the settlement, authorities said Friday. Brienz, in the southeastern Graubuenden region of Switzerland, was evacuated on May 12 after geology experts warned that the Alpine rock looming over the village could break loose. In recent days, local officials said rock movements on the slope were accelerating.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States deployed a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying about 150 Tomahawk missiles to South Korea on Friday, a day after North Korea resumed missile tests in protest of the U.S.-South Korean live-fire drills.

KALAMATA, Greece (AP) — Rescue workers transferred the bodies of dead migrants to refrigerated trucks as a major search continued Thursday for possible survivors of a sea disaster in southern Greece. Hundreds of people are still feared missing. At least 78 bodies have been recovered after a fishing boat crammed with migrants seeking to make it from Libya to Italy capsized and sank a day earlier in deep waters off the Greek coast.

MOSCOW (AP) — More than 20 Ukrainian soldiers who were taken prisoner during fighting in Ukraine went on trial in southern Russia on Wednesday. The captured soldiers were members of the Azov battalion, an elite Ukrainian armed forces unit that fought Russian troops in the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol. Russia captured Mariupol last year after a three-month battle that reduced most of the city to smoldering ruins.

KALAMATA, Greece (AP) — A fishing boat carrying migrants trying to reach Europe capsized and sank Wednesday off the coast of Greece, authorities said, leaving at least 79 dead and many more missing in one of the worst disasters of its kind this year. Coast guard, navy and merchant vessels and aircraft fanned out for a vast search-and-rescue operation set to continue overnight.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and shelled the eastern Donetsk region early Wednesday, killing at least six people and damaging dozens of homes, regional Ukrainian officials said. Russian forces have stepped up aerial strikes in their nearly 16-month war, a Ukrainian military spokesman said, while the country's armed forces have reported limited gains in the early stages of a counteroffensive to take back the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine's territory that is under Russian control.

TOKYO (AP) — An 18-year-old army trainee shot three fellow soldiers at a firing range on a Japanese army base Wednesday, killing two of them, officials said. The suspect was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder at the scene in Gifu prefecture in central Japan, police said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Tuesday that he could order his troops to try to seize more land in Ukraine to protect bordering Russian territory — a threat with questionable credibility because the Kremlin lacks full control over areas it already annexed.

KOWACH, South Sudan (AP) — Martha Nyanguour didn't have time to bury her husband, son or granddaughter when they were killed by gunfire in September. Instead, the 50-year-old paid her respects by throwing bits of grass over their bodies, then grabbed her remaining children and fled.