GAYAN, Afghanistan (AP) — Villagers rushed to bury the dead and dug by hand through the rubble of their homes in search of survivors of a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan. Wednesday's quake killed at least 1,000 people.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian authorities say Russia's military captured two villages in eastern Ukraine and were vying for control of a key highway in a continued offensive on the frontline. The capture of the two villages in the embattled Donbas region came as part of blistering offensive in recent weeks in and around the pivotal city of Sievierodonetsk.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders are set to grant Ukraine a candidate status to join the 27-nation bloc. It's a first step in a long and unpredictable journey toward full membership that could take many years to complete.

BEIJING (AP) — Major flooding has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in southern China, with more rain expected. The manufacturing hub of Guangdong province suspended classes, office work and public transport amid rising waters and the threat of landslides.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says it believes that a Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier who was accompanying him were “coldly executed” in Russian-occupied woodlands in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine. The bodies of Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov were found April 1 in woods north of the capital, Kyiv.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s prime minister says its debt-laden economy has “collapsed" after months of shortages of food, fuel and electricity. In comments underscoring the country’s dire situation as it seeks help from international lenders, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament the South Asian country is “facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s state-run news agency says an earthquake in the country’s east has killed 1,000 people and injured 1,500 others. That latest figure came from the Bakhtar News Agency as officials tried to help those affected by Wednesday's temblor.

JERUSALEM (AP) — In a 10-year political career, Yair Lapid has transformed himself from upstart political novice to feisty opposition leader to the savvy operator who toppled longtime leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Next week, he is expected to assume his biggest role yet — as Israel’s new prime minister. Following the government’s decision Monday to dissolve parliament, Lapid is set to take office as caretaker prime minister until elections in the fall.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Józef Walaszczyk, a member of the Polish resistance who rescued dozens of Jews during the Nazi German occupation of Poland during World War II, has died at 102. Walaszczyk died on Monday, according to the Institute of National Remembrance, a Polish state historical body.

SYLHET, Bangladesh (AP) — Villagers in northeastern Bangladesh are crowding makeshift refugee centers and scrambling to meet boats arriving with food and fresh water as massive floods, which have killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands there and in neighboring India, continue to wreak havoc.

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli Cabinet minister says the country's outgoing coalition government will fast-track a bill this week to dissolve parliament, setting up the country for its fifth elections in three years.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A series of clandestine, against-the-odds helicopter missions to reach besieged soldiers are being celebrated in Ukraine as one of the riskiest, most heroic feats of military derring-do in the four-month war against Russia. The flights delivered supplies and evacuated wounded during the last-ditch defense of the Azovstal steel mill. It was surrounded by Russian forces in the brutalized city of Mariupol.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea says it has successfully launched its first homegrown space rocket. The Science Ministry says the three-stage Nuri rocket succeeded Tuesday in releasing and placing its functioning “performance verification” satellite at a desired altitude of 435 miles.

LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of railway workers have walked off the job in Britain, bringing the train network to a crawl in the country’s biggest transit strike in three decades. About 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff are holding a 24-hour strike on Tuesday.

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court has ruled that the country’s ban on same-sex marriage does not violate the constitution, and rejected demands for compensation by three couples who said their right to free union and equality has been violated.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Despite the heavy influx of weapons from the West, Ukrainian forces are outgunned by the Russians in the battle for the eastern Donbas region, where the fighting is largely being carried out by way of artillery exchanges.

BANGKOK (AP) — The world’s largest recorded freshwater fish, a giant stingray, has been caught in the Mekong River in Cambodia, according to scientists from the Southeast Asian nation and the United States.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s weakened coalition government decided Monday to dissolve parliament and call a new election, the country's fifth in three years. The vote, expected this fall, could bring about the return of a nationalist religious government led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or another prolonged period of political gridlock. The previous four elections, focused on Netanyahu's fitness to rule while on trial for corruption charges, ended in deadlock.

France's far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday that her party’s extraordinary surge in the country's parliamentary election is a “historic victory” in French politics. Many voters in …

Floods in Bangladesh have left millions struggling to access safe drinking water and food across the country’s vast northeastern and northern regions. More than a dozen people died across the …

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Witnesses in Ethiopia say more than 200 people, mostly ethnic Amhara, have been killed in an attack in the country’s Oromia region and are blaming a rebel group, which denies it. It is one of the deadliest such attacks in recent memory as ethnic tensions continue in Africa’s second most populous country.

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Gunmen attacked two churches in rural northwestern Nigeria on Sunday, killing three people, witnesses and a state official said, weeks after a similar attack in the West African nation left 40 worshippers dead.

BEIJING (AP) — China has launched its third aircraft carrier, the first such ship to be designed and built entirely within the country. State media reports said the Type 003 new-generation aircraft carrier christened Fujian left its drydock at a shipyard in Shanghai on Friday morning.

BORETTO, Italy (AP) — Water is so low in large stretches of Italy’s largest river that local residents are walking through the middle of the expanse of sand and shipwrecks are resurfacing, but authorities fear there’ll be far greater consequences for farmers and local populations.

LONDON (AP) — The British government has approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges. WikiLeaks said it would appeal.