PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance is expected to keep its parliamentary majority after the first round of voting Sunday, but will likely have far fewer seats than five years ago. According to projections based on partial results, Macron’s party and its allies got about 25-26% of the vote Sunday on the national level. They were neck-and-neck with a new leftist coalition. Yet Macron’s candidates are projected to win in a greater number of districts than their leftist rivals.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds into its fourth month, officials in Kyiv have expressed fears that the specter of “war fatigue” could erode the West’s resolve to help the country push back Moscow’s aggression. The U.S. and its allies have given billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine.

BEIJING (AP) — China has attacked the theory that the coronavirus pandemic may have originated as a leak from a Chinese laboratory as a politically motivated lie. The response came after the World Health Organization recommended in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is needed into whether a lab accident may be to blame.

LONDON (AP) — The British government plans to burn billions of dollars in unusable protective equipment purchased during the coronavirus pandemic. It says the move will generate power. A public spending watchdog says $5 billion worth of equipment bought by the government has to be dumped because it is defective or does not meet U.K. standards.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Volunteer drivers are risking everything to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukrainians behind the front lines of the war — and to help many of them escape. The routes are dangerous and long and the drivers risk detention, injury or death. Ukrainian activists say more than two dozen drivers have been detained and held for more than two months by Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk region.

LONDON (AP) — Explorers and historians are telling the world about the discovery of the wreck of a royal warship that sank in 1682 while carrying a future king of England, Ireland and Scotland. The HMS Gloucester ran aground while navigating sandbanks off the town of Great Yarmouth on the eastern English coast. It sank within an hour, killing an estimated 130 to 250 crew and passengers. James Stuart, the son of King Charles I, survived.

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic. This marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins.

MADRID (AP) — Emergency agencies have deployed almost 1,000 firefighters, military personnel and support crews to fight a wildfire in southern Spain that has forced the evacuation of some 2,000 people. Authorities raced against the clock in the dry, hilly area of Andalucia as Spain’s AEMET weather service said Thursday that the country could be on the verge of a heatwave.

BEIJING (AP) — Thousands of coronavirus testing sites have popped up on sidewalks across Beijing and other Chinese cities in the latest development in the country’s “zero-COVID” strategy. Regular testing of residents is becoming the new normal as the ruling Communist Party sticks steadfastly to the “zero-COVID” approach that is increasingly at odds with the rest of the world.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pounded an eastern Ukrainian city and the two sides waged pitched street battles that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said could determine the fate of the critical Donbas region. Meanwhile, Russia claimed Thursday that it struck a training facility far from the front lines.