MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Thursday ruled that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich must remain in jail on espionage charges until at least late August, rejecting the American journalist’s appeal to be released. The 31-year-old U.S. citizen was arrested in late March while on a reporting trip. A Moscow court ruled last month to keep him in custody until Aug. 30, but his lawyers had challenged the decision.

Rescuers on Wednesday rushed more ships and vessels to the area where a submersible disappeared on its way to the Titanic wreckage site, hoping underwater sounds they detected for a second straight day might help narrow their search in an increasingly urgent mission. Crews were scouring an area twice the size of Connecticut in waters 2 1/2 miles deep, said Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District, who noted that authorities are still holding out hope of saving the five passengers onboard the Titan.

PARIS (AP) — A strong explosion in a building in Paris' Left Bank on Wednesday, leaving four people injured and igniting a fire that sent smoke soaring over the domed Pantheon monument and prompted the evacuation of buildings, police said. The cause of the blast was not immediately known.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Tesfa Kiros Meresfa, an Orthodox Christian priest, begs door-to-door for food along with countless others recovering from a two-year war in northern Ethiopia that starved his people. To his dismay, urgently needed grain and oil have disappeared again for millions caught in a standoff between Ethiopia's government, the United States and United Nations over what U.S. officials say may be the biggest theft of food aid on record.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — For weeks inmates had complained they were being threatened by gang members at a women’s prison in Honduras. The gang fulfilled those threats on Tuesday, slaughtering 41 women, many of them burned, shot or stabbed to death. President Xiomara Castro said the riot at the prison in the town of Tamara, about 30 miles  northwest of Honduras' capital, was “planned by maras (street gangs) with the knowledge and acquiescence of security authorities.”

A Canadian military surveillance aircraft detected underwater noises as a massive operation searched early Wednesday in a remote part of the North Atlantic for a submersible that vanished while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic. A statement from the U.S. Coast Guard did not elaborate on what rescuers believed the noises could be, though it offered a glimmer of hope for those lost aboard the Titan as estimates suggest as little as a day's worth of oxygen could be left if the vessel is still functioning.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Bret grew stronger on Wednesday as it took aim at islands in the eastern Caribbean that braced for torrential rainfall, landslides and flooding. Bret had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph early Wednesday morning and was moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean at 16 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday called comments by U.S. President Joe Biden referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a dictator “extremely absurd and irresponsible,” as a new rift threatened to upset tentative efforts to stabilize the relationship between the two countries.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries on Wednesday agreed on a new package of sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine. Sweden, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said that the package includes measures aimed at countering sanctions circumvention and individual listings.

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.