OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Attacks by Islamic extremists are on the rise five months after mutinous soldiers overthrew Burkina Faso's democratically elected president. And analysts say that could undermine support for coup leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba’s regime. Many in Burkina Faso supported the military takeover, frustrated with the previous government’s inability to stem Islamic extremist violence that has killed thousands.

Day after day, Russia is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor. With the conflict now in its fourth month, it’s a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India and other Asian nations are becoming an increasingly vital source of oil revenues for Moscow as the U.S. and other Western countries cut their energy imports from Russia in line with sanctions over its war on Ukraine. Such sales are boosting Russian export revenues at a time when Washington and allies are trying to limit Moscow's cash flows.

BEIJING (AP) — China's capital has put school back online in one of its major districts amid a new COVID-19 outbreak linked to a nightclub. A total of 228 cases have been linked to the Heaven Supermarket club in the downtown Workers Stadium nightlife area after an infected person visited there Thursday. That prompted authorities in the sprawling Chaoyang district to put school back online, with the exception of students taking middle and high school placement exams.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea says North Korea has test-fired suspected artillery pieces into the sea. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says it detected several flight trajectories believed to be North Korean artillery on Sunday. It says South Korea maintains a firm military readiness in close coordination with the United States. The suspected launches come days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for greater defense capability to cope with outside threats.

HELSINKI (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says Turkey has “legitimate concerns” over terrorism and other issues that need to be taken seriously. Turkey has accused Finland and Sweden of supporting Kurdish militants and says it will not back the two Nordic nations joining NATO until they change their policies.

MOSCOW (AP) — Three months after McDonald’s suspended operations in Russia, its famous former outlet on Moscow’s Pushkin Square as the restaurant reopened under a Russian owner and a new name. In March, McDonald’s halted operations of its company-run restaurants in Russia in response to Russia sending troops into Ukraine. Two months later, the American fast-food chain decided to leave Russia altogether and sold its 850 restaurants to a Russian franchise licensee. On Sunday, hundreds of people streamed into the Pushkin Square outlet of a Russian chain named “Vkusno-i Tochka,” or Tasty-period.

KOLONSCHYNA, Ukraine (AP) — A 15-year-old boy is being hailed in Ukraine for stealthy aerial reconnaissance work he did with his father when Russia invaded their country. The father-son team used their drone to help the country's military spot, locate and destroy Russian armor and other targets in the early days of the war. They took aerial photos and pinpointed the coordinates of Russian tanks and trucks that were subsequently destroyed.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern Ukraine celebrated Russia Day on Sunday and began issuing Russian passports to those in one city who requested them, as Moscow seeks to solidify its rule over captured parts of the country. Russia Day is the holiday that marks Russia’s emergence as a sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces and Russian troops continue to battle back and forth in a key eastern city. At the same time, fears of a global food crisis have escalated because million of tons of grain have piled up in the besieged country’s silos. Russian forces were closing in Wednesday on control of the entire Luhansk region. It is one of two provinces that make up the industrial heartland known as the Donbas.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Russia and Turkey have backed a maritme corridor to export Ukrainian grain to global markets amid an escalating world food crisis. Turkey's foreign minister hosted his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Ankara on Wednesday for talks on a U.N. proposal to free Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and allow 22 million tons of grain to be shipped. Ukraine was not invited to the talks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — WNBA star Brittney Griner is easily the most prominent American locked up by a foreign country. But the Phoenix Mercury player’s case is tangled up with that of another prisoner few Americans have heard of. Paul Whelan also has been held in Russia since his December 2018 arrest on espionage charges he and the U.S. government say are false.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A passenger train has derailed in eastern Iran, killing at least 21 people and injuring 47 others. That's according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency. The train operated by the state-run Islamic Republic Railway carried some 350 people as it traveled from Tabas, some 550 kilometers from Tehran, to the city of Yazd.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has turned off two surveillance devices used by U.N. nuclear inspectors to monitor the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment. Wednesday's decision further escalates the crisis over Iran's atomic program as the country's nuclear deal with world powers remains in tatters.

BERLIN (AP) — Authorities say a teacher was killed and nine people were seriously injured after a man drove a car into a German school group standing in a popular Berlin shopping district. Police said the man drove into people on a street corner at around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday before getting the car back on the road and then crashing into a shop window around a block further on.