KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership has ordered all Afghan women to wear all-covering clothing in public, and threatened to punish their male relatives in cases of noncompliance. The decree Saturday evoked similar restrictions on women during the Taliban’s previous hard-line rule between 1996 and 2001.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — The Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein has won the largest number of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time. With almost all votes counted from Thursday's election, Sinn Fein has secured 27 of the assembly’s 90 seats.

HAVANA (AP) — Relatives of the missing in Cuba’s capital are desperately searching for victims of an explosion at one of Havana's most luxurious hotels that killed at least 26 people. They checked the morgue and hospitals, and if unsuccessful, they returned to the partially collapsed Hotel Saratoga. A natural gas leak was the apparent cause of Friday’s blast at the 96-room hotel.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian officials says more civilians have been rescued from the tunnels under a besieged steel plant in Mariupol. That news came even as fighters holed up at the sprawling complex made their last stand to prevent Moscow’s complete takeover of the strategic port city.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's interior minister says plans will be advanced for the construction of 4,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank. If approved, it would be the biggest advancement of settlement plans since the Biden administration took office.

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s governing Conservatives have suffered local election losses in their few London strongholds. Voting held Thursday for thousands of seats on more than 200 local councils decided who will oversee garbage collection and the filling of potholes, but were also seen as an important barometer of public opinion ahead of the next national election.

HONG KONG (AP) — China is installing a career security official as the new leader of Hong Kong in the culmination of a sweeping political transformation that has gutted any opposition in the Asian financial center and placed it ever more firmly under Beijing’s control.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli security forces are carrying out a massive manhunt for two Palestinians suspected in a mass stabbing near Tel Aviv that left three Israelis dead. The stabbing on Thursday, Israel’s Independence Day, was the latest in a series of deadly assaults in recent weeks.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian fighters at Mariupol’s pulverized steel plant are holding out against Russian troops in an increasingly desperate effort to keep Moscow from taking the strategic port city. The wife of one of the fighters said the troops would not surrender and her husband told her “words of goodbye.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. says it shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva prior to the strike that sank the warship. The incident was a high-profile failure for Russia’s military.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli officials say at least three people have been killed in a Palestinian stabbing attack near Tel Aviv. Israeli police say the assailants fled in a vehicle on Thursday night. Security forces set up roadblocks in the area of the attack, which took place in the town of Elad, and helicopters hovered overhead.

MILAN (AP) — Rising energy prices in Europe are testing the resolve of those caught between a dependence on cheap Russian energy and their revulsion at Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Governments are trying to replace Russian energy, mindful their regular payments are funding the invasion.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A cardinal has testified that Pope Francis authorized spending up to 1 million euros to free a Colombian nun kidnapped by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali.

BEIJING (AP) — Rescuers in central China have pulled a woman alive from the rubble of a building that partially collapsed almost six days earlier. The unidentified woman is the 10th survivor of the disaster in the city of Changsha, in which at least five people have died and dozens are still missing.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Heavy fighting is raging at the besieged steel plant in Mariupol as Russian forces attempt to finish off the city’s last-ditch defenders and complete the capture of the strategically vital port. Thursday's bloody battle came amid growing suspicions that President Vladimir Putin wants to present the Russian people with a major battlefield success in time for Victory Day on Monday.

MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge in Miami has ruled that the premier of the British Virgin Islands can be released on a $500,000 bond, following his arrest on drug-smuggling charges in a U.S. government sting in South Florida. In a surprise decision, federal Judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes on Wednesday rejected prosecutors’ argument that Andrew Fahie would flee the U.S. if released pending trial on cocaine charges.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — The Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein may be headed for a historic victory in Northern Ireland, which has been led by British unionist parties since it was founded as a state a century ago. Opinion polls suggest Sinn Fein will become the largest group in the 90-seat Northern Ireland Assembly after Thursday's vote.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis hasn’t made much of a diplomatic mark in Russia’s war in Ukraine: His appeals for a truce have gone unheeded, and his planned meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church was called off. Francis has been seemingly unable to capitalize on his moral authority, soft power or direct line to Moscow to nudge an end to the bloodshed or at least a cease-fire.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters on Wednesday. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile was fired from the North’s capital region and flew to the waters off its eastern coast.

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing is closing some 10% of the stations in its vast subway system as an additional measure against the spread of the coronavirus. The subway authority in a brief message says only that the closure of 40 mostly downtown stations is being taken as part of epidemic control measures.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Amid all the horrors that have unfolded in the war on Ukraine, the Russian airstrike on the theater being used as a bomb shelter in Mariupol on March 16 stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date. An Associated Press investigation has found evidence that the attack was far deadlier than estimated, killing closer to 600 people.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pounded targets across Ukraine, taking aim at supply lines for foreign weapons in the west and intensifying an offensive in the east. The Russian military said it used missiles to destroy electric power facilities at five railway stations across Ukraine, while artillery and aircraft also struck troop strongholds and fuel and ammunition depots.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s chief executive has called on the 27-nation bloc to ban oil imports from Russia in a sixth package of sanctions over the war in Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told EU lawmakers on Wednesday that she envisions member nations phasing out imports of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities have relocated a migrant camp that sprung up in a park in the border city of Reynosa. Authorities said Tuesday about 2,000 migrants from Central American and Haiti were taken to a shelter in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian fighters say Russian forces began storming a sprawling steel plant in the besieged port city of Mariupol on Tuesday. That came as a convoy carrying dozens of civilians evacuated from the facility over the weekend arrived in the relative safety of a Ukrainian-controlled city.