U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday in an unannounced diplomatic mission to reassure Ukraine that it has American support as it struggles to defend against increasingly intense Russian attacks.

The visit comes less than a month after Congress approved a long-delayed foreign assistance package that sets aside $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, much of which will go toward replenishing badly depleted artillery and air defense systems.

Greece's leader arrived in Turkey's capital on Monday for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as both countries pursue a normalization program and seek to put aside decades-old disputes.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was welcomed by Erdogan and a military guard of honor at the presidential palace in Ankara before the leaders' fourth meeting over the past year. They are expected to hold two hours of discussions followed by a news conference.

Commuter rail service serving Barcelona and northeastern Spain has suffered major disruption because of the theft of copper cables from a train installation, Spanish rail authorities said Sunday.

Thousands of commuters were stranded at train stations in and around Barcelona after trains couldn't run on several commuter lines.

Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have spread across U.S. university and college campuses in recent weeks, leading to disruptions and arrests. Some demonstrations extended into weekend graduation celebrations, although they were muted in comparison to the encampments and rallies that have roiled campuses and resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests of students and other protesters.

Most of the commencement exercises took place as scheduled and remained largely peaceful. Here is a look at some of the ceremonies that included protests:

Armenian police said on Monday they had detained dozens of people attempting to block streets in the capital Yerevan as part of protests against government plans to concede land to Azerbaijan.

Armenia has agreed to hand over territory it has controlled since the 1990s and has started border delimitation efforts, in a bid to secure an elusive peace deal with Baku and avoid another bloody conflict.

Millions of Indians across 96 constituencies began casting their ballots on Monday as the country's gigantic, six-week-long election edges past its halfway mark. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third straight term with an eye on winning a supermajority in Parliament.

Monday's polling in the fourth round of multi-phase national elections across nine states and one union territory will be pivotal for Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as it includes some of its strongholds in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Russia said on Monday that it had shot down 31 Ukrainian drones overnight over several Russian regions and annexed Crimea.

"During the night new attempts by the Kyiv regime to carry out terrorist attacks with the help of aerial drones... against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation were foiled," the defense ministry said in a statement on the Telegram social media channel.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has delivered some of the Biden administration's strongest public criticism yet of Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza, saying Israeli tactics have meant "a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians" but failed to neutralize Hamas leaders and fighters and could drive a lasting insurgency.

In a pair of TV interviews Sunday, Blinken underscored that the United States believes Israeli forces should "get out of Gaza," but also is waiting to see credible plans from Israel for security and governance in the territory after the war.

Iran's conservatives and ultra-conservatives clinched more seats in a partial rerun of the country's parliamentary elections, official results showed, tightening their hold on the chamber.

Thousands of people been evacuated from border areas in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, as Russia kept up constant strikes on a key town as part of a cross-border offensive, officials said Sunday.