Sci-fi epic "Dune" won five prizes and brooding Western "The Power of the Dog" was named best picture as the British Academy Film Awards returned Sunday with a live, black-tie ceremony after a pandemic-curtailed event in 2021.

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was named best director for "The Power of the Dog," becoming only the third woman to win the prize in the awards' seven-decade history.

A few months ago, Choucri Asmar decided he wasn't ready to give up hope. So he led a group of residents in "a peaceful demonstration to protect the trees" of his Cairo neighborhood.

Egyptian authorities were planning to clear out a large avenue of ficus, acacia and palm trees — part of sweeping urban redevelopment projects that are transforming much of historic Cairo.

France lifted most COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, abolishing the need to wear face masks in most settings and allowing people who aren't vaccinated back into restaurants, sports arenas and other venues.

The move had been announced earlier this month by the French government based on assessments of the improving situation in hospitals and following weeks of a steady decline in infections. It comes less than a month before the first round of the presidential election scheduled on April 10.

Two months after the Berlin Wall fell, another powerful symbol opened its doors in the middle of Moscow: a gleaming new McDonald's.

It was the first American fast-food restaurant to enter the Soviet Union, reflecting the new political openness of the era. For Vlad Vexler, who as a 9-year-old waited in a two-hour line to enter the restaurant near Moscow's Pushkin Square on its opening day in January 1990, it was a gateway to the utopia he imagined the West to be.

Germany said Monday that it will replace some of its ageing Tornado bomber jets with U.S.-made F-35A Lightning II aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Announcing the decision, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Germany also will upgrade its Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets for electronic warfare — a capability that's also currently fulfilled by the Tornado jets. The Eurofighter will be replaced from 2040 with the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS, that's being jointly developed with France and Spain, she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will deliver a virtual address to the U.S. Congress as the Russian war on his country intensifies.

Zelenskyy will speak Wednesday to members of the House and Senate, the Democratic leaders announced.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a new round of talks Monday as Russia's military forces bombarded Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine with a punishing assault that the Red Cross said has created "nothing short of a nightmare" for the country's civilians.

After an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to NATO's doorstep, the talks raised hopes for progress in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.

Stocks on Wall Street are mixed Monday as waves of market-moving forces crash into each other and keep trading jumbled, from war in Ukraine to an upcoming Federal Reserve meeting on interest rates

The S&P 500 was 0.4% higher after flipping from an earlier loss in morning trading, as the yield on the 10-year Treasury touched its highest level since the summer of 2019. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 254 points, or 0.8%, at 33,198, as of 10:03 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.

Iraq's prime minister met with Kurdish officials on Monday and inspected the site of an Iranian missile attack near the American consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil.

Mustafa al Kadhimi was received by Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled region. The Iraqi premier also inspected damage caused by some 12 ballistic missiles that landed near the U.S. consulate, which is new and unoccupied, and caused damage to a nearby local television channel.

More than a dozen U.N. agencies and international aid groups said Monday that 161,000 people in war-torn Yemen are likely to experience famine over the second half of 2022 — a fivefold increase from the current figure.

The stark warning came in a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, ahead of an annual fund-raising conference that the United Nations is hosting on Wednesday. The IPC is a global partnership of 15 U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations working in Yemen and funded by the European Union, the USAID and UKAID. It tracks and measures food insecurity in conflict-stricken regions.