Four people were killed and seven were hurt when a man went on a stabbing rampage across multiple locations in a northern Illinois community, authorities said.

A 22-year-old man is in police custody and was being questioned Wednesday, according to Rockford Police Chief Carla Redd. She said one of the people who was wounded remained in critical condition.

For Evan Gershkovich, the dozen appearances in Moscow's courts over the past year have fallen into a pattern.

Guards take the American journalist from the notorious Lefortovo Prison in a van for the short drive to the courthouse. He's led in handcuffs to a defendants' cage in front of a judge for yet another hearing about his pretrial detention on espionage charges.

Russia fired salvoes of drones and missiles overnight at southern and eastern regions of Ukraine, authorities said Thursday, injuring more than a dozen people as the Kremlin's forces persevered with attritional attacks designed to wear down Ukrainian defenses.

Air defense systems intercepted 26 out of 28 Shahed drones, Ukraine's air force said. Russian forces also launched five missiles overnight, it said.

With local elections across Turkey days away, legal experts are coaching thousands of volunteer election monitors on the rules they'll need to watch for fraud and ensure a fair vote.

The vote across Turkey's 81 provinces Sunday will determine who controls localities from major municipalities to tiny districts and villages.

Ukraine needs any edge it can get to repel Russia from its territory. One emerging bright spot is its small but fast-growing defense industry, which the government is flooding with money in hopes that a surge of homemade weapons and ammunition can help turn the tide.

The effort ramped up sharply over the past year as the U.S. and Europe strained to deliver weapons and other aid to Ukraine, which is up against a much bigger Russian military backed by a thriving domestic defense industry.

It was the middle of the night when a dispatcher's warning crackled over the radio: A massive cargo ship had lost its steering capabilities and was heading toward the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Within about 90 seconds, police officers responded that they had managed to stop vehicle traffic over the Baltimore bridge in both directions. One said he was about to drive onto the bridge to alert a construction crew.

At least five people were killed Wednesday when a bus headed from Berlin to Switzerland came off a highway in eastern Germany and ended up on its side, authorities said.

The accident happened on the A9 highway near Leipzig at about 9:45 a.m. and the road was closed in both directions.

China's nationalist leader Xi Jinping has called for closer trade ties with the U.S. during a meeting with top American business leaders in Beijing that comes amid a steady improvement in relations that had sunk to the lowest level in years.

Xi emphasized Wednesday the mutually beneficial economic ties between the world's two largest economies, despite heavy U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and Washington's accusations of undue Communist Party influence, unfair trade barriers and theft of intellectual property.

The Kremlin on Tuesday called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "peculiar kind of Jew", when asked how he could be linked to an attack in Moscow claimed by Islamic jihadists.

Russian officials continue to allege Kyiv was somehow involved in Friday's attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 139 people, an assertion Zelensky has denounced as absurd.

Hiding behind a "Black Wolf", a state-of-the-art nine-ton armored vehicle, a group of armed men in black slowly make their way towards a 19th-century chateau in the southern suburbs of Paris.

An hour earlier, four hooded assailants equipped with assault rifles stormed the historic building in Draveil, which houses a police academy.