The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 18% in the last week, with more than 4.1 million cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.N. health agency said in its latest weekly report on the pandemic that the worldwide number of deaths remained relatively similar to the week before, at about 8,500. COVID-related deaths increased in three regions: the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Americas.

Europe prepared to lead the world in regulating the freewheeling cryptocurrency industry at a time when prices have plunged, wiping out fortunes, fueling skepticism and sparking calls for tighter scrutiny.

The European Union took a first step late Wednesday by agreeing on new rules subjecting cryptocurrency transfers to the same money-laundering rules as traditional banking transfers.

Sri Lanka's strategic location has attracted outsized interest in the small island nation from regional giants China and India for more than a decade, with Beijing and its free-flowing loans and infrastructure investments widely seen as having gained the upper hand in the quest for influence.

But Sri Lanka's economic collapse has proved an opportunity for India to swing the pendulum back, with New Delhi stepping in with massive financial and material assistance to its neighbor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin shot back at Western leaders who mocked his athletic exploits, saying they would look "disgusting" if they tried to emulate his bare-torso appearances.

Putin made the comment during a visit to Turkmenistan early Thursday when asked about Western leaders joking about him at the G7 summit.

Russia on Thursday pulled back its forces from a strategically placed Black Sea island where they have faced relentless Ukrainian attacks, but kept up its push to encircle the last bulwark of Ukraine's resistance in the eastern province of Luhansk.

Russia's Defense Ministry said it withdrew its forces from the Zmiyinyy (Snake) Island off Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa in what it described as a "goodwill gesture." Ukraine's military said the Russians fled the island in two speedboats following a barrage of Ukrainian artillery and missile strikes.

Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Jewish worshipers on Thursday at a flashpoint holy site in the occupied West Bank, wounding an Israeli military officer and two civilians, the Israeli army said.

The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said a Palestinian teenager was wounded by live fire and 16 others by rubber bullets in clashes with Israeli forces at the site near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, a frequent point of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Amos Hochstein, President Joe Biden's point man for global energy problems, says he knows that transitioning away from the climate-wrecking pollution of fossil fuels is the only way to go. He advocates urgently for renewable energy, for energy-smart thermostats and heat pumps.

But when it comes to tackling the pressing energy challenges presented by Russia's war on Ukraine, Hochstein also can sound like nothing as much as the West's oilfield roustabout, taking a giant pipe wrench to the world's near-crisis-level energy shortfalls.

Top-ranked Iga Swiatek will host a charity tennis event next month in her home country of Poland to raise funds for children and teenagers impacted by the war in Ukraine.

The event in Krakow on July 23 will feature a mixed doubles exhibition match and Ukraine soccer great Andriy Shevchenko will be a special guest.

Donald Trump rebuffed his own security's warnings about armed protesters in the Jan. 6 rally crowd and made desperate attempts to join his supporters as they marched to the Capitol, according to dramatic new testimony before the House committee investigating the 2021 insurrection.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a little-known former White House aide, described an angry, defiant president who was trying that day to let armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol.

Chamila Nilanthi is tired of all the waiting. The 47-year-old mother of two spent three days lining up to get kerosene in the Sri Lankan town of Gampaha, northeast of the capital Colombo. Two weeks earlier, she spent three days in a queue for cooking gas -- but came home with none.

"I am totally fed up, exhausted,'' she said. "I don't know how long we have to do this.''