Italian Premier Mario Draghi travels to Algeria on Monday to sign a deal for additional natural gas, the latest push by a European Union country to acquire alternative energy sources to reduce dependence on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is Italy's biggest supplier, representing 40% of total imports, followed by Algeria, which provides some 21 billion cubic meters of gas via the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline. The new deal would add an extra 9 billion cubic meters of gas from Algeria, just eclipsing Russia's 29 billion cubic meters a year.

Jordan's monarch is traveling to Germany Sunday for a spine surgery, Jordan's palace announced.

King Abdullah II, 60, will undergo a surgery to treat "a herniated disk in the thoracic spine" at a hospital in Frankfurt next week, and will return home after a recovery period of one week.

A delegation from the European Union election observers on Monday wrapped up a six-day visit to Lebanon during which they discussed the deployment of observers ahead of the upcoming May 15 parliamentary elections in the crisis-hit country.

A showdown looms in Ukraine after Russia appointed a new military commander and looked to concentrate its attacks in the east, while Ukraine's president said his troops will hold their ground, urging Western leaders, in particular President Joe Biden, to do more.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Sunday in a nightly address that this week will be as crucial as any during the war, saying "Russian troops will move to even larger operations in the east of our state."

French President Emmanuel Macron may be ahead in the presidential race so far, but he warned his supporters that "nothing is done" and his runoff battle with far-right challenger Marine Le Pen will be a hard fight. And she's ready for it.

The duel is starting Monday, after the two came out on top in Sunday's first-round vote. The centrist Macron is heading to an economically depressed area of northern France where a majority of voters chose Le Pen, close to her electoral stronghold of Henin-Beaumont.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims have taken part in Palm Sunday celebrations in Jerusalem at the start of the Holy Week.

The holiday this year comes as tourists are returning to the Holy Land following two years of disruption during the pandemic. It also is taking place as tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are rising amid a spate of recent Palestinian attacks in Israel that have prompted military raids in the occupied West Bank in response.

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man near the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said early Monday, the latest in a growing wave of violence that has erupted during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The Israeli military said it opened fire at a man throwing a firebomb at an Israeli vehicle driving on a West Bank highway late Sunday. The shooting raised to four the number of Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours, among them an unarmed woman who was shot and killed at a military checkpoint near Bethlehem.

Israeli troops on Saturday raided the West Bank hometown of a Palestinian who carried out a deadly shooting in Tel Aviv, sparking a gunbattle that left at least one Palestinian militant dead, according to Palestinian officials.

The Israeli military said its troops were carrying out what it said was a counterterrorism operation in the city of Jenin and the adjacent Jenin refugee camp. That's the area in the northern West Bank where the gunman in Thursday's attack had lived. It said the troops came under fire and returned fire at the assailants. There were no Israeli casualties and the forces seized an automatic rifle used by one of the militants, the military said.

The new head of Yemen's internationally recognized government has said that the council he was chosen to lead will work to end the country's grinding, eight-year civil war.

In his first televised address, Rashad al-Alimi thanked his government's backers —Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — which have been helping Yemeni government forces fight the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for years.

Pink Floyd is releasing its first new music in almost three decades to raise money for the people of Ukraine, the band has announced.

"Hey Hey Rise Up" features Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick Mason, with vocals from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band BoomBox. Roger Waters, who left the band in the 1980s, is not involved.