Inflation in the U.K. spiked to its highest level for more than a year in April amid a raft of higher domestic bills, such as energy and water, official figures showed Wednesday.

The Office for National Statistics said that its key measure of inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, rose by 3.5% in the year to April, up from 2.6% in March.

The six-legged alien Stitch from "Lilo & Stitch" doesn't choose to be bad. He's just genetically programed that way. Kind of like the way Disney is apparently programmed these days to strip mine its old animated stories to make poor live-action remakes.

So here comes the sweet but utterly unnecessary "Lilo & Stitch" of 2025, which carefully apes almost every detail of the 2002 original but then goes all Hollywood at the end with over-the-top explosions, the addition of a CIA team and Tom Cruise-level heroics, maybe to try to compete with the latest "Mission: Impossible" opening at the same time.

Colombia lost nearly 88,900 hectares (340 square miles) of forest — an area larger than New York City — in just six months, driven by the rapid spread of illegal roads, coca cultivation, and unregulated mining, according to a report by Colombia's procurator's office.

The independent watchdog warned of accelerating environmental destruction in some of the country's most ecologically critical regions.

At the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, rituals of faith unfold: worshippers kneel in prayer, visitors raise their palms skyward or fervently murmur invocations as they press their faces against an ornate structure enclosing where they believe the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad is entombed.

But it's more than just religious devotion that the golden-domed shrine became known for during Syria's prolonged civil war.

President Vladimir Putin visited Russia's Kursk region for the first time since Moscow claimed that it drove Ukrainian forces out of the area last month, the Kremlin said Wednesday.

Putin visited the region bordering Ukraine the previous day, according to the Kremlin.

A suicide car bomber struck a school bus in southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing five people — including at least three children — and wounding 38 others, officials said, the latest attack in tense Balochistan province.

The province has been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with an array of separatist groups staging attacks, including the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA, designated a terror group by the United States in 2019.

President Donald Trump loves big numbers — and he's always happy to talk them up.

Trump, who coined the phrase "truthful hyperbole" in his book "The Art of the Deal," over the last few days has been steadily increasing the amount of money he says that countries in the Mideast pledged to invest in the U.S. when he visited the region last week. He didn't provide underlying details.

Two of northern Gaza's last functioning hospitals have been encircled by Israeli troops, preventing anyone from leaving or entering the facilities, hospital staff and aid groups said this week, as Israel pursued its renewed offensive into the devastated Palestinian territory.

The Indonesian hospital and al-Awda hospital are among the region's only surviving medical centers.

Hospitals in Gaza say Israeli strikes overnight and into Wednesday killed at least 45 people, including several women and a week-old infant. The strikes came as Israel's war on Hamas shows no signs of relenting, despite a surge in international anger at Israel's widening offensive.

Israel began allowing dozens of humanitarian trucks into Gaza on Tuesday, but the aid has not yet reached Palestinians in desperate need, according to aid groups.

Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for humanitarian aid to reach the Gaza Strip and for an end to the "heartbreaking" toll on its people, as he presided over his first general audience in St. Peter's Square.

The Vatican said that around 40,000 people were on hand for the audience, which came just days after an estimated 200,000 people attended the inaugural Mass on Sunday for history's first American pope.