Donald Trump and fellow Republicans assailed President Joe Biden on Saturday for what they called an assault on Christianity, after the US leader highlighted the Transgender Day of Visibility that this year coincides with Easter.

Turks were voting on Sunday in municipal elections, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national "jewel" that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to pry away from the opposition.

But there appeared no excess of enthusiasm at polling stations, AFP correspondents reported, to a backdrop of raging inflation and massive devaluation.

The French parliament's lower house on Thursday approved a resolution condemning as "bloody and murderous repression" the killing by Paris police of dozens of Algerians in a crackdown on a 1961 protest to support Algerian independence.

In recent years France has made a series of efforts to come to terms with its colonial past in Algeria.

The Philippine president said Thursday that his government would enforce a "countermeasure package" in response to "aggressive and dangerous attacks" by the Chinese coast guard and suspected militia ships in the disputed South China Sea, saying "Filipinos do not yield."

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. did not provide details of the actions his government would take in the succeeding weeks but said these would be "proportionate, deliberate and reasonable in the face of the open, unabating, and illegal, coercive, aggressive and dangerous attacks by agents of the China coast guard and Chinese maritime militia."

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.