VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Thursday unveiled plans for a yearlong restoration of the monumental baldacchino, or canopy, over the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, pledging to complete the work on Bernini’s masterpiece before Pope Francis’ big 2025 Jubilee.

The price tag? About 700,000 euros ($770,000).

The restoration and conservation project, funded entirely by the Knights of Columbus and using the expertise of ’

Sergei Udaltsov, a Russian pro-war activist and critic of President Vladimir Putin, was remanded into custody Thursday over alleged terrorism offenses, his lawyer told the Russian state news agency Tass.

Udaltsov is the leader of the Left Front, a group of political parties that and are affiliated with the Communist Party.

He was prominent during the 2011-12 protests that saw the biggest demonstrations in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was briefly allied with now-imprisoned opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

LONDON (AP) — A legal adviser to the European Union’s top court said Thursday that Google should pay a whopping fine in a long-running antitrust case in which regulators found the company gave its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results.

The European Court of Justice’s advocate general, Juliane Kokott, recommended rejecting the U.S. search giant’s appeal of the 2017 penalty. In a legal opinion, Kokott also proposed upholding the 2.4 billion euro

The United Negro College Fund announced a donation of $100 million from the Lilly Endowment Inc., the single largest unrestricted gift to the organization since its founding 80 years ago.

The gift announced Thursday will go toward a pooled endowment for the 37 historically Black colleges and universities that form UNCF’s membership, with the goal of boosting the schools’ long-term financial stability.

HBCUs, which have compared with other colleges, have seen an since the racial justice protests spurred by the killing of in

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A magnitude 6.4 earthquake shook parts of and neighboring on Thursday, sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes and offices and frightening people in remote villages, Pakistani officials and the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter of the quake was in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department. It was the third major earthquake to strike Afghanistan in three months.

It was located 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Jurm village in northeastern Afghanistan at

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday sharply condemned alleged plans by members of far-right groups who supposedly met recently at a mansion outside Berlin to devise a plot to deport millions of immigrants, even those with German citizenship, if the groups take power.

The alleged plan, which was published in an article by the investigative journalists’ group Correctiv on Wednesday, has led to an uproar in the country because it echoes the Nazis’ ideology of deporting all people who are not ethnically German.

Scholz said

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania on Thursday signed an agreement to jointly tackle drifting sea mines that have threatened shipping since the start of the .

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said the agreement establishes a Mine Countermeasures Task Group among the three NATO allies to deal with the mines.

“We jointly decided to sign a protocol between three countries in order to fight more effectively against the mine danger in the Black Sea by improving our existing close cooperation and coordination,” Guler said at a news conference in Istanbul with

WASHINGTON (AP) — is awarding $623 million in grants to states, local governments and tribes to help build an electric vehicle charging network across the nation. Grants announced Thursday will fund 47 EV charging stations and related projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico, including 7,500 EV charging ports, officials said.

“America led the arrival of the automotive era, and now we have a chance to lead the world in the EV revolution — securing jobs, savings and benefits for Americans

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s intelligence ministry on Thursday identified a top suspect, described as ringleader and bomb-maker, in the twin suicide bombings last week as the death toll from the attack rose to at least 94, state media reported.

The Jan. 3 attack, in which two suicide bombers targeted , was the deadliest in Iran in decades as the wider Middle East remains on edge.

at the ceremony in Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of