AP Top News at 10:51 p.m. EDT

ROME (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he doubts Russia's Vladimir Putin wants to end his war in Ukraine, expressing new skepticism that a peace deal can be reached soon. Only a day earlier, Trump had said Ukraine and Russia were “ very close to a deal." "There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Trump said in a social media post as he flew back to the United States after attending Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican, where he met briefly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — All Ukrainian troops have been forced from parts of Russia’s Kursk region, which Moscow lost control of last year to a surprise Ukrainian incursion, Russia’s top general said in a Kremlin meeting Saturday. Ukrainian officials denied the claim. Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff for Russia’s Armed Forces, gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the news in a meeting Saturday, Peskov told Russian state news outlet Interfax. In a statement, Putin congratulated the Russian soldiers and commanders and said that Kyiv’s incursion had “completely failed”. “The complete defeat of our enemy along Kursk’s border region creates the right conditions for further successes for our troops and in other important areas of the front,” he said.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — World leaders and rank-and-file Catholic faithful bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral Saturday that highlighted his concern for people on the peripheries and reflected his wish to be remembered as a simple pastor. Though presidents and princes attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, prisoners and migrants welcomed Francis' coffin at his final resting place in a basilica across town. According to Vatican estimates, some 250,000 people flocked to the funeral Mass at the Vatican and 150,000 more lined the motorcade route through downtown Rome to witness the first funeral procession for a pope in a century.

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — A massive explosion and fire rocked a port Saturday in southern Iran purportedly linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant, killing 14 people and injuring around 750 others. Helicopters and aircraft dumped water from the air on the raging fire through the night into Sunday morning at the Shahid Rajaei port. The explosion occurred just as Iran and the United States met Saturday in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program. No one in Iran outright suggested that the explosion came from an attack. However, even Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the talks, on Wednesday acknowledged that “our security services are on high alert given past instances of attempted sabotage and assassination operations designed to provoke a legitimate response.” State media offered the casualty figures.

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — Iran and the United States held in-depth negotiations in Oman over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program on Saturday, ending the discussions with a promise for more talks and perhaps another high-level meeting next weekend. The talks ran for several hours in Muscat, the mountain-wrapped capital of this sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state television after the talks that the parties exchanged written points throughout the day in discussions that he described as “very serious and work-focused.” “This time, the negotiations were much more serious than in the past, and we gradually entered into deeper and more detailed discussions," he said.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Protesters chanted and marched Saturday outside the FBI after agents arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities. The case has escalated a clash between the Trump administration and local authorities over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot. President Donald Trump's administration has accused state and local officials of interfering with his immigration enforcement priorities.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday named a veteran aide and confidant as his new vice president. It’s a major step by the aging leader to designate a successor. The appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh as vice president of the Palestine Liberation Organization does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president. But it makes him the front-runner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party who hope to succeed the 89-year-old Abbas. The move is unlikely to boost the image among many Palestinians of Fatah as a closed and corrupt movement out of touch with the general public.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans do not agree with President Trump’s aggressive efforts to quickly enact his agenda, a new poll finds, and even Republicans are not overwhelmingly convinced that his attention has been in the right place. Americans are nearly twice as likely to say Trump has been mostly focusing on the wrong priorities as to say he has been focusing on the right ones, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Further, about 4 in 10 Americans say Trump has been a “terrible” president in his second term, and about 1 in 10 say he has been “poor.” In contrast, about 3 in 10 say he has been “great or ”good,” while just under 2 in 10 say he has been “average.” Most haven’t been shocked by the drama of Trump’s first 100 days.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike flattened a three-story home in Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 people — half of them children — as Arab mediators scrambled to restart a ceasefire. Israeli strikes killed at least 49 people in the past 24 hours, according to health officials. The dead in the early morning airstrike in a neighborhood in western Gaza City included three women and five children, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies. Israel's military said that it had struck a Hamas militant and the structure where he operated collapsed, adding that the collapse was under review.

BOSTON (AP) — As a Black teenager growing up in Boston, Wayne Lucas vividly remembers joining about 20,000 people to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the city's segregated school system and the entrenched poverty in poor communities. Sixty years on, Lucas was back on the Boston Common on Saturday to celebrate the anniversary of what became known as the 1965 Freedom Rally. He joined others in calling for continued activism against many of the same injustices and inequities that King fought against, and in criticizing President Donald Trump and his administration for current divisions and fears about race and immigration across the country.