Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Saturday killed at least two people, including a 9-year-old girl, officials said, as uncertainty remains about whether Kyiv diplomats will attend a new round of peace talks proposed by Moscow for early next week in Istanbul.

Russian troops launched some 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight and into Saturday, the Ukrainian air force said. Three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed and another 30 drones failed to reach their targets without causing damage, it said.

The girl was killed in a strike on the front-line village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region, and a 16-year-old was injured, Zaporizhzhia’s Gov. Ivan Fedorov said.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Saturday that it had gained control of the Ukrainian village of Novopil in the Donetsk region, and took the village of Vodolahy in the northern Sumy region. Ukrainian authorities in Sumy ordered mandatory evacuations in 11 more settlements as Russian forces make steady gains in the area.

Andrii Yermak, a top adviser to Zelenskyy, said Friday that Kyiv was ready to resume direct peace talks with Russia in Istanbul on Monday but that the Kremlin should first provide a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the more than three-year war.

Zelenskyy said Friday that Russia was “undermining diplomacy” by withholding the document.

“For some reason, the Russians are concealing this document. This is an absolutely bizarre position. There is no clarity about the format,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

Moscow previously said it would share its memorandum during the talks.

Train fatally derails after bridge collapse

A passenger train derailed in western Russia late Saturday after a bridge collapsed because of what local officials described as “illegal interference,” killing at least seven people and injuring 30.

The bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, was damaged “as a result of illegal interference in transport operations,” Moscow Railways said in a statement, without elaborating.

Russia’s federal road transportation agency, Rosavtodor, said the destroyed bridge passed above the railway tracks where the train was traveling.

U.S. approves latest COVID vaccine

The U.S. approved a new COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna late Friday but with limits on who can use it — not a replacement for the company’s existing shot, but a second option.

The new vaccine, mNexspike, is a step toward next-generation coronavirus vaccines. It’s made in a way that allows for a lower dose — a fifth of the dose of its current COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax — by refining its immune target.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the new vaccine for use in all adults 65 and older, and for people age 12 to 64 who have a least one health condition that puts them at increased risk from the coronavirus.

That’s the same limit that the FDA set in licensing another COVID-19 vaccine option from competitor Novavax.

Moderna’s existing vaccine doesn’t face those limits and has long been used for anyone ages 6 months and older. The company said it expected to offer both options this fall.

Ecuador apologizes to plantation workers

Ecuador’s government issued a public apology on Saturday to a group of plantation workers who were subjected to slave-like conditions according to a ruling issued last year by the country’s Constitutional Court.

In an event held near the presidential palace in Quito, various members of Ecuador’s Cabinet recognized that more than 300 workers of a Japanese-owned abaca plantation were forced to live in conditions of “modern slavery” with Labor Minister Ivone Nuñez pledging that Ecuador will strive to “build a state that guarantees the human rights of workers.”

The apology issued by government officials is one of the reparation measures ordered by the court last year.

In the ruling, the Constitutional Court determined that between 1963 and 2019 workers of the Japanese company Furukawa were forced to live in dormitories without basic services at a plantation in western Ecuador, where accidents were common due to the lack of safety training.

Former employees of Furukawa attended Saturday’s ceremony along with their lawyers, who have accused the company of not paying reparations to the workers who were affected by the harsh conditions at its plantation in Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas province.

The company changed owners in 2014, and it has said that conditions have changed since then.

Alpine river flowing after Swiss landslide

A small Alpine river dammed by a landslide that largely buried the Swiss village of Blatten is now flowing through the debris, and the level of a newly created lake that raised worries about potential new destruction has fallen, authorities said Saturday.

A huge mass of rock, ice and mud from the Birch glacier thundered into the Lötschental valley in southern Switzerland on Wednesday, destroying much of the village. Buildings that weren’t buried were submerged in a lake created by the small Lonza River, whose course was dammed by the mass of material.

Authorities worried that water pooling above the mass of rock and ice could lead to risks of its own. Still, the regional government in Valais canton (state) said that the Lonza has been flowing through the full length of the debris since Friday.

Geologist and regional official Raphaël Mayoraz said Saturday that the level of the lake has since gone down about 3.3 feet.

“The speed at which this lake is emptying comes from the river eroding the deposit,” he said at a news conference. “This erosion is relatively slow, but that’s a good thing. If it is too fast, then there is instability in this channel, and that could lead to small slides of debris.”

Truck turnover frees millions of bees

There was a buzz in the air Friday in northwestern Washington state as about 250 million honeybees escaped a commercial truck that overturned.

The truck hauling an estimated 70,000 pounds of honeybee hives rolled over around 4 a.m. close to the Canadian border near Lynden, the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office said in social media posts.

It appears the driver did not navigate a tight turn well enough, causing the trailer to roll into a ditch, county emergency management spokesperson Amy Cloud said in an email. The driver was uninjured, Cloud said.

The box hives later came off the truck, and local beekeepers swarmed to help recover, restore and reset the hives, according to the sheriff’s office.

The plan is to allow the bees to return to their hives and find their queen bee in the next day or two, according to the sheriff’s office. The goal is to save as many of the bees as possible.

Suit challenging Ky. abortion ban withdrawn

Attorneys for a woman who sued Kentucky seeking to restore the right to an abortion have dropped their challenge to the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

The attorneys filed a motion Friday to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit, but did not give a reason for seeking to drop the case. The lawsuit had been filed last year in state court in Louisville on behalf of a woman who was seven weeks pregnant at the time and identified only by the pseudonym Mary Poe to protect her privacy.

— From news services