The top photos of the day by AP's photojournalists

April 22, 2025

From front-page news to powerful moments you may have missed, this gallery showcases today’s top photos chosen by Associated Press photo editors.

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Palestinians examine the remains of bulldozers hit by an Israeli army airstrike in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

The body of Pope Francis is carried into St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, where he will lie in state for three days. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

People walk around St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

A street artists chalks a portrait of the late Pope Francis outside the Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Clouds are reflected in the water of lake 'Walchensee' during low water near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

A group of singers and dancers perform after French President Emmanuel Macron's visit Monday, April 21, 2025 in Tsingoni , Mayotte island, in the Indian Ocean French territory of Mayotte. (AP Photo/Alexis Duclos)

Police officers calm an injured dog while a dead body lies near a multi-story building damaged by a Russian strike on a residential neighborhood in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Kateryna Klochko)

A Donald Trump bobblehead sits on the counter as trader Jonathan Mueller works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Dancers rehearse choreography before an audition for the Radio City Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Paramedics carry a wounded tourist on a stretcher at a hospital in Anantnag after assailants indiscriminately fired at tourists visiting Pahalgam, Indian controlled Kashmir, Tuesday, April 22, 2025.(AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Troops march during a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade, which will take place at Dvortsovaya (Palace) Square on May 9 to celebrate 80 years after the victory in World War II, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Cincinnati Reds' Elly De La Cruz steals second during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Miami Marlins, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Cardinal Silvano Tomasi arrives in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Faithful react as they attend a Mass for the late Pope Francis, at the St. John Lateran Basilica, in Rome, Monday April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A woman prays during the morning mass at the Sanctuaire d'adoration cathedral, following the announcement of Pope Francis's death in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Women's race competitors including eventual winner Ferne Gardener, no. 11, right, run with a 20kg sack of coal over a 1.1 km course during the World Coal Carrying Championships in Ossett, West Yorkshire, England, Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, ahead of the annual Holocaust remembrance day which begins at sundown Wednesday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A woman is dressed in traditional costume as she and visitors tour Jiayu Pass, a strategic point of the Great Wall of China along the ancient "Silk Road," near the city of Jiayuguan in China's northwestern Gansu province, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

A nun holds a rosary and a picture of Pope Francis during a rosary prayer for the late Pope Francis, in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Tuesday April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Pope Francis's body is laid out in state inside his private chapel at the Vatican, Monday, April 21, 2025. (Vatican Media via AP, HO)

A portrait of the late Pope Francis is projected onto a water fountain at Magic Water Circuit in Lima, Peru, Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand parliamentary committee has recommended the unprecedented suspensions of three Māori lawmakers for performing a protest haka in the debating chamber last year.

The haka is a chanting dance of challenge of great cultural importance in New Zealand, and the three lawmakers from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori party, performed one to oppose a controversial bill that would have redefined the country’s founding document.

A committee Wednesday recommended record suspensions and severe censure — the harshest penalties ever assigned to New Zealand parliamentarians — after finding the trio in contempt of Parliament.

Government bloc lawmakers, who hold the majority, are expected to endorse the penalties in a vote Tuesday. But Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee took the unusual step Thursday of saying he would first allow unlimited debate before the vote due to the severity of the proposed punishments.

The recommendations were the latest twist in the fraught saga over the bill, now defeated, that opponents said would have provoked constitutional havoc and reversed decades of progress for Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people.

Video of the legislators in full cry drew global attention last November. The bill they opposed was vanquished at a second vote in April.

However, some lawmakers from the center-right government objected to the Māori Party legislators’ protest during the first vote and complained to parliament’s speaker. At issue was the way the trio walked across the floor of the debating chamber towards their opponents while they performed the haka.

“It is not acceptable to physically approach another member on the floor of the debating chamber,” Wednesday’s report said, adding that the behavior could be considered intimidating. The committee denied the legislators were being punished for the haka, which is a beloved and sacred cultural institution in New Zealand life, but “the time at and manner in which it was performed” during a vote, according to the findings.

The committee deciding the fate of the lawmakers has members from all political parties. The government’s opponents disagreed with parts or all of the decision but were overruled.

“This was a very serious incident, and the likes of which I have never seen before in my 23 years in the debating chamber,” said the committee's chair, Judith Collins.

The three legislators didn’t appear before the committee when summoned in April because they said Parliament doesn’t respect Māori cultural protocol and they wouldn’t get a fair hearing.

“The process was grossly unjust, unfair, and unwarranted, resulting in an extreme sanction,” Māori party spokesperson and lawmaker Mariameno Kapa-Kingi said in a statement. “This was not about process, this became personal.”

The report recommended that Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is New Zealand’s youngest lawmaker, be suspended from Parliament for seven days. The co-leaders of her political party, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, face 21-day bans.

Three days is the longest a lawmaker has been barred from the House before. Suspended legislators are not paid during their bans.

Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer, the leaders of the party that advocates Māori rights and holds six of Parliament’s 123 seats, have lambasted the committee’s process as intolerant of Māori principles and identity.

The pair received more severe sanctions than Maipi-Clarke because the younger lawmaker had written a letter of “contrition” to the committee, the report said.

The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill sought to redefine New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 pact between the British Crown and Māori leaders signed during New Zealand’s colonization.

The English and Māori language versions of the treaty differed, and the Crown immediately began to breach both, resulting in mass land thefts and generations of disenfranchisement for Māori, who remain disadvantaged on almost every metric. But in recent decades, Māori protest movements have wrought growing recognition of the Treaty’s promises in New Zealand’s law, politics and public life.

That produced billion-dollar land settlements with tribes and strategies to advance Indigenous language and culture. Such policies were the target of the bill, drawn up by a minor libertarian party who denounced what they said was special treatment for Māori as they tried to rewrite the treaty's promises.

FILE - A protester against the Treaty Principles Bill sits outside Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlotte Graham-McLay, File)

FILE -Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke speaks to the thousands of people gathered outside New Zealand's parliament to protest a proposed law that would redefine the country's founding agreement between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown, in Wellington, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Tantrum, File)

FILE -Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, right, and her colleagues from Te Pāti Māori, talk to reporters following a protest inside Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlotte Graham-McLay, File)