Obama to attend Peres service:

President Obama will attend the funeral of Shimon Peres, the former Israeli president and driving force behind the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, on Friday in Israel, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Peres, 93, died after suffering a stroke two weeks ago. The visit will be Obama’s second to Israel as president.

Royal family official jailed:

LONDON — A former British royal official has been sentenced to five years in prison for taking more than $130,000 in bribes to award contracts for work at Buckingham Palace and other royal residences. For more than a decade, Ronald Harper was deputy property manager for palaces in London and for Windsor Castle, west of the city. Prosecutors said Harper took gifts or money from the directors of companies that were then given contracts for taxpayer-funded work on the buildings.

Attacker gets 12 years:

TOKYO — The South Korean man who slashed U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert last year was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison for attempted murder. Kim Ki-jong, 56, apparently a North Korean sympathizer, attacked the U.S. ambassador to South Korea at a breakfast forum in central Seoul in March last year, while joint U.S.-South Korean military drills were taking place.

OPEC to curb oil production:

ALGIERS, Algeria — OPEC nations reached a preliminary agreement Wednesday to curb oil production for the first time since the global financial crisis eight years ago, pushing up prices that had sunk over the past two years and weakened the economies of oil-producing nations.

Tyson chicken nuggets recalled:

Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. meat processor, is recalling 132,520 pounds of fully cooked chicken nuggets that may be contaminated with hard plastic. The voluntary recall includes 5-pound bags of Panko nuggets sold at Costco Wholesale locations around the country, Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson said.

Air rage incidents on the rise:

WASHINGTON — Incidents of unruly passengers on planes are increasing, and more effective deterrents are needed to tackle the problem, a global airline trade group said Wednesday. There were 10,854 air rage incidents reported by airlines worldwide last year, up from 9,316 incidents in 2014, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Senators want EpiPen probe:

WASHINGTON — Senators are asking the Justice Department to investigate whether pharmaceutical company Mylan acted illegally when it classified its lifesaving EpiPen as a generic drug and qualified for lower rebate payments to states. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and two democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday and suggested the company may have gamed the system to divert millions of dollars from taxpayers.

Bill dumps rape-reporting limit:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The emotional stories of women who say they were sexually assaulted more than a decade ago by comedian Bill Cosby prompted California state lawmakers to approve a bill to eliminate the state's 10-year limit on filing rape and related charges. On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he has approved the legislation to revoke that limitation.

Beginning next year, the bill will end the statute of limitations in certain rape and child molestation cases.

FBI cites extremism in attack:

MINNEAPOLIS — FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that the man who stabbed and wounded 10 people in a central Minnesota mall before he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer appears to have been inspired, at least in part, by extremist ideology.