French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday convened a defense and national security council meeting to discuss riots that have killed two and injured hundreds in New Caledonia, his office said.

Macron has cancelled a trip to a French region planned for early Wednesday to handle the crisis in the Pacific territory, and the regular weekly cabinet meeting has been moved to the afternoon, officials said.

European Union nations endorsed sweeping reforms to the bloc's failed asylum system on Tuesday as campaigning for Europe-wide elections next month gathers pace, with migration expected to be an important issue.

EU government ministers approved 10 legislative parts of The New Pact on Migration and Asylum. It lays out rules for the 27 member countries to handle people trying to enter without authorization, from how to screen them to establish whether they qualify for protection to deporting them if they're not allowed to stay.

Georgia's parliament on Tuesday began the third and final reading of a divisive bill that sparked weeks of mass protests, with critics seeing it as a threat to democratic freedoms and the country's aspirations to join the European Union.

The bill would require media and nongovernmental organizations and other nonprofits to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power" if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will make a two-day state visit to China this week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, in the latest show of unity between the two authoritarian allies against the U.S.-led Western liberal global order.

Putin will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping during his visit starting on Thursday, the ministry said, saying the two leaders would discuss "cooperation in various fields of bilateral relations ... as well as international and regional issues of common concern." No details were mentioned.

Russia said Tuesday its forces had captured another village in the Kharkiv region and advanced far behind Ukrainian defensive lines in the border territory.

"Units of the North group of troops liberated the village of Bugruvatka in the Kharkiv region and advanced deep into the enemy defence," the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday in an unannounced diplomatic mission to reassure Ukraine that it has American support as it struggles to defend against increasingly intense Russian attacks.

The visit comes less than a month after Congress approved a long-delayed foreign assistance package that sets aside $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, much of which will go toward replenishing badly depleted artillery and air defense systems.

Greece's leader arrived in Turkey's capital on Monday for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as both countries pursue a normalization program and seek to put aside decades-old disputes.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was welcomed by Erdogan and a military guard of honor at the presidential palace in Ankara before the leaders' fourth meeting over the past year. They are expected to hold two hours of discussions followed by a news conference.

Commuter rail service serving Barcelona and northeastern Spain has suffered major disruption because of the theft of copper cables from a train installation, Spanish rail authorities said Sunday.

Thousands of commuters were stranded at train stations in and around Barcelona after trains couldn't run on several commuter lines.

Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have spread across U.S. university and college campuses in recent weeks, leading to disruptions and arrests. Some demonstrations extended into weekend graduation celebrations, although they were muted in comparison to the encampments and rallies that have roiled campuses and resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests of students and other protesters.

Most of the commencement exercises took place as scheduled and remained largely peaceful. Here is a look at some of the ceremonies that included protests:

Armenian police said on Monday they had detained dozens of people attempting to block streets in the capital Yerevan as part of protests against government plans to concede land to Azerbaijan.

Armenia has agreed to hand over territory it has controlled since the 1990s and has started border delimitation efforts, in a bid to secure an elusive peace deal with Baku and avoid another bloody conflict.