Cristiano Ronaldo was included in Portugal's squad by new coach Jorge Jesus for its upcoming Nations League games on Friday.

The 41-year-old Ronaldo said that this summer's World Cup was his last, but the global star has yet to say when he plans to retire from international play. He will be 43 by the time the 2028 European Championship, the next major tournament, is held.

The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched their fifth consecutive NL West title and 13th in the past 14 seasons with an 8-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday.

"It's a big deal," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "I think that a lot of people think that it's just a rite of passage (but) it's not easy. So it's something that we're all really proud of, but really understand that's not the end goal."

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree on Thursday increasing benefits under his flagship welfare program by 15%, weeks before the first round of the presidential elections.

The minimum monthly benefit per family of Bolsa Familia, or Family Grant, will rise to 691 reais ($134) next month, from 600 reais ($117). The decree says that it adjusts payments for accumulated inflation since March 2023.

As Houthi rebels closed in, Eshraq Abdel Gelil and her husband fled their home, walking through the mountains before catching a ride to a nearby city. Four months pregnant, she feared another miscarriage.

They are among an estimated 125,000 people who have fled as the Iran-backed rebels have advanced down the Red Sea coast to a key maritime chokepoint. The offensive, linked to the wider Iran war, has threatened Saudi oil exports, pushed up global fuel prices and rattled markets.

A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in a U.S. prison after a federal judge recounted the "unimaginably cruel" details of his abuse.

A jury in March found Samir Ousman Alsheikh guilty on all six counts including torture and conspiracy to commit torture for his actions while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.

Japan's central bank on Friday raised the benchmark interest rate to 1.25% from 1.0%, a 31-year-high.

The Bank of Japan has been trying to normalize monetary policy after decades of keeping interest rates near or below zero to try to encourage more borrowing and spending to counter deflation and pull Japan's economy out of the doldrums.

It's been a week since Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels stormed down the Red Sea coast, extending their reach to a key maritime chokepoint and threatening Saudi Arabia's oil exports.

The Houthis' biggest land grab in years reignited Yemen's 12-year civil war and pushed up global fuel prices. It also gave Iran another potential source of leverage as the United States has started to loosen Tehran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz, on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.

The deadly collapse of a multistory building in Gaza has drawn new attention to the hardships facing Palestinians there nearly a year after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas promised to kickstart reconstruction.

But as talks faltered, plans for rebuilding stalled. Israel bars entry of almost all construction materials, making even repairs difficult. Many residents have since moved back into some of the hundreds of thousands of homes damaged by the war despite the risk of weakened foundations and unstable walls suddenly giving way.

A powerful bomb exploded Friday at a mosque near a building housing police offices in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 15 people and wounding 56 others, police and rescue officials said. The attack came as violence has surged in the region with security forces targeting militants.

The bombing occurred in Kohat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, when an attacker apparently rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the mosque, said Zulfiqar Hameed, the provincial police chief.

The world is deeply divided and the U.N.'s most powerful body is paralyzed when it comes to ending conflicts. But there's a way forward. So says the United Nations' top official.

On his way out of office at year's end after nearly a decade, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres — known for doom-and-gloom speeches about the state of the planet — said Thursday he finds hope and possibility in the coming years. But that, he says, is only if the world's governments can finally cooperate on curtailing conflict, upending inequality and grappling with the arriving juggernaut of artificial intelligence.