President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday unveiled a new program meant to bolster France's armed forces by training thousands of volunteers aged 18 and 19 starting next year, part of a broader response to concerns over Russia's threat to European nations beyond the war in Ukraine.

The young volunteers will serve in uniform for 10 months in France's mainland and oversea territories only, not in military operations abroad, Macron said in a speech at the Varces military base, which is located in the French Alps.

Firefighters battled a blaze at a high-rise apartment complex in Hong Kong for the second day on Thursday, as the death toll rose to 65 in one of the deadliest blazes in the city's modern history.

Rescuers holding flashlights were going from apartment to apartment at the charred towers as thick smoke continued to pour out from some windows at the Wang Fuk Court complex, a dense cluster of buildings housing thousands of people in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near Hong Kong's border with the mainland.

An Afghan national has been accused of shooting two West Virginia National Guard members just blocks from the White House in a brazen act of violence at a time when the presence of troops in the nation's capital and other cities around the country has become a political flashpoint.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said the guard members were hospitalized in critical condition after Wednesday afternoon's shooting. West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey had walked back his statement Wednesday announcing the troops had died, saying he received "conflicting reports" about their condition.

Pope Leo XIV encouraged Turkey to continue being a source of stability and dialogue in a world riven by conflict, as he opened his first foreign trip as pope on Thursday with a plea for peace amid efforts to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

The American pope emphasized a message of peace as he arrived in Ankara, welcomed on the tarmac by a military guard of honor and at the presidential palace by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Kirill Dmitriev is not a professional diplomat. But the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund has emerged as a key player in drafting a new proposal to end Moscow's war in Ukraine.

That is perhaps no surprise: A former investment banker, Dmitriev has increasingly served as a back-channel communicator between the Kremlin and allies of U.S. President Donald Trump, despite being on the U.S. sanctions list.

The Russia-Ukraine war has seen almost four years of failed peace plans, blueprints and high-level summits. A new U.S. push to end the fighting has set off the latest flurry of diplomacy, with American, European, Russian and Ukrainian officials all trying to shape the outcome of Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II.

Tilted heavily toward Russia's aims, the U.S.-backed proposal presented to Ukraine last week set off alarm bells in Kyiv and other European capitals. Ukraine and its allies offered a set of counterproposals that revamped the plan's points. Ukrainian and European leaders expressed optimism about the talks' momentum, but awaited responses from Washington and Moscow that are crucial.

A court on Wednesday convicted a Turkish journalist of threatening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reports said, in a case that critics view as an attempt to silence a prominent voice against the government.

Fatih Altayli, 63, a veteran journalist whose YouTube programs attracted hundreds of thousands of views daily, was sentenced to four years and two months in prison.

Thirteen people were killed in a fire that spread across multiple high-rise apartment buildings in a Hong Kong housing complex, the city's fire services said Wednesday.

Nine people were declared dead on the scene and four others who were sent to the hospital were later confirmed dead, authorities told reporters.

President Donald Trump has said his plan to end the war in Ukraine has been "fine-tuned" and he's sending envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to meet with Ukrainian officials.

Trump suggested Tuesday he could eventually meet with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but not until further progress has been made in negotiations. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday evening aboard Air Force One, Trump said resolving the war was difficult, and described what had been a 28-point plan as a work in progress. "That was not a plan — it was a concept," Trump said.

The Kremlin said Wednesday that parts of the latest U.S. plan to end the Ukraine war were positive, but that many other points required discussion.

"Some aspects can be viewed positively, but many require special discussions among experts," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told a state TV reporter.