It began last month with the arrest of a Russian deputy defense minister. Then the head of the ministry's personnel directorate was hauled into court. This week, two more senior military officials were detained. All face charges of corruption, which they have denied.

The arrests began after President Vladimir Putin began his fifth term and shuffled his ally, longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, into a new post.

Taiwan tracked dozens of Chinese warplanes and navy vessels off its coast on Friday, the second day of a large military exercise launched by Beijing to show its anger over the self-governing island's inauguration of new leaders who refuse to accept its insistence that Taiwan is part of China.

China has issued elaborate media statements showing Taiwan being surrounded by forces from its military, the People's Liberation Army. A new video on Friday showed animated Chinese forces approaching from all sides and Taiwan being enclosed within a circular target area while simulated missiles hit key population and military targets.

The French prosecutor for New Caledonia says a police officer has been taken into custody after shooting and killing a man when the officer was set upon by a group of about 15 people.

Yves Dupas says the officer is believed to have fired one shot, killing a 48-year-old man on Friday afternoon. It's the seventh shooting death reported since unrest erupted May 13 on the archipelago over contested voted reforms.

The helicopter carrying Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi caught fire soon after it crashed into a mountain and there was no sign it was attacked, state media reported, citing the military's crash investigators.

The statement from the general staff of the armed forces in charge of investigating the crash was read on state television late Thursday. The first statement on the crash did not lay blame but said more details would come after further investigation.

Armenia on Friday returned to Azerbaijan four border villages it had seized decades ago, officials in Yerevan and Baku said, a new step towards normalising ties between the historic rivals.

Armenian border guard troops "officially" took up new positions, its national security service said, while Azerbaijan's Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev announced Baku's border guards took control of the four settlements.

Facing a room of Arab American activists from across the country angry at President Joe Biden's response to the Israel-Hamas war, a well-known adviser to Donald Trump was asked this week what the former president would have done differently had he been in office.

Richard Grenell, Trump's former ambassador to Germany, repeatedly pointed to Trump's governing record and said that other countries' fear of him decreased global conflict. But two people in the room said Grenell didn't provide the specific policy changes they were hoping to hear, which left at least one leader dissatisfied and unswayed.

Russian missiles slammed into Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast of the country and killed at least seven civilians early Thursday, officials said, as Kyiv's army labored to hold off an intense cross-border offensive by the Kremlin's larger and better-equipped forces.

At least 16 people were injured as S-300 missiles struck the city of Kharkiv, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. The sound of 15 explosions reverberated around the city of some 1 million people.

Iran on Thursday prepared to inter its late president at the holiest site for Shiite Muslims in the Islamic Republic, a final sign of respect for a protégé of Iran's supreme leader killed in a helicopter crash earlier this week.

President Ebrahim Raisi's burial at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad caps days of processionals through much of Iran, seeking to bolster the country's theocracy after the crash killing him, the country's foreign minister and six others.

Taiwan scrambled jets and put missile, naval and land units on alert Thursday over Chinese military exercises being conducted around the self-governing island democracy where a new president took office this week.

China's military said its two-day exercises around Taiwan were punishment for separatist forces seeking independence. Beijing claims the island is part of China's national territory and the People's Liberation Army sends navy ships and warplanes into the Taiwan Strait and other areas around the island almost daily to wear down Taiwan's defenses and seek to intimidate its people, who firmly back their de facto independence.

President Emmanuel Macron pushed Thursday for a lifting of protesters' barricades in riot-hit New Caledonia and pledged that reinforced police forces battling deadly unrest on the French Pacific archipelago "will stay as long as necessary," even when French security services will be focused in weeks ahead on the massive security operation for the Paris Olympics.

By binning his previously announced schedule to fly across the globe from Paris on his presidential jet, Macron brought the weight of his office and his personal touch to bear on the crisis that has left six dead and a trail of destruction on the archipelago that is a global source of nickel, used in batteries and other everyday necessities, and where Indigenous Kanak people have long sought independence from France.