Australian military spy planes will start flying missions over the southern Philippines to help in the fight against Islamic militants terrorising the area, the government said Friday.

Helmut Kohl was the "chancellor of German unity" but a week after his death, a family spat has cast a glaring spotlight on deep divisions and a looming battle over his legacy.

Tower blocks housing thousands of people across England are being urgently tested to check if their cladding poses a serious fire risk following the Grenfell Tower disaster, as the government on Thursday blamed decades of neglect.

At least one death was blamed on Tropical Storm Cindy as it made landfall on U.S. soil in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday.

The main forest fires that have raged in Portugal since the weekend, killing more than 60 people, were brought under control on Thursday, the civil protection agency said, but grief and anger smouldered across the country.

Germany's foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported Thursday.

The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006.

EU president Donald Tusk on Thursday said Brexit could be reversed as leaders gathered for a Brussels summit amid growing confidence in a future without Britain.

Embattled Prime Minister Theresa May will make EU leaders an offer on the rights of expats after Britain's withdrawal as she tries to convince them she still has a grip after her election meltdown.

Combustible cladding has been found in "a number" of publicly-owned tower blocks in Britain following emergency checks after a devastating fire in London, British Prime Minister Theresa May said Thursday.

A knife attack on a Michigan airport police officer on Wednesday by a man yelling "Allahu Akbar" is being investigated as an act of terrorism, the FBI said.

Clashes erupted early on Thursday in Beni, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with residents reporting the sound of gunshots and heavy weapons fire.