An official investigation into the helicopter crash in May that killed Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi and seven other people found it was caused by challenging climatic and atmospheric conditions, Iranian state TV reported.

The final report of the Supreme Board of the General Staff of the Armed Forces said the main cause of the helicopter crash was the complex climatic conditions of the region in spring, state TV said.

Russia launched an overnight barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Kyiv, Ukraine's air force said Monday, as children prepared their return to school across the country after the summer vacation.

Several series of explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital in the early hours. Debris from intercepted missiles and drones fell in every district of Kyiv, injuring three people and damaging two kindergartens, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said. City authorities reported multiple fires.

The Alternative for Germany party's success in two state elections piled new pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz's fractious government and left the country's main opposition party facing political contortions on Monday to find a way to govern a pair of eastern regions without involving the far-right party.

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, became the first far-right party to win a state election in post-World War II Germany in Thuringia on Sunday under one of its hardest-right figures, Björn Höcke. In neighboring Saxony, it finished only just behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union, which leads the national opposition. Voters punished the three parties in Scholz's governing coalition, which took well under 15% of the vote between them.

A Russian strike on Friday killed two women and wounded eight other people in northeast Ukraine's city of Sumy, prosecutors said.

Sumy lies just across the border from Russia's Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a shock offensive on August 6 aimed at creating a "buffer zone" in Russian territory, among other goals.

The Kremlin says it has "no worries" about President Vladimir Putin's upcoming visit to Mongolia, a county that is a member of the International Criminal Court, which last year issued a warrant for his arrest.

The visit, scheduled for Sept. 3, will be Putin's first trip to an ICC member state since the warrant was issued in March 2023 over suspected war crimes in Ukraine.

Germany deported Afghan nationals to their homeland on Friday for the first time since August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power.

Government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit described the 28 Afghan nationals as convicted criminals but did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify their offenses.

Japan's Defense Ministry Friday sought a record 8.5 trillion yen ($59 billion) budget for the next year to fortify its deterrence on southwestern islands against China's increasing threat, while focusing on unmanned weapons and AI to make up for the declining number of servicemembers as a result of the country's shrinking population.

The ministry's request for 2025 marks the third year of Japan's rapid five-year military buildup plan under the government's ongoing security strategy. Japan aims to spend 43 trillion yen ($297 billion) through 2027 to double its annual military spending to around 10 trillion yen, making it the world's third-largest military spender after the United States and China.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will sit down Thursday for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.

The interview with CNN's Dana Bash will give Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has eschewed uncontrolled environments, while also giving her a fresh platform to define her campaign and test her political mettle ahead of an upcoming debate with former President Donald Trump set for Sept. 10. But it also carries risk as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup following Joe Biden's exit and last week's Democratic National Convention.

Russia conducted a heavy aerial attack on Ukraine for the third time in four days Thursday, again launching missiles and scores of drones that mostly were intercepted, Ukraine's air force said.

Russian forces fired five missiles and 74 Shahed drones at Ukrainian targets, an air force statement said. Air defenses stopped two missiles and 60 drones, and 14 other drones presumably fell before reaching their target, it said.

Germany is planning to deport the leader of an Islamic center it banned in July over alleged links to militant groups, an interior ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.

Investigators swooped on the Hamburg Islamic Center five weeks ago after concluding it was an "Islamist extremist organization" with links to Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.