European Union officials said Friday that Europeans can expect oil and gas prices to remain above what they were before the Iran war for at least until the end of 2027, with prices of other goods also following an upward trajectory.

EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said that higher energy prices are primarily responsible for driving inflation to a forecast 3.1% for this year and 2.4% for 2027. That's significantly higher than the earlier forecast for this year of 1.9%.

On the surface, Chinese leader Xi Jinping's back-to-back summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin looked pretty similar, with formal handshakes in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, enthusiastic greetings from flower-waving children, and marching columns of soldiers with gleaming bayonets. But the visits also revealed how different China's relationship is with the two countries.

During Trump's visit, China sought to stabilize ties with the United States, while Putin's trip served to deepen its strategic partnership with Russia.

Cristiano Ronaldo has finally won a major trophy with Al-Nassr.

The 41-year-old Portugal star scored twice in a 4-1 win over Damac to help Al-Nassr clinch the Saudi Pro League title Thursday. It's the team's first major trophy since Ronaldo joined more than three years ago.

The day arrived when the Senate just said, No.

President Donald Trump's political revenge tour met its potential match this week as angry, upset Republican senators, pushed to a breaking point by his seemingly insatiable and outlandish demands — particularly a $1.776 billion fund for Jan. 6 rioters and others he believes were wrongly prosecuted — did the unthinkable.

The head of the World Health Organization said Friday that the Ebola outbreak in Congo is "spreading rapidly" and now poses a "very high" risk at the national level.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the U.N. health agency was revising upward to "very high" its assessment of the risk within Congo, which had previously been deemed as high. The risk remains high for regional spread and low at global levels, he told reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday there was "slight progress" during talks with Iran amid uncertainty as to whether a deal will be reached or war will resume.

He spoke days after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was holding off on a military strike on Iran because "serious negotiations" were underway. Trump has been threatening for weeks that the ceasefire reached in mid-April could end if Iran does not make a deal, with shifting parameters for striking such an agreement.

The European Union's executive commission cut its growth outlook and predicted higher inflation due to sharply higher energy prices from the war in Iran — but said the economy will avoid an outright recession.

"As a net energy importer, the EU's economy is highly susceptible to the energy shock caused by the conflict in the Middle East," the commission said in a statement Thursday. The rising cost of fuel "means higher household bills and surging business costs that reduce profits for many industries."

Once a year, large numbers of Muslim pilgrims converge in Saudi Arabia, uniting in religious rituals and acts of worship as they perform the Hajj. While fulfilling a religious obligation, they immerse themselves in what can be a spiritual experience of a lifetime for them and a chance to seek God's forgiveness and the erasure of past sins.

This year, the Hajj has been approaching against the backdrop of a tenuous ceasefire in the Iran war and related tensions and uncertainty in the Middle East.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on his latest mission to assuage nervous U.S. allies in Europe about the Trump administration's intentions with NATO or at least put a friendlier face on whipsawing changes and uncertainty about American troop reductions.

Rubio will attend a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Sweden on Friday — the same day senior Pentagon officials are expected to brief the 32-nation alliance on plans for the U.S. military's commitment to European defense at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.

Trucks carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles rumbled over forest roads, atomic-powered submarines set sail from Arctic and Pacific ports, and crews scrambled into warplanes as Russia and neighboring Belarus held the final stage of their joint nuclear drills Thursday.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko inspected Russian short-range nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles at a military unit involved in the drills, declaring: "I dreamed about this machine a long time ago."