President Volodymyr Zelensky said negotiating teams from Washington, Moscow and Kyiv would discuss territorial control of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region at talks beginning Friday in the United Arab Emirates.

"The Donbas is a key issue. It will be discussed in the modality that the three parties see fit in Abu Dhabi today and tomorrow," Zelensky told journalists, including from AFP, in an online briefing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the settlement in Ukraine with U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys during marathon overnight talks, and the Kremlin insisted that the territorial issue needs to be resolved to reach a peace deal.

The Kremlin meeting, which lasted past 3 a.m. Friday, came hours after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sharply criticized his European allies Thursday for what he cast as their slow and fragmented response to Russia's nearly four-year full-scale invasion that he said has left Ukraine at the mercy of Putin amid an ongoing U.S. push for a peace settlement.

The toll in Iran's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests has reached at least 5,002 people killed, activists said Friday, warning many more were feared dead as the most comprehensive internet blackout in the country's history crossed the two-week mark.

The challenge in getting information out of Iran persists due to authorities cutting off access to the internet on Jan. 8, even as tensions rise between the United States and Iran as an American aircraft carrier group moves closer to the Middle East — a force U.S. President Donald Trump likened to an "armada" in comments to journalists late Thursday.

Barcelona midfielder Pedri is expected to be out for a month because of a hamstring injury.

Pedri injured his right leg in the 4-2 win at Slavia Prague in the Champions League on Wednesday.

La Liga will hold a minute of silence before this weekend's matches in memory of the victims of the two deadly train accidents in the country in the past week.

At least 43 people were killed in southern Spain last Sunday when a high-speed train jumped the track and caused a second train passing the other way to derail. That was followed by another crash on Tuesday when a commuter train outside Barcelona hit a retaining wall that collapsed, killing one person.

The vast field of over 5,800 electric and hybrid vehicles gleamed on the cargo deck of the BYD Changzhou, an Chinese container vessel unloading Wednesday at a river port in eastern Argentina.

In other places, such a scene would not be noteworthy. Chinese automaker BYD has sped up its exports and undercut rivals the world over, alarming Washington, upsetting Western and Japanese auto giants and unnerving local industries across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Japan posted a trade deficit for the fifth straight year in 2025, according to government data released Thursday, as exports were hit by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and a diplomatic rift with neighboring China.

For the full year, Japan logged a 2.65 trillion yen ($17 billion) trade deficit, the Finance Ministry reported in its preliminary data.

Denmark's prime minister insisted that her country can't negotiate on its sovereignty on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump said he agreed on a "framework of a future deal" on Arctic security with the head of NATO. Trump said the outcome would be "all the military access we want" to Greenland.

Trump on Wednesday abruptly scrapped the tariffs he had threatened to impose on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. It was a dramatic reversal hours after he insisted he wanted to get the island "including right, title and ownership" — though he also said he would not use force.

Chile is reeling from one of its most serious wildfire emergencies in years.

Deadly flames sweeping across central and southern parts of the South American country have turned large swaths of forest and towns to ash, killed at least 20 people, forced tens of thousands from their homes and left families sifting through charred debris.

By Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College and Josiane Yazbeck, Université La Sagesse

(THE CONVERSATION) More than a year after a ceasefire nominally ended active fighting, much of southern Lebanon bears the ecological scars of war. Avocado orchards are gone and beehives destroyed. So, too, are the livelihoods they supported. Meanwhile, fields and forests have disappeared under the intense fire caused by white phosphorus shelling. Shrapnel and unexploded bombs, however, remain.