For the last two decades or so, Portugal arrived at every major tournament with all eyes on Cristiano Ronaldo.

The team's hopes of doing well at World Cups and European Championships were mostly dependent on whether Ronaldo could successfully lead his team to victory.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to implement a pension reform that would eventually push up the retirement age by three years to 65, making younger generations work longer.

In an interview on France 2 television, Macron said the changes would start being applied next year.

Never has Italy's failure to come to terms with its fascist past been more evident as it marks the 100th anniversary Friday of the March on Rome that brought totalitarian dictator Benito Mussolini to power, a date that has only gained more scrutiny as the first postwar government led by a far-right party with a neo-fascist past takes office.

The symbolism looks troubling: Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party controversially retains the emblem of a flame used by the fascists; her party's co-founder, Ignazio La Russa, whose middle name is Benito and whose home office is awash in fascist memorabilia, is the elected speaker of Parliament's upper house.

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said Thursday that "riots" pave the way for "terror" attacks, a day after a deadly assault on a shrine in the southern city of Shiraz claimed by the Islamic State group.

"The intention of the enemy is to disrupt the country's progress, and then these riots pave the ground for terrorist acts," he said in televised remarks.

Four pro-Iranian fighters were killed early Thursday during Israeli strikes on several positions near Damascus, a war monitor said, in the third such attack in less than a week.

Tudor Popescu swings his ax down on a log, then feeds the split wood into a stove that heats his home in the capital of Moldova. As the nights turn chilly, the stack of firewood has been growing higher around him — his provisions for the coming winter.

In the past, Popescu relied on natural gas to keep warm in the mornings and firewood in the evenings. But gas is now in shorter supply, creating a crisis in his small Eastern European country.

A battle is brewing around Europe's rooftop over the planet's most precious resource.

Bountiful for centuries, the crystal-clear waters issuing from the Alps could become increasingly contested as climate change and glacier melt affect the lives of tens of millions in the coming years: Italy wants them for crop irrigation in the spring and summer. Swiss authorities want to hold up flows to ensure their hydroelectric plants can rev up when needed.

Israel is holding its fifth national election in under four years, and once again the race is shaping up as a referendum on former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fitness to rule.

Netanyahu has been campaigning while standing trial on corruption charges. As Israel's opposition leader, he has portrayed himself as the victim of a political witch hunt and promised to reform a legal system he sees as profoundly biased against him. His main opponent, caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, is marketing himself as a voice of decency and national unity.

Gunmen opened fire Wednesday at a major Shiite holy site in the southern city of Shiraz, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens, according to state-run media.

The official website of the judiciary says two gunmen were arrested and a third is on the run after the attack on the Shah Cheragh mosque. The state-run IRNA news agency reported the death toll and state TV said 40 people were wounded.

Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world's "fossil fuel addiction" degrades public health each year, doctors reported in a new study.

Worldwide the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and biomass forms air pollution that kills 1.2 million people a year, including 11,800 in the United States, according to a report Tuesday in the prestigious medical journal Lancet.