The Iranian ambassador to Sweden went to the Swedish Foreign Ministry on Friday to protest the sentencing of an Iranian citizen to life by a Swedish court for committing grave war crimes and murder during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

The Stockholm District Court said Thursday that Hamid Noury took part in severe atrocities in July-August 1988 while working as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison outside the Iranian city of Karaj.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil urged Friday for a dignified return of the Syrian refugees to their homeland.

Lebanon has one of the world’s highest numbers of refugees per capita and currently hosts over 1 million Syrians who fled the decade-old conflict. Officials say the influx has cost Lebanon billions of dollars and further damaged its crippled infrastructure while it struggles with a financial meltdown.

The exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday arrived in India's remote Ladakh region bordering China where he received a rousing reception.

Thousands of people lined both sides of the road outside the airport in the cold desert region's Leh town to welcome the Dalai Lama, who is touring outside his base in the northern Indian city of Dharmsala for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. He will stay in Ladakh for about 45 days.

China's economy contracted in the three months ending in June compared with the previous quarter after Shanghai and other cities shut down to fight coronavirus outbreaks, but the government said a "stable recovery" is under way after businesses reopened.

The world's second-largest economy shrank by 2.6%, down from the January-March period's already weak 1.4%, official data showed Friday. Compared with a year earlier, which can hide recent fluctuations, growth slid to 0.4% from the earlier quarter's 4.8%.

"It's absolutely crazy to stick yourself to the road with superglue," admits Lina Schinkoethe.

And yet, the 19-year-old recently landed in jail for doing just that, in protest at what she believes is the German government's failure to act against climate change.

Russia remains barred from Europe's leading soccer competitions including the Champions League after the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected appeals by the national soccer federation and four clubs on Friday.

CAS upheld decisions by UEFA and FIFA which excluded Russian national teams and clubs following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Italians woke to political uncertainty Friday amid an unprecedented government crisis that has put Mario Draghi's future as prime minister on tenterhooks and raised the specter of snap elections.

The premier of Europe's third-largest economy will have until Wednesday to shore up political support in a bid to save his coalition government tackling numerous challenges, from soaring inflation to the war in Ukraine.

Palestinian journalists covering President Joe Biden’s visit to the occupied West Bank are wearing black T-shirts bearing the image of slain Palestinian-American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh.

The popular Al-Jazeera correspondent was killed in May while covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank.

Top financial officials from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations met on the Indonesian island of Bali on Friday seeking strategies to counter the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine, inflation and other global crises.

Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati opened the two-day meeting by urging fellow finance ministers, central bank chiefs and other leaders to find ways to "build bridges, not walls." She said the consequences of failure, especially for less wealthy nations, would be "catastrophic."

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka's interim president Friday until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned after mass protests over the country's economic collapse forced him from office.

Wickremesinghe was acting president since Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday after angry protesters had stormed his official residence.