Heat waves and drought gripping California highlight the urgency to slash fossil fuel use and remove planet-warming emissions from the air, a top state official said during discussions of a new plan for the state to reach its climate goals.

"I think every single Californian today knows that we're living through a climate emergency," said Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency.

Emmanuel Macron may be weakened at home after parliamentary elections forced him into political maneuvering, but on the international stage the French president has the resources to remain one of the most influential world leaders.

France's foreign allies closely watched Sunday's elections where Macron's alliance won the most seats but lost its majority in the National Assembly, France's most powerful house of parliament.

A day after endorsing Ukraine's candidacy to join the European Union, the bloc's leaders turned their attention Friday to the severe economic turbulence looming over the coming months as the full impact of Russia's war sinks in and the threat of recession rises.

The EU's 27 leaders gathered in Brussels to grapple with surging inflation, energy shocks, dwindling business and consumer confidence, and growing budget pressures.

Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser al-Khelaïfi was acquitted in Switzerland on Friday for a second time in a retrial of alleged wrongdoing linked to former FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke.

Al-Khelaïfi was cleared again of a charge of incitement to commit aggravated criminal mismanagement for allowing Valcke to use a vacation home in Sardinia rent free. The home was bought in 2013 by a Qatari company.

After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country's east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday.

The city of Sievierodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to a huge chemical factory on the city's edge, where they holed up in its sprawling underground structures.

Water-dropping aircraft from Azerbaijan and Qatar on Friday joined the fight against a wind-stoked wildfire that burned for a fourth day near a popular resort in southwestern Turkey.

Turkey's forestry minister, meanwhile, said the fire may be close to being contained but the wind still poses a risk.

The death toll from a devastating earthquake in Afghanistan continued to climb days after it turned brick and stone homes into rubble, killing 1,150 people and injuring scores more, according to the latest figures carried in state media on Friday.

The country of 38 million people was already in the midst of a spiraling economic crisis that had plunged millions deep into poverty with over a million children at risk of severe malnutrition.

The Israeli Embassy in Uruguay has expressed its "concern" about a cargo plane with Iranian and Venezuelan crew that has been grounded outside Buenos Aires more than two weeks.

In a news release, the embassy said some of the Iranian crew members "were involved directly in the trafficking of weapons to Syria and the terrorist organization Hezbollah of Lebanon."

Lebanon and Sri Lanka may be a world apart, but they share a history of political turmoil and violence that led to the collapse of once-prosperous economies bedeviled by corruption, patronage, nepotism and incompetence.

The toxic combinations led to disaster for both: Currency collapse, shortages, triple-digit inflation and growing hunger. Snaking queues for gas. A decimated middle class. An exodus of professionals who might have helped rebuild.

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.

On Dec. 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines.