A contest to lead Europe's financial rescue fund is drawing to a close with the spotlight on three candidates. But a question that has hung over the monthslong race looks certain to persist: Will the winner have enough to do despite fresh economic shocks?

Finance ministers from the 19 countries that share the euro currency could decide Thursday in Luxembourg on a successor to Germany's Klaus Regling as managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, created during the eurozone debt crisis a decade ago. They also could postpone the decision until July.

The head of the Russian Central Bank warned Thursday that the country's economy faces pressure from abroad that could persist indefinitely, dampening hopes that conditions could return to what they were before Russia sent troops into Ukraine.

"It seems to me that it's obvious to everyone that it won't be as it was before," Elvira Nabiullina said at a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual showpiece gathering aimed at investors.

Australia's new government on Thursday formally committed to a more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target of 43% by the end of the decade in fulfillment of a key election pledge.

The previous conservative government was dumped by voters at the May 21 election after it stuck to a seven-year-old pledge to reduce Australia's emissions by only 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Damaging floodwaters that tore through Yellowstone National Park menaced communities downstream where residents cleaned up from the mess and kept an eye on rising river levels while others braced for the economic fallout while the park remains closed.

After wiping out miles of roads and untold number of bridges in the park and swamping hundreds of homes in surrounding communities, the roiling waters threatened to cut off fresh drinking water supplies to Montana's largest city.

Kevin Spacey "strenuously denies" allegations of sexual assault, his lawyer said Thursday, as the Oscar-winning actor appeared in a London court to face five charges of offenses against three men.

Photographers and television camera crews thronged Spacey, 62, as he arrived at London's Westminster Magistrates Court for the preliminary hearing.

At Greece's largest coal mine, controlled explosions and the roar of giant excavators scooping up blasted rock have once again become routine. Coal production has been ramped up at the site near the northern Greek city of Kozani as the war in Ukraine forced many European nations to rethink their energy supplies.

Coal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war.

Thousands of people marched in Bangladesh's capital on Thursday to demand the governments of Bangladesh and India officially condemn comments by two Indian governing party officials deemed derogatory to Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The march began at the country's main Baitul Mukarram Mosque but was blocked by police as it headed toward India's Embassy, a few kilometers (miles) away.

One month ahead of President Joe Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia, the District of Columbia is renaming the street in front of the Saudi embassy Jamal Khashoggi Way, trolling Riyadh for its role in the killing of the dissident Saudi activist and journalist in 2018.

With members of the D.C. Council in attendance, a Jamal Khashoggi Way sign was unveiled directly in front of the embassy's main entrance.

French officials warned Thursday that a record pre-summer heatwave was spreading north from Spain, where authorities were fighting several forest fires as the country sizzles under a sixth day of sweltering temperatures.

The Meteo France weather service said it was the earliest hot spell to hit the country since at least 2005, worsening a drought caused by an unusually dry winter and spring and raising the risk of forest fires.

NATO defense ministers gathered Thursday for talks focusing on bolstering forces and deterrence along the military alliance's eastern borders to dissuade Russia from planning further aggression.

The war by the Kremlin in Ukraine since February has led allies to rethink strategies and to agree that NATO forces should be present in greater numbers on that flank. They have already beefed up the deployment of troops and material and want to guarantee a long-term presence of forces.