Just days before France's crucial presidential runoff vote, the center-left leaders of Germany, Spain and Portugal urged French voters Thursday to choose centrist President Emmanuel Macron over far-right nationalist rival Marine Le Pen.

And in another sign of the wide international influence the result of Sunday's French presidential vote will have, imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny also spoke up a day earlier, urging French voters to back Macron and alleging that Le Pen is too closely linked to Russian authorities.

Fire managers across the US Southwest are reckoning with strong winds that forecasters say could lead to explosive growth in wildfires this week. Hundreds of people were evacuated in numerous blazes that have scorched structures and signaled an early start to the fire season.

A wildfire on the outskirts of Flagstaff continued its run Wednesday though dry grass and scattered Ponderosa pines around homes into volcanic cinder fields, where roots underground can combust and send small rocks flying into the air, fire officials said. Aircraft was grounded for a second day due to high winds, and a major northern Arizona highway remained closed as smoke shrouded the air.

At least 14 people were killed by bomb blasts in Afghan cities Thursday -- including 10 at a mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif, the second attack against a Shiite target this week.

The number of bombings in Afghanistan has dwindled since the Taliban returned to power in August, but the jihadist Islamic State group has claimed several since then.

Queen Elizabeth II is marking her 96th birthday privately on Thursday, retreating to the Sandringham estate in eastern England that has offered the monarch and her late husband, Prince Philip, a refuge from the affairs of state.

Elizabeth is expected to spend the day at the estate's Wood Farm cottage, a personal sanctuary where she also spent her first Christmas since Philip's death in April 2021. Philip loved the cottage, in part because it is close to the sea, she said in February when hosting a rare public event at Sandringham.

Not even an off-day for Karim Benzema was enough to keep Real Madrid from moving closer to clinching the Spanish league title.

Benzema missed two penalty kicks seven minutes apart in the second half but Madrid went on to earn a 3-1 win at Osasuna Wednesday to open a 17-point lead over second-place Atletico Madrid, which can no longer catch its rival as both teams have five games left to play. Barcelona is 18 points back but has seven games left to play, meaning it still has a theoretical chance to catch Madrid.

It's still advantage Manchester City in the Premier League title race.

Three second-half goals earned City a 3-0 win over Brighton on Wednesday, lifting Pep Guardiola's team back into first place after being ousted — only for 24 hours as it turned out — by title rival Liverpool.

Once a model of coaching stability in Alex Ferguson's long trophy-filled tenure, Manchester United hired a fifth full-time manager in nine years since his retirement by bringing in Erik ten Hag from Ajax.

Ten Hag's arrival was announced by United on Thursday, with the 52-year-old Dutchman joining at the end of the season to 2025. He is tasked with awakening a fallen superpower in European soccer that is enduring its longest trophy drought in nearly 40 years.

A Spanish court has lifted measures that shielded the clubs that want to create a European Super League competition from being punished by UEFA and FIFA.

In court documents seen by The Associated Press on Thursday, a court in Madrid said it was removing the legal protection because even if the clubs are punished that would not impede them from going forward with the plan to create a breakaway competition beyond UEFA's control.

Lu Muying died on April 1 in a government quarantine facility in Shanghai, with her family on the phone as doctors tried to resuscitate her. She had tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and was moved there in line with government policy that all coronavirus cases be centrally isolated.

But the 99-year-old, who was just two weeks shy of her 100th birthday, was not counted as a COVID-19 death in Shanghai's official tally. In fact, the city of more than 25 million has only reported 25 coronavirus deaths despite an outbreak that has spanned nearly two months and infected hundreds of thousands of people in the world's third-largest city.

The first and most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, launched more than a decade ago. Yet for all the relentless buzz, relatively few are well versed in cryptocurrencies or the blockchain, the technology on which they're built.

Despite the evangelizing by and rising profile of some investors, a 2021 poll by Pew Research Center found that just 16% of Americans said they have ever invested in cryptocurrencies. That broadened to 31% between the ages of 18 and 29 and to 43% of men in that age range.