Travel restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus are hammering the already beleaguered travel and tourism industries and adding to the gloom in Europe in the midst of the crucial holiday season.

Travelers are rearranging or canceling trips because of tightening rules. Eurostar, which operates trains across the English Channel, sold out of tickets to France on Friday before new travel restrictions to and from Britain went into effect.

The value of Afghanistan's currency is tumbling, exacerbating an already severe economic crisis and deepening poverty in a country where more than half the population already doesn't have enough to eat.

The afghani lost more than 11% of its value against the U.S. dollar in the space of a day earlier this week, before recouping somewhat. But the market remains volatile, and the devaluation is already impacting Afghans.

North Korea on Friday commemorated the 10th anniversary of former leader Kim Jong Il's death with calls for greater public loyalty toward his son and current leader Kim Jong Un, who is struggling to navigate the country out of deepening pandemic-related hardships.

In his 10 years at the helm of North Korea since his father's death, Kim Jong Un, 37, has secured the same absolute power enjoyed by Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, the current leader's grandfather and state founder. Despite massive economic shocks caused by draconian anti-virus measures and long-dormant diplomacy with the United States, North Korea shows no signs of political instability and few outside experts question Kim's grip on power.

Russia on Friday published draft security pacts demanding NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries and to roll back its military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe — bold demands that the U.S. and its allies already have rejected.

The documents, which have been submitted to the U.S. and its allies earlier this week, also call for a ban on sending U.S. and Russian warships and aircraft to areas from where they can strike each other's territory and demand a rollback on alliance drills near Russia.

Turkey's currency crashed to an new all-time low against the dollar Friday, a day after the Central Bank again lowered a key interest rate despite surging consumer prices, a move in line with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's unconventional economic policy.

The lira's fall prompted the Central Bank to intervene by selling off more foreign currency. It was the bank's fifth intervention in recent weeks to attempt to prop up the lira.

As a backhoe dug up the ground to build trenches, Iraqi soldiers scanned the vast farming tracts for militants; not far away, their Kurdish counterparts did the same.

The scene earlier this month in the small northern Iraqi farming village of Lheiban was a rare instance of coordination between the federal government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The two sides were fortifying a joint position aimed at defending the village against attacks by the Islamic State group.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party has suffered a stunning defeat in a parliamentary by-election that was a referendum on his government amid weeks of scandal and soaring COVID-19 infections.

Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan overturned a Conservative majority of almost 23,000 votes from the last election to win Thursday's contest in North Shropshire, a rural area of northwest England that has been represented by a Conservative almost continuously since 1832. The election was called after the former Conservative member of Parliament resigned amid a corruption scandal.

A Kentucky neighborhood ravaged by a tornado by got more bad news Thursday: the body of a missing teenager was found.

Nyssa Brown was the seventh member of her family to die in the tornado that hit Bowling Green last week. Warren County coroner Kevin Kirby said the 13-year-old's body was found Thursday morning in a wooded area near her subdivision.

Twenty-seven people were feared dead after a fire broke out in a building in Osaka in western Japan, fire department officials said Friday, and police were investigating arson as a possible cause.

The fire started on the fourth floor of an eight-story building in the shopping and entertainment area of Kitashinchi, Osaka city fire department official Akira Kishimoto said.

Five children died and four others were in critical condition on Thursday after falling from a bouncy castle that was lifted 10 meters (33 feet) into the air by a gust of wind at a school on Australia's island state of Tasmania.

The school was holding a celebration to mark the end of the school year.