The European Union will seek China's assurances that it won't assist Russia in circumventing economic sanctions leveled over the invasion of Ukraine at an annual summit Friday.

EU officials say they will also look for signs Beijing is willing to cooperate on bringing an end to the war at the virtual meeting.

Russian troops left the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site early Friday after returning control to the Ukrainians, authorities said, as eastern parts of the country braced for renewed attacks and Russians blocked another aid mission to the besieged port city of Mariupol.

Ukraine's state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received "significant doses" of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. But there was no independent confirmation of that.

A powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric has said that he was stepping back for the next 40 days and giving his Iran-backed rivals the chance to form the country's next government.

The surprising move by Muqtada al-Sadr comes against the backdrop of a persisting political deadlock in Iraq, five months after general elections.

There couldn't be a better moment for Jonathan Clauss to return to the club which once thought he was not ready for the roughness of the game.

It has been a long road, but the 29-year-old Lens right back ultimately made it to the top level, getting a first taste of international soccer with France's national team over the past few days.

When Xavi Hernández returned as Barcelona coach four months ago, the team he had helped lead to greatness as a player was struggling to get wins over the most modest of rivals.

After a bumpy start, Xavi now has Barcelona back to playing like a title challenger after a string of big wins that culminated in a 4-0 rout at Real Madrid before a two-week international break.

A convoy of buses headed to Mariupol on Thursday in another attempt to evacuate people from the besieged port city, while Russia pressed its attacks in several parts of Ukraine ahead of a planned new round of talks aimed at ending the fighting.

After the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area, the Red Cross said its teams were traveling to Mariupol with relief and medical supplies and hoped to help pull civilians out of the beleaguered city on Friday. Previous attempts at establishing a similar humanitarian corridor have fallen apart.

A Norwegian soccer official delivered a scathing criticism of World Cup host Qatar and FIFA to an audience of executives on Thursday on the eve of the tournament's draw.

Qatar's record of protecting the rights of migrant workers — who have built tens of billion of dollars of projects needed for the World Cup — and its criminalization of homosexuality was aired by Lise Klaveness, the newly elected head of soccer in Norway and one of the few women ever to lead a FIFA member federation.

The world's fair in Dubai, a tech-saturated site teeming with talking robots and solar canopies, sought to be the future.

Now, it's history.

Bruce Willis is stepping away from acting after a diagnosis of aphasia, a condition that causes loss of the ability to understand or express speech, his family said.

In a statement posted on Willis' Instagram page, the 67-year-old actor's family announced that Willis was recently diagnosed with aphasia and that it is impacting his cognitive abilities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recalled Ukraine’s ambassadors to Georgia and Morocco, suggesting they haven’t done enough to persuade those countries to support Ukraine and punish Russia for the invasion.

“With all due respect, if there won’t be weapons, won’t be sanctions, won’t be restrictions for Russian business, then please look for other work,” Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation Wednesday. “I am waiting for concrete results in the coming days from the work of our representatives in Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa.”