North Korea leader Kim Jong Un expressed his willingness to restore stalled communication lines with South Korea in coming days while shrugging off U.S. offers for dialogue as "cunning ways" to conceal its hostility against the North, state media reported Thursday.

Kim's statement is an apparent effort to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington as he wants South Korea to help him win relief from crippling U.S.-led economic sanctions and other concessions. Pyongyang this month has offered conditional talks with Seoul alongside its first missile firings in six months and stepped-up criticism of the United States.

Ecuador's president has declared a state of emergency in the prison system following a battle among gang members in a coastal lockup that killed at least 116 people and injured 80 in what authorities say was the worst prison bloodbath ever in the country.

Officials said at least five of the dead were found to have been beheaded.

Three Palestinians were killed Thursday by Israeli fire, including a woman who tried to stab officers in Jerusalem, a militant shot during West Bank clashes and a Gazan who approached the border fence.   

The violence comes days after an Israeli raid on militants in the occupied West Bank left five Palestinians dead.

A French foreign ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said Paris "regrets the suspension" of the probe into the Beirut port blast, urging the Lebanese judiciary to work "in total transparency, and without any political interference" so that investigations could proceed.

"It is up to the Lebanese authorities to allow the probe to continue with all the necessary financial and human resources so it can shed light on what happened on Aug. 4 and meet the legitimate expectations of the Lebanese people," French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre told reporters in Paris.

The new government held its first meeting Wednesday since it won a vote of confidence last week.

The president and prime minister authorized a committee to resume bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund over Lebanon's worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history. Talks with the IMF were suspended last year.

Luis Suárez converted a stoppage-time penalty after Antoine Griezmann scored his first goal since returning to Atlético Madrid as the Spanish team fought back to beat 10-man AC Milan 2-1 in the Champions League on Tuesday.

Griezmann leveled six minutes from time and Atlético was awarded a penalty that Suárez struck confidently down the middle in the seventh minute of stoppage with the last of the visitor's 22 shots.

The European Union's general court on Wednesday annulled the 27-country bloc's approval of agriculture and fishing agreements that allow Morocco to export goods from Western Sahara.

The ruling could damage the EU's relationship with Morocco, although the court said the effects of the 2019 agreements would be maintained over a certain period "to preserve the European Union's external action and legal certainty over its international commitments."

Death's come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government is declaring them extinct.

It's a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they've exhausted efforts to find these 23. And they warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife.

The World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest is among four national parks to be handed back to traditional owners in a deal signed with an Australian state government on Wednesday.

More than 160,000 hectares (395,000 acres) of land in northern Queensland state stretching from the Daintree, north of Port Douglas, to south of Cooktown will be jointly managed before a full handover is made to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people.

Japan's former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida won the governing party leadership election on Wednesday and is set to become the next prime minister, facing the imminent task of addressing a pandemic-hit economy and ensuring a strong alliance with Washington to counter growing regional security risks.

Kishida replaces outgoing party leader Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is stepping down after serving only one year since taking office last September.