Climate change is top of the agenda when voters in Iceland head to the polls for general elections on Saturday, following an exceptionally warm summer and an election campaign defined by a wide-reaching debate on global warming.

All nine parties running for seats at the North Atlantic island nation's Parliament, or Althing, acknowledge global warming as a force of change in a sub-Arctic landscape.

The advance of lava from a volcanic eruption in Spain's Canary Islands has slowed significantly, raising doubts Thursday about whether it will fan out across the land and destroy more homes instead of flowing into the sea.

A giant river of lava slowed to four meters (13 feet) per hour after reaching a plain on Wednesday. On Monday, a day after the eruption on the island of La Palma, it was moving at 700 meters (2,300 feet) per hour.

Denmark is siding with the United States in the dispute with its fellow EU member France over a major Indo-Pacific defense deal.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a newspaper interview that she wants to warn against turning "concrete challenges, which will always exist between allies, into something they should not be."

China sent 19 fighter jets toward Taiwan in a large display of force Thursday, after the self-governing island announced its intention to join an 11-nation Pacific trade group that China has also applied to join.

Taiwan deployed air patrol forces in response to the Chinese jets and tracked them on their air defense systems, the island's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Taiwan has applied to join an 11-nation Pacific trade group, Cabinet officials said Thursday, setting up a potential clash with rival Beijing over the status of the island democracy.

Taiwan's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership might be disrupted if China, which applied last week, is admitted first, said John Deng, a minister without portfolio.

A month after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the music is going quiet.

The last time the militant group ruled the country, in the late 1990s, it outright banned music. So far this time, the government set up by the Taliban hasn't taken that step officially. But already, musicians are afraid a ban will come, and some Taliban fighters on the ground have started enforcing rules on their own, harassing musicians and music venues.

Tunisian President Kaïs Saied issued presidential decrees bolstering the already near-total power he granted himself two months ago.

Wednesday's decrees include the continuing suspension of the Parliament's powers and the suspension of all lawmakers' immunity from prosecution. But the text published in the official gazette went even further — now freezing lawmakers' salaries.

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Middle Eastern king, then looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, is finally headed back to Iraq.

The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in the nation's capital.

China's central bank will soon have access to private credit information of hundreds of millions of users of Ant Group's online credit service, in a move signaling more regulatory oversight of the financial technology sector.

Huabei, Ant Group's credit service, said in a statement that consumer credit data it has collected will be included in the People's Bank of China's financial credit information database.

The new rulers of Afghanistan have an uphill battle in their efforts to be recognized in time to address other world leaders at the United Nations this year.

The Taliban are challenging the credentials of the ambassador from Afghanistan's former government and asking to speak at the General Assembly's high-level meeting of world leaders this week, according to a letter sent to the United Nations.