French centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron is promising an ethics bill that will block office-holders from conflicts of interest, nepotism and other ethical issues that have infuriated voters.

Macron, who started his own political movement just a year ago, also promised he could get a legislative majority to pass the measure and others he says France needs to pull itself from the economic doldrums.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejoined the ruling party on Tuesday after an absence of almost three years, the first major change to come into effect following a controversial vote to boost his powers.

Erdogan last month narrowly won a referendum on sweeping consitutional changes to create a presidential system in Turkey with just over 51 percent of the vote.

Those endangered North Atlantic right whales cavorting in Cape Cod Bay are fun to watch, but their frolicking doesn't tell the whole story.

Charles "Stormy" Mayo, director of right whale ecology at the federally funded Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, says ominous signs suggest the global population of 500 animals is slowly declining — not incrementally rebounding as experts had hoped a year ago.

Popular support for a hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel has been gaining momentum with West Bank marches, sit-ins and a social media campaign showing video clips of celebrities from across the Arab world drinking salty water in solidarity.

The strike is one of the largest such protests in recent years, with potential fallout beyond the prisoners' demands for better conditions in Israel lockups.

SpaceX has launched a top-secret spy satellite for the U.S. government.

The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Monday morning from its NASA-leased pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It hoisted a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Three German nationals died when the small plane they were travelling in crashed in southern Spain at the weekend, authorities said Monday.

They were flying from the southeastern town of Muchamiel to Granada in southern Andalucia on Saturday afternoon, and crashed in a mountainous area some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from their final destination.

The leader of al-Qaida' branch in Yemen says his militants have often fought alongside Yemeni government factions — remarks that could embarrass the U.S.-backed coalition fighting the impoverished Arab country's Shiite rebels.

Qasim al-Rimi leads the group known as Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, considered by Washington to be the most dangerous offshoot of the global terror network.

Police shot and killed a 49-year-old man suspected of shooting seven people Sunday at a birthday pool party in an apartment complex near the University of California, San Diego, authorities said.

Four women and three men were taken to hospitals with gunshot wounds, Chief Shelley Zimmerman said at a news conference. One of the women later died.

U.S. armored vehicles are deploying in areas in northern Syria along the tense border with Turkey, a few days after a Turkish airstrike that killed 20 U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, a Syrian war monitor and Kurdish activists said Friday.

Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported between Turkish and Kurdish forces Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters.

Syria's military said Israel struck a military installation southwest of Damascus International Airport before dawn Thursday, setting off a series of explosions and raising tensions further between the two neighbors.