France's far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has refused to go into a meeting with Lebanon's grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Deryan after his aides asked her to wear a headscarf.

Le Pen was scheduled to meet with Mufti Deryan as part of her three-day visit to Lebanon this week where she met senior officials.

A trial has opened in southern Turkey for 47 people accused of attempting to kill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the night of the failed coup, while he was vacationing with his family.

The suspects — 37 of them former military personnel — face possible life sentences on charges that include attempted assassination, overthrow of the constitutional order and other crimes against the state.

An Iranian semi-official news agency is reporting that the country's elite Revolutionary Guard has launched sophisticated rockets during military exercises.

The Monday report by Tasnim, an agency considered to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, said the launch of "smart and advanced" rockets came during an annual three-day maneuver which began on Monday in Iran's central desert.

France's far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on Monday met for the first time with a foreign head of state, holding talks in Beirut with Lebanon's President Michel Aoun.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to the United States and others on Saturday to support and bolster multilateral organizations such as the European Union, the United Nations and NATO, an alliance to which U.S. Vice President Mike Pence pledged America's commitment was "unwavering."

Merkel told Pence and other world leaders, diplomats and defense officials at the Munich Security Conference that "acting together strengthens everyone."

A powerful Pacific storm blew into Southern and Central California on Friday with wind-driven heavy rains that downed power lines and electrocuted a man, killed a motorist in a submerged car and disrupted hundreds of flights at airports.

With the storm feeding on an atmospheric river of moisture stretching far out into the Pacific, precautionary evacuations of homes in some neighborhoods were requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.

Turkey's top religious official has suggested that the German authorities' raids on the apartments of four Islamic clerics are political moves fueled by "Islamophobia" ahead of elections in the country.

The Islamic clerics whose homes were raided on Wednesday are suspected of spying on opponents of the Turkish government and are accused of hiding behind religion to conduct espionage on behalf of Ankara.

An Afghan provincial official says the Taliban have stormed several Afghan security posts in eastern Kunar province, killing five police officers.

Provincial governor, Waheedullah Kalimzai, says the daring attacks early on Friday morning lasted nearly two hours and were apparently coordinated but the police, aided by other security officials, managed to repel the attackers and drove the insurgents from the area.

Israel warned Hizbullah on Thursday against attacking it after Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah threatened to strike Israel's nuclear reactor in any future war.

The comments by Nasrallah marked the first time his group explicitly threatened to target the reactor in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.

The 8-year-old niece of pop star Britney Spears, who was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident, still isn't well enough to return to school but was able to take Valentine's Day treats to her class in Louisiana Tuesday.

Eight-year-old Maddie Spears-Aldridge is the daughter of Spears' sister, actress and singer Jamie Lynn Spears.