A United Nations report released Thursday shows that there is still a multibillion dollar funding gap for preserving tropical forests, which are key to fighting climate change.

A new fund that aims to raise $100 million for firefighting in South America, home to the Amazon rainforest, was announced this week at New York Climate Week and the U.N. General Assembly. But the funding excludes vast swathes of forests in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Zinedine Zidane was asked if taking charge of his first France game on Friday will feel just as special as his playing debut for Les Bleus more than 30 years ago.

"Even more so, maybe," a smiling Zidane said Thursday ahead of a Nations League game at Turkey. "I feel an immense emotion being at the head of this France team."

In the end, Jürgen Klopp and Xavi Hernandez gave one another a big hug on the sideline and headed for the locker rooms, honors even, unbeaten international records intact.

Thursday's 1-1 draw between Germany and the Netherlands in the Nations League was the international coaching debut for both men, who both inherited teams that disappointed at the World Cup.

Argentina's poverty rate jumped to 32.3% in the first half of 2026, official data showed Thursday, as incomes failed to keep pace with the rising cost of basic goods, a setback for libertarian President Javier Milei little more than a year before he seeks reelection.

The national statistics agency, known as INDEC, reported that the share of Argentines living below the poverty line jumped four percentage points from 28.2% in the second half of 2025. Extreme poverty, or indigence, rose from 6.3% to 7.5%.

Five cheetah cubs had to survive a weather scare and the illness of their mother after their birth at the Prague Zoo. But they are doing well now, the zoo said on Friday.

The zoo said the quintuplets — four males and one female — that were born on June 18 had faced a tough time from the start.

Israel’s military said two of its soldiers were killed in northern Gaza on Thursday while inspecting an unexploded Israeli drone near a military post. They were the first Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza in months.

The drone exploded as the soldiers approached it, the military said Friday. They were evacuated to a hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

With Saudi oil facilities, cities and ships off its coast coming under escalating attacks, the kingdom's top religious authority has called on soldiers to be prepared to defend the country from Iran-backed Houthis.

The strongly worded statement from Grand Mufti Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan, who traditionally avoids weighing in on politics in a country that holds enormous influence among Muslims worldwide, is a rare message on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East from the kingdom's top religious authority.

Russian authorities on Friday released the full results from the country's first wartime parliamentary election, which further cemented the Kremlin's overwhelming political control.

The three-day balloting ended Sunday. According to the results released by the Central Election Commission, the main Kremlin party, United Russia, will get more than three-fourths of the seats in the lower house, the State Duma, a record high. The tightly orchestrated vote excluded virtually any genuine opposition.

Yemen's internationally recognized government pressed world leaders anew Thursday for help defeating the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, saying that their new perch along one of the world's busiest waterways presents an international economic risk.

The Houthis — who have controlled Yemen's capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north for over a decade — stormed down Yemen's coast this month and seized the crucial port city of Mokha and key Red Sea islands. That gives them better surveillance of ships passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, at the sea's southern end. About 12% of the world's trade usually passes through the waterway.

Pope Leo XIV will visit the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes this weekend as part of his four-day apostolic journey to France, which is the first official papal state visit to the country in 18 years.

The site near the Spanish border draws millions of pilgrims annually, including sick and disabled believers hoping for a cure from the famed spring water in the Lourdes grotto. Here is what to know about Lourdes, one of Catholicism's most important pilgrimage sites.