Russia conducted a heavy aerial attack on Ukraine for the third time in four days Thursday, again launching missiles and scores of drones that mostly were intercepted, Ukraine's air force said.

Russian forces fired five missiles and 74 Shahed drones at Ukrainian targets, an air force statement said. Air defenses stopped two missiles and 60 drones, and 14 other drones presumably fell before reaching their target, it said.

Germany is planning to deport the leader of an Islamic center it banned in July over alleged links to militant groups, an interior ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.

Investigators swooped on the Hamburg Islamic Center five weeks ago after concluding it was an "Islamist extremist organization" with links to Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

One person has been killed and two injured in strikes on Russia's Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, the regional governor said Thursday.

Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram that "the town of Shebekino was targeted by Ukrainian forces" and "unfortunately, one person was killed".

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Thursday in Beijing, on a visit with the stated aim of keeping communications open between the two powers, as the relationship between China and the United States has become increasingly tense in recent years.

Sullivan, on his first trip to China in his capacity as the main adviser to President Joe Biden on U.S. national security issues, has met with senior Chinese officials including Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a senior general of the Central Military Commission.

French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation.

Both free-speech advocates and authoritarian governments have spoken in Durov's defense since his weekend arrest. The case has also called attention to the challenges of policing illegal activity online, and to the Russia-born Durov's own unusual biography and multiple passports.

The European Union traditionally ends its summer slumber in the dying days of August with an informal meeting of its foreign affairs ministers in a political equivalent of a fireside chat. But with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Hungary holding the presidency of the 27-nation bloc, vacation has already been turned into one long firebrand's shout.

Since July 1, and right up to year's end, the EU's arcane rules allow Hungary, a nation of 9.5 million, to represent and often speak for the bloc of 450 million. The problem is that Orbán increasingly stands for everything the EU opposes.

French prosecutors are expected to charge or release the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, after his police custody order expires on Wednesday.

Durov was detained Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a judicial inquiry opened last month involving 12 alleged criminal violations. They include allegations that his platform is being used for selling child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud, abetting organized crime transactions and Telegram's refusal to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.

The leaders of Germany and the United Kingdom announced plans on Wednesday to draw up a treaty meant to deepen the two nations' trade, defense and other ties.

The move comes as new U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer moves ahead with plans for a "reset" of relations with the European Union.

A Russian missile slammed into Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday, local authorities said, just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's home city was observing an official day of mourning for an attack the previous day that killed four civilians at a hotel.

The latest attack on the city struck civilian infrastructure, wounding four people, local administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said on social media.

Ukraine says it has a new long-range weapon to strike deep into Russia without asking permission from allies — a homegrown combination of missile and drone that the defense minister vowed Monday would provide "answers" to a wave of Russian bombings.

The Palianytsia was created due to urgent necessity, Ukrainian officials said, as Russia has dominated the skies since the outbreak of the war in February 2022 and Ukraine's Western allies have placed conditions on use of their long-range missiles in Russia. On Monday, a wave of Russian missiles and drones targeted Ukraine's electrical infrastructure in the largest such attack in weeks.