China's top diplomat in Hong Kong has rebuked his American counterpart just weeks after her arrival and warned her against meeting people she "shouldn't meet with," according to a statement released Thursday.

Four people were injured and a suspected knifeman shot by police Thursday after a car ramming and stabbing incident outside a synagogue in Manchester, officials said.

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Europe Thursday to take coordinated action against Russia's so-called shadow fleet and follow his country's lead in clamping down on vessels used to bust Western sanctions.

Indonesian rescue workers were racing against the clock on Wednesday in the search for survivors from a school collapse in the province of East Java, with at least 90 students still unaccounted for, along with three confirmed dead and about 100 injured.

The Islamic boarding school, which authorities said was undergoing an unauthorized expansion to add two new stories, collapsed during afternoon prayers on Monday, sending slabs of concrete and other heavy debris crashing onto the students below.

The Russian army's advance in Ukraine slowed again in September, especially in the Donetsk region, according to an AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Moscow's forces seized a total of 447 square kilometers (173 square miles) from Ukraine in September, accentuating a slowdown that began in August, the data showed.

France is probing an oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia's clandestine "shadow fleet" for "serious offenses", President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday -- stopping short of confirming reports of a link to mysterious drone flights in Denmark.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen Wednesday vowed Russia would not succeed in sowing "division and anxiety" in the bloc, at the start of summit talks in Denmark rattled by a spate of mysterious drone flights.

"It's a pattern, and this pattern is coming from Russia," von der Leyen told reporters as the defence talks kicked off in Copenhagen. "Russia tries to test us, but Russia also tries to sow division and anxiety in our societies. We will not let this happen".

Rescuers used backhoes and sniffer dogs to look for survivors in collapsed houses and other damaged buildings in the central Philippines Wednesday, a day after an earthquake killed at least 69 people.

The death toll was expected to rise from the magnitude-6.9 earthquake that hit at about 10 p.m. Tuesday and trapped an unspecified number of residents in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu province.

Plunged into a government shutdown, the U.S. is confronting a fresh cycle of uncertainty after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to keep government programs and services running by Wednesday's deadline.

Roughly 750,000 federal workers are expected to be furloughed, some potentially fired by the Trump administration. Many offices will be shuttered, perhaps permanently, as Trump vows to "do things that are irreversible, that are bad" as retribution. His deportation agenda is expected to run full speed ahead, while education, environmental and other services sputter. The economic fallout is expected to ripple nationwide.

Denmark's support for Ukraine, its lack of anti-drone defenses and this week's EU summit in Copenhagen could all explain the unidentified drone sightings over Danish airspace that have been widely blamed on Russia.