Americans are marking 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with solemn ceremonies, volunteer work and other tributes honoring the victims.

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot and killed at a Utah college event in what the governor called a political assassination.

Authorities say Kirk was killed with a single shot from a rooftop on Wednesday. Whoever fired the gun then slipped away amid the chaos of screams and students fleeing the Utah Valley University campus. Federal, state and local authorities were still searching for an unidentified shooter early Thursday and working what they called "multiple active crime scenes."

Poland said early Wednesday that multiple Russian drones entered and were shot down over its territory with help from NATO allies, describing the incident as an "act of aggression" carried out during a wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine.

Several European leaders said they believed Russia was intentionally escalating the war, and NATO was discussing the incident in a meeting. It came three days after Russia's largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began, an attack that for the first time hit a key government building in Kyiv.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appointed Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu as new prime minister and tasked him with immediately trying to get the country's fractious political parties to agree on a budget for one of the world's biggest economies.

Lecornu, 39, was the youngest defense minister in French history and architect of a major military buildup through 2030, spurred by Russia's war in Ukraine. A longtime Macron loyalist, Lecornu is now France's fourth prime minister in barely a year.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a major state of the union speech on Wednesday addressing the challenges facing the world's biggest trading bloc and laying out her vision for tackling them.

The commission has enthusiastically billed her speech — modeled on the annual State of the Union addresses to Congress by U.S. presidents — as "a milestone event for European democracy."

The tiny, gas-rich Gulf Arab state of Qatar hosts the biggest U.S. military base in the Middle East. It has evacuated tens of thousands of American citizens from Afghanistan. It has been designated a U.S. "major non-NATO ally." It has even lavished a $400 million jumbo jet on President Donald Trump for use as Air Force One.

None of that protected this quiet peninsula in the Persian Gulf from coming under an Israeli aerial attack on Tuesday as it mediated U.S.-backed negotiations to end the Israel-Hamas war.

Schools closed, flights were disrupted and tens of thousands of people were evacuated in southern China as Tropical Storm Tapah made landfall Monday.

The economic hub of Guangdong province near Hong Kong halted some train and ferry services ahead of the storm, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Dozens of scenic areas were closed and some 60,000 people were evacuated across the region by Sunday afternoon, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The risk of direct impacts from Hurricane Kiko decreased Monday as the tropical cyclone showed signs it would pass to the north of the Hawaiian Islands, forecasters said.

Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga set the tone at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night with career-defining moments of their own.

Grande scored two honors — video of the year and best pop video — and had the audience buzzing when she thanked her "therapists and gay people" during her acceptance speech.

President Donald Trump celebrated news on Monday that an alumni group from West Point canceled an award ceremony set to honor Tom Hanks, with the president calling the famous actor "destructive" and "WOKE."

Hanks was scheduled to receive the 2025 Sylvanus Thayer Award on Sept. 25, but the U.S. Military Academy's alumni association canceled the ceremony last week, according to news reports.