British competition regulators gave preliminary approval Friday to Microsoft's restructured $69 billion deal to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard, easing a final global hurdle that paves the way for one of the largest tech transactions in history to go through.

The Competition and Markets Authority said the revamped proposal "substantially addresses previous concerns" about stifling competition in the fast-growing cloud gaming market, which frees players from buying expensive consoles and gaming computers by streaming to tablets, phones and other devices.

Shares in Europe were mostly lower Friday after mixed trading in Asia following a broad retreat on Wall Street driven by worries over interest rates.

Singapore police say they have uncovered more luxury watches, gold bars and other assets from a massive money laundering scheme that was busted last month, bringing the total amount of assets seized or frozen to 2.4 billion Singapore dollars ($1.75 billion).

The police had launched further operations related to a group of foreign nationals suspected to be involved in laundering the proceeds of their organized criminal activities, including scams and online gambling, police said in a statement on Wednesday.

Ukraine carried out a missile strike Friday on the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, a Russian official said, and images on social media showed large plumes of smoke said to be coming from Sevastopol harbor in the annexed Crimea.

The Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, didn't offer any details, saying only that emergency services have been dispatched to the site of the strike and there was no information about casualties.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered unspecified steps to further develop relations with Russia after his recent visit to the country as his foreign rivals warn that any cooperation on military weapons would be dangerous and bring consequences.

Experts speculated North Korea and Russia likely discussed banned arms transfer deals and other cooperation measures during Kim's six-day trip last week. They say the two countries are serious about sharply boosting their ties while they are engaged in separate confrontations with the West.

President Volodymyr Zelensky worked to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine on a whirlwind visit to Washington on Thursday, delivering an upbeat message on the war's progress while facing new questions about the flow of American dollars that for 19 months have helped keep his troops in the fight against Russian forces.

The Ukrainian leader received a far quieter reception than the hero's welcome he was given last year from Congress, but also won generally favorable comments on the next round of U.S. aid he says he needs to stave off defeat.

Firefighters on Thursday were battling flames in Brazil's northeastern Bahia state, fanned by strong winds and abnormally high temperatures for the season, authorities said.

While it is still technically winter in Brazil, with spring due to start in a couple days, a heat wave prompting record temperatures has swept across much of the country since the beginning of the week.

After pageantry and politics in Paris, Britain's King Charles III heads south Friday to Bordeaux to focus on a more personal passion: the environment.

Charles will meet emergency workers and communities affected by wildfires in the Bordeaux region last year, and visit an experimental forest designed to monitor the impact of climate on urban woodlands.

A day-long communication outage in a flood-stricken city in eastern Libya further complicated the work of teams searching for bodies under the rubble and at sea Wednesday.

The country's chief prosecutor, meanwhile, vowed to take "serious measures" to deliver justice for the victims of the floods, which killed thousands of people and devastated the coastal city of Derna more than a week ago.

The Asian Games are an attention grabber. For starters, they involve more participants than the Summer Olympics. Organizers say more than 12,000 will be entered when the opening ceremony takes place Saturday in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. This is more than the 10,500 expected for next year's Paris Olympics.

The giant numbers are partly due to the staggering array of events with many regional specialties, sports, and games you won't find in the Olympics. And there's also cricket, which appears headed to the Olympics as soon as 2028 in Los Angeles, and certainly for 2032 in Brisbane, Australia.