France's prime minister convened a crisis meeting on Thursday and canceled ministers' trips to focus on the nationwide spread of protests, some violent, by high school students venting against under-resourced schools, long hours and other complaints.

The demonstrations erupted in Paris-region schools last week and have snowballed, with police making hundreds of arrests in clashes with the young protesters. Authorities have reported many dozens of injuries, including from hurled objects but also, in some suspected cases, from police riot-control projectiles.

A wind turbine described by its developer as the world's tallest now rises 365 meters (1,197 feet) above the sparsely populated landscape of eastern Germany, surpassing the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The colossal turbine has been built at an existing wind farm in Lusatia, southeast of Berlin. Once a major center of lignite mining, the region has increasingly turned to renewable energy in recent years. The prototype reached its full height this week and is due to be inaugurated in mid-November.

Cristiano Ronaldo walked out on Portugal's training camp on Wednesday, hours after coach Jorge Jesus said the star forward would not start the game against Denmark in the Nations League on Thursday.

The 41-year-old Ronaldo said that "in time" he would "tell the Portuguese people the truth about the reasons" behind his departure.

Spring has finally arrived in the Southern Hemisphere and, in Chile, even the desert is blossoming.

Known as the driest nonpolar desert on Earth, a massive portion of the Atacama Desert has been covered in flowers after the El Niño weather pattern brought heavy rains to the region earlier this year. The unusually large amount of water allowed millions of seeds and bulbs to sprout and bloom, many of them after remaining dormant for decades.

A Russian drone struck a school in Kyiv on Thursday, city officials said, as the Ukrainian capital endured another night and day of relentless aerial attacks.

Children and staff at the school were in shelters when the drone hit, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said, although the drone's warhead didn't explode. There was no immediate report of casualties. The building's brick frontage showed a large hole and black burn mark alongside smashed windows.

Americans are deeply frustrated with President Donald Trump's handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party's chances in November.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of the Republican president's handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

France's public debt has climbed to a record during the two terms of President Emmanuel Macron, unsettling investors and emerging as a defining issue ahead of next year's presidential election.

With France already gripped by deep social tensions, the candidates vying to succeed Macron are under pressure to explain how they would bring the debt under control. It now stands at 119% of gross domestic product, leaving the country's strained public finances likely to dominate the campaign.

It is the flood Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City has learned to expect.

Forecasters warned on Sept. 27 that high tides could combine with heavy rain to increase the risk of flooding in Ho Chi Minh City, one of the world's most climate-vulnerable cities. As heavy rain combined with the tide on the evening of Sept. 30, the Saigon river and smaller waterways spilled onto the roads of Vietnam's commercial capital.

The Trump administration is removing Syria from a list of countries that are not allowed to purchase or import U.S. weaponry, a step that is part of a monthslong process of easing sanctions on the new government in Damascus and its leaders.

In a notice published Wednesday in the Federal Register, the State Department said it was amending its International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, so that Syria no longer was among the nations subject to a policy of denial for licenses and other approvals needed for the sale of U.S. weapons and munitions.

The U.K. has "strong indications" that Iran played a part in the incident that saw five men arrested near a U.S.-run military air base in England late at night, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Wednesday.

Burnham said U.K. and U.S. officials are carrying out a "complex and serious" investigation into how and why five men and three vans were near the perimeter of RAF Fairford, a base that has been used by American bombers striking Iran during this year's war.