Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Monday told U.S. President Joe Biden the relationship between their two countries was "one of the most important" in the world, state media reported.

"China is willing to work with the United States... (to) promote the development of healthy, stable China-US relations, moving sustainably forward down the right track", state broadcaster CCTV reported Xi as saying in a condolence letter, following the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

Former President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. The 39th president of the United States was a Georgia peanut farmer who sought to restore trust in government when he assumed the presidency in 1977 and then built a reputation for tireless work as a humanitarian. He earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Carter died Sunday, coming up on two years after entering hospice care, at his home in Plains, Georgia.

Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old.

The longest-lived American president died on Sunday, roughly 22 months after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said.

A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing most of the 181 people on board, in one of the country's worst aviation disasters.

The head of Russia's civil aviation agency said Friday that Ukrainian drones were attacking the city of Grozny as an Azerbaijani Airlines plane was trying to land there, before it later crashed in Kazakhstan.

Dmitry Yadrov also said on Telegram that there was heavy fog over Grozny when the incident occurred Wednesday and "conditions that day and in those hours around the airport were very complicated".

North Korean troops are suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Russia's Kursk region and facing logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks, Ukraine's military intelligence said Thursday.

The intelligence agency, known under its acronym GUR, said Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units. It said North Korean troops also faced supply issues and even shortages of drinking water.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved parliament on Friday and confirmed the expected date for the early general election prompted by the collapse of Olaf Scholz's government last month.

"I have decided to dissolve the 20th German Bundestag to fix the date for an early election for February 23rd," Steinmeier said in a speech, adding that "political stability in Germany is a precious asset".

Azerbaijan Airlines said on Friday it was suspending flights to seven Russian cities after one of its Russia-bound jets veered off course and crashed in western Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

The airline said it was "taking into account the initial results of the investigation into the crash... and taking into account flight safety risks", after reports that investigators had found the plane could have been shot down by a Russian air defense missile.

The Kremlin on Thursday cautioned against "hypotheses" over the crash of an Azerbaijani plane which had been due to land in Russia as experts pointed to possible evidence of a missile explosion.

The Russian operator of a cargo ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria said Thursday that it had been hit by a series of explosions in an act of sabotage.

Oboronlogistica, a state-controlled company that operated the Ursa Major freighter, said it was wrecked by three powerful explosions just above the water line in what it described as a "terrorist attack" that caused it to sink.