French President Emmanuel Macron will hold talks with key political players in a bid to form a new government, after surprise legislative elections last month resulted in no party winning the majority at the National Assembly, France's powerful lower house of parliament.

Macron's office said meetings with leaders of France's main political parties will be held on Friday and Monday at the Elysee presidential palace in order to "keep moving towards the broadest and most stable majority possible."

Iran's new foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has called for dialogue with the European Union to resolve bilateral issues, following a phone call with the bloc's top diplomat.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes the development of relations with the European Union in an environment based on mutual respect," Araghchi said in a statement issued late Thursday.

President Voldymyr Zelensky toured the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy on Thursday in his first visit to the border area since his forces entered Russian territory more than two weeks ago.

During a meeting with Ukraine's military commander, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces have claimed control of another settlement in the Russian region of Kursk and taken more Russian prisoners of war whom he hopes to exchange for captured Ukrainians.

A drone attack sparked a fire at a military facility in the Volgograd region of southern Russia on Thursday, regional officials and the country's Ministry of Defense said.

Regional Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov said on Telegram that a "defense ministry facility" was on fire after being attacked with drones in the area of Marinovka. There were no casualties, he said.

At his first outdoor rally since last month's attempted assassination, Donald Trump spoke from behind bulletproof glass Wednesday in North Carolina at an event focused on national security. On politics, he called his predecessor Barack Obama "nasty" for his comments the night before at the Democratic National Convention.

Trump blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal and for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East while returning repeatedly in his remarks to the Democratic gathering in Chicago, where speaker after speaker has assailed Trump as a threat to the country should he return to the White House.

Iran's hard-line parliament has approved all members of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian's Cabinet, the first time in over two decades a leader has been able to get all of his officials through the body.

The approval marks an early win for Pezeshkian, a longtime lawmaker who found himself catapulted into the presidency after a helicopter crash in May killed his hard-line predecessor.

Former President Donald Trump pledged Tuesday to "Make America Safe Again" while campaigning in Michigan as the Democrats who gathered in Chicago to nominate Kamala Harris branded him a career criminal.

As part of a battleground campaign swing designed to counter the Democratic National Convention, Trump stood alongside sheriff's deputies in the city of Howell and labeled Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, as the "ringleader" of a "Marxist attack on law enforcement" across the country.

A year ago this week, President Vladmir Putin strode onto a stage in the Kursk region to commemorate the 80th anniversary of one of the Soviet army's proudest moments in World War II.

Addressing a rapt audience that included soldiers fresh from fighting in Ukraine, Putin called the decisive victory in the Battle of Kursk "one of the great feats of our people."

A bus carrying Shiite pilgrims from Pakistan to Iraq crashed in central Iran, killing at least 28 people, an official said Wednesday.

The crash happened Tuesday night in the central Iranian province of Yazd, said Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local emergency official, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Russian authorities said Wednesday that Moscow came under the largest attack yet by Ukrainian drones since the start of fighting in 2022, and that it destroyed all of them.

Russia destroyed 45 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia's Ministry of Defense said. It said 11 were destroyed over the Moscow region, 23 over the Bryansk region, six over Belgorod, three over Kaluga and two over Kursk.