U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he had sent envoys around the world to pressure countries to economically isolate Iran, hailing new restrictions targeting the country's airlines and banks.

Iran stood firm Sunday on its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's rejection of the proposal that had created some optimism for breaking the Mideast war stalemate.

Russia on Friday said a Ukrainian strike killed three people -- which it said were aid volunteers from Siberia -- in the Moscow-occupied part of the southern Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia region.

Kremlin-installed official Yevgeny Balitsky said "three volunteers from (Russia's) Omsk region were killed as a result of a cynical terrorist attack on a civilian vehicle delivering humanitarian aid" near the village of Novobogdanivka.

Russian authorities on Friday released the full results from the country's first wartime parliamentary election, which further cemented the Kremlin's overwhelming political control.

The three-day balloting ended Sunday. According to the results released by the Central Election Commission, the main Kremlin party, United Russia, will get more than three-fourths of the seats in the lower house, the State Duma, a record high. The tightly orchestrated vote excluded virtually any genuine opposition.

A powerful blast shook the Greek capital's tourist district of Plaka, near the ancient Acropolis, on Friday morning, causing a building to collapse and injuring at least two people who had to be rescued from an adjacent building, authorities said.

The fire department said the explosion occurred in an old two-story building in the Plaka district, the historic part of Athens that lies at the foot of the Acropolis hill, Greece's most visited ancient monument. The building collapsed, while neighboring buildings were also damaged.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said U.S. President Donald Trump told him he would allow Ukraine to produce advanced Patriot air defense missiles, after a series of reversals on the issue.

"At our last meeting, President Trump emphasized to me that yes, I have made a final decision. Ukraine will receive licenses for the production of Patriot missiles," Zelensky said in a voice note to journalists.

A tech-heavy guest list, the fashion choices of those on it, who sat where and what was on the menu marked the softer — often and glitzier — details of diplomacy as Donald Trump threw a Thursday night state dinner honoring China's leader Xi Jinping.

The event featured a cavalcade of billionaires, Washington powerbrokers, business leaders and the type of festivities that most excite Trump, who has a reputation for reveling in hosting parties.

Pope Leo XIV is taking his call to respect the dignity of every human life on the road with a weekend visit to France, where the Catholic Church has lost ground on influencing ethical issues as the country maintains a strict approach to secularism.

Leo is spending four intense days in Paris, the Catholic shrine at Lourdes and the northeastern city of Metz. He's hoping to draw attention to his appeals for peace at a time of war, and for greater reflection as artificial intelligence questions the very essence of what it means to be human.

President Donald Trump said early Thursday that China and the United States were united in their opposition to AI guardrails, suggesting ahead of his summit with counterpart Xi Jinping that the U.S. legal system would keep the technology in check.

"Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is," Trump said, using his new moniker for artificial intelligence.

Renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia on Thursday effectively shattered a peace pact that ended a devastating two-year war in 2022, with rebel forces mobilizing for an armed struggle they hope will lead to the removal of the federal prime minister.

The main combatants are Ethiopian federal troops and fighters loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front, or TPLF, an armed political group in Tigray, Ethiopia's northernmost regional state.