President-elect Donald Trump has expressed frustration that flags will be flying at half-staff when he takes office later this month.

It's an action put in place by President Joe Biden to honor the late President Jimmy Carter, who died last month at 100. It's not a timeline that Trump can do anything about — until after he takes office — although a large U.S. flag at Trump's home in Florida has been raised to full height following Carter's burial.

The defense ministers of Europe's five top military spenders have said they want to continue increasing their investments in defense but described meeting President-elect Donald Trump's challenge for them to raise spending to 5% of their overall economic output as complicated.

The defense ministers of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Poland came together Monday near Warsaw for a meeting in a new format that they established after Trump was re-elected last year. Their first meeting in this format of five NATO members was held in Berlin in late November.

France's new prime minister, François Bayrou, is facing his first major test at parliament on Tuesday as his government has no majority amid unprecedented political instability.

Bayrou will address lawmakers through a general policy speech meant to outline his top priorities, including key budget decisions, one month after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron.

President Joe Biden said Monday that his stewardship of American foreign policy has left the U.S. safer and economically more secure, arguing that President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a nation viewed as stronger and more reliable than it was four years ago.

Biden trumpeted his administration's work on expanding NATO, rallying allies to provide Ukraine with military aid to fight Russia and bolstering American chip manufacturing to better compete with China during a wide-ranging speech to reflect on his foreign policy legacy a week before ceding the White House to Trump.

A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 has hit southwestern Japan, the country's Meteorological Agency said Monday, while warning the public to stay away from coastal areas because of a tsunami threat.

Tsunami advisories were issued for Miyazaki Prefecture, where the quake was centered, in the southwestern island of Kyushu, as well as nearby Kochi Prefecture, shortly after the quake struck at 9:19 p.m. local time, according to the agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will host his Iranian counterpart this week for the signing of a broad partnership pact between Moscow and Tehran, the Kremlin said Monday.

The agreement on "comprehensive strategic partnership" between the countries will be signed during Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's visit to Moscow on Friday, the Kremlin said.

Russian forces are bypassing a key stronghold in eastern Ukraine that they have fought for months to capture and are focusing instead on cutting supply lines to it, a Ukrainian official said Monday.

Russian troops are going around the vital logistics hub of Pokrovsk, where a steadfast Ukrainian defense has kept them at bay, and are taking aim at a highway that leads from there to the central Ukraine city of Dnipro, Maj. Viktor Trehubov, a local Ukrainian army spokesperson, told The Associated Press.

President Joe Biden strode into the White House four years ago with a foreign policy agenda that put repairing alliances strained by four years of Republican Donald Trump's "America First" worldview front and center.

The one-term Democrat took office in the throes of the worst global pandemic in a century and his plans were quickly stress-tested by a series of complicated international crises: the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas' brutal 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Middle East.

After a weekend spent blocking the explosive growth of fires that destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 24 people in the Los Angeles area, firefighters got a slight break with calmer weather but cast a wary eye on a forecast for yet more wind.

Should that happen, already burned homes and valleys could flare anew, sending embers to unburned territory miles downwind. New fires could add to the complication.

Iran is set to hold nuclear talks with France, Britain and Germany on Monday, just a week before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office.