Hopes of a breakthrough rose after Trump said he had spoken by phone with Russian counterpart Putin -- whom he met in Alaska last week -- following a "very good" meeting with the Europeans and the Ukrainian president at the White House.

US President Donald Trump said Monday he had started arranging a peace summit between Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia's Vladimir Putin, after intensive talks with Zelensky and European leaders at the White House.

As Spain enters its third week of heatwave alerts, firefighters continue to battle blazes in the northwest and west of the country, with army units deployed to help contain the blazes.

The first lady's office on Saturday reposted a Fox News article on X containing the short letter, a day after Trump and Putin failed to find a breakthrough at their high-stakes meeting.

Donald Trump on Saturday dropped his push for a ceasefire in Ukraine in favor of pursuing a full peace accord -- a major shift announced hours after his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin yielded no clear breakthrough.

Talks on striking a global treaty on combating plastic pollution were extended an extra day into Friday but with no clear endgame in sight.

Putin flies to Alaska on Friday at the invitation of Trump in his first visit to a Western country since he ordered the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Spain on Thursday mourned its third wildfire death this week and Greece began beating back a blaze threatening its third-largest city as an unrelenting heatwave stoked tinderbox conditions in southern Europe.

US President Donald Trump said he believes his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is ready to end his war in Ukraine, speaking on the eve of Friday's summit between the men, but that peace would likely require at least a second meeting involving Ukraine's leader.

"Now I can talk about it without crying," said the Dutch woman who was four when she and her family were captured and held in "horrible" conditions in a camp in Java.

Attempts to secure a landmark treaty combating plastic pollution descended into disarray on the penultimate day of talks Wednesday as dozens of countries rejected the latest draft text, leaving the talks in limbo.

US President Donald Trump threatened "severe consequences" if Russia's Vladimir Putin does not agree to peace in Ukraine but also said on Wednesday that a meeting between them could swiftly be followed by a second that would include the leader of Ukraine.

Firefighters across Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and the Balkans were battling wildfires on Tuesday, with another heatwave pushing temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius across parts of Europe.

The procurement of the Dassault Rafale B jet fighters marks an ambitious plan to update the Indonesian Air Force with more capable and modern aircraft. 

Trump has been vague about his expectations for the Alaska summit with Putin on Friday, describing it as a "feel-out meeting" to gauge the Russian leader's ideas for ending the war in Ukraine.

Talks on sealing a landmark treaty to tackle the global scourge of plastic pollution were still stuck in second gear on Monday, with time running out to bridge the chasm between the most ambitious countries and oil-producing states.

Two warships that are part of the UK Carrier Strike Group HMS Prince of Wales visited Jakarta in late June.

Indonesia's first Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft succesfully made its maiden flight from Seville, Spain, on Aug. 1

Talks on forging a landmark treaty to combat the scourge of plastic pollution were stumbling Saturday, with progress slow and countries wildly at odds on how far the proposed agreement should go.

European leaders welcomed on Saturday US President Donald Trump's plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on ending the war in Ukraine, while stressing the need to keep pressure on Moscow and protect Ukrainian and European security interests.

The Alaska summit would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.

Pictures released by Russian state media show a towering plume of ash spewing from the Krasheninnikov volcano, which last erupted in 1550, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

Under the law, which took effect on July 25, online platforms must take steps to prevent children accessing harmful content such as pornography.

In 2022, countries agreed they would find a way to address the crisis by the end of 2024, but the talks in Busan, South Korea failed to overcome fundamental differences.

Scores of flights to and from UK airports were cancelled Wednesday due to a technical glitch, according to the air traffic control service, prompting anger from airline chiefs.

The number of people with liver cancer will nearly double worldwide by 2050 unless more is done to address preventable causes such as obesity, alcohol consumption and hepatitis, a study warned Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump set a new deadline on Monday of 10 or 12 days for Russia to make progress toward ending the war in Ukraine or face consequences, underscoring frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the conflict.

US President Donald Trump landed in Scotland on Friday for a five-day visit set to mix diplomacy, business and leisure, as a huge UK security operation swung into place amid planned protests near his family-owned golf resorts.

The United Nations' highest court on Wednesday told wealthy countries they must comply with their international commitments to curb pollution or risk having to pay compensation to nations hard hit by climate change.

The world's top court will Wednesday deliver a seminal ruling laying out what legal obligations countries have to prevent climate change and whether polluters should pay up for the consequences.