With Pope Leo XIV recovering in hospital on Thursday following his lung cancer operation, questions are swirling about how the illness could change his papacy, less than two years after his election.

Diego Maradona's family on Wednesday called for his medical team to be given stiff prison terms over what two of his daughters called his "murder."

Romanian President Nicusor Dan on Thursday said drone attacks on vessels in the Black Sea were "unacceptable" and must stop, after two ships were struck off the country's coast, spillover from Russia's war with Ukraine.

Istanbul was battling on Thursday to recover from flooding caused by what officials described as the heaviest rainfall in at least 80 years, as the toll rose to three dead and four missing.

Yemen's Houthis on Thursday fired missiles at the presidential palace in Aden, which also serves as the headquarters of the internationally recognized government, security sources told AFP, while a journalist saw smoke rising from the site.

The firing squad execution of a convicted military base shooter will not be livestreamed, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday, scrapping a plan by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that had prompted bipartisan and international outrage.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that the world was falling short of its pledges to protect nature as he launched a progress report ahead of next week's global biodiversity summit.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he had previously spoken with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa about violence towards the Druze community, in his first acknowledgement of direct contact.

Syrian authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of a paramilitary leader whose forces backed ousted leader Bashar al-Assad during the country's war, and who is accused of being the main culprit in a massacre of nearly 250 civilians, shortly after a Lebanese media report said the man was “kidnapped” from his house in Lebanon’s Mansourieh.

"The intelligence services have arrested Ali Kayali, who also went by the name Mihrac Ural, the main suspect in the Banias massacre of 2013, while he was attempting to flee across the border," state news agency SANA said.

A Saudi foreign ministry official on Thursday said the country reached out to Yemen's Houthis in recent weeks as fighting escalates between the two sides, but the group refused to meet in Oman.