It was a murder case almost everyone had an opinion on. O.J. Simpson 's "trial of the century" over the 1994 killings of his ex-wife and her friend bared divisions over race and law enforcement in America and brought an intersection of sports, crime, entertainment and class that was hard to turn away from.

In a controversial verdict, the football star-turned-actor was acquitted in the criminal trial but later found civilly liable in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Years later, he served nine years in prison on unrelated charges. His death in April brought an end to a life that had become defined by scrutiny over the killings.

President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named centrist leader Francois Bayrou as his new prime minister, the presidency said, handing him the task of hauling France out of months of political crisis.

Bayrou, head of the MoDem group that is allied to Macron's party, was appointed nine days after Michel Barnier's government was ousted by parliament in a historic no-confidence vote.

President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview published Thursday that he disagrees "very vehemently" with Ukraine firing U.S.-supplied missiles deep into Russia.

President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month — extending a diplomatic olive branch even as Trump threatens to levy massive tariffs on Chinese goods.

Trump's incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, confirmed on Thursday that Trump invited Xi, but said it was "to be determined" if the leader of the United States' most significant economic and military competitor would attend.

NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday issued a stark warning to "turbo-charge" defense spending, saying European nations need to do more to "prevent the next big war" as the threat from Russia grows.

About six months ago, Donald Trump was sitting in a courtroom in lower Manhattan listening to a jury make him the first former president convicted of a crime.

On Thursday, he will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange just blocks from that courthouse and as he was recognized by Time magazine as its person of the year.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol defended his martial law decree as an act of governance and denied rebellion charges, vowing Thursday to "fight to the end" in response to attempts to impeach him and intensifying investigations into last week's dramatic move.

The main opposition Democratic Party quickly slammed Yoon's speech as "an expression of extreme delusion" and "false propaganda." Later Thursday, it and other opposition parties submitted a new impeachment motion against Yoon for a floor vote this weekend.

Ukraine attacked an airfield in southern Russia with US-supplied long-range missiles early Wednesday, the Russian military said, vowing it would respond with "appropriate measures".

Chancellor Olaf Scholz formally set Germany on course for an early election Wednesday by requesting a confidence vote in parliament next week.

Five weeks after his three-party governing coalition collapsed in a dispute over how to revitalize Germany's stagnant economy, Scholz's office said he had requested the confidence vote in parliament's lower house, or Bundestag, for Monday. The aim is to hold a parliamentary election on Feb. 23, seven months earlier than originally scheduled.

Romania's pro-European parties agreed Wednesday to form a majority government made up of groupings that were traditionally on opposite sides and shutting out far-right nationalists who made significant gains in the election on Dec. 1.

Pro-Western parties won the most votes, with the leftist Social Democratic Party, or PSD, topping the polls. The PSD reached agreement late Tuesday to form a grand coalition with the center-right National Liberal Party, or PNL, the reformist Save Romania Union party, USR, and the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party.