French union leaders on Friday began crunch meetings with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and other top officials over a hotly contested pension overhaul that has sparked the country's longest rail strike in history. Expectations of a breakthrough were low, however, after the government...

Gale-force winds in Australia merged two enormous fires into a megablaze across land almost four times the area of New York City on Friday, while thousands rallied to again demand action on climate change. "The conditions are difficult today," said Shane Fitzsimmons, rural fire service...

Hundreds of people have been killed or raped in attacks on the Hema ethnic group in eastern DR Congo's Ituri province, in what "may amount to crimes against humanity" or even genocide, the UN said on Friday. "At least 701 people have been killed and 168 injured during inter-ethnic tensions...

Iraq's caretaker premier Adel Abdel Mahdi has asked the United States to send a delegation to Baghdad to begin preparing for a troop pullout, his office said on Friday. In a phone call late Thursday with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Abdel Mahdi "requested that delegates be sent to...