Conservative politician Keiko Fujimori was officially declared the winner of Peru’s presidential election Friday, nearly a month after the June 7 runoff, ending weeks of uncertainty in the deeply polarized South American nation of about 34 million people.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Friday that Russian forces had completed the capture of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, marking what Moscow described as a major milestone in the war, although Ukraine had not confirmed the claim and independent verification was not immediately possible.

Government delegations from China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Iraq arrived in Tehran on Friday, where the body of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lay in state.

Moldovan Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu announced Friday that he was stepping down, triggering the resignation of his government in the strategically located nation sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania that has been a European Union candidate country since November 2025.

At least 40 people were killed and eight others injured early Friday after a speeding, overcrowded passenger bus plunged about 20 meters (70 feet) into a rocky ravine in southwestern Pakistan, officials said.

Authorities say the main suspect in a Monaco bomb attack this week that seriously injured a Ukraine-born business tycoon, his partner, and their 13-year-old son is a Ukrainian woman living in Germany who disguised herself as a man.

Iran’s military command warned the United States and Israel on Thursday against launching any new attack as the Islamic Republic prepares a massive state funeral for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in Israeli airstrikes on February 28 at the opening of the war.

The Ukrainian Red Cross said Thursday that one of its main humanitarian warehouses was destroyed in a large-scale Russian attack on Kyiv that killed at least 27 people and injured more than 90 others in the deadliest strike on the Ukrainian capital this year.

The Dutch centrist government came under mounting pressure Thursday after another municipality announced it would refuse to accommodate asylum seekers despite national legislation requiring local authorities to help shelter people fleeing war, persecution, and poverty.

The French government faced mounting political pressure Thursday after nearly 3,000 people were evacuated from wildfires in southern France, prompting Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to warn that this year’s fire season had begun weeks earlier than usual following a record-breaking heatwave blamed for killing thousands of people in France and neighboring Spain.

A period of national mourning was underway in Venezuela on Thursday as hope of finding survivors faded following last week’s devastating twin earthquakes, with the official death toll nearing 2,000 and tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for.

Researchers say they have taken a major step toward creating life from scratch after building tiny synthetic cell-like structures that can feed, grow, copy genetic material, and divide in a laboratory dish.

Numerous people have been killed and injured in a massive overnight Russian attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv that forced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to cut short his visit to Ireland, officials said early Thursday.

The Council of Europe’s top constitutional advisory body arrives in Hungary on Thursday to assess a controversial constitutional amendment that would remove President Tamás Sulyok from office, amid growing domestic and international concern over the country’s democratic institutions.

The Catholic Church faced one of its most serious internal confrontations in decades Wednesday after the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) consecrated four bishops without papal approval, despite an emotional last-minute appeal from Pope Leo XIV.