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Michael Phelps picked up his 19th gold medal on a second night of world records in the Olympic pool, with Katie Ledecky cruising to women's 400 meters freestyle victory and Britain's Adam Peaty running away with the men's 100 breaststroke.

The death of a schoolgirl three days after she was set on fire by a stalker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has sparked outrage from activists who said the law was failing victims of unwanted advances from men.

Major progress has been made in curbing the number of children going to bed hungry, but a deadly combination of discrimination and poverty means some groups are being left behind, an international children's charity said on Thursday.

U.N. aid agencies have made their first deliveries of relief in weeks to thousands of Syrian refugees stranded on Jordan's northeastern border with Syria, the world body said on Thursday.

An Emirates Airline flight from India caught fire after making an emergency landing at Dubai International Airport on Wednesday, but all 300 passengers and crew escaped from the burning fuselage, authorities said.

Drug smuggling arrests and seizures are up in Peru ahead of the Olympic Games in neighboring Brazil, with foreigners carrying packs of cocaine in their stomachs risking death to cash in on a potential spike in demand, police said on Tuesday.

The Catholic archbishop of Dublin has removed trainee priests from Ireland's largest seminary over allegations of widespread use of the gay sex app Grindr and the failure of the authorities to properly investigate it.

Pope Francis has set up a commission to study the role of women deacons in early Christianity, the Vatican said on Tuesday, raising hopes among equality campaigners that women could one day have a far greater say in the Roman Catholic Church.

Maryland police fatally shot an armed woman who threatened to kill officers during an hours-long standoff, and a 5-year-old boy was shot and wounded, authorities said.

A U.S. judge will hear arguments on Monday to stop North Carolina from enforcing a state law barring transgender people from using bathrooms in government buildings and public schools that correspond with their gender identity.

Voters in the Japanese capital elected their first woman governor on Sunday, after two predecessors stepped down over scandals that clouded the city's preparations to host the 2020 summer Olympic Games.

More than half of newborn babies are not breastfed within the first hour of life, putting them at heightened risk of disease and death, the United Nations' children's agency said on Friday, highlighting sub-Saharan Africa as an area of concern.

French police have detained a Syrian asylum seeker in connection with the Normandy church attack, two sources said on Friday, as security services widened their investigation into the killing of an elderly priest at the altar by two would-be jihadists.

The second teenager involved in the killing of a priest in a church in France this week was a 19-year-old who was known to security services as a potential Islamist militant, police and judicial sources said on Thursday.

Islamic State, pushed off more than half the Iraqi territory it seized in 2014, has suffered a near collapse in revenue from oil smuggling, officials say, forcing it to cut fighters' pay, levy new taxes and raise fines for breaking its religious code.

Lawyers for a transgender high school student in Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to keep out of a legal dispute about bathroom rights, an issue that has emerged as an increasingly divisive one in the United States.

John Hinckley Jr., who wounded U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three other people in a 1981 assassination attempt prompted by his mental illness, should be freed after 35 years and released to live with his mother, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

Pope Francis said on Wednesday that a string of recent attacks, including the murder of a priest in France, was proof that the "world is at war".

Police in Bangladesh killed nine militants on Tuesday who were believed to have been plotting an attack similar to the one on a cafe on July 1 that killed 22 people, the national police chief said.

Three men arrested after fleeing from authorities near the scene a nightclub shooting where two teenagers were killed are persons of interest in the investigation and could see further charges, authorities said on Tuesday.

A 27-year-old Syrian man denied asylum in Germany a year ago blew himself up on Sunday outside a crowded music festival, injuring 12 people in the country's fourth violent attack on members of the public in less than a week.

At least two people were killed and more than a dozen others, many of them teenagers, were wounded in a shooting early on Monday outside a Florida nightclub that was hosting a party for all age groups, authorities said.

Up to 20 people were killed and at least 40 others wounded, according to health workers, in two days of fighting in northern Mali between Tuareg rebels and pro-government militia threatening a shaky year-old peace deal.

Hundreds of civilians displaced by recent fighting in South Sudan are struggling to find proper shelter in U.N. compounds in the capital as the rainy season begins to set in.

Gunmen went on a shooting rampage in a shopping mall in the southern German city of Munich on Friday, killing and wounding many people, police said.