The bishop sat quietly near the front row, hands folded, listening as Indigenous leaders and church workers spoke about the threats to Peru's northern forests, a part of the Amazon rain forest. It was 2016, a year after Laudato Si, Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment.

When he was up to speak, the bishop didn't preach though he was in his city of Chiclayo as host of a regional gathering. Instead, he reflected on things he had seen.

Three years after flying into the Cannes Film Festival with "Top Gun: Maverick," Tom Cruise returned to the Croisette on Wednesday with "Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning."

Christopher McQuarrie's latest "Mission: Impossible" installment is the biggest Hollywood tentpole wading ashore in Cannes this year.

Republicans in Congress are moving with rapid speed to advance President Donald Trump's big bill of tax breaks, spending cuts and beefed-up border security funding as leaders work to enact many of his campaign promises.

House committees have been laboring for months to draft the legislation, which Republicans have labeled "THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,'' a nod to Trump himself. Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing to approve the package and send it to the Senate by Memorial Day.

For 20-year-old Mayank Yadav, riding a crowded bus in the summer months in this western Indian city can be like sitting in an oven. That makes it a treat when he steps off and into a bus stop outfitted with sprinklers that bathe overheated commuters in a cooling mist.

"Everyone is suffering from the heat," Yadav said. "I hope they do more of this across the city."

The unofficial national fruit of New Zealand isn't native to the country – it's South American. It isn't exclusively found in New Zealand. And it's not, perhaps surprisingly, the kiwi. It's the feijoa.

Known as pineapple guava elsewhere, the fruit — a green perfumed oval with a polarizing taste — can be purchased in California or Canberra. Yet no country has embraced the feijoa with quite the fervor or the fixation of New Zealanders.

It's not just the "gesture" of a $400 million luxury plane that President Donald Trump says he's smart to accept from Qatar. Or that he effectively auctioned off the first destination on his first major foreign trip, heading to Saudi Arabia because the kingdom was ready to make big investments in U.S. companies.

It's not even that the Trump family has fast-growing business ties in the Middle East, ones that run deep and offer the potential of vast profits.

Sweltering heat more commonly seen in the throes of summer than in the spring was making an unwelcome visit this week to a large portion of the U.S. – from the Dakotas to Texas and other parts of the South – and putting millions of Americans on alert for potentially dangerous temperatures.

In Austin, forecasters warned that the early heat wave could break a century-old record for May of 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

The talks have taken place in the warring capitals of Moscow and Kyiv, from Washington and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to countries across Europe. Now, all eyes are finally turning to Istanbul to seek an end to Russia's 3-year-old, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed restarting direct peace talks Thursday with Ukraine in the Turkish city that straddles Asia and Europe. And President Volodymyr Zelenskyy challenged the Kremlin leader to meet in Turkey in person.

Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 60 people, including almost two dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was "no way" he would halt Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territory before Hamas is defeated.

At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in the strikes around Jabaliya in northern Gaza, according to local hospitals and Gaza's Health Ministry. At least ten other people were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis, the European Hospital reported.

President Donald Trump arrived Wednesday in Qatar, where he was greeted by the country’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani, as he kicked off the second leg of his three-nation Middle East tour this week.

In a stunning engagement earlier in the day in Saudi Arabia, Trump met with Syria's new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa — a onetime insurgent who had spent years imprisoned by U.S. troops in Iraq. Trump said the rapprochement with Syria came at the urging of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.