Scott Neuman

Updated 11:20 a.m. ET Saturday

French President Emmanuel Macron is calling on world leaders to place the massive fires destroying Brazil's Amazon rainforest at the top of their agenda as they gather in France's southwest for the Group of Seven summit.

Google has suspended 210 YouTube channels it says were being used as part of a "coordinated" campaign to influence public opinion about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Australia has agreed to join a U.S.-led naval contingent protecting commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman amid alleged attacks by Iran against vessels operating in the strategic waterways.

Australia will join Britain and Bahrain as part of a maritime security mission to escort commercial shipping in the region, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Wednesday. He said his government would lend a frigate, patrol plane and specialist defense force personnel.

Canberra's contribution was meant to be "modest, meaningful and time limited," Morrison said.

The World Health Organization says there's not enough evidence to conclude that microplastics — which exist nearly everywhere in the environment and show up in drinking water — pose any risk to human health, but it cautions that more research is needed to draw firm conclusions.

China's Foreign Ministry has confirmed that an employee of Britain's Hong Kong consulate was detained nearly two weeks ago during a business trip to the mainland.

Although consulate officials suspected he'd been detained by Chinese authorities, Cheng's exact whereabouts had been unknown to family and friends since he disappeared on Aug. 8 in Shenzhen, a city in China's Guangdong province just across the border from Hong Kong.

An Australian state appellate court on Wednesday upheld lower-court verdicts against Cardinal George Pell, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric to be found guilty of sexual abuse.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Court of Appeal of Victoria state rejected Pell's request to overturn his December conviction. The 78-year-old prelate, a former archbishop of Sydney who later became a top Vatican adviser, is serving a six-year prison sentence for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys.

Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET

President Trump has called the Danish prime minister's comments "nasty" after she rejected the idea of selling Greenland to the United States as "absurd" — in an escalation of diplomatic tensions that began suddenly last week.

Trump complained Wednesday at the White House that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's statement was "not nice" and showed disrespect.

"All she had to do was say 'No, we wouldn't be interested,' " he told reporters. "She's not talking to me, she's talking to the United States of America."

An Iranian tanker detained in Gibraltar last month is again underway after a court in the British territory rejected a request from Washington to formally seize the vessel for violating international sanctions.

The Grace 1, now renamed Adrian Darya 1, was intercepted by British Royal Marines on July 4, allegedly because it was carrying its cargo of 2.1 million barrels of light crude oil to Syria.

Iran has denied the ship was headed to Syria.

Updated at 10 a.m. ET

A day after a British tabloid published video purporting to show Prince Andrew seeing off a young woman at financier Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan mansion in 2010, Buckingham Palace released a statement saying the Duke of York is "appalled" by reports of "Epstein's alleged crimes."

President Trump on Sunday confirmed that his administration has discussed buying Greenland from Denmark, comparing the idea to "a large real estate deal" and suggesting the island would be of strategic value to the United States.

North Korea rejected further peace talks with Seoul on Friday on the same day it launched at least two projectiles — the sixth such test in a month, according to South Korea's military.

The statement from North Korea followed a speech on Thursday by South Korean President Moon Jae-in marking the 74th anniversary of Korean independence. In it, Moon vowed reunification of the Korean peninsula by 2045 — a subject that Pyongyang views as provocative.

Asian and European markets put in a mixed performance a day after fears of a looming global recession triggered an 800-point drop in the Dow — one of the biggest one-day sell-offs on Wall Street ever.

In Asia, indexes in China and Hong Kong were mostly in positive territory, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng both posting modest gains. South Korea and India were also up.

President Trump has proposed a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss how to "humanely solve" months of protests that have wracked Hong Kong.

In a Wednesday evening tweet, Trump called Xi "a great leader who very much has the respect of his people."

"He is a good man in a 'tough business,' " the president added. "I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?"

Japan's new emperor followed in his father's footsteps, expressing "deep remorse" for his country's role in World War II as part of an annual ceremony marking its surrender, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe followed another recent tradition on Thursday — sending an offering to the Yasukuni shrine that honors, among others, some of Japan's most notorious war criminals.