Emmanuel Macron becomes France's youngest ever president on Sunday, taking over from Socialist Francois Hollande in a solemn ceremony.

Rescuers saved 484 migrants from boats in the Mediterranean on Saturday and found the bodies of seven men who had died in the attempt to get to Europe, Italy's coast guard said.

The United States is close to completing a series of arms deals for Saudi Arabia totaling more than $100 billion, a senior White House official said on Friday, a week ahead of President Donald Trump's planned visit to Riyadh. The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the arms package could end up surpassing more than $300 billion over a decade to help Saudi Arabia boost its defensive capabilities while still maintaining U.S. ally Israel's qualitative military edge over its neighbors.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Russia to rein in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his key ally Iran, as Washington and Moscow sought to boost their fragile ties with high-profile White House talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Washington since Trump came to power in January, earned a rare invitation to the Oval Office for a head-to-head with the Republican president.

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi warned in a speech on Wednesday that the country’s democratic path is “under threat,” as protests over social and economic issues continue in southern and central Tunisia. Essebsi announced the deployment of army forces to protect vital state facilities and petroleum outlets, as the protests brought a halt to production at two foreign energy companies; Perenco and Canada-based Serinus Energy.

South Korea's new president was sworn in on Wednesday, just a day after a landslide election victory, and immediately declared his willingness to visit Pyongyang amid high tensions with the nuclear-armed North. Left-leaning Moon Jae-In, a former human rights lawyer, backs engagement with North Korea in the quest for peace -- in contrast to the threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration in recent weeks.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks on Syria and Ukraine, amid a political firestorm that has placed Moscow's alleged meddling in last year's election back in the spotlight.

Liberal politician Moon Jae-in won South Korea's presidential election on Tuesday, exit polls showed, an expected victory that would end nearly a decade of conservative rule and bring a more conciliatory approach toward North Korea.

Mahmud Abbas said Tuesday Donald Trump was expected to visit the Palestinian territories "soon" and that he was ready to meet Israel's prime minister as part of the US president's peace efforts. Trump is expected in Israel later this month as part of his first foreign trip and the Palestinian president said "we are looking forward to his visit soon to Bethlehem" in the occupied West Bank, with speculation it will occur on May 23.

Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday her Conservative Party would keep its pledge to bring down net immigration to the United Kingdom down to "tens of thousands" per year if it wins an election next month. "It is important that we continue, and we will continue, to say that we do want to bring net immigration down to sustainable levels. We believe that is the tens of thousands," May told supporters in London.

War has now forced more than one million children to flee South Sudan and uprooted 1.4 million others within the country, the United Nations said on Monday. Children make up 62 percent of the 1.8 million people who have fled South Sudan for refugee camps in neighbouring Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda since civil war began in 2013, the UN children's agency, UNICEF, and refugee agency, UNHCR, said in a joint press release.

Iran will leave no part of Saudi Arabia untouched except holy Muslim sites if Riyadh "does anything ignorant", Iran's defence minister was quoted as saying after a Saudi prince threatened to move the "battle" to Iran.

Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France on Sunday with a business-friendly vision of European integration, defeating Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union.

Washington is working to push through contracts for tens of billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, some new, others in the pipeline, ahead of US President Donald Trump's trip to the kingdom this month, people familiar with the talks told Reuters this week. Saudi Arabia is Trump's first stop on his maiden international trip, a sign of his intent to reinforce ties with a top regional ally.

Syrian regime allies Russia and Iran and rebel supporter Turkey on Thursday signed a memorandum on a Moscow-backed plan to create safe zones in Syria to bolster a fragile truce. An AFP reporter at peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana saw the heads of the delegations, representing the three countries sponsoring the negotiations, sign the document.

A poll taken after the presidential debate has suggested the ex-economy minister outperformed his far-right rival. More often than not, policy positions turned to personal insults during the tumultuous encounter. An opinion poll of French broadcaster BFMTV shows that 63 percent of viewers found banker-turned-politician Emmanuel Macron more convincing in Wednesday's presidential debate. Only 34 percent of those polled found far-right leader Marine Le Pen more convincing in the final presidential debate before Sunday's run-off vote.

Britain's Brexit minister David Davis warned Wednesday that it would not be bullied in upcoming negotiations with the EU, and rejected a report that its exit bill could reach 100 billion euros. "We are going into this negotiation not as a supplicant, but as a negotiator," Davis said, as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier prepared to set out his plan for the talks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday Europe should not push Turkey away despite worries about President Tayyip Erdogan's tightening grip on power, seeming to play down talk that its aspirations to join the European Union are over. The EU's top official dealing with Ankara has told Reuters that Turkey had disqualified itself from joining the bloc due to Erdogan's crackdown on dissidents, his "Nazi" jibes at Germany and a referendum that granted him sweeping new powers.

During a tense appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied on Tuesday that Moscow ever interferes in elections in other countries. Speaking during a joint news conference following talks at his Black Sea residence, Putin said accusations of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election were "simply rumors" that are being used as part of the political fight in Washington. He also denied interfering in European elections.

China demanded on Tuesday an immediate halt to a controversial US missile shield hours after Washington announced that the defence system was now operational in South Korea. Washington and Seoul agreed to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery deployment in July in the wake of a string of North Korean missile tests.

With just six days until a French presidential vote that could define Europe's future, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron are holding high-stakes rallies Monday that overlap with nationwide May Day labor marches reminding both candidates that jobs are voters' No. 1 concern. The tense campaign interrupted the usual calm of the May Day holiday, as supporters of both candidates are taking to the streets, airwaves and social networks to weigh on an election closely watched by global financial markets and France's neighbors as a test of the global populist wave.