At Asia's largest defense summit, the president of the Philippines discussed maritime tensions with Beijing over the South China Sea. Meanwhile, top US and Chinese defense officials held a rare meeting on the sidelines.

Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned against tensions with China in the South China Sea turning violent amid increased confrontations with Chinese boats around contested shoals.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday, Marcos said the Philippines would respond if a soldier was killed by China's use of water canons against Filipino vessels.

"If a Filipino citizen was killed by a willful act, that is very close to what we define as an act of war," Marcos said in response to a journalist's question.

The UK and the US struck 13 Houthi targets in several locations in Yemen on Thursday in response to a recent surge in attacks by the Iran-backed militia group on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, three US officials said.

The Houthi rebels said the airstrikes killed at least 16 people and wounded 35.

American and British fighter jets and US ships hit a wide range of underground facilities, missile launchers, command and control sites, a Houthi vessel and other facilities, according to US sources.

Russia has accused Nato and the US of "provoking a new level of tension" after the US and Germany became the latest allies to let Ukraine's military to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

A Berlin spokesman said Germany was convinced Ukraine had the right to defend itself from Russia, especially from cross-border attacks on its second largest city Kharkiv.

US officials said American-supplied weapons could be used to counter Russian fire near the Kharkiv region, either where Russian forces were "hitting them or preparing to hit them".

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said the decision would help protect civilians living in villages close to the Russian border.

The proposed curriculum overhaul was released a week after the Texas GOP proposed requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools. School districts that opt to use them will get more funding.

Elementary school curriculum proposed this week would infuse new state reading and language arts lessons with teachings on the Bible, marking the latest push by Texas Republicans to put more Christianity in public schools.

The Texas Education Agency released the thousands of pages of educational materials this week. They have been made available for public viewing and feedback and, if approved by the State Board of Education in November, will be available for public schools to roll out in August of 2025. Districts will have the option of whether to use the materials, but will be incentivized to do so with up to $60 per student in additional funding.

Andrew Tate, the divisive social media influencer awaiting trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape, lost an appeal Thursday to have the court relax geographical restrictions preventing him from traveling outside the eastern European country.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled against Tate, who had challenged a May 10 decision that extended by 60 days restrictions on the 37-year-old stipulating he may not leave the country. Tate had requested that he be able to leave Romania, provided he stay within Europe’s ID-check-free Schengen zone, which Romania partially joined in March.

GOP convention votes on wide-ranging platform including striking law protecting abortion providers from being charged with murder

Texas Republicans are open to applying the death penalty to abortion providers, a new proposal from the state party indicates.

Over the weekend, during the Texas GOP convention, Republican delegates voted on a party platform for 2024 that proclaims “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide” and suggests striking a state law that protects abortion providers from being charged with homicide. In Texas, capital murder is punishable by the death penalty. Killing a child under the age of 15 can qualify as capital murder, the most severe form of homicide.

Elsewhere in the platform, the Texas GOP calls for “legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization”.

From being repeatedly asked for ID to feeling threatened by harmful rhetoric, politicians say lack of diversity is undermining work of EU

As a newly minted member of the European parliament in 2019, Alice Kuhnke swiftly learned to keep her ID badge handy. Sometimes the request to see it would come just moments after she had swiped it to enter a building, other times she would be stopped hours later as she made her way to meetings.

Six months into the job, she mentioned the stringent security measures over coffee with a few colleagues. “They said ‘Are you serious? I’ve never been stopped.’”

Kuhnke, a Black MEP from Sweden, put the same question to her Black colleagues. The answer confirmed what she had suspected: “Some of them had been stopped.”

It was one of her first hints of what it meant to work in a European parliament that is profoundly out of step with the demographic reality of Europe. While racialised minorities make up an estimated 10% of the EU’s population, MEPs from these groups accounted for just 4.3% of the total lawmakers in the last mandate, according to analysis by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR).

Farm worker who had contact with sick cows tests positive for H5N1, making it the second case detected in Michigan

A third person has now tested positive for H5N1 in the US, the second case to be detected in Michigan, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Thursday.

A farm worker who had contact with sick cows tested positive for the virus. This new case does not seem to indicate human-to-human transmission of the highly pathogenic avian flu, as it was detected on a different farm from the previous Michigan case, officials said.

Only 39 people in the US have been tested for H5N1 over the course of the 2024 outbreak, according to the CDC. More than 350 people are being monitored for symptoms, which includes 220 people in Michigan, officials said.

H5N1 was also recently detected in the muscle of a dairy cow intended for beef consumption. No additional viral particles have been detected in other beef samples, and the infected meat did not enter the food supply, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said.

Violence against politicians has been dominating the headlines, but instances of everyday racism and antisemitic attacks are causing German victim advice centres to sound the alarm. Euronews travelled to Thuringia, a right-wing hotspot, to speak with a victim of neo-Nazi violence.

Germany has witnessed a surge in far-right, racist, and antisemitic violence, reaching unprecedented levels in over a decade. 

Mayar, a 20-year-old nurse who fled Syria during the war and has lived in Germany for nearly nine years, feels a strong sense of German identity, having grown up there. He recounted the moment of the attack in vivid detail.

"He (perpetrator) insulted me and then hit me. He choked me and pushed me against the train, and then he was strangling me with his thumbs pressed into my throat."

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced a new arms package for Ukraine focusing on air defense and including 1 million rounds of small arms ammunition.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced a new package of arms support for Ukraine worth €500 million ($542 million) during an unannounced visit to the port city of Odesa on Thursday. 

The new German arms package was unveiled by Pistorius alongside Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov. 

Pistorius' third visit to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, comes as Ukrainian forces are under pressure from a renewed Russian offensive in the northeast, combined with heavy airstrikes on Ukrainian cities.

China’s Commerce Ministry has sent a letter to the EU trade chief to express annoyance at recent trade probes and calling for a reset.

Beijing is warning the European Union it will hit its aviation and agricultural sectors unless Brussels pulls back from an impending trade war.

With the European Commission expected to slap tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in the coming days, the Chinese Commerce Ministry has sent a five-page letter to EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis calling for a reset, according to a person with direct knowledge of the file. 

A spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed to POLITICO that Dombrovskis had received the letter. “We are working on a reply,” the spokesperson added.

Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday declined an invitation to meet with Democratic senators to talk about Supreme Court ethics and the controversy over flags that flew outside homes owned by Justice Samuel Alito.

Roberts’ response came in a letter to the senators a day after Alito separately wrote them and House members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters because of the flags, which are like those carried by rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary panel, had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the Jan. 6 attack or the Republican former president’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.