29 Nov 2018; AFP: Life expectancy in the United States dropped yet again as drug overdose deaths continued to climb -- taking more than 70,000 lives in 2017, a record high -- and suicides rose, a US government report said Thursday.

The drug overdose rate rose 9.6 percent compared to 2016, while suicides climbed 3.7 percent, said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.

CHICAGO (AP) — A man who witnessed a Chicago officer fatally shoot black teenager Laquan McDonald testified Thursday that police waved him away without questioning him that October 2014 night and didn’t even bother to take down his name.

30 Nov 2018; AFP: G20 powers open two days of summit talks in crisis-hit Argentina on Friday after a stormy buildup dominated by US President Donald Trump's consensus-bucking crusade to realign world trade.

Shortly before the summit kicks off, Trump's "America First" charge will bear fruit with the signing in Buenos Aires of a successor to the North American free trade pact NAFTA.

29 Nov 2018; AFP: Global temperatures in 2018 are set to be the fourth highest on record, the UN said Thursday, stressing the urgent need for action to rein in runaway warming of the planet.

In a report released ahead of the COP 24 climate summit in Poland, the World Meteorological Organization pointed out that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, and that "2018 is on course to be the 4th warmest year on record."

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is folksy, plain-spoken, and spontaneous — perhaps too much so for financial markets, which have been roiled in advance of his inauguration Saturday.

Lopez Obrador is the first president since the Mexican Revolution to rise to prominence as a protest leader, and he sees his inauguration as a historic “fourth transformation” of Mexico, following independence from Spain, the liberal reforms that broke the church’s dominance in the 1850s and the 1910-1917 revolution.

Damascus, Nov 30 (AFP) Israeli jets on Thursday bombed several areas near Damascus as well as in southern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

"Israeli forces bombarded for an hour positions in the southern and southwestern suburbs of Damascus as well as in the south of Syria at the border of Quneitra province," the Observatory's chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Earlier, Syrian state media said air defences downed a number of "hostile targets" close to the capital.

29 Nov 2018; DW: Thousands had to be evacuated from their homes after the discovery of a World War II bomb in the western German city of Cologne. Army experts were drafted in to defuse the device.

Public order officials helped move some 10,000 people to temporary shelters on Wednesday, after a decision to evacuate all homes within a one-kilometer (0.62-mile) radius of the bomb.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Congo’s deadly Ebola outbreak is now the second largest in history, behind the devastating West Africa outbreak that killed thousands a few years ago, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Peter Salama, called it a “sad toll” as Congo’s health ministry announced the number of cases has reached 426. That includes 379 confirmed cases and 47 probable ones. So far this outbreak, declared on Aug. 1, has 198 confirmed deaths, with another 47 probable ones, Congo’s health ministry said.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian officials on Friday barred Russian males between the ages of 16 and 60 from traveling to the country in the latest escalation of tensions between the neighbors.

The long-simmering conflict bubbled over Sunday when Russian border guards rammed into and opened fired on three Ukrainian vessels near the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The vessels were trying to pass through the Kerch Strait on their way to the Sea of Azov. The Russians then captured the ships and their 24-member crew.

PARIS (AP) — French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will meet with some protesters’ representatives on Friday in an effort to calm tensions over rising taxes, a first since the movement started two weeks ago.

The government’s move comes amid calls for a new actions Saturday across France, including on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, where a protest last weekend degenerated into violence.

29 Nov 2018; DW: The French Foreign Ministry has said "non merci" to a suggestion by Germany's finance minister to turn France's UN Security Council seat into a joint EU one. An attempt to sweeten the deal didn't work.

France pushed backed Thursday against a proposal by German Olaf Scholz, also the vice chancellor, to turn the French seat at the UN Security Council into a join EU seat.

29 Nov 2018; AFP: German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer said Thursday it would slash 12,000 jobs in a major restructuring following the mammoth takeover of Monsanto, enabling it to save 2.6 billion euros ($3 billion) a year from 2022.

The planned job cuts will affect about one in every ten of the group's 118,200 posts, "a significant number of them in Germany", said the group in a statement.

Bayer swallowed Monsanto in one of Germany's biggest ever corporate takeovers at a cost of $63 billion in June.