Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of "deliberately delaying" the export of grain from Ukrainian ports bound for countries in Africa and Asia.

"Today more than 150 ships are in a queue to fulfil contractual obligations for the supply of our agricultural products," Zelensky said in a video address.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is traveling to Australia for talks with his counterpart Anthony Albanese, said Friday he wants to bolster military and energy cooperation between the two countries amid their shared concerns about China.

Kishida said he hoped to update their 2007 bilateral security pact to factor in the progress they've made and further promote their partnership.

It is a British cliché that a week is a long time in politics. Liz Truss proved it true on Thursday when she became the shortest-serving British prime minister in history. In a matter of days, her U-turn on economic plans that made global markets jittery and the resignations of key ministers prompted calls from within Truss' party for her to step down. But the shakeup at the top is hardly an outlier in the recent history of Britain's Conservatives, whose latest troubles have been years in the making.

DAVID CAMERON'S DECISION

EU leaders on Friday reached agreement on a "roadmap" aimed at putting in place measures within weeks to shield European consumers from soaring energy prices.

The accord came after 11 hours of wrangling over broad proposals to lower energy bills as gas prices pushed skywards by the war in Ukraine.

Turkey's central bank has slashed interest rates for the third month in a row, making its biggest drop this year despite sky-high inflation that is squeezing people's finances as it follows President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's unorthodox economic views.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey on Thursday lowered the benchmark rate by a massive 1.5 percentage points, to 10.5%. The bank cut rates by 1 percentage point each in August and September. The bank had kept the rate at 14% for eight months, pausing a previous round of cuts that triggered a currency crisis.

Households and businesses across Europe have struggled with high electricity prices for months, though they have fallen since late August peaks.

Electricity costs are intrinsically linked to natural gas prices, which spiked after Russia invaded Ukraine and drastically reduced flows of the fuel used to heat homes, generate power and run factories as the European Union sanctioned Moscow.

Lawmakers from two of Germany's governing parties on Thursday slammed plans for Chinese shipping company Cosco to take a major stake in the operator of the country's biggest container terminal, warning that they pose a national security risk.

Public broadcaster NDR reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asked officials to find a compromise that would allow the investment to happen, after several ministries initially rejected it on the grounds that Cosco, already the port's biggest customer, could get too much leverage.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday dramatically announced her resignation just six weeks after taking office.

The head of the United Nations' World Food Program is renewing pressure on oil-rich Gulf countries to give his agency more help to deal with mounting humanitarian crises.

WFP Executive Director David Beasley's comments on Thursday followed a meeting with Development Minister Svenja Schulze of Germany, the agency's second-biggest donor. Schulze also stressed that "we simply need more countries to give money" as the global food crisis exacerbated by Russia's war in Ukraine and rising prices grows.

European Union leaders were heading into a two-day summit Thursday with opposing views on whether, and how, the bloc could impose a gas price cap to contain the energy crisis fueled by Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and his strategy to choke off gas supplies to the bloc at will.

At the opening of the summit, the need for rock-solid EU unity in confronting Russia will be highlighted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is expected to address the 27 national leaders by video conference from Kyiv, asking for continued help to get his nation through the winter.