NPR News

Updated at 3:20 p.m. ET

Sixteen-year-old activist Greta Thunberg has quickly risen to prominence with her clarion call for climate action and Time's naming her its 2019 Person of the Year this week.

Since her first school strike for action in August 2018, Thunberg has grown her protest into a global youth movement calling for the world leaders of today to take decisive action on climate change and prevent further global warming.

Rockets struck Baghdad's international airport compound Thursday, as the country tries to contain anti-government protests which have shaken the foundation of the Iraqi government. The attack appears to be the latest in what a senior U.S. military official described as a dangerously escalating campaign by Iran-backed militias.

New Zealand police will undertake an operation to retrieve bodies left behind following this week's volcanic eruption on White Island that killed at least eight people and injured dozens more.

Officials will attempt to recover the bodies of eight people missing and presumed dead. Eight specialists will travel to the island Friday morning local time, contingent on risk factors such as weather.

Israel is heading to an unprecedented third election in less than a year after parliament missed Wednesday night's deadline to nominate a lawmaker to form the next government.

The deadline was triggered after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, Benny Gantz, both failed in their attempts to cobble together a ruling coalition.

Islamist militants attacked an army camp in Western Niger on Tuesday, killing 71 soldiers, according to an army spokesman. It was the deadliest assault on the country's military in living memory, the spokesman told news outlets on Wednesday.

"The combat [was] of a rare violence, combining artillery shells and the use of kamikaze vehicles by the enemy," army spokesman Col. Boubacar Hassan said, according to Reuters. An additional 12 soldiers were injured in the fighting that stretched over three hours, he said.

It was a busy fall morning at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C. Myrieme Churchill found a clearing in the arrivals hall and scanned the crowd.

One by one, her people showed up: a black father and daughter from Tennessee. A white couple from Georgia. A Somali immigrant. Two South Asians — one from Canada, one from Britain. Churchill greeted them in a blend of languages: Salaam! Bonjour! Welcome to D.C.!

U.K. voters are heading to the polls Thursday for a general election to select 650 members of Parliament — and determine the futures of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The election is expected to have high turnout, with key questions about Brexit left to resolve.

Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time and were scheduled to close at 10 p.m. (5 p.m. ET). That's when the first projections of the results will likely emerge. So far on election day, the most popular figures at polling stations seem to be dogs.

Just more than a week after Germany announced the expulsion of two Russian diplomats, citing evidence of a state-sponsored contract killing in Berlin, the Russian government has retaliated in kind.

The country's Foreign Ministry announced Thursday that, "guided by the reciprocity principle," it was declaring two members of the German diplomatic mission in Moscow to be personae non gratae.