Arizona must stop enforcing abortion restrictions that predate and contradict a 2024 voter-approved constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights, a judge ordered in a ruling released Friday.

Maricopa Superior Court Judge Greg Como found that the older laws present unnecessary obstacles to getting an abortion, including barring one if a woman was seeking it because the fetus had a non-fatal genetic abnormality, and requiring patients to see a doctor twice, at least 24 hours apart, before obtaining one.

He also took issue with the laws because they required abortion seekers to undergo ultrasounds and Rh blood testing, and barred doctors from prescribing abortion pills by telehealth and mailing them to patients. Pills are the most common way abortion is obtained.

Canada and France opened diplomatic consulates on Friday in the capital of Greenland, showing support for NATO ally Denmark and the Arctic island in the wake of U.S. efforts to secure control of the semiautonomous Danish territory.

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand cited deepening ties on defense, security, climate change, economic resilience and Arctic co-operation.

France’s Foreign Ministry said Jean-Noël Poirier was taking up his duties as consul general on Friday, making it the first European Union country to establish a consulate general in Greenland.

Norway’s crown princess apologized on Friday for the situation she has put the royal family in as she faces scrutiny over her contacts with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, part of a broader apology for all those she has “disappointed.”

Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s communications and contacts with Epstein have put her in the spotlight over the past week, adding to the embarrassment to the royals just as her son went on trial in Oslo for multiple offenses, including charges of rape.

The Epstein files contained several hundred mentions of the crown princess, who said in 2019 that she regretted having had contact with Epstein.

British police on Friday searched two properties linked to ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson as part of a probe into potential misconduct stemming from his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

The former Cabinet minister, ambassador and elder statesman of the governing Labour Party is being investigated for potential misconduct in public office over documents, part of a trove of Epstein files, suggesting he passed sensitive government information to Epstein.

A deputy chief of Russia’s military intelligence agency was shot and wounded in Moscow on Friday in an attack that follows a series of assassinations of senior military officers that Russia has blamed on Ukraine.

Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev was hospitalized after being shot several times by an unidentified assailant at an apartment building in northwestern Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement.

A diver who helped recover bodies from a deadly collision between a boat carrying migrants and a Greek coast guard vessel said Friday that most of the 15 people who died had suffered severe head injuries, as questions mounted over the circumstances of the incident.

A search and rescue operation was still underway Friday for potentially missing people three days after the collision off the coast of the eastern Aegean island of Chios. Fifteen people were killed and 26 injured, including 11 children and two coast guard officers. The total number of people on board the small speedboat remains unclear.

The large number of casualties has led to questions over how the collision occurred. Judicial authorities have launched an inquiry.

Storm Leonardo continued to batter the Iberian Peninsula on Friday, bringing floods and putting rivers at risk of bursting their banks while thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Spain and Portugal.

In southern Spain’s Andalusia region, some 7,000 people have had to leave their homes because of successive storms.

Among them were about 1,500 people ordered to evacuate the mountain village of Grazalema, where Andalusia’s regional leader, Juan Manuel Moreno, warned that aquifers were “full to the brim with water” and at risk of collapsing.

A tropical storm set off flooding and a landslide in the southern Philippines, leaving at least eight people dead, displacing more than 28,000 and trapping residents in houses in two flooded villages, officials said Friday.

Tropical Storm Penha slammed ashore onto the southeastern province of Surigao del Sur from the Pacific late Thursday. It weakened into a tropical depression Friday night and was last tracked off the central province of Cebu with sustained winds of up to 34 miles per hour and gusts of up to 47 mph, according to the country’s weather agency.

China and South Africa signed a framework agreement for a new trade deal Friday as Africa’s leading economy looks to other options after the high import tariffs imposed on it by the U.S. and its diplomatic fallout with the Trump administration.

South Africa’s Ministry of Trade and Industry said the agreement would start negotiations over a deal that would give some South African goods, such as fruit, duty-free access to the Chinese market. The ministry said it expected the trade deal to be finalized by the end of March.

In return, the trade ministry said China will get enhanced investment opportunities in South Africa, where its car sales have seen rapid growth.

— Denver Post wire services