With “Welcome” messages in multiple languages, the Eiffel Tower greeted tourists Friday for the first time in nearly nine months, reopening to the public even as France introduces new virus rules aimed at taming the fast-spreading delta variant. Smiles were broad and emotions palpable as the first masked visitors mounted the elevators heading to the top of the Paris monument.

Officials in Minnesota said they’re finding more giant goldfish in waterways, prompting a plea to citizens to stop illegally dumping their unwanted fish into ponds and lakes. The goldfish, which can grow to the size of a football, compete with native species for food and increase algae in lakes. Officials in the Twin Cities suburb of Burnsville found 10 fish in Keller Lake earlier this month while doing a water quality survey.

Dutch Queen Maxima teamed up with a small robot Thursday to unveil a steel 3D-printed pedestrian bridge over a canal in the heart of Amsterdam's red light district. Maxima pushed a green button that set the robot's arm in motion to cut a ribbon across the bridge with a pair of scissors.

Through the pens and pencils of children, England is fighting back against racism. After Marcus Rashford and two other Black players missed penalty kicks in the final moments of the national soccer team's European Championship loss to Italy, bigots defaced a mural of the Manchester United star and hurled racist abuse at the three on social media. Children in Manchester rose to Rashford's defense, filling spaces on the wall with messages of support, encouragement and consolation.

Thousands of fans packed Rome's sidewalks to wildly cheer Europe’s new soccer champions as Italy toured the city in an open-topped bus on Monday evening, crowning a day that saw them honored at the presidential palace and premier's office and cited by the Pope. The first Italy team to win the European Championship in 53 years knew it was in for an exhilarating day when it arrived at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport at dawn from London to be welcomed by a banner on the tarmac reading, “Grazie Azzurri.”

Essential workers who helped New York City through the COVID-19 pandemic were honored Wednesday with a parade up Broadway — nurses, doctors, first responders, teachers, bus drivers and more riding on floats through a canyon of tall buildings and falling confetti. The parade stretched from Battery Park to City Hall, led up Broadway in lower Manhattan by grand marshal Sandra Lindsay, a health care worker who was the first person in the country to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot after they were authorized for public use.

For nearly everybody who has come to the Cannes Film Festival after months in various stages of lockdown and caution, the transition is head-spinning.

Smoke and heat from a massive wildfire in southeastern Oregon are creating giant “fire clouds” over the blaze — dangerous columns of smoke and ash that can reach up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) in the sky and are visible from more than 100 miles away. Authorities have put these clouds at the top of the list of the extreme fire behavior they are seeing on the Bootleg Fire, the largest wildfire burning in the U.S.

The silvery blue waters of the Great Salt Lake sprawl across the Utah desert, having covered an area nearly the size of Delaware for much of history. For years, though, the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi River has been shrinking. And a drought gripping the American West could make this year the worst yet. The receding water is already affecting the nesting spot of pelicans that are among the millions of birds dependent on the lake. Sailboats have been hoisted out of the water to keep them from getting stuck in the mud. More dry lakebed getting exposed could send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe.

More than a million people on Sunday began planting 250 million saplings in India’s most populous state, part of an annual mass tree planting campaign to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of global climate change. Lawmakers, government officials and volunteers from social organizations swarmed riverbanks, farms, forests, schools and government buildings, planting saplings at designated spots. The effort spans 68,000 villages and 83,000 forest sites in northern Uttar Pradesh state.