BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group held talks on Wednesday in Beirut with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures in a key meeting of three top anti-Israel militant groups amid the war raging in Gaza. In neighboring Syria, meanwhile, state media said an Israeli airstrike hit the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, damaging its runway and putting it out of service.

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast as a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane early Wednesday, bringing dangerous winds and heavy rain to Acapulco and surrounding towns, stirring memories of a 1997 storm that killed dozens of people.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday hit multiple residential buildings, as health officials in the besieged territory reported hundreds killed in the past day and the closure of medical facilities because of bomb damage and a lack of power.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz spoke of a “hell that we never knew before and never thought we would experience” as she described the harrowing Oct. 7 assault on her kibbutz by Hamas militants and the terror of being taken hostage into the Gaza Strip. Lifshitz was the first of the four hostages released so far to speak of their experience, from the initial attack through the more than two weeks of captivity.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Since Israel activated the Iron Dome in 2011, the cutting-edge rocket-defense system has intercepted thousands of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. The system has given residents a sense of security, and Israelis can often be seen watching the projectiles flying through the skies and destroying their targets overhead.

TAIPEI. Taiwan (AP) — China has replaced Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu, who has been out of public view for almost two months, state media reported Tuesday. No further information was given. Li is the second senior Chinese official to disappear this year, following former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who was removed from office in July with no explanation offered.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Four North Koreans were found in a small wooden boat in South Korean waters on Tuesday in what is likely a rare case of North Koreans taking a risky sea voyage to flee to the South, Seoul officials said. More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea to avoid poverty and political oppression since the late 1990s.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas on Monday released two elderly Israeli women held hostage in Gaza as the United States expressed increasing concern that the escalating Israel-Hamas war will spark a wider conflict in the region, including attacks on American troops. The death toll in Gaza rose rapidly as Israel ramped up airstrikes that flattened buildings in what it said was preparation for an eventual ground assault.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli warplanes struck targets across Gaza on Monday after another aid shipment was allowed into the besieged Hamas-ruled territory. Israel is widely expected to launch a ground offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israeli communities. Tanks and troops have been massed at the Gaza border, and Israel says it has stepped up airstrikes in order to reduce the risk to troops in the next stages.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The United States renewed a warning Monday that it would defend the Philippines in case of an armed attack under a 1951 treaty, after Chinese ships blocked and collided with two Filipino vessels off a contested shoal in the South China Sea. Philippine diplomats summoned a Chinese Embassy official in Manila on Monday for a strongly worded protest following Sunday’s collisions off Second Thomas Shoal. 

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The second aid convoy destined for desperate Palestinian civilians reached Gaza on Sunday, as Israel widened its attacks to include targets in Syria and the occupied West Bank and the Israeli prime minister warned Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group that if it launches its own war, “we will cripple it with a force it cannot even imagine.”

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Economy Minister Sergio Massa held the lead Sunday night in early results from Argentina’s presidential election, a surprise reflecting voters' reluctance to hand the presidency to his chief contender, a populist who has pledged to drastically overhaul the state.

Hezbollah announced the deaths of five more militants as clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border intensified and the Israeli prime minister warned Lebanon on Sunday not to let itself get dragged into a new war.

Israeli warplanes struck targets across Gaza, two airports in Syria and a mosque in the occupied West Bank allegedly used by militants, as the 2-week-old war with Hamas threatened to spiral Sunday into a broader conflict.

In the humble backyard of a destroyed house, a 13-year-old chops firewood to get ready for winter. His mother, Tetiana Yarema, has been preparing for months as she remembers last winter’s Russian strikes on the energy infrastructure that plunged Ukraine into darkness.

A Chinese coast guard ship and an accompanying vessel rammed a Philippine coast guard ship and a military-run supply boat Sunday off a contested shoal, Philippine officials said, in an encounter that heightened fears of an armed conflict in the disputed South China Sea.

A court in Iran sentenced two female journalists to up to seven years in prison for “collaborating” with the United States government among other charges, local reports said. Both have been imprisoned for over a year following their coverage of the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody in Sept. 2022.

At least three civilians were killed and others wounded in Ukraine on Friday and Saturday, as Russian forces continued to shell areas across the country and pushed forward near an embattled eastern city, local Ukrainian officials reported Saturday.

In blue ink on a scrap of white paper that sits on his desk, Jehad Adwan scribbles the names and ages of his wife's relatives. Next to five names, he writes “killed” or simply, “K." Beside another five, he marks “injured” or “I."

The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off following Hamas' bloody rampage two weeks ago.

When the sun rose on Friday and the autumn heat baked the rotten debris on Gaza's streets, Mohammed Elian emerged from the zipper hole of his new canvas home. He — and hundreds of other Palestinians displaced by the latest war between Israel and Hamas — have crowded into a tent camp in southern Gaza.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas on Friday freed an American woman and her teenage daughter who had been held hostage in Gaza, Israel said, the first such release from among the roughly 200 people the militant group abducted from Israel during its Oct. 7 rampage. Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, were out of the Gaza Strip and in the hands of the Israeli military, an army spokesman said. Hamas said it released them for humanitarian reasons in an agreement with the Qatari government.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes pounded locations across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including parts of the south that Israel told Palestinians to take refuge, heightening fears among more than 2 million Palestinians trapped in the territory that nowhere was safe. Israel's defense minister told ground troops to be ready to enter Gaza, though he didn’t say when the invasion will start.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during their Oct. 7 assault on Israel, a militant video and weapons seized by Israel show, despite Pyongyang's denials that it sells arms to the militant group.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel said Wednesday that it will allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. The first crack in a punishing 10-day siege on the territory came one day after a blast at a hospital killed hundreds and put immense strain on Gaza's struggling medical system.