Firecrackers popped, incense was offered at temples and dancers and drummers paraded Wednesday in Asia and farther afield as millions around the world celebrated the Lunar New Year.

From Beijing to Havana, the holiday — known as the Spring Festival in China, Tet in Vietnam and Seollal in Korea — is a major festival celebrated in many countries. Wednesday marked the start of the Year of the Snake, one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac.

Hindu devotees, mystics and holy men and women have gathered in India's northern city of Prayagraj for the Maha Kumbh festival, the world's largest religious gathering.

The festival is held every 12 years at the confluence of sacred rivers. A stampede occurred as people rushed to take part in a bathing ritual at the festival early Wednesday. In images from the scene of the stampede, families waited at makeshift hospitals to get word of their missing relatives, rescuers were helping the injured and police tried to manage the massive crowds.

Neymar has agreed to return to Santos nearly 12 years after he left the Brazilian team, club president Marcelo Teixeira said Tuesday.

The Brazil striker confirmed earlier that his contract with Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal had been terminated by mutual consent. He had an injury-marred spell at Al-Hilal, where he played only seven matches and scored once.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank overnight and into Wednesday.

A 23-year-old man was shot dead in Tulkarem and a 25-year-old man was killed in a strike on Jenin, where Israel launched a large operation earlier this month.

The Grammy Awards will look a little bit different this week.

Each year, the Recording Academy hosts a multitude of events to welcome the music industry during Grammy week and record labels do the same. However, many institutions have canceled their plans — Universal Music Group, Sony, Spotify, BMG and Warner Music Group among them — and instead are allocating resources to help those affected by the devastating Los Angeles-area wildfires.

Human-caused climate change increased the likelihood and intensity of the hot, dry and windy conditions that fanned the flames of the recent devastating Southern California wildfires, a scientific study found.

But the myriad of causes that go into the still smoldering fires are complex, so the level of global warming's fingerprints on weeks of burning appears relatively small compared to previous studies of killer heat waves, floods and droughts by the international team at World Weather Attribution. Tuesday's report, too rapid for peer-review yet, found global warming boosted the likelihood of high fire weather conditions in this month's fires by 35% and its intensity by 6%.

Congolese security forces on Tuesday tried to slow the advance of Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who say they have captured Goma after entering eastern Congo's largest city, as U.N. officials reported an unspecified number of bodies on the streets.

Hospitals are overwhelmed in Goma, while hundreds of thousands are fleeing gunfire and shelling, the officials said.

An explosion struck a Hong Kong-flagged container ship Tuesday traveling north through the Red Sea, sparking a major fire that forced its crew to abandon the vessel, shipping industry officials said.

The ship was drifting and ablaze some 225 kilometers (140 miles) off the coast of Hodeida, a port city in Yemen held by the country's Houthi rebels, said the Diaplous Group, a maritime firm.

BY Kelsey Norman, Rice University and Ana Martín Gil, Rice University

(THE CONVERSATION) For more than a decade, Syrians have been the world's largest refugee population.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hoping to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington as early as next week, according to two U.S. officials familiar with preliminary planning for the trip.

Should the trip come together in that timeframe, Netanyahu could be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump at the White House since his inauguration last week. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the planning remains tentative, said details could be arranged when Trump's special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, travels to Israel this week for talks with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.