The World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest is among four national parks to be handed back to traditional owners in a deal signed with an Australian state government on Wednesday.

More than 160,000 hectares (395,000 acres) of land in northern Queensland state stretching from the Daintree, north of Port Douglas, to south of Cooktown will be jointly managed before a full handover is made to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people.

Japan's former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida won the governing party leadership election on Wednesday and is set to become the next prime minister, facing the imminent task of addressing a pandemic-hit economy and ensuring a strong alliance with Washington to counter growing regional security risks.

Kishida replaces outgoing party leader Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is stepping down after serving only one year since taking office last September.

Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, hurling stones at cars and homes and leaving several people wounded, including a Palestinian toddler, activists said Wednesday.

Video of Tuesday's attack released by an Israeli rights group showed several shirtless settlers with scarves wrapped around their faces hurling stones at a cluster of homes and vehicles. Israeli troops stood among the settlers but did not appear to be taking any action to stop them.

People in northeastern China ate breakfast by the light of smartphones and shopkeepers turned on generators as much of the country enforced power cuts Wednesday to meet official conservation targets and ease shortages in some areas.

News reports blame high coal prices they say make power companies reluctant to meet booming demand, while economists say the real motive is political: Officials are under pressure to curtail energy use to meet official targets.

Lava from a volcano on Spain's Canary Islands has reached the sea after 10 days of wiping out hundreds of homes and causing the evacuation of thousands of residents.

Columns of steam that experts had warned could contain toxic gases shot upward when the bright red molten rock tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean at 11 p.m. on Tuesday.

Five intelligence officers were killed in a shootout Tuesday with suspected Islamic State group militants in Sudan's capital Khartoum, authorities said.

The General Intelligence Agency said in a statement the suspected militants opened fire on forces who raided their hideout in the Gabra neighborhood in southern Khartoum. It said five were killed and an officer was also wounded in the raid.

North Korea said Wednesday it successfully tested a new hypersonic missile it implied was being developed as nuclear capable, as it continues to expand its military capabilities and pressure Washington and Seoul over long-stalled negotiations over its nuclear weapons.

The missile test early Tuesday was North Korea's third round of launches this month and took place shortly before North Korea's U.N. envoy accused the United States of hostility and demanded the Biden administration permanently end joint military exercises with South Korea and the deployment of strategic assets in the region.

The top U.S. military officer called the 20-year war in Afghanistan a "strategic failure" and acknowledged to Congress that he had favored keeping several thousand troops in the country to prevent a collapse of the U.S.-supported Kabul government and a rapid takeover by the Taliban.

Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee pointed to the testimony Tuesday by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as evidence that President Joe Biden had been untruthful when, in a television interview last month, he suggested the military had not urged him to keep troops in Afghanistan.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria announced Tuesday that invitations have been issued for a sixth meeting of the committee charged with producing a new constitution for war-torn Syria in October.

After the failure of the five previous meetings of Syrian government, opposition and civil society representatives, Geir Pedersen told the U.N. Security Council: "We should all now expect the constitutional committee to begin to work seriously on a process of drafting — not just preparing — a constitutional reform."

President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan is heading to Cairo on Wednesday for talks with Egyptian government officials about rising tensions between Israel and Hamas.

The Biden administration is leaning heavily on Egypt, which has long played a role as mediator between Israel and Hamas, for help in maintaining stability in the region even as it presses Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to stop his crackdown on dissent.