Israel's defense minister has said that Israel's new government has greatly increased the number of strikes on Iranian targets since taking office late last year.

Yoav Gallant did not provide an exact number of airstrikes. But the address, delivered at a security conference, marked rare public comments on Israeli military activity in Syria.

The U.N. envoy for Sudan urged the country's warring generals to honor a seven-day cease-fire that began Monday night, warning the growing ethnic dimension to the fighting risks engulfing Sudan in a prolonged conflict.

Volker Perthes told the U.N. Security Council that the conflict, which began April 15, has shown no signs of slowing down despite six previous declarations of cease-fires by both sides. All the previous truces have been violated.

A top Russian official who faces sanctions in the West over Moscow's war on Ukraine visited Saudi Arabia and held talks with his counterpart in the kingdom early on Tuesday, state media reported.

Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev's visit to Riyadh came just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed an Arab League summit held in Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Friday. The visits underline how the kingdom and Gulf Arab states, traditionally the security clients of the United States, have been maintaining their relations with Moscow amid the Ukraine war.

troops and security forces fought for a second day Tuesday against an alleged cross-border raid that Moscow blamed on Ukrainian military saboteurs but which Kyiv portrayed as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region on the Ukraine border, said forces continued to sweep the rural area around the town of Graivoron, where the alleged attack on Monday took place. Twelve civilians were wounded in the attack, he said, and an elderly woman person died during the evacuation.

The third-placed contender in the Turkish presidential elections formally endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday for the second-round runoff vote to be held on May 28.

The nationalist presidential candidate Sinan Ogan, 55, has emerged as a potential kingmaker after neither Erdogan nor his main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, secured the majority needed for a first-round victory on May 14.

Emirati leaders extended a long-sought invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the U.N climate conference, known as COP28, in November.

The United Arab Emirates' President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum also invited Israel's figurehead President Isaac Herzog and dozens of other leaders including Syrian President Bashar Assad to COP28, in Dubai.

Several dozen youths pelted police with objects and set cars and trash bins ablaze in Cardiff in local unrest that erupted after two teenagers died in a road accident, officials said Tuesday.

Police said "large scale disorder" broke out after officers were called to the scene of a crash in the Ely district of the Welsh capital on Monday evening.

Smoke from dozens of raging wildfires in western Canada has drifted south into the United States and prompted the states of Colorado and Montana to issue air quality alerts.

Colorado's Department of Public Health and Environment put out alerts and advisories for Saturday afternoon through Sunday afternoon for much of the eastern half of the state, including Denver. It warned that air quality may be unhealthy during that period.

The economic damage of weather- and climate-related disasters continues to rise, even as improvements in early warning have helped reduce the human toll, the U.N. weather agency said Monday.

The World Meteorological Organization, in an updated report, tallied nearly 12,000 extreme weather, climate and water-related events over the past half-century around the globe that have killed more than 2 million people and caused economic damage of $4.3 trillion.

Swathes of India from the northwest to the southeast braced for more scorching heat Monday, with New Delhi under a severe weather alert, as extreme temperatures strike parts of the country.

The Indian Meteorological Department issued a heat wave alert for seven southern and central states last week and broadened it to the capital and some northern states on Monday as sizzling temperatures breached normal levels.