Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public speech, nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat in his lifetime.

Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award on Monday evening. Organizers said the honor "acknowledges the determination of authors, publishers and booksellers who take a stand against intolerance, despite the ongoing threats they face."

An unexpected visitor spotted sunbathing on a beach in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv is turning heads and causing a media buzz.

But it's not American film director and Tel Aviv mainstay, Quentin Tarantino, or another Hollywood celebrity — it's Yulia, an endangered Mediterranean monk seal.

Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad received an invitation to attend the upcoming COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this year, even as the yearslong war in his country over his rule grinds on.

Assad's invite, late Monday, to the climate talks comes as the Syrian president already is scheduled to attend the Arab League summit this Friday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, years after being frozen out of regional politics. A brutal crackdown by Assad's government on demonstrators in a 2011 Arab Spring uprising challenging his rule descended into a civil war and consequently became a regional conflict.

Volodymyr Zelensky set off across Europe with a long shopping list. Ukraine's president will head home with much of what he wanted — though not the Western fighter jets he seeks to defend against Russian air attacks.

European leaders promised Zelensky an arsenal of missiles, tanks and drones during a whirlwind three-day visit to Italy, the Vatican, Germany, France and the U.K. that sought to replenish Ukraine's depleted weapons supplies ahead of a long-anticipated spring offensive aimed at turning the tide of the war.

Close, but not close enough. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received the most votes in a weekend presidential election but could not claim victory because he failed to get the majority support required for an outright win.

Preliminary results showed the longtime leader had 49.5% of the vote. His main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, garnered 45%, according to Turkish election authorities. A third candidate, nationalist politician Sinan Ogan, received 5.2%.

The White House has said Russia is looking to buy additional advanced attack drones from Iran for use in its war against Ukraine after using up most of the 400 drones it had previously purchased from Tehran.

The Biden administration last year publicized satellite imagery and intelligence findings that it said indicated Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russia. And for months, officials have said the United States believed Iran was considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, but Washington did not have evidence a deal was consummated.

Israel's foreign minister has paid a visit to Sweden in a new sign of warming ties between the two nations.

Eli Cohen said his visit to Stockholm was the first visit by an Israeli foreign minister to Sweden in 22 years.

A fire ripped through a hostel in New Zealand's capital overnight, killing at least six people and forcing others to flee the four-story building in their pajamas in what a fire chief on Tuesday called his "worst nightmare."

Six bodies were found but not all areas of the building had been searched yet because the roof on the top floor had collapsed, bringing down debris and making the area unsafe, said Bruce Stubbs, the incident controller for Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

Loud explosions sounded above Kyiv early Tuesday as Russia launched an intense air attack on the capital using a combination of missiles launched from the air, sea and land.

Russia's latest attack on Kyiv was "exceptional in its density — the maximum number of attacking missiles in the shortest period of time," said Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration.

NATO leaders are discussing ways to ensure that Ukraine does not come under attack from Russia again once the war is over, but they are concerned about doing anything that might drag the organization into a wider conflict, the head of the military alliance said Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking "security guarantees" from the 31-nation alliance to ward off any future attack from Ukraine's neighbor. Some countries are weighing what could be done to avoid a repeat of the war. Russia already annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.