Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday attended the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter Western alliances.

Putin and Xi joined the leaders of other countries that are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at its annual meeting in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.

After the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, Iranian lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian wrote that it was "unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family."

Days later as nationwide protests and a bloody crackdown on all dissent took hold, he warned that those "insulting the supreme leader ... will create nothing except long-lasting anger and hatred in the society."

As Iran's runoff presidential election nears, comments by an official in the campaign of reformist Masoud Pezeshkian raised the possibility of his government increasing government-set gasoline prices — a move that has sparked nationwide protests in the past.

While still tentative, economists long have warned Iran needs to overhaul its system of subsidies, estimated to cost the Islamic Republic tens of billions of dollars a year. In 2019, a similar hike triggered mass demonstrations and a bloody crackdown that grew even more intense after the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini.

President Joe Biden's conduct behind closed doors, in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in meetings around the world is described in the same dual way by those who regularly see him in action.

He is often sharp and focused. But he also has moments, particularly later in the evening, when his thoughts seem jumbled and he trails off mid-sentence or seems confused. Sometimes he doesn't grasp the finer points of policy details. He occasionally forgets people's names, stares blankly and moves slowly around the room.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday that the Palestinian death toll from nearly nine months of war has surged past 38,000.

The ministry said that in the last 24 hours, the bodies of 58 people had been brought to hospitals, bringing the overall death toll to 38,011.

An Israeli airstrike slammed into a residential building next to the main medical center in Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis, wounding at least seven people, hospital authorities and witnesses said Wednesday.

Nasser Hospital sits in the western part of the city, which is inside the Israeli-designated humanitarian "safe zone" where Palestinians have been told to go, according to maps provided by Israel's military. The latest Israeli evacuation order affected about 250,000 people earlier this week across wide swathes of Gaza, the United Nations estimated.

Israel's Cabinet was set to convene Thursday to discuss Hamas' latest response to a U.S.-backed proposal for a phased cease-fire in Gaza, as diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the nine-month war stirred back to life after a weekslong hiatus.

The United States has rallied world support behind a plan that would see the release of all of the scores of hostages still held by the militant group in return for a lasting truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. But until now, neither side appears to have fully embraced it.

Freya, a 6-month-old lion cub rescued from the wildlife trade in Lebanon, poked a curious nose out of her transport crate and sniffed the air. Satisfied, she took her first cautious steps in her new forever home in a sanctuary in South Africa.

Freya's relocation to the Drakenstein Lion Park is only a partial success story.

Hezbollah said it launched "more than 200" rockets and a salvo of "explosive drones" at Israeli military positions Thursday, in one of its largest barrages, in response to a strike that killed a senior commander of the Iran-backed group.

A Hezbollah statement said that "as part of the response to the... assassination carried out by the enemy" in southern Lebanon's Tyre area on Wednesday, its fighters fired "more than 200 rockets of various types" at five Israeli bases across the border including in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

With cease-fire talks faltering in Gaza and no clear offramp for the conflict on the Lebanon-Israel border, the daily exchanges of strikes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces have sparked fires that are tearing through forests and farmland on both sides of the frontline.

The blazes — exacerbated by supply shortages and security concerns — have consumed thousands of hectares of land in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, becoming one of the most visible signs of the escalating conflict.