When Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen launched missiles and hit three commercial ships in the southern Red Sea last weekend, it triggered an immediate question: Will the U.S. military strike back?

The Houthis have sharply escalated their attacks against ships as they sail toward the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait. And U.S. Navy ships have shot down an array of drones headed their way and believed to have been launched by the militant group from territory it controls in Yemen.

A Russian schoolgirl shot several of her classmates with a gun on Thursday, killing one person and injuring five others, before killing herself, state news agencies and authorities said.

The shooting happened at a school in Bryansk, in a region that borders Ukraine, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen needs back surgery and could lose his starting spot with Germany's national team ahead of the European Championship.

Barcelona said Tuesday Ter Stegen will undergo a surgical procedure to address lower back issues that have been bothering him recently. The Catalan club did not say for how long he is expected to be sidelined.

Pep Guardiola's confidence in Manchester City remains unshaken even after a three-game winless run.

The defending Premier League champions have drawn their last three games in England's top flight and sit third in the standings. But Guardiola is convinced his team can make history this season by winning an unprecedented fourth successive title.

Former No. 1-ranked Caroline Wozniacki has been awarded one of the first wild cards for the 2024 Australian Open, and is planning on bringing her two young children to the scene of her biggest Grand Slam triumph.

Wozniacki, the 2018 Australian Open women's champion, and six Australian players were granted the first batch of wild cards.

When Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said in his introductory remarks: "We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies."

You might be tempted to call that hyperbole, but — this being Miyazaki, the legendary anime filmmaker of "Spirited Away," "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" — it's closer to fact. The occurrence of a new film from Miyazaki deserves to be treated like the coming of a seldom-seen comet or something rarer still, like a winning New York Jets season.

In a rare punitive move against Israel, the State Department said it will impose travel bans on extremist Jewish settlers implicated in a rash of recent attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the step after warning Israel last week that President Joe Biden's administration would be taking action over the attacks. Blinken did not announce individual visa bans, but department spokesman Matthew Miller said the bans would be implemented starting Tuesday and would cover "dozens" of settlers and their families, with more to come if the settler violence continued. He wouldn't give a number and refused to identify any of those targeted due to confidentiality reasons.

This year's United Nations climate talks may have seen record numbers registered to attend, but activists who have spent years demonstrating at the annual event say their space to voice their demands is shrinking year on year.

Held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates — where broad laws tightly restrict speech — climate activists have been protesting at COP28's Blue Zone, which is considered international territory. Demonstrators say there have always been strict regulations for protests at COPs, but they say actions this year have been further limited in terms of the number of people allowed to participate and which climate issues they're allowed to address on any given day. It's a stark contrast, activists say, to the growing presence of the fossil fuel industry, where those linked to the industry number around 1,400, according to an Associated Press analysis.

After a first-day blur of rare quick action and agreement, negotiators at a critical United Nations climate summit Wednesday finished up their first week in a more familiar place for them: the murky middle where momentum and roadblocks intertwine.

"Negotiations, as are often the case, are a mixed picture right now. We see big differences between individual states in some areas," German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said, "but there is a will to make progress."

The top U.S. and Chinese diplomats agreed Wednesday to keep building on recent progress in bilateral ties and work together to keep the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza from spreading.

Both Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred in a telephone call to last month's closely watched meeting between the two countries' leaders in San Francisco following years of frigid ties.