A rocket attack at the sprawling U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Friday morning caused minor material damage but no casualties, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The attack is the first to be confirmed since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war on the U.S. Embassy, in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraqi government buildings and embassies, on the west bank of the Tigris River.

Desperate Palestinians fleeing Israel's expanding ground offensive crowded into an ever-shrinking area of the Gaza Strip as the Israel-Hamas war entered its third month Friday. The United Nations warned that its aid operation is "in tatters" because no place in the besieged enclave is safe.

Israel's ferocious military assault on Gaza, a tiny, densely populated territory, has led to widespread civilian casualties and mass displacements, triggering international alarm.

Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has spent the majority of the season in apparent crisis.

Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, spoke this week of his confidence that Manchester City would win an unprecedented fourth Premier League title in a row.

Anti-doping prosecutors in Italy requested a maximum four-year ban for Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba on Thursday after the World Cup winner tested positive for testosterone.

Pogba opted not to make a plea bargain with Italy's anti-doping agency, meaning the case will be tried before the country's anti-doping court.

For the sixth month in a row, Earth set a new monthly record for heat, and also added the hottest autumn to the litany of record-breaking heat this year, the European climate agency calculated.

And with only one month left, 2023 is on the way to smashing the record for hottest year.

It is sickly hilarious to make a movie in which so much consensual sex is had, often so gleefully, that is not the least bit sexy. Though Bella Baxter's insatiable libido might be her guiding light at first in "Poor Things," sexual liberation (or "furious jumping," as she calls it) is only part of this fantastical, anarchic journey to consciousness.

Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and his star, Emma Stone, have a good and strange thing going whether she's playing a striving scullery maid who works her way into the favor of Queen Anne, or a re-animated Victorian woman finding independence. Stone helps make his black humor more accessible, and he creates unorthodox opportunities for her to play and stretch. We, the audience, are the benefactors.

In weather terminology, they call it "rapid intensification" — the process by which a storm strengthens dramatically in a short period.

In pop culture terminology, they call it Taylor Swift.

China's exports rose in November, the first increase since April, while imports fell, according to customs data released Thursday.

Exports rose 0.5% from a year earlier to $291.9 billion, a sign that demand may be picking up after months of decline. But imports fell 0.6%, to $223.5 billion, after they climbed 3% in October.

Shares have fallen in Europe and Asia, tracking a retreat on Wall Street as investors grow wary over signs growth is slowing in Germany and other major economies.

U.S. futures edged lower and oil prices rose.

In recent years, city leaders in Grand Island, Nebraska, observed that many workers and students were walking or biking long distances to their jobs or schools. So when city administrator, Laura McAloon, learned of an opportunity to study the development of a bus system to meet those transportation needs, she jumped at it.

The opportunity was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in collaboration with the International City/County Management Association, a network of local government administrators. And it sent McAloon to Washington along with other local leaders to learn about strategies and policies to lift people in their community out of poverty.