Despite frequent and devastating heat waves, droughts, floods and fire, major fossil fuel-producing countries still plan to extract more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with the Paris climate accord's goal for limiting global temperature rise, according to a United Nations-backed study released Wednesday.

Coal production needs to ramp sharply down to address climate change, but government plans and projections would lead to increases in global production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050, the Production Gap Report states. This conflicts with government commitments under the climate accord, which seeks to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

This October was the hottest on record globally, 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month — and the fifth straight month with such a mark in what will now almost certainly be the warmest year ever recorded.

October was a whopping 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous record for the month in 2019, surprising even Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European climate agency that routinely publishes monthly bulletins observing global surface air and sea temperatures, among other data.

A three-year drought that has left millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran with little water wouldn't have happened without human-caused climate change, a new study found.

The west Asian drought, which started in July 2020, is mostly because hotter-than-normal temperatures are evaporating the little rainfall that fell, according to a flash study Wednesday by a team of international climate scientists at World Weather Attribution.

G7 foreign ministers called Wednesday on Iran to refrain from providing support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and to use its influence to de-escalate regional tensions.

"We call on Iran to refrain from providing support for Hamas and taking further actions that destabilize the Middle East, including support for Lebanese Hezbollah and other non-state actors, and to use its influence with those groups to de-escalate regional tensions," the ministers said in a joint statement after talks in Japan.

Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing south on foot with only what they can carry after running out of food and water in the north, a U.N. agency said Wednesday, as Israel said its troops were battling Hamas militants deep inside Gaza City.

Over 70% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have already fled their homes, but the growing numbers making their way south point to an increasingly desperate situation in and around Gaza's largest city, which has come under heavy Israeli bombardment.

Top diplomats from the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies announced a unified stance on the Israel-Hamas war on Wednesday after intensive meetings in Tokyo, condemning Hamas, supporting Israel's right to self-defense and calling for "humanitarian pauses" to speed aid to desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip.

In a statement following two days of talks, the nations sought to balance unequivocal criticism of Hamas' attacks against Israel and "the need for urgent action" to help civilians in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

When Hezbollah announced last week that its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would deliver his first public speech since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, much of the region held its breath.

Would Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Arab world's most powerful paramilitary force, continue its limited exchanges of fire with Israel or throw itself wholeheartedly into the war? In Lebanon, streets emptied as people sat glued to their screens to watch, ready to parse his words along with decision-makers in Israel and across the Mideast.

Nintendo reported an 18% rise in net profit for its first fiscal half on Tuesday, as sales continued to get a boost from its hit Super Mario movie, and the popularity of its software for various new video games.

April-September profit at Nintendo Co., which didn't break down quarterly results, totaled nearly 271.3 billion yen ($1.8 billion), up from 230 billion yen a year earlier. Sales surged 21% to 796 billion yen ($5.3 billion).

A Lebanese woman and her three granddaughters were laid to rest in their hometown in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, two days after they were killed in an Israeli drone strike that hit the car they were traveling in near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Hundreds of men and women marched before the four coffins, which were draped in black and white banners as they were carried through the streets of the village of Ainata. The coffins were later taken for burial in a cemetery in the nearby village of Blida.

Israel bombed Tuesday al-Labbouneh, near the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura, and the outskirts of the southern towns of Mhaibib and Aitaroun, as two Iron Dome missiles landed in an open area in the outskirts of the town of al-Tiri in south Lebanon after a failed interception attempt.

Meanwhile, Israeli media said that Israeli residents of the Galilee Panhandle near Lebanon's border had been asked to stay near shelters over a suspected security incident.