The Hamas-run government in Gaza says Israeli airstrikes have hit apartment blocks in a refugee camp near Gaza City for a second day in a row, causing many deaths and injuries.

The toll from Wednesday’s strikes on Jabalia was not immediately known. Al-Jazeera television, which is still reporting from northern Gaza, aired videos of devastation and of several wounded people, including children, being brought to a nearby hospital.

After visiting Qatar, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati will continue a tour of other Arab countries, as he works to ensure Lebanon does not enter the Hamas-Israel war.

Mikati said Wednesday that time is of the essence in stopping the Hamas-Israel war from “going out of control” and affecting Lebanon and the wider region.

Bolivia's government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out "crimes against humanity" in Gaza, and Chile and Colombia recalled their ambassadors to Israel as they criticized the Israeli military offensive against Hamas militants.

Bolivian officials cited the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza that have resulted from the latest Israel-Hamas war, but made no mention of the Hamas attack on Israel at the start of the conflict.

Palestinians reported another widespread outage of internet and phone service in Gaza early Wednesday, hours after Israeli airstrikes leveled apartment buildings near Gaza City and as ground troops battled Hamas militants inside the besieged territory.

Humanitarian aid agencies have warned that such blackouts severely disrupt their work in an already dire situation in Gaza, where more than half of the population of 2.3 million Palestinians has been displaced and basic supplies are running low more than three weeks into the war triggered by Hamas' bloody Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel.

The human rights group Amnesty International has said that civilians in southern Lebanon were injured this month when Israeli forces hit a border village with shells containing white phosphorus, a controversial incendiary munition.

The organization said it verified three other instances of Israel's military dropping white phosphorus on Lebanese border areas in the past month, but Amnesty said it did not document any harm to civilians in those cases.

The inflation that has been wearing on European consumers fell sharply to 2.9% in October, its lowest in more than two years as fuel prices fell and rapid interest rate hikes from the European Central Bank took hold.

But that encouraging news was balanced by official figures showing economic output in the 20 countries that use the euro shrank by 0.1% in the July-September quarter.

Pfizer lost more than $2 billion in the third quarter as an expected COVID-19 product sales decline clipped revenue.

Sales of the drugmaker's COVID treatment Paxlovid and the vaccine Comirnaty slid 97% and 70%, respectively, as Pfizer, like its competitors, switched to selling on the commercial market instead of to governments.

The heir to the Spanish throne, Princess Leonor, swore allegiance to her country's Constitution on her 18th birthday Tuesday, laying the groundwork for her eventual succession as queen when the time comes.

The nationally televised ceremony in the lower house of parliament is understood to symbolize the continuity of Spain's parliamentary monarchy and the institution's allegiance to the chamber.

Saudi Arabia is all but certain to host the men's 2034 World Cup after the Australian football federation decided not to enter the bidding contest, which had been widely seen as shaped by FIFA to suit the oil rich kingdom.

FIFA had set Tuesday as the deadline to formally declare interest in hosting the tournament, but Australia's decision not to enter the race leaves Saudi Arabia as the only declared candidate — to the dismay of many human rights activists.

In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says.

The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s.