Thousands of Syrians gathered in Damascus’ historic main mosque for the first Muslim Friday prayers since former President Bashar Assad was overthrown.

Israel carried out a wave of heavy airstrikes across Syria as its troops advanced deeper into the country.

A U.S. envoy has held talks in Beirut with Lebanese officials about a possible cease-fire in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Israel’s new foreign minister says there has been “certain progress” in efforts to end the fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Iran has fired dozens of ballistic missiles at Israel.

Palestinian health officials say Israeli strikes in the occupied West Bank killed six people, including the son of a prominent jailed militant.

The Israeli military says it has killed five more militants in a large-scale operation in the occupied West Bank, including a well-known local commander.

The top United Nations humanitarian official for Gaza says that successive Israeli evacuation orders have displaced 90% of the Palestinian territory's 2.1 million residents since the Israel-Hamas war began in October.

Several U.S. officials say the pier built by the American military to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza will be reinstalled on the beach to be used for several days, but then the plan is to pull it out permanently.

The United Nations has told Israel it will suspend aid operations across Gaza unless urgent steps are taken to better protect humanitarian workers.

U.N. investigators are looking into allegations against 14 of the 19 staffers from the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians who Israel claims were involved in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants that spurred the latest war in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch says military forces in Burkina Faso killed 223 civilians, including babies and many children, in attacks on two villages accused of cooperating with militants.

The United Nations is calling for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.

More than 53,000 people have fled Haiti’s capital in less than three weeks as deadly gang violence continues.

The Israeli military has rescued two hostages from the Gaza Strip early in a dramatic operation that Palestinian hospital officials say also killed at least 67 Palestinians in airstrikes.

The Palestinians are hoping that a vote in the U.N. General Assembly on a nonbinding resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire will demonstrate widespread global support for ending the Israel-Hamas war.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has used a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and urged its members to demand an immediate cease-fire.

Hundreds of foreign nationals and several seriously injured Palestinians are being allowed to leave Gaza for the first time since the Israel-Hamas war began more than three weeks ago.

The Ukrainian government is seeking to extend a wartime deal that allowed the country’s grain to get to nations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

A U.N. resolution that calls on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to swiftly reverse their increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls and condemns their ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations is set to be voted on Thursday by the Security Council.

The United Nations says the 3,330 Afghan men and women it employs stayed home for a second day to protest the Taliban’s ban on U.N. female staff working in the country, as it continued to press for the decision to be reversed.

U.N. officials say that female Afghan employees of the United Nations have been banned from working by Taliban authorities.

The United Nations says at least 32 civilians were killed by rebel groups in eastern Congo’s Ituri province.

Turkey's state-run news agency says Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that his country be referred to as “Türkiye.”.

New Zealand and Australia have sent military surveillance flights to assess the damage caused by a huge undersea volcanic eruption in Tonga.

The U.N. humanitarian chief is urging Myanmar’s military leaders to provide unimpeded access to the more than 3 million people in need of “life-saving" humanitarian assistance since government forces seized power on Feb. 1.

The part-virtual, partly in-person U.N. General Assembly meeting is again drawing people to the world body’s headquarters a year after going remote because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The United Nations says the Taliban, Afghanistan’s new rulers since last month, have challenged the credentials of Afghanistan’s former U.N. ambassador and are asking to speak at the U.N. General Assembly’s high-level meeting of world leaders that began Tuesday.

The United Nations is calling the Myanmar military’s extension of the state of emergency and election delay moves in the wrong direction from international calls for the restoration of democracy.

A high-level committee that focuses on rapid responses to humanitarian crises estimates that some 350,000 people in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region are in famine conditions.

Representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have met with Myanmar’s junta leader six weeks after an emergency regional summit on the coup in the country drew promises of progress toward a solution but produced no tangible results.

A U.N. spokesman said the world body has been left with no international staff in North Korea and its North Korean employees are working remotely. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin, File)SEOUL – A U.N. spokesman said the world body in North Korea has been left with no international staff, who are now working remotely. AdDujarric said that WFP operations will be handled by local staff in Pyongyang and international staff working remotely. Several U.N. agencies including WFP, WHO and UNICEF have offices in North Korea. North Korea has about 26 million people.

(UNTV via AP)CAMEROON – Myanmar’s U.N. ambassador, who strongly opposed the military coup in his country, insists he remains the permanent representative to the United Nations, but the foreign ministry has informed the U.N. that the ambassador has been terminated and his deputy is now in charge. The dispute over who is recognized as Myanmar’s ambassador -- the representative of the generals who carried out the Feb. 1 coup or of the ousted democratically elected government -- is under discussion and could end up in the General Assembly, where all 193 U.N. members have seats. “I wish therefore to confirm to you that I remain Myanmar’s permanent representative to the United Nations.”The second letter to the secretary-general from Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which Dujarric said was received Tuesday, makes no mention of the coup. AdThe ministry said Myanmar’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Tin Maung Naing, has been assigned as the charge d’affaires of the U.N. mission. The General Assembly meeting was called to hear a briefing from the U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, who said it is time to “sound the alarm” about the coup.

The Iranian-supported Houthi rebels rule the capital and Yemen’s north where the majority of the population lives, forcing international aid groups to work with them. Most of Yemen's 30 million people rely on international aid to survive. Some aid agencies said they were considering pulling out foreign staff. Saudi Arabia has advocated the terror designation, hoping it would pressure the rebels to reach a peace deal. The Saudi Foreign Ministry welcomed the U.S. decision, expressing hope the designation would force the rebels to “seriously” return to negotiating table.

FILE - In this May 20 2008 file photo, pro-independence Polisario Front rebel soldiers prepare tea in the Western Sahara region of Tifariti. The Moroccan military has intervened in a U.N.-patrolled border zone in the disputed Western Sahara to clear a key road it said was being blockaded for weeks by supporters of the pro-independence Polisario Front. A Polisario envoy accused the Moroccan military of firing at innocent protesters and said that led to clashes Friday between Moroccan and Polisario forces. Morocco annexed Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony believed to have considerable offshore oil deposits and mineral resources, in 1975. Morocco has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for Western Sahara.

Hong Kong and Singapore say they have agreed to a bilateral air travel bubble, re-establishing travel links as coronavirus infections in both cities decline. -- Maryland will reduce indoor operations for bars and restaurants from 75% to 50% in response to rising coronavirus cases and increased hospitalizations. Maryland also reported 1,338 new coronavirus cases Tuesday — the seventh straight day of at least 1,000 cases. ___WASHINGTON — The U.S. has surpassed 1 million new confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of November. The El Paso County sheriff’s office says two of the employees were hospitalized over the weekend as coronavirus cases surged at the facility.

“The United Nations was formed to promote peace with a goal of the abolition of nuclear weapons,” Fihn said. It says the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, known as the TPNW, “turns back the clock on verification and disarmament and is dangerous” to the half-century-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of global nonproliferation efforts. “It would be unfortunate if the TPNW were allowed to derail our ability to work together to address pressing proliferation.”Fihn has stressed that “the nonproliferation Treaty is about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and eliminating nuclear weapons, and this treaty implements that. There’s no way you can undermine the Nonproliferation Treaty by banning nuclear weapons. Secretary-General Guterres said in an Associated Press interview on Wednesday: “It is clear for me that we will only be entirely safe in relation to nuclear weapons the day where nuclear weapons no longer exist.

File-This June 4, 2020, file photo shows Women and children walk in a makeshift site for displaced people in Kongoussi, Burkina Faso. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the funds will help some 10 million people in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger for the remainder of this year and through next year with nutrition, food, health services, water and sanitation, shelter, education, protection and support to survivors of gender-based violence. Both Guterres and Lowcock appealed for $2.4 billion to cover the remaining months of 2020 and 2021. U.N. spokesman Dujarric said donors pledged $985 million for this year and $704 million for 2021 and beyond. The United States was next pledging $274.8 million followed by Denmark with $183.1 million, the European Union with $122.8 million and Germany with $118.2 million.

TANZANIA U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep shock late Friday at the discovery of mass graves in Libyan territory recently recaptured from forces commanded by Khalifa Hifter, and called for a transparent investigation. The U.N. chief also called on Libyas U.N.-supported government to secure the mass graves, identify the victims, establish the causes of death and return the bodies to next of kin. The discoveries have raised fears about the extent of human rights violations in territories controlled by Hifters forces, given the difficulties of documentation in an active war zone. Philippe Nassif, Amnesty Internationals director for the Middle East and North Africa, said the group was working to verify the mass killings. Libya has been in turmoil since 2011 when a civil war toppled long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed.

A weakened Hurricane Dorian flooded homes on North Carolina's Outer Banks on Friday with a ferocity that took even storm-hardened residents by surprise, forcing people to retreat to their attics. Follow live Dorian tracking below:Friday afternoon (AP):The United Nations said Friday that the International Office on Migration is providing 1,000 tarps to replace roofs stripped from homes by Hurricane Dorian on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the migration office stressed that the priority right now is search and rescue operations. He says that after everyone has been rescued and the wounded safely evacuated, the agency will focus on providing temporary shelter for those who lost their homes. Dujarric said the World Health Organization reports it's focusing on providing clinical care, food supplies, safe drinking water and sanitation to survivors.