The Islamic State group ambushed pro-government militiamen in an overnight attack in eastern Syria, killing at least 21 fighters, pro-government media and an opposition war monitor said Wednesday.

Sham FM radio reported that the militiamen from the pro-government National Defense Places were ambushed in the village of al-Kawm in the central Syrian desert, between the government-held city of Homs and south of the city of Raqqa, which is under control of U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces.

A senior Chinese military official held talks in Moscow Wednesday, praising strong ties between the countries during a visit that underlined growing cooperation between them.

Gen. Zhang Youxia, China's second-ranking military official and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, said that relations between Russia and China are "at the highest level in the new epoch." He said they "invariably support each other on issues of fundamental interest and key concerns."

Southern California authorities investigating the death of a Jewish man following a confrontation with a pro-Palestinian demonstrator over the Israel-Hamas war haven't determined whether a crime occurred and on Tuesday asked for the public's help to unravel what happened.

Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said deputies determined that Paul Kessler, 69, who died early Monday at a hospital, had fallen backward and struck his head on the ground at a pro-Palestinian demonstration Sunday afternoon in Thousands Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles.

Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia received positive news on Wednesday about their quests to join the European Union but countries in the volatile Balkans region that have waited years longer to become members of the world's biggest trading bloc appeared to slip back in the queue.

In a series of reports, the EU's executive branch recommended that war-ravaged Ukraine should be permitted to open membership talks, once it's addressed some shortfalls.

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.