Russia and China will look to gain more political and economic ground in the developing world at a summit in South Africa this week, when an expected joint dose of anti-West grumbling from them may take on a sharper edge with a formal move to bring Saudi Arabia closer.

Leaders from the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will hold three days of meetings in Johannesburg's financial district of Sandton, with Chinese premier Xi Jinping's attendance underlining the diplomatic capital his country has invested in the bloc over the last decade-and-a-bit as an avenue for its ambitions.

Tropical Storm Hilary inundated streets across Mexico's arid Baja California Peninsula with deadly floodwaters Sunday before moving over Southern California, where it swamped roads and downed trees, as concerns mounted that flash floods could strike in places as far north as Idaho.

Forecasters said Hilary was the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, bringing floods, mudslides, high winds, power outages and the potential for isolated tornadoes. The storm already dumped more than 6 inches (15.24 centimeters) of rain in some mountain communities and threatened more than an average year's worth of rain in inland desert areas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed Sunday a stern retaliation to the Russian missile strike in the center of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that killed seven people and wounded over a hundred others the day before.

"I am sure our soldiers will respond to Russia for this terrorist attack. Respond tangibly," Zelensky said in a video address published in the early hours of Sunday at the end of a visit to Sweden, his first foreign trip since attending a NATO summit in Lithuania last month.

An American-owned oil tanker long suspected of carrying sanctioned Iranian crude oil began offloading its cargo near Texas late Saturday, tracking data showed, even as Tehran has threatened to target shipping in the Persian Gulf over it.

Ship-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed the Marshall Islands-flagged Suez Rajan was undergoing a ship-to-ship transfer of its oil to another tanker, the MR Euphrates, near Galveston, some 70 kilometers (45 miles) southeast of Houston.

A new study reveals that 25 countries, home to a quarter of the world's population, are facing extremely high water stress. Most are located in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

Repeated droughts around the world are depleting water tables and leading to water stress, in other words, demand for water is outstripping available resources. And the situation is not about to improve. By 2050, almost 60% of the world's population could be facing extremely high water stress for at least one month of the year. Such are the alarming findings of the World Resources Institute (WRI), which recently published data from its Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, detailing the countries most at risk of water shortages. It names the five most water-stressed countries as Bahrain, Cyprus, Kuwait, Lebanon and Oman. "The water stress in these countries is mostly driven by low supply, paired with demand from domestic, agricultural and industrial use," the WRI notes.

A Lebanese Shiite cleric who has angered politicians and religious leaders in Lebanon and Iraq has said that groups including Lebanon's Hezbollah are trying to silence voices of dissent within the sect — including his own.

Sheikh Yasser Auda has developed a reputation on social media in recent years for his criticism of corruption in Iraq and Lebanon. He has also spoken out against the use of violence against opponents of Iran-backed groups in the two crisis-hit countries. He vowed in an interview with The Associated Press not to bow down even if it costs him his life.

Iran's foreign minister met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of his visit to the kingdom, a sign of how the two countries are trying to ease tensions after years of turmoil.

Images of Iran's top diplomat, Hossein Amirabdollahian, sitting with Prince Mohammed would have been unthinkable only months earlier, as the longtime rivals have been engaged in what officials in both Tehran and Riyadh have viewed as a proxy conflict across the wider Middle East. The prince even went as far as to compare Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler at one point in 2017.

A new study on inclusion in film shows just how much of a rarity "Barbie" is. For every woman as a speaking character in the most popular films of 2022, there were more than two men, according to report by University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

The USC report, published Thursday, found that 34.6% of speaking parts were female in the top 100 box-office hits of last year. The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has been annually tracking that and many other metrics since 2007.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says it has decided to suspend all of its services in Lebanon's largest refugee camp on Friday in protest against the presence of gunmen in its facilities.

UNRWA's decision went into effect shortly before noon Friday at the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon. Services will resume Saturday, UNRWA said.

After Bradley Cooper's prosthetic nose in the trailer for the upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic "Maestro" stoked criticism of antisemitism, the conductor's children have come to the defense of the actor.

The teaser trailer for "Maestro," which Cooper directs and stars in, debuted Tuesday and offered the first close-up look at Cooper's makeup and performance as the great American composer and longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic. Cooper, who is not Jewish, dons a prosthetic nose as part of his transformation into Bernstein, who was.