Russian strikes hit Ukraine's southern Odesa region and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks on Thursday morning, and air raid sirens sounded all across the country amid fears that Moscow unleashed another large-scale missile attack.

An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a "massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine."

North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile toward its eastern waters Thursday, hours after the North threatened to launch "fiercer" military responses to the U.S. bolstering its security commitment to its allies South Korea and Japan.

The missile fired from the North's eastern coastal Wonsan area at 10:48 a.m. landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, according to its neighbors. After detecting the launch, South Korean, U.S. and Japanese militaries quickly condemned the launch that they say threatens stability in the region.

Republicans won control of the U.S. House on Wednesday, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden's agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a threadbare majority will pose immediate challenges for GOP leaders and complicate the party's ability to govern.

More than a week after Election Day, Republicans secured the 218th seat needed to flip the House from Democratic control. The full scope of the party's majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted.

Turkish security forces have detained a suspect wanted in connection with the deadly bombing in Istanbul in an operation in a Turkish-controlled area in northwestern Syria, Turkey's state-run news agency reported.

Other suspects detained following the bombing will appear before court officials on Thursday to face possible charges or be released from custody.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday a deadly explosion in Poland was probably the result of Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire but that Russia bears "ultimate responsibility" for the war.

Members of the Group of 20 leading economies ended their meeting Wednesday by declaring that most of them strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and warning that the conflict is intensifying fragilities in the world's economy.

The summit's closing declaration was noteworthy in highlighting the war given the divisions among the group, which includes not only Russia itself but also countries such as China and India that have significant trade ties with Moscow and have stopped short of outright criticism of the war.

Donald Trump's company is licensing its name for a golf resort in Oman in the first of what the company hopes will be several overseas deals, raising conflict-of-interest issues as the former president announced a third run for the White House.

The Trump Organization said the licensing deal — the first since Trump left office — is with Saudi developer Dar Al Arakan and will include a golf course, hotel and thousands of residential units in the Oman capital of Muscat.

NASA's new moon rocket blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard early Wednesday, bringing the U.S. a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

If all goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon, and then the capsule will return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific in December.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday it was "unlikely" that a missile that killed two in NATO-ally Poland was fired from Russia, but he pledged support for Poland's investigation into what it had called a "Russian-made" missile.

Biden spoke after he convened an "emergency" meeting of the Group of Seven and NATO leaders in Indonesia Wednesday morning for consultations on the explosion that killed two people in the eastern part of Poland near the Ukraine border.

In two volatile spots in the occupied West Bank, Israel has installed robotic weapons that can fire tear gas, stun grenades and sponge-tipped bullets at Palestinian protesters.

The weapons, perched over a crowded Palestinian refugee camp and in a flashpoint West Bank city, use artificial intelligence to track targets. Israel says the technology saves lives — both Israeli and Palestinian. But critics see another step toward a dystopian reality in which Israel fine-tunes its open-ended occupation of the Palestinians while keeping its soldiers out of harm's way.