Egyptian prison authorities have intervened medically with imprisoned pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who this week escalated his hunger strike and stopped drinking water, his family said Thursday, demanding his release. The drama surrounding his fate is coinciding with Egypt's hosting of the U.N. climate summit.

With the family scrambling for details on Abdel-Fattah's condition, officials at the prison refused to allow a lawyer for the family to visit him, despite approval by the prosecutors' office for the visit. The laywer, Khaled Ali, said Interior Ministry officials told him the approval was not valid because it was dated Wednesday, adding in a tweet that he was only notified of the approval on Thursday morning.

A stray bullet hit a Middle East Airlines jet while landing in Beirut on Thursday, causing some material damage. No one among the passengers or crew was hurt, the head of the Lebanese airline company said.

The jet was landing on its way back from Jordan when the bullet hit the plane, said Mohamad El-Hout. He told reporters that Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport often faces such incidents, in addition to birds that fly in the area, endangering aviation.

Shortly after Hurricane Nicole made landfall early Thursday along the east coast of Florida, it was downgraded to a tropical storm but it was still battering a large area of the storm-weary state with strong winds, damaging storm surge and heavy rain.

The rare November hurricane prompted officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations in areas that included former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

Ukrainian officials acknowledged that Russian troops had no choice but to flee a key southern city but stopped short of declaring victory in Kherson on Thursday even after Moscow said it began a retreat that would represent a humiliating defeat in the grinding war.

It was difficult to know what was happening in the strategic port city, from which tens of thousands have fled in recent weeks. Some Western observers, including the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, said they believed the Kremlin's forces have been forced to pull out — though a full withdrawal could take some time.

Drinks are on the house at this year's U.N. climate talks and the price of food will be slashed, Egypt's foreign minister said Thursday following complaints from delegates that they were struggling to get food and water during the event.

But on another issue that threatened to overshadow this year's meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh — the imprisonment of a prominent Egyptian pro-democracy campaigner, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry indicated no shift in position by the government.

The climate change generation is saying officials are talking too much, listening too little and acting even less. And they are fed up.

"Instead of talking about how to solve the climate crisis, they negotiate about how to continue polluting," said Mitzy Violeta, a 23-year old indigenous activist from Mexico. "Youth movements are realizing the solution isn't going to be in international gatherings," like the one taking place in Egypt.

Yevgeny Prigozhin has had many roles: Convicted felon and hot dog vendor. Owner of a swanky St. Petersburg restaurant and holder of lucrative government catering contracts. Founder of a mercenary military force involved in Russia's various conflicts.

Prigozhin has kept a low profile over the years. But in recent months, the 61-year-old entrepreneur with links to Russian President Vladimir Putin has become more and more public with his activities, especially involving Moscow's 8-month-old war in Ukraine.

Ukraine signed a peace accord Thursday with Southeast Asian nations, a largely symbolic act that comes as Kyiv seeks to shore up international support in isolating Russia.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba signed the "Treaty on Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia" as the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations got underway in Phnom Penh.

Protests in Iran raged on streets into Thursday with demonstrators remembering a bloody crackdown in the country's southeast, even as the nation's intelligence minister and army chief renewed threats against local dissent and the broader world.

The protests in Iran, sparked by the Sept. 16 death of a 22-year-old woman after her detention by the country's morality police, have grown into one of the largest sustained challenges to the nation's theocracy since the chaotic months after its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Russia's announced retreat from Kherson, a regional capital in southern Ukraine that it seized early in the war, and a potential stalemate in fighting over the winter could provide both countries an opportunity to negotiate peace, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday.

He said as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and "well over" 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, now in its ninth month. "Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side," Milley added.