A Palestinian teenager was killed early Wednesday following an Israeli raid in the city of Nablus, near a flashpoint site in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The army said it was protecting worshippers and fired on a suspect who had placed an explosive device nearby, which detonated.

Palestinian officials identified him as Mahdi Hashash, 15, and said he was killed by shrapnel during an Israeli raid. A branch of the militant Palestinian group Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade called the teen "our martyr."

Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday.

The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic.

Many people evacuated from vulnerable locations in the northwestern Bahamas as Tropical Storm Nicole approached Wednesday and residents of Florida braced for the storm, which could strengthen to a hurricane.

Nicole was expected to be the first storm to make landfall in the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a devastating Category 5 storm that hit the archipelago in 2019, before hitting storm-weary Florida on Wednesday night and moving into Georgia on Thursday.

Israeli archeologists have found an ancient comb dating back some 3,700 years ago and bearing what is likely the oldest known full sentence in Canaanite alphabetical script, according to an article published Wednesday.

The inscription encourages people to comb their hair and beards to rid themselves of lice. The sentence contains 17 letters that read: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

The veteran core of Luka Modrić, Ivan Perišić and Marcelo Brozović were included in the 26-man team that Croatia coach Zlatko Dalić announced for the World Cup on Wednesday.

Croatia, a finalist in 2018, is in Group F with Belgium, Canada and Morocco for the tournament in Qatar.

At first, Saskia Niño de Rivera was excited about going to Qatar for a World Cup that would mark a significant professional event for her partner, a sports agent for Mexico soccer players. She even contemplated privately proposing there during a game, and posting photos once they left the country.

But as the lesbian couple learned more about laws on same-sex relations in the conservative Gulf country, the plans no longer sounded like a good idea. Instead, Niño de Rivera proposed at an Amsterdam stadium this summer and opted to skip the World Cup altogether.

When Son Heung-min went down clutching his face in a recent Champions League match, the pain was not confined to the Tottenham striker's fractured eye socket.

The shockwaves were felt all the way back in his homeland of South Korea, where the nation collectively feared the worst ahead of the World Cup.

Israel's president held talks with party leaders Wednesday on the new governing coalition to be headed by Benjamin Netanyahu after receiving the official results of the November 1 general election won by the veteran right-winger.

Such presidential consultations had been a source of intrigue after Israel's four previous elections, as it was not immediately clear which leader would get the first shot at forming a coalition, or whether they would be successful. 

U.S. President Joe Biden is coming to international climate talks in Egypt this week with a message that historic American action to fight climate change won't shift into reverse, as happened twice before when Democrats lost power.

Current and former Biden top climate officials said the vast majority of the summer's incentive-laden $375 billion climate-and-health spending package — by far the biggest law passed by Congress to fight global warming — was crafted in such a way that will make it hard and unpalatable for future Republican Congresses or presidents to reverse it.

A senior member of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government announced his resignation Tuesay night after mounting allegations that he bullied colleagues.

Gavin Williamson announced his resignation as minister of state without portfolio in letter posted on Twitter, four days after the Times of London published expletive-laden text messages he sent to another member of Parliament.