A United Nations appeal for Yemen Wednesday is aiming at raising $4.27 billion to alleviate what it describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 161,000 people likely to experience famine there in 2022.

The virtual pledging conference is co-hosted by Sweden and Switzerland. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will address donors on the dire needs of the Arab world's poorest country.

Four Bengal tigers rescued from years of captivity in a train carriage in Argentina have been released into open-air enclosures in South Africa.

After a journey of more than 70 hours from Argentina, the tigers stepped from their crates into open-air enclosures at the Lionsrock Big Cat Sanctuary in South Africa's central Free State province.

Both Russia and Ukraine projected optimism ahead of another scheduled round of talks Wednesday, even as Moscow's forces rained fire on Kyiv and other major cities in a bid to crush the resistance that has frustrated Kremlin hopes for a lightning victory.

In the encircled seaport of Mariupol, a Russian airstrike destroyed a theater building where hundreds of people were sheltering, the city council said. There was no immediate word on deaths or injuries.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national who has been detained in Iran for nearly six years, has left Tehran's airport after being freed with another fellow detainee, Anoosheh Ashoori, British officials said Wednesday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, tweeted that he was pleased that the two's "unfair detention" had ended.

The Council of Europe on Wednesday expelled Russia from the continent's foremost human rights body in an unprecedented move over Moscow's invasion and war in Ukraine.

The 47-nation organization's committee of ministers said in statement that "the Russian Federation ceases to be a member of the Council of Europe as from today, after 26 years of membership."

Japanese prosecutors filed an appeal Wednesday against the verdict in the trial of former Nissan executive Greg Kelly, who recently was cleared of almost all charges he had faced related to alleged under-reporting of his former boss Carlos Ghosn's pay.

The Tokyo District Court handed down a six-month sentence suspended for three years earlier this month. It found Kelly, an American, guilty of under-reporting former Nissan Chairman Ghosn's compensation for just one of the eight years cited in the charges.

Saudi Arabia's octogenarian monarch underwent medical tests had the battery of his pacemaker changed, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported Wednesday.

King Salman will rest for several days following the procedure and "successful medical tests," the news agency said. Government-produced images showed the king leaving the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the capital, Riyadh, hunched forward and using a cane, but otherwise walking unassisted.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cited Pearl Harbor and the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 on Wednesday as he appealed to the U.S. Congress to do more to help Ukraine's fight against Russia.

“We need you right now,” Zelenskyy said in remarks livestreamed at the U.S. Capitol. He added, "I call on you to do more”

Russian warships around midnight fired missiles and artillery at the Ukrainian sea coast near Tuzla, to the south of Odesa, Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said.

“They fired a huge amount of ammunition from a great distance,” he said Wednesday on Facebook.

Ukraine said it saw possible room for compromise in talks with Russia despite Moscow's stepped up bombardment Tuesday of Kyiv and new assaults on the port city of Mariupol, from where an estimated 20,000 civilians managed to flee through a humanitarian corridor.

The fast-moving developments on the diplomatic front and on the ground came as Russia's invasion neared the three-week mark and the number of Ukrainians who have left the country amid Europe's heaviest fighting since World War II eclipsed 3 million.