A Tunisian ex-justice minister who launched a hunger strike after his arrest a week ago is "stable" in hospital, a doctor said Friday, as Human Rights Watch demanded his release.

Noureddine Bhiri, 63, of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, was arrested by plainclothes police officers last Friday and later accused of possible "terrorism" offences.

Iran put three ballistic missiles on display at an outdoor prayer esplanade in central Tehran on Friday, as talks in Vienna aimed at reviving Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers flounder.

The missiles, known as Dezful, Qiam and Zolfaghar and with official ranges of up to 1000-km (620 miles), were already-known models, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said.

Kazakhstan is experiencing the worst street protests the country has seen since gaining independence three decades ago.

The outburst of instability is causing significant concern in Kazakhstan's two powerful neighbors: Russia and China. The country sells most of its oil exports to China and is a key strategic ally of Moscow.

The World Health Organization has said that a record 9.5 million COVID-19 cases were tallied over the last week as the omicron variant of the coronavirus swept the planet, a 71% increase from the previous 7-day period that the U.N. health agency likened to a "tsunami." However, the number of weekly recorded deaths declined.

"Last week, the highest number of COVID-19 cases were reported so far in the pandemic," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He said the WHO was certain that was an underestimate because of a backlog in testing around the year-end holidays.

Experts say testing is the best way to determine what you have since symptoms of the illnesses can overlap.

The viruses that cause colds, the flu and COVID-19 are spread the same way — through droplets from the nose and mouth of infected people. And they can all be spread before a person realizes they're infected.

New data from the music industry confirms what a lot of people long suspected — 2021 was a very good year for Morgan Wallen, Adele and vinyl.

MRC Data's year-end report, presented in collaboration with Billboard, showed that Wallen's "Dangerous: The Double Album" ended 2021 as both the top country album of the year and the most popular album across all genres, with 3.2 million equivalent album units earned during the year.

With more bad weather looming, Virginia officials sought to reassure the public as they reacted to harsh criticism of their response to a snowstorm earlier this week that left hundreds of motorists stranded on Interstate 95 in frigid temperatures.

In contrast to his response to Monday's storm, Gov. Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency in advance of the wintry weather that is expected to move into the state late Thursday, and he asked the Virginia National Guard for assistance. The measures are necessary this time, his office said, because of the lingering effects of the first storm.

A team of scientists is sailing to "the place in the world that's the hardest to get to" so they can better figure out how much and how fast seas will rise because of global warming eating away at Antarctica's ice.

Thirty-two scientists are starting a more than two-month mission aboard an American research ship to investigate the crucial area where the massive but melting Thwaites glacier faces the Amundsen Sea and may eventually lose large amounts of ice because of warm water. The Florida-sized glacier has gotten the nickname the "doomsday glacier" because of how much ice it has and how much seas could rise if it all melts — more than two feet (65 centimeters) over hundreds of years.

When Lisa Young evacuated her home as a fast-moving Colorado wildfire burned, it looked like firefighters were going to be able to stop what appeared then to just be a grass fire in a field behind her home. She just took her purse, turned off her slow cooker and television and made sure her two cats had enough food and water to drink, thinking she would be back home soon.

Later that night staying with relatives, she watched images of her home outside of Denver burning on television, her driveway recognizable because of her father's old Corvette on fire. Her house was one of nearly 1,000 destroyed in the blaze, leading her to fear that her calico cats, Joy and Noelle, 5-year-old sisters, died in the fire.

Twenty of Yellowstone National Park's renowned gray wolves roamed from the park and were shot by hunters in recent months — the most killed by hunting in a single season since the predators were reintroduced to the region more than 25 years ago, according to park officials.

Fifteen wolves were shot after roaming across the park's northern border into Montana, according to figures released to The Associated Press. Five more died in Idaho and Wyoming.