Asian shares were mixed Friday after a late-in-the-day wave of buying pushed the S&P 500 to a fresh record high.

Benchmarks rose in Hong Kong and Tokyo but fell in Sydney and Shanghai.

Israeli leaders on Thursday recommended reopening the country to fully vaccinated tourists beginning on Nov. 1, a year and a half after closing its borders to most foreign visitors due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

The decision, which still requires formal government approval, comes as Israel emerges from a fourth wave of coronavirus infections. Israel in July began an aggressive booster shot campaign, offering a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to virtually anyone over the age of 16. That campaign appears to have brought the outbreak under control.

He feels like a man who has drowned.

The worst flooding that parts of South Sudan have seen in 60 years now surrounds his home of mud and grass. His field of sorghum, which fed his family, is under water. Surrounding mud dykes have collapsed.

What is the "delta plus" variant?

It's a relative of the delta variant, identified by British scientists last month.

The Earth's warming and resulting natural disasters are creating a more dangerous world of desperate leaders and peoples, the Biden administration said in the federal government's starkest assessments yet of security and migration challenges facing the United States as the climate worsens.

The Defense Department for years has called climate change a threat to U.S. national security. But Thursday's reports by the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, National Security Council and Director of National Intelligence provide one of the government's deepest looks yet at the vast rippling effects on the world's stability and resulting heightened threats to U.S. security, as well as its impact on migration.

The 2-month-old California wildfire that threatened the Lake Tahoe resort region over the summer has been declared 100% contained, officials said.

The fire, which scorched more than 346 square miles (896 square kilometers) of the Sierra Nevada and burned hundreds of homes, reached the milestone late Wednesday, according to a report from firefighting officials.

A hefty set of tusks is usually an advantage for elephants, allowing them to dig for water, strip bark for food and joust with other elephants. But during episodes of intense ivory poaching, those big incisors become a liability.

Now researchers have pinpointed how years of civil war and poaching in Mozambique have led to a greater proportion of elephants that will never develop tusks.

The boss of a notorious Haitian gang accused of kidnapping 17 members of a U.S.-based missionary group last weekend is warning that the hostages will be killed if his demands aren't met.

"I swear by thunder that if I don't get what I'm asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans," gang leader Wilson Joseph said in a video posted on social media Thursday.

Two months after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, one of the country's once-prominent female leaders — a former parliament member, candidate for president and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize — is visiting the United Nations, not as a representative of her government but as a woman in exile.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Fawzia Koofi called for humanitarian aid sent to Afghanistan to be contingent on the participation of women in its distribution, as well as free and safe travel for Afghans into and out of the country.

China's capital Beijing has begun offering booster shots against COVID-19, four months before the city and surrounding regions are to host the Winter Olympics.

Anyone 18 or older who have received two-dose Chinese vaccines and belong to at-risk groups, including those participating, organizing or working on games facilities, would be eligible for the additional shot, state media reported Friday.