Japan was set to expand its coronavirus state of emergency for a second week in a row Wednesday, adding several more prefectures as a surge in infections fueled by the delta variant strains the country's health care system.

The government last week extended the state of emergency until Sept. 12 and expanded the areas covered to 13 prefectures from six including Tokyo. Sixteen other prefectures are currently under quasi-emergency status.

A California fire that gutted hundreds of homes advanced toward Lake Tahoe on Wednesday as thousands of firefighters tried to box in the flames and tourists who hoped to boat or swim found themselves looking at thick yellow haze instead of alpine scenery.

The Caldor Fire was less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of the lake that straddles the California-Nevada state line. The fire was eating its way through rugged timberlands and was "knocking on the door" of the Lake Tahoe basin, California's state fire chief Thom Porter warned this week.

From the shell of their sitting room, its wall blown open by Israeli missiles, Zaki and Jawaher Nassir have a window into their neighborhood's upheaval.

In one building's skeleton, children play video games atop a slab of fallen concrete. In another, a man stares out from beside a bed covered in debris.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared Tuesday he is sticking to his Aug. 31 deadline for completing a risky airlift of Americans, endangered Afghans and others seeking to escape Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The decision defies allied leaders who want to give the evacuation more time and opens Biden to criticism that he caved to Taliban deadline demands.

"Every day we're on the ground is another day that we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both us and allied forces and innocent civilians," Biden said at the White House, referring to the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate, which is known for staging suicide attacks on civilians.

Nine activists from Bahrain had their iPhones hacked by advanced spyware made by the Israeli company NSO Group, the world's most infamous hacker-for-hire firm, a cybersecurity watchdog reported on Tuesday.

Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said NSO Group's Pegasus malware successfully hacked the phones between June 2020 and February 2021. Those reportedly hacked included members of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and two political dissidents living in exile. At least one of the activists lived in London when the hacking occurred, Citizen Lab said.

Hamas-backed Palestinian activists on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip launched a new wave of incendiary balloons into Israel, further raising tensions after a night of Israeli airstrikes on the seaside territory.

The enemy sides this week have engaged in their heaviest cross-border fighting since an 11-day war in May. In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, officials said a Palestinian teen was killed in a clash with the Israeli military.

Algeria formally broke off diplomatic relations with neighboring Morocco on Tuesday, with the foreign minister citing a series of alleged hostile acts.

The move culminates a period of growing tension between the North African countries which are mired in a decades-long feud, with their borders closed to each other. There was no immediate reaction from Morocco.

An explosion shook the base of an al-Qaida-linked group in northern Syria on Tuesday, killing and wounding dozens of fighters, opposition activists said.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the explosion at the base of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in the country. HTS is the most powerful group in Syria's northwest.

Anna Mays woke up in a panic attack Monday, thinking she was back in the rising floodwater.

Two days ago, she had been clinging for her life to the front door of her duplex in rural Tennessee as the water inched up to her neck. Her brother was hanging onto a tree.

Scientists say that global warming makes the kind of extreme rainfall that caused deadly flash flooding in western Europe last month more likely, though it remains unclear exactly how much.

At least 220 people died in Germany and Belgium on July 14-15 when swollen streams turned into raging rivers, sweeping away houses, roads and bridges, and causing billions of euros (dollars) in damage.