When Mustafa Kinno felt the ground shake and heard the deafening blast toward the port, he frantically called his brother living nearby.

No reply. He tried a neighbor, who said the family was sitting outside their apartment across from the port when it exploded. Terrified, Mustafa ran more than two miles (four kilometers) to his brother, glass crunching under his feet.

India reported more than 83,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, showing some decline after reaching a record a week earlier.

The country has now confirmed more than 5.6 million cases. The health ministry also reported 1,085 new fatalities, raising the death toll to 90,020.

U.S. President Donald Trump urged world leaders to hold China accountable for the spread of the coronavirus, in a video address to a scaled-down U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday as America's death toll topped 200,000.

Beyond criticizing China, Trump took aim at the very foundation of the United Nations by urging other leaders to put their own countries first, a message that echoed his "America First" campaign mantra.

A strong explosion shook a Hizbullah stronghold in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, but the cause was not immediately clear.

As TV networks said the blast ripped through a "house belonging to Hizbullah," pro-Hizbullah journalist Salem Zahran said it occurred at a depot for storing "shells from the war era," adding that it caused no casualties.

Microsoft is buying the company behind popular video games The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout.

The software giant said Monday that it is paying $7.5 billion for ZeniMax Media, the parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks.

An enormous wildfire that churned through mountains northeast of Los Angeles and into the Mojave Desert was still threatening homes on Monday and was one of more than two dozen major fires burning across California.

Five of the largest wildfires in state history are currently burning and more than 5,600 square miles (14,500 square kilometers) have been charred, an area larger than the state of Connecticut, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

The U.N.'s first virtual meeting of world leaders was set to start Tuesday with pre-recorded speeches from some of the planet's biggest powers, kept at home by the coronavirus pandemic that will likely be a dominant theme at their video gathering this year.

Among those expected to speak Tuesday are U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose countries have reported the highest and second-highest coronavirus death tolls, respectively. Also on deck are President Xi Jinping of China, where the virus originated, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which has raised international eyebrows with its rapid vaccine development.

Tropical Storm Beta made landfall on the upper Texas coast late Monday night.

The storm made landfall about 5 miles (8 kilometers) north of Port OÇonnor, Texas, with maximum winds of 45 mph (72 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Its winds weakened as it made its way to shore over several days.

A dual American and Lebanese citizen charged in the U.S. with conspiring to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in donations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election is in jail in Lithuania, police disclosed Monday.

Police said Ahmad "Andy" Khawaja "performed multimillion-dollar transactions and was in possession of significant amounts of money" when arrested.

Health Minister Hamad Hassan recommended a total two-week lockdown to stem the alarming rise in daily detected coronavirus infections, but authorities say it finds it difficult to impose another lockdown amid an unprecedented economic collapse.

Lebanon registered a record 1,006 cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, the government announced Sunday, amid a sharp increase in infections and deaths due to the new coronavirus.