Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed new attacks on airports and military facilities in neighboring Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as the kingdom is pulled deeper into the latest front in the Iran war, which also threatens a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

As the Saudi capital is targeted again, new cage-like fences have been erected this week around fuel tanks and other equipment of the Saudi state-run Aramco oil company near the Riyadh airport. The kingdom, the world's top oil exporter, has seen oil and military assets targeted in recent days.

It's perhaps the most dramatic wound inflicted on the Gaza Strip by Israel's military campaign over the past three years: The city of Rafah, once home to a quarter million people, has been erased.

Satellite imagery shows the Israeli military has systematically razed the southern city and other towns and districts to the ground and in some places plowed away the rubble. Demolition, using bulldozers and explosives, has continued unabated since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal reached a year ago, as the military solidifies its hold over the around 60% of the territory that it still controls.

Russian missiles and drones pounded Kyiv and a dozen other Ukrainian regions overnight into Wednesday, killing at least 21 civilians, including four children, and wounding around 60 in Moscow's latest devastating barrage, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine had anticipated the attack, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warning the previous day that intelligence services had concluded that Russia was building up for a "massive" strike.

Israelis gathered on Wednesday to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, saw 251 taken hostage, and sparked a devastating war in Gaza that has left much of the territory in ruins and its 2 million people living in dire conditions.

In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters, and the site of a music festival that the militants overran three years ago in the deadliest attack against Israel. It is the first anniversary that all the hostages are home, marking a new stage of grief.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said in a Time magazine interview published Thursday that it’s “possible” he’ll ramp up bombing in Iran after the Nov. 3 midterms.

When pressed further by Time journalists, Trump continued: “I can’t tell you that because look, you know, you’re asking, where are you going to bomb?”

France's prime minister convened a crisis meeting on Thursday and canceled ministers' trips to focus on the nationwide spread of protests, some violent, by high school students venting against under-resourced schools, long hours and other complaints.

The demonstrations erupted in Paris-region schools last week and have snowballed, with police making hundreds of arrests in clashes with the young protesters. Authorities have reported many dozens of injuries, including from hurled objects but also, in some suspected cases, from police riot-control projectiles.

A wind turbine described by its developer as the world's tallest now rises 365 meters (1,197 feet) above the sparsely populated landscape of eastern Germany, surpassing the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The colossal turbine has been built at an existing wind farm in Lusatia, southeast of Berlin. Once a major center of lignite mining, the region has increasingly turned to renewable energy in recent years. The prototype reached its full height this week and is due to be inaugurated in mid-November.

Cristiano Ronaldo walked out on Portugal's training camp on Wednesday, hours after coach Jorge Jesus said the star forward would not start the game against Denmark in the Nations League on Thursday.

The 41-year-old Ronaldo said that "in time" he would "tell the Portuguese people the truth about the reasons" behind his departure.

Spring has finally arrived in the Southern Hemisphere and, in Chile, even the desert is blossoming.

Known as the driest nonpolar desert on Earth, a massive portion of the Atacama Desert has been covered in flowers after the El Niño weather pattern brought heavy rains to the region earlier this year. The unusually large amount of water allowed millions of seeds and bulbs to sprout and bloom, many of them after remaining dormant for decades.

A Russian drone struck a school in Kyiv on Thursday, city officials said, as the Ukrainian capital endured another night and day of relentless aerial attacks.

Children and staff at the school were in shelters when the drone hit, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said, although the drone's warhead didn't explode. There was no immediate report of casualties. The building's brick frontage showed a large hole and black burn mark alongside smashed windows.