Police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University early Wednesday and arrested demonstrators, hours after dozens marched to the home of the school's president as city officials prepared to appear before Congress on the protest's handling.

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith were called to testify Wednesday afternoon at the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, but the hearing was canceled after the arrests.

Facing heat over its military support for Israel's war, the Biden administration is due to deliver a first-of-its-kind formal verdict this week on whether the airstrikes on Gaza and restrictions on delivery of aid have violated international and U.S. laws designed to spare civilians from the worst horrors of war.

A decision against Israel would add to pressure on President Joe Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel's military.

Russian forces unleashed a nighttime barrage of more than 50 cruise missiles and explosive drones at Ukraine's power grid Wednesday, targeting a wide area in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called a "massive" attack.

The bombardment blasted targets in seven Ukrainian regions, including the Kyiv area and parts of the south and west, damaging homes and the country's rail network, authorities said. Three people, including an 8-year-old girl, were injured, according to officials.

Ukrainian counterintelligence investigators have foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top military and political figures, Ukraine's state security service said Tuesday.

Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which protects top officials, were detained on suspicion of enacting the plan drawn up by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, a statement said. The colonels were recruited before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement.

France's president is hosting China's leader at a remote mountain pass in the Pyrenees on Tuesday for private meetings after a high-stakes state visit in Paris dominated by trade disputes and Russia's war in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Tourmalet Pass near the Spanish border, where Macron spent time as a child visiting his grandmother. It is meant to be a reciprocal gesture after Xi took Macron last year to the residence of the governor of Guangdong province, where the Chinese president's father once lived.

Vladimir Putin begins his fifth term as Russian president in an opulent Kremlin inauguration Tuesday, after destroying his political opponents, launching a devastating war in Ukraine and consolidating all power in his hands.

Already in office for nearly a quarter-century and the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, Putin's new term doesn't expire until 2030, when he is constitutionally eligible to run for another six years.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit to European ally Serbia on Tuesday falls on a symbolic date: the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during NATO's air war over Kosovo.

U.S. jets dropped five bombs on the Chinese Embassy compound in the Serbian capital on May 7, 1999, setting it ablaze and killing three Chinese nationals. Twenty other people were injured in the incident, which has burdened relations between the two powers ever since.

Millions of Indian voters across 93 constituencies were casting ballots on Tuesday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mounted an increasingly shrill election campaign, ramping up polarizing rhetoric in incendiary speeches that have targeted the Muslim minority.

In recent campaign rallies, Modi has called Muslims "infiltrators" and said they "have too many children," referring to a Hindu nationalist trope that Muslims produce more children with the aim of outnumbering Hindus in India. He has also accused the rival Indian National Congress party of scheming to "loot" wealth from the country's Hindus and redistribute it among Muslims, who comprise 14% of India's more than 1.4 billion people.

Police arrested some 125 activists as they broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam in the early hours of Tuesday, as protests that have roiled campuses in the United States spread into Europe.

Police in the Dutch capital said in a statement on the social media platform X that their action was "necessary to restore order" after protests turned violent. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Student protests against the Israeli military assault on Gaza following the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel have spread to several countries.