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Alma al-Shaab (Lebanon) (AFP) – Soldiers and volunteers are battling a blaze on Lebanon’s southern border caused by Israeli bombing overnight, according to local officials. Persistent rocket fire and artillery exchanges across Israel’s border with Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah have raised fears of a new front in the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. Israel has bombed Gaza for more than two weeks after Hamas gunmen carried out the worst attack in Israel’s 75-year history. More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attack and 200 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. Over 6,500 have been killed in Gaza since, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Mexico City (AFP) – Hurricane Otis killed at least 27 people as it lashed the beach resort town of Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast as a scale-topping category 5 storm, says the country’s security minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez.

Maya Biosphere Reserve (Guatemala) (AFP) – Guatemalans are waging an unequal but hopeful struggle to recover land deforested by illegal cattle ranching and logging in the heart of the country’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected area in Central America.

Al-Mahra (Yemen) (AFP) – A tropical cyclone has flooded roads and submerged cars in the city of Al Gaydah, on the coast of Yemen’s southeastern Al Mahra governorate. At least two people were killed and around 10,000 others displaced across the war-torn country. Rescue efforts have been hampered by the breakdown of telecommunications.

Khorsabad (Iraq) (AFP) – A dig in northern Iraq has unearthed a 2,700-year-old alabaster sculpture of the winged Assyrian deity Lamassu, which was found largely intact despite its large dimensions. Only the head was missing, which was already in the collection of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad after being confiscated by customs officers from smugglers in the 1990s. The sculpture escaped destruction by Islamic State jihadists which overran the area in 2014, thanks to the city’s residents who hid it before fleeing to government-held areas.

Paris (AFP) – The wax statue of American star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is being given a makeover in Paris’ Grevin Museum, in hopes of obtaining a more true-to-life complexion after complaints that it was too light-skinned.

Acapulco (Mexico) (AFP) – A major Category 5 hurricane made landfall near Mexico’s Pacific beach resort of Acapulco early Wednesday, leaving a trail of destruction and tourists stranded.

Jiuquan (China) (AFP) – China sent a fresh crew to its Tiangong space station on Thursday, in the latest mission for a growing space programme that plans to send people to the moon by 2030.

Jiuquan (China) (AFP) – China sends a fresh crew to its Tiangong space station in the latest mission for a growing space programme that plans to send people to the Moon by 2030. The Shenzhou-17 blasted off from the Jiuquan launch site in arid northwest China at 11:14 am (0314 GMT) Thursday, carrying a three-astronaut team with the youngest average age since the space station’s construction. IMAGES

Kharkiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – 52-year-old explosives engineer Valeriy Onul lost his leg after stepping on a mine in Ukraine’s Kherson region. Yet despite the injury sustained in the line of duty, he and fellow amputee sapper Andriy Ilkiv are both hard work demining their country’s frontline with Russia, crossing the Kharkiv region’s fields on their prosthetic limbs as they do so.