Israeli forces pounded targets in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya on Saturday, killing at least 33 people and injuring dozens of others in the bombardment, a Palestinian emergency services group said.

Israel has surrounded Jabaliya for a week as it seeks to root out Hamas fighters who it says have reorganized in the area. Since Friday, approximately 20,000 Palestinians have fled the neighborhood, according to UNRWA, the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza, amid Israel’s bombardment. Paltel, the largest telecommunications provider in Gaza, said that internet service was completely down in northern Gaza.

Fighting also escalated in Lebanon on Saturday, as the Israeli military targeted several areas outside of Beirut in airstrikes that covered the area in clouds of dust. The resurgence in attacks, after several days of relative calm, came after Hezbollah warned of “a new and escalating phase” in the conflict with Israel.

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The experts had warned for years: Cuba’s power grid was on the verge of collapse, relying on plants nearly a half-century old and importing fuel that the strapped Communist government could barely afford.

On Friday morning their dire predictions came true, as the entire island plunged into the most prolonged blackout it has suffered in the three decades since its former benefactor and steady fuel supplier, the Soviet Union, collapsed.

Cuban energy officials managed to get power back up briefly to some parts of the island on Friday night. But early Saturday the state’s utility company reported another “total disconnection” of the system, the second in less than 24 hours.

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A lawyer and a party official for the leading opposition candidate in Mozambique’s recent presidential election were fatally shot in their car late Friday night, inflaming tensions in a southern African nation that was already on edge after the highly disputed vote this month.

The lawyer, Elvino Dias, had been preparing to challenge in court the results for the candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, whose quick rise in popularity saw him outperform every other opposition candidate in the Oct. 9 poll. Several independent election observation missions said they saw irregularities in the voting process that tilted the race in favor of Daniel Chapo, the candidate for Frelimo, the former liberation party, which has governed this coastal nation since independence nearly 50 years ago.

The stakes were high in the race to replace President Filipe Nyusi, who is leaving office after serving his two-term limit.

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The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be ready to declare victory and move on, while a demoralized Hamas might show greater flexibility in cease-fire talks.

Or, at least, that outcome would most likely be welcomed by most of the countries. Despite their pledges to keep on fighting, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies may also be looking for offramps, analysts say, even if Israel seems not to be displaying much appetite for taking the win.

“All of them are super eager for offramps. They have been from the start,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group, speaking of the Arab nations. “It’s a difficult situation for the entire region. And there are many ways in which this could get much worse.”

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Israeli bombs have blown up its munitions stores and killed thousands of its fighters, including many seasoned commanders.

And yet, Hezbollah keeps fighting.

Since Israel invaded southern Lebanon nearly three weeks ago, its forces have confronted a flexible enemy that uses the environment to launch complex and sometimes deadly operations.

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Panda exchanges, like the one that sent two bears to Washington’s National Zoo this week, are governed by closely held contracts. In most countries, they are never released.

Lawyers for the Smithsonian, which operates the National Zoo, cited a confidentiality clause and refused to release a 2020 contract. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which regulates the import and export of exotic species, provided a San Diego Zoo contract with key passages blacked out.

But my colleagues and I found full copies of those documents and others in regulatory filings.

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For months, Serhii Hnezdilov, a Ukrainian soldier, pushed for troops exhausted by years of war with Russia to be replaced with fresh conscripts. He expressed his concerns in interviews, on social networks and in a podcast, drawing on his five years of fighting in an infantry brigade.

But Mr. Hnezdilov, 24, said his calls went unanswered. So last month, he took a radical step that he hoped would focus attention on his cause: He deserted and then publicly announced it on social media and in news outlets.

“I was left with no other option but to leave, slam the door very loudly and force people to finally start talking about this problem,” Mr. Hnezdilov said in a video interview with The New York Times on Oct. 1 from a secret location where he was hiding from the Ukrainian authorities.

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Feted by many fellow journalists and Western diplomats as a fearless scourge of corrupt oligarchs, Moldova’s most popular television host torched her soaring career and stellar image three years ago with a startling life choice.

She fell in love and had a child with one of her country’s most notorious and, according to prosecutors, most corrupt oligarchs.

Ostracized by many of her onetime friends and admirers, Natalia Morari, 40, has now caused yet more dismay by refashioning herself into a politician. She no longer works for the independent, award-winning television station she founded in 2006, and is running for president in an election on Sunday against the incumbent, Maia Sandu, the standard-bearer of a pro-European cause for which the journalist was for years a prominent champion.