At least 20 people were killed after a powerful cyclone struck Madagascar and 15 were missing, the Indian Ocean island's disaster authority said Wednesday.

Cyclone Gezani made landfall on Tuesday, slamming into the second-largest city Toamasina, with winds reaching 250 kilometers per hour.

Crouching amid a pile of rubble that used to be his Gaza home, Mahmoud Hammad scoops dirt into a large sieve and shakes it, looking carefully before dumping it out.

In recent days, he was lucky. Tiny bones appeared.

A Russian drone smashed into a home in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region overnight, killing a father and his three small children and seriously wounding their mother who is 35 weeks pregnant, officials said Wednesday.

The strike completely destroyed the brick house and set it on fire, with the family trapped under the rubble, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor's office.

Jurors in a landmark social media case that seeks to hold tech companies responsible for harms to children got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterized by dueling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remaining defendants, Meta and YouTube.

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials "KGM," whose case could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits will play out. KGM and the cases of two other plaintiffs have been selected to be bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

A group of Buddhist monks arrived in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, completing a 15-week peace pilgrimage from Texas marked by quiet, single-file walks, a growing social media following and crowds gathering along their route.

Escorted across the Chain Bridge into the capital, the saffron-robed monks and their rescue dog, Aloka, have drawn national attention with their message of mindfulness, healing and unity.

An Israeli drone strike killed two Palestinians on bicycles Tuesday, hospital officials said, marking the latest deaths since an October ceasefire that hasn't halted deadly attacks in the Gaza Strip.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said the two men were hit near the ceasefire line that divides Gaza, with one half under Israeli military control. They were hit in eastern Deir al-Balah, the hospital said, adding that it also received the body of a woman who was killed by Israeli gunfire in central Maghazi refugee camp.

As the Winter Olympics opened in Milan, Vice President JD Vance hailed the competition as "one of the few things that unites the entire country."

That unity didn't last long.

Beyond the car windows being smashed, people tackled on city streets — or even a little child with a floppy bunny ears snowcap detained — the images of masked federal officers has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations.

Not in recent U.S. memory has an American policing operation so consistently masked its thousands of officers from the public, a development that the Department of Homeland Security believes is important to safeguard employees from online harassment. But experts warn masking serves another purpose, inciting fear in communities, and risks shattering norms, accountability and trust between the police and its citizenry.

A shooting at a school in British Columbia left eight dead including a woman whom police believe to be the shooter, while two more people were found dead at a nearby home, Canadian authorities said Tuesday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said more than 25 people are injured, including two who were airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries, after the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

The U.S.-led international coalition to fight the Islamic State group has welcomed Syria in the fight against the extremists, saying that the priorities include the swift transfer of IS detainees to Iraq and third-country repatriation of families linked to IS held in two camps in Syria.

The State Department also welcomed a recent ceasefire that ended fighting between Syrian government forces and the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that were a main force in the fight against IS in Syria.