LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada judge was attacked Wednesday by a defendant in a felony battery case who leaped over a defense table and the judge’s bench, landing atop her and sparking a bloody brawl involving court officials and attorneys, officials and witnesses said.

In a violent scene captured by courtroom video, Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus fell back from her seat against a wall and suffered some injuries but was not hospitalized, courthouse officials said.

(AP) --- Police in New Jersey hunted Thursday for the killer of a Muslim leader who was shot outside his mosque before morning prayers, offering cash to anyone who can help them make an arrest. Authorities said they had no evidence that religious hate motivated the imam’s slaying, but vowed to protect people of faith amid soaring reports of bias attacks across the U.S.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Members of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday called on Yemen's Houthis to halt their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they are illegal and threaten regional stability, freedom of navigation and global food supplies.

Addressing the council's first formal meeting of 2024, members also demanded that the Houthis release the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese-operated cargo ship linked to an Israeli company, and its crew, which the group seized on Nov. 19.

TOKYO, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Three men were injured on Wednesday in a stabbing incident and taken to hospital after a woman wielded a knife on a train at Akihabara Station in Tokyo, Japanese police said.

The police received an emergency call at just before 11 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) saying the woman had inflicted injuries with a knife on the Yamanote loop line, one of the busiest transport routes in the city, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson said.

BEIRUT/CAIRO/GAZA, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Israeli army made statements suggesting the two avowed enemies wanted to avoid risking the further spread of war beyond the Gaza Strip after a drone strike killed a Palestinian Hamas deputy leader in Beirut.

In a speech in Beirut on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed that his powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite militia "cannot be silent" following the killing of Hamas deputy Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday.

GENEVA, Jan 3 (Reuters) - United Nations experts urged U.S. authorities on Wednesday to halt the planned execution of a prisoner by asphyxiation using pure nitrogen, saying the untested method may subject him to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture."

Kenneth Smith, convicted for a murder-for-hire committed in 1988, is scheduled to be executed in the U.S. state of Alabama on Jan. 25 using the method, which is intended to deprive him of oxygen by using a face mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists have found a way to help Alzheimer’s drugs seep inside the brain faster — by temporarily breaching its protective shield.

The novel experiment was a first attempt in just three patients. But in spots in the brain where the new technology took aim, it enhanced removal of Alzheimer’s trademark brain-clogging plaque, researchers reported Wednesday.

WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. has not observed acts in Gaza that constitute genocide, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday, after South Africa launched genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice over Israel's military operation in the Palestinian enclave.

"Those are allegations that should not be made lightly ... we are not seeing any acts that constitute genocide," Miller said at a regular news briefing. "That is a determination by the State Department," he added.

BEIJING, Jan 3 (Reuters) - China's military will conduct routine patrols with its naval and air forces in the South China Sea from Wednesday to Thursday, the military's Southern Theater Command said, as ongoing tensions simmer in the region over disputed territories.

China's military did not say where exactly the patrols would be held but they were announced as the Philippines and the United States were carrying out a two-day joint patrol in the highly strategic waterway, a move that likely irked Beijing.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two bombs exploded minutes apart Wednesday at a commemoration for a prominent Iranian general slain in a U.S. drone strike in 2020, officials in Iran said, killing at least 103 people and wounding at least 188 as the Middle East remains on edge over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A man was found dead inside an airplane engine Monday night at Salt Lake City International Airport after police say he breached an emergency exit door, walked onto the tarmac and climbed inside the jet’s engine.

Officers found 30-year-old Kyler Efinger, of Park City, unconscious inside an engine mounted to the wing of a commercial aircraft loaded with passengers, the Salt Lake City Police Department announced Tuesday. The plane had been sitting on a de-icing pad, and its engines were rotating.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.

Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles. The allegations surfaced amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.