U.S. officials say the number of reported sexual assaults across the military decreased last year. A confidential survey also found a 19% drop in the number of service members who said they had experienced some type of unwanted sexual contact. Both are dramatic reversals of what has been a growing problem in recent years. Officials told The Associated Press that more than 29,000 active-duty service members said in the survey that they had unwanted sexual contact during the previous year, compared with nearly 36,000 in 2021. It's the first decrease in eight years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report hasn't been publicly released.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fending off criticism that he is not planning for a postwar reality in the Gaza Strip, saying it's impossible to prepare for any scenario in the embattled Palestinian enclave until Hamas is defeated. Netanyahu has faced increasing pressure from critics at home and allies abroad, especially the United States, to present a postwar plan for Gaza. Meanwhile, Palestinians are marking the 76th anniversary of mass expulsion from what is now Israel in the war surrounding the country’s creation in 1948. More than twice the number expelled have been displaced within Gaza in this war.

A big change may be coming to a Jersey Shore town that was founded as a religious retreat and prevents people from using the beach on Sunday mornings. The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association is being sued by the state of New Jersey and has removed the Sunday morning ban from its website under a section on beach rules. It has not responded to requests for clarification, and the state attorney general's office says it is trying to determine the status of the case. New Jersey says the ban violates state beach access laws. But the association says it is within its rights to keep the shore calm on Sunday mornings.

A first-year U.S. Naval Academy student has stood victorious on classmates' shoulders and placed an upperclassman’s cap atop the Herndon Monument after a grueling, slippery struggle. The Class of 2027 worked together Wednesday to scale the 21-foot obelisk covered in vegetable shortening to replace a white plebe “Dixie cup hat” with an upperclassman’s hat. After the climb is complete, they’re called fourth class midshipmen. This year the climb took two hours, 19 minutes and 11 seconds. The shortest time for is believed to be 1 minute, 30 seconds in 1969. The monument wasn't greased that year. The longest was more than four hours in 1995. Upperclassmen glued down the Dixie cup that year.

A flotilla of about 100 fishing boats led by Filipino activists has sailed to a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s coast guard and suspected militia ships have used powerful water cannons to ward off what they regard as intruders. The Philippine coast guard and navy deployed one patrol ship each to keep watch from a distance on the activists and fishermen, who set off on mostly small wooden fishing boats Wednesday to assert Manila’s sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal. Dozens of journalists joined the three-day voyage. The activists and volunteers planned to lay small territorial buoys and distribute food packs and fuel to Filipino fishermen near the shoal.

The Biden administration has told key lawmakers it is sending a more than $1 billion in additional arms and ammunition to Israel. That's according to three congressional aides who spoke of condition of anonymity to discuss an arms transfer that has not yet been made public. It's not immediately known how soon the weapons would be delivered. It’s the first arms shipment to Israel to be revealed by the administration since it put another arms transfer — consisting of 3,500 bombs — on hold this month. President Joe Biden's administration has said it paused that earlier transfer to keep Israel from using the bombs in its growing offensive in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah.

They stroll Doha’s waterfront promenade and sing softly about children who are now free of pain. For the Palestinian group Sol Band, it seems surreal that weeks ago they were hiding from Israeli shelling. Five of the band’s seven musicians returned to Gaza in August to work on their next album.  But on Oct. 7, Hamas, along with other militants, attacked southern Israel. Israel retaliated with a military campaign that leveled large swaths of Gaza and killed more than 35,000 people, according to the territory’s health ministry. In April, the five bandmates were able to leave Gaza via Egypt to Qatar.