Japan posted a trade deficit for a second straight month in August, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday, despite signs of sluggish consumer spending that weighed on imports.

Japan's trade deficit totaled 695 billion yen, or $4.9 billion, down 26% from a year earlier, the ministry said.

More than 100 wildfires stretched thousands of firefighters to the limit in northern Portugal on Wednesday, with seven deaths since the worst spate of fires in recent years spread out of control over the weekend.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro declared a state of calamity for the hardest-hit areas late on Tuesday, invoking powers to mobilize more firefighters and civil servants. He also called on police investigators to redouble their efforts to find those who started the fires and pledged help for those who have lost their homes or have been evacuated.

Since childhood, Loveness Bhitoni has collected fruit from the gigantic baobab trees surrounding her homestead in Zimbabwe to add variety to the family's staple corn and millet diet. The 50-year-old Bhitoni never saw them as a source of cash, until now.

Climate change-induced droughts have decimated her crops. Meanwhile, the world has a growing appetite for the fruit of the drought-resistant baobab as a natural health food.

Devastating floods through much of Central Europe and deadly wildfires in Portugal are joint proof of a "climate breakdown" that will become the norm unless drastic action is taken, the European Union's head office said Wednesday.

"Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future," said EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic.

The 2024-25 Champions League kicked off Tuesday in a new format with 36 teams instead of 32.

The revamped competition features a league system in which each team plays eight games, replacing the old group stage with eight groups of four teams.

Ukrainian drones struck a large military depot in a town deep inside Russia overnight, causing a huge blaze and prompting the evacuation of some local residents, a Ukrainian official and Russian news reports said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. diplomat said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's recently announced — but still confidential — plan for winning the war "can work" and help end the conflict that is now in its third year.

A three-phased election for choosing a local government in Indian-controlled Kashmir opened early Wednesday in the first such vote since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government stripped the disputed region of its special status five years ago.

Authorities deployed thousands of additional police and paramilitary soldiers in the region's seven southern districts where over 2.3 million residents are eligible to cast their votes and chose 24 lawmakers out of 219 candidates in the first phase of the polling.

Having all but tamed inflation, the Federal Reserve is poised to do something Wednesday it hasn't done in more than four years: Cut its benchmark interest rate, a step that should lead to lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses just weeks before the presidential election.

And yet an unusual air of uncertainty overhangs this week's meeting: It's unclear just how large the Fed's rate cut will be. Wall Street traders and some economists foresee a growing likelihood that the central bank will announce a larger-than-usual half-point cut. Many analysts foresee a more typical quarter-point rate cut.

China on Wednesday announced sanctions on American companies selling arms to the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory and threatens to annex by force.

Chinese state media made the announcement, citing the Foreign Ministry, but gave no details on the companies involved. Taiwan is awaiting deliveries of F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks and a range of missiles from the U.S.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government were quick to blame Israel for the nearly simultaneous detonation of hundreds of pagers used by the group's members in an attack Tuesday that killed at least nine people and wounded nearly 3,000 others, according to officials.

Many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it wasn't immediately clear if others also carried the pagers. Among those killed were the son of a prominent Hezbollah politician and an 8-year-old girl, according to Lebanon's health minister.