International mediators appeared to make progress Wednesday on extending the truce in Gaza, encouraging Hamas militants to keep freeing hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and further relief from Israel’s air and ground offensive. The cease-fire will otherwise end within a day.

Israel has welcomed the release of dozens of hostages in recent days and says it will maintain the truce if Hamas keeps freeing captives.

Mexico’s president said Wednesday that two of four news photographers who were shot Tuesday are in serious condition, as prosecutors confirmed that a fifth journalist was shot and wounded the same day.

The four photojournalists were shot near a military barracks in the southern Guerrero state after they returned from a crime scene. They had been covering one of the many homicides that occur on a near-daily basis in the violence-wracked city of Chilpancingo.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said “we must regret this,” referring to the shooting, but did not offer any information on a possible motive in the attack.

Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago.

The find, announced Wednesday, can help explain how solar systems across the Milky Way galaxy came to be. This one is 100 light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. 

The six found so far are roughly two to three times the size of Earth but with densities closer to the gas giants in our own solar system. Their orbits range from nine to 54 days, putting them closer to their star than Venus is to the sun and making them exceedingly hot.

Abby Madsen can be reached at mads3817@stthomas.edu.