According to the Ukrainian energy minister, Russia launched a massive aerial strike against Ukraine on Wednesday, prompting the nation to implement preventative power outages. Herman Halushchenko commented on Facebook that the enemy is still frightening Ukrainians and that citizens should remain indoors during air raid alarms and pay attention to official information. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Moscow launched around 40 missiles, of which at least 30 were shot down. He also stated that the attack involved roughly 70 strike drones. The number of people intercepted is still unknown. Emergency power outages were recorded in the regions of Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kirovohrad by the state energy provider Ukrenergo. The incident occurs ...

Follow live updates here. This live blog has ended. What we know about the California wildfires Southern California is facing "extremely critical fire conditions" caused by Santa Ana winds today as the fight to contain the enormous Palisades Fire and four smaller blazes continues. Winds were weaker than expected yesterday but could pick up again today. The wildfires have so far killed at least 24 people and swept through 40,000 acres in the Greater Los Angeles area, destroying entire communities and more than 12,300 structures. The Palisades Fire, has burned more than 23,000 acres and was only 18% contained early today as it threatened Brentwood, Encino and Westwood. Evacuation orders are in effect for 88,000 residents of Los Angeles, ...

South Korea's SEOUL Weeks after his initial effort to impose martial law ended in a dramatic standoff at the house where he had been hiding since he was impeached, South Korean officials apprehended President Yoon Suk Yeolon on Wednesday. Hours after hundreds of police officers arrived at Yoon's presidential complex in central Seoul, the arrest warrant was carried out at 10:33 a.m. (8:33 p.m. Tuesday ET), according to the Corruption probe Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), which is in charge of a joint probe. Yoon is the first South Korean president to be jailed while in office. He was impeached last month after his brief martial law decree sent South Korea, a crucial ally of the United States, into political turmoil. In contrast to the initial execution attempt, the CIO stated in ...

Following a siege in a crackdown on illegal mining, South African officials have removed at least 60 dead from the shaft of a shuttered gold mine more than 1.2 miles below, where an undetermined number of men are still thought to be trapped. In an effort to drive the miners to the surface for arrest, the siege, which started in August at the mine in the town of Stilfontein, some 90 miles from Johannesburg, cut off food and water supplies for months. In an operation that is anticipated to last for days, authorities started removing men and bodies from the shaft on Monday using a metal cage. The number of persons still inside is unknown, South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu informed broadcaster eNCA. We're concentrating on helping them get there. "When every underground miner went the...

LONDON: In response to growing pressure over her ties to her aunt, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Britain's anti-corruption minister quit on Tuesday. Although she had been exonerated of any wrongdoing, Tulip Siddiq said that she was leaving her position as Treasury's economic secretary since the matter was taking time away from the government's work. Siddiq, 42, was elected to a north London seat in 2015 after serving as a municipal councilor. Following Prime Minister Keir Starmer's center-left Labour Party's resounding election victory in July, she was appointed to the government. Since Siddiq submitted herself to the government's ethics watchdog in early January when it was revealed that she lived in London residences connected to her aunt, Starmer has been under increasing pr...

The cause of the Palisades Fire, which swept down a slope a week ago, killing at least eight people and engulfing entire villages, is still unknown. When the answers are revealed, they will probably be located on a blackened and scorched ridgeline in western Los Angeles that looks out over a community in the Pacific Palisades that has a well-known hiking trail. Six days prior, this region had been the site of a small fire. Being aware of the disastrous Investigators started by gathering footage and photos from neighboring residences and social media, speaking with witnesses and firemen, reviewing 911 calls, and searching for leads. The Jan. 7 fire might take months to contain. Jose Medina, acting special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Los Angeles...

According to a federal assessment issued Tuesday, consuming just one alcoholic beverage per day is associated with numerous detrimental health repercussions. The results, which are applicable to both men and women, linked daily drinking to a lower risk of ischemic stroke but an increased risk of liver cirrhosis, several malignancies, and injuries. However, occasional binge drinking negates that seeming protection. According to Stanford University psychiatry professor Keith Humphreys, the notion that having one drink per day, if you're a woman, or two drinks per day, if you're a man, will make you healthier and longer-lived on average is untrue. According to him, there isn't a point at which it is advantageous. There doesn't appear to be a point at which there is no risk at all. The second...

Following the Biden administration's announcement on Tuesday that it was removing Cuba from the list of states that fund terrorism and implementing other goodwill measures, Cuba announced that it will release 553 political prisoners. The communist-run government and the Catholic Church had been negotiating the detainees' release. After the historic islandwide protests in July 2021, the most of them were imprisoned. More than 1,000 people were first arrested in a ruthless crackdown. Many received penalties of up to 30 years in prison. "I thank all those who contributed to the decision announced today by the United States to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it should never have been," Miguel D az-Canel, the president of Cuba, wrote "Together with two other meas...

Washington On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to overturn a Texas statute that forbids minors from accessing pornographic material on the internet. A case brought by the Free expression Coalition, a group representing the pornography industry, claims that the 2023 law, which aims to limit children' access to sexual material, infringes upon the right to free expression of adults who choose to see the same content. The law mandates that pornographic websites check the ages of all users, typically by looking at official documents like driver's licenses. The opponents, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, claim that the statute restricts adults' freedom of speech in a content-based manner, which is a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. They ...

Early Wednesday marked the start of a new year of lunar exploration as two robotic landers and a tiny rover set out for the moon. Two independent, uncrewed missions to the lunar surface were launched by a SpaceX rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:11 a.m. ET. One of those projects, created by Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based business, intends to place a lander named Blue Ghost in the Martian Crisium, a 340-mile-wide basin on the moon believed to be the location of an old asteroid impact. The other project, which is being operated by iSpace, a Japanese business, uses a mini rover named Tenacious and a lander named Resilience. Their intended landing spot is in the far north of the moon, in an area known as Mare Frigoris. This was the second time iSpace had tried to land a...