The United States has made "direct contact" with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a press conference in Aqaba, Jordan on Saturday.
"We've been in contact with HTS and with other parties," Blinken said, referring to the rebels who drove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power in a lightning offensive earlier this month.
Blinken referred to those discussions as "direct contact." He did not elaborate on details of the talks, but did acknowledge that the U.S. has "impressed upon everyone we've been in contact with" the importance of helping to find the missing American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared near Damascus 12 years ago.
It was Christmas Day, 1944, when people heard the news: Glenn Miller, one of music's biggest stars, had vanished.
He had boarded a military plane from Britain, bound for Paris, where he was scheduled to perform for American troops during World War II. But neither crew nor passengers made it across the English Channel.
There is no wreckage of Glenn Miller's plane, and no definitive answers. Eighty years ago this week, he disappeared without a trace.
Miller wasn't even supposed to be on board the small prop plane. But, anxious to get going after multiple weather delays, he'd hitched a ride without authorization. It took days for anyone to realize he'd gone missing.
More than 300,000 people die from drowning every year – and nearly all of these cases are preventable, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO).
It's the first-ever global report from WHO on how to prevent drownings, drawn from surveying 139 countries.
Children are the highest-risk group, the report found. Nearly a quarter of all drowning deaths happen among children under age 4. Another 19% of drowning deaths are among kids between ages 5 and 14.
That means drowning is a leading](https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/12/13/g-s1-38078/target=_blank)) cause of death for children across the globe.
"It is definitely underrecognized, and it is extremely devastating -- yet so preventable," said Caroline Lukaszyk, a technical officer for injury prevention at the WHO. "No matter where you live, what context you're in, it's still preventable."
Gukesh Dommaraju, the 18-year-old chess prodigy from India, has unseated China's Ding Liren to become the new world chess champion.
Born in 2006, Dommaraju is the youngest world champion of all time, a record previously held by Garry Kasparov, who became world champion in 1985 at age 22.
Dommaraju secured the win Thursday in Singapore after a tight match between the two grandmasters that seemed on the verge of a tie.
"Ding's opening choice was expected, but Gukesh played a variation that nobody expected," International Chess Federation President Arkady Dvorkovich said.](https://fide.com/news/3347).)
The federation described most of the gameplay between the two as having "near-perfect accuracy" with things primed to go for a draw.
The New York Police Department said on Wednesday it has determined that the gun found in the possession of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, matches casings found at the scene of the shooting a week ago in Manhattan.
In a brief response to questions at the end of an unrelated afternoon press conference,](https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1YpJklYQEzrxj),) NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said police "got the gun in question back from Pennsylvania. It's now at the NYPD crime lab."
Arctic tundra, which has stored carbon for thousands of years, has now become a source of planet-warming pollution. As wildfires increase and hotter temperatures melt long-frozen ground, the region is releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The finding was reported in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's annual Arctic Report Card,](https://arctic.noaa.gov/report-card/),) released Tuesday. The new research, led by scientists from the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, signals a dramatic shift in this Arctic ecosystem, which could have widespread implications for the global climate.
"The tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon that it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution."
Mina, one of the bestselling Italian musical artists of all time, just dropped a new album — at the age of 84.
She's not a household name in the United States, though audiences in this country might recognize the performer's unmistakable voice from the Netflix series Ripley, the HBO series The White Lotus, and the Pixar animated feature Luca.
But in her native country, Mina has been worshipped for decades — especially because of her powerful and distinctive voice.
"All generations have always identified with her voice and with her albums," said Rome-based musicologist and music critic Paulo Prato.
To consider how climate change could cause some extinctions, imagine a tiny mountain bird that eats the berries of a particular mountain tree.
That tree can only grow at a specific elevation around the mountain, where it's evolved over millennia to thrive in that microclimate. As global temperatures rise, both the tree and the bird will be forced to rise too, tracking their microclimate as it moves uphill. But they can only go so far.
"Eventually, they reach the peak, and then there's nowhere else to go," says Mark Urban,](https://ecoevolutionlab.eeb.uconn.edu/),) a biologist at the University of Connecticut.
Insurgents' stunning march across Syria accelerated Saturday with news that they had reached the gates of the capital and that government forces had abandoned the central city of Homs. The government was forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country.
The loss of Homs is a potentially crippling blow for Assad. It stands at an important intersection between Damascus, the capital, and Syria's coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus — the Syrian leader's base of support and home to a Russian strategic naval base.
The pro-government Sham FM news outlet reported that government forces took positions outside Syria's third-largest city, without elaborating. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian troops and members of different security agencies have withdrawn from the city, adding that rebels have entered parts of it.
The new federal order will give regulators the power to test samples from dairy farms or when milk is being transported or processed. Private labs will also be required to report any positive cases. The testing program is launching first in California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
USDA said Friday the purpose of the federal order is to "identify where the disease is present, monitor trends, and help states identify potentially affected herds."