Powerful winds roared into California on Wednesday, already toppling trees as crews rushed to clear storm drains and people fortified their homes in preparation for flooding and power outages.

House Republicans flailed through a second day of multiple balloting Wednesday, unable to elect their leader Kevin McCarthy as House speaker or come up with a new strategy to end the political chaos that has tarnished the start of their new majority.

Russia has said a new year missile attack that killed at least 89 Russian soldiers happened because troops were using mobile phones, defying a ban.

Authorities have confirmed the 10-year-old Vietnamese boy who fell into a hollow concrete pillar on New Year’s Eve has died.

There are calls for greater safeguards in Taiwan after at least one device used by the military for its missiles was sent for repair in China.

The wave of Covid infections sweeping across China may already have peaked in some of the country’s largest cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, according to a new study.

On a day of political drama not seen in Congress for a century, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy repeatedly failed in his bid to be elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

A man who opened fire on a New York City subway train last year, shooting 10 passengers in a rush-hour attack, has pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges.

A total of 22 people were injured after a car crashed into a restaurant in upper Manhattan.

Walter Cunningham, a retired NASA astronaut and pilot of the first crewed flight in the space agency’s famed Apollo program, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 90, NASA said.

For the first time in nearly a century, the United States House of Representatives has failed to elect a speaker in the first rounds of voting, as Republican Kevin McCarthy fell short of securing a majority in the chamber to succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

Palestinians have condemned a visit to a contested holy site in Jerusalem by a far-right Israeli minister as an “unprecedented provocation”.