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President Trump is making good on his preelection pledge to withdraw from the World Health Organization. In one of many orders issued after his inauguration, he announced the start of the process for terminating U.S. membership in the U.N. agency that oversees global health issues.

Trump's frustration with WHO goes back to the height of the COVID era. He's repeatedly criticized the organization for being too slow to respond to the pandemic and being "owned and controlled by China."

Donald Trump fired Mark Milley from his role on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council on Tuesday. Milley is a retired army general who served as the most senior uniformed officer at the Pentagon as chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump and Joe Biden.

Trump announced the firing in a social media post, after Milley sharply turned against him in the years between his presidencies, ultimately branding him “a total fascist”.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that his administration was also “actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand presidential appointees from the previous administration”, in a mass purge in his first 24 hours in office.

TVNL Comment:  Thank you for your service, General Milley.  We wish you well.

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that “at least 200,000” allied troops would be needed to enforce any peace deal in Ukraine as he urged Europe to “take care of itself” as Donald Trump returns to power in the US.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelenskyy said European leaders should not ask themselves what Trump would do next, and said that they instead needed to take collective steps to defend their continent at a time when it was under aggressive attack by Russia.

President Donald Trump began Day 2 of his presidency on Tuesday with a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. He didn’t seem particularly impressed with it.

A senior Taliban figure has urged the group’s leader to scrap education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying there is no excuse for them, in a rare public rebuke of government policy.

Sher Abbas Stanikzai, political deputy at the Foreign Ministry, made the remarks in a speech on Saturday in southeastern Khost province.

He told an audience at a religious school ceremony there was no reason to deny education to women and girls, “just as there was no justification for it in the past and there shouldn’t be one at all.”

The government has barred females from education after sixth grade. Last September, there were reports authorities had also stopped medical training and courses for women.

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As a cease-fire and hostage release deal was reportedly reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday, new polling made it clearer than ever that Vice President Kamala Harris' refusal to break with the Biden administration's position on Israel's relentless assault on Gaza had an impact on her support from voters, and contributed to millions of potential Democratic voters deciding to stay home on Election Day.

A YouGov poll backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and released on Wednesday showed that among the 19 million people who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote in 2024, nearly a third named Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza as a top reason for staying home.

"The top reason those non-voters cited, above the economy at 24% and immigration at 11%, was Gaza: a full 29% cited the ongoing onslaught as the top reason they didn't cast a vote in 2024," wrote Ryan Grim at Drop Site News, the first outlet to report the news.

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onday marked the second day of the ceasefire in Gaza, and Palestinians began the work of digging through the rubble in search of the 10,000 bodies that are estimated to be buried under the buildings that were destroyed by Israel’s bombing campaign.

“We are searching for 10,000 martyrs whose bodies remain under the rubble,” Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, told Reuters. Basal said at least 2,840 bodies were melted, and there were no traces of them.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 135 bodies were found in the destroyed southern city of Rafah. Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update that hospitals received 122 bodies in the previous 24 hours, including 62 who were dug out of the rubble.

A huge fire killed at least 66 people as it ripped on Tuesday through a hotel at a popular ski resort in northeastern Turkey that was packed with people enjoying the winter holidays, including families.

The blaze at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya broke out around 3:30 am (0030 GMT), sending huge clouds of smoke into the night air and sparking panic among the guests.

Survivors and eyewitnesses spoke of scenes of desperation as people tried to flee the flames with some leaping out of the windows or using bedsheets as a makeshift rope.

"People on the upper floors were screaming. They threw bedsheets out of the windows, some tried to jump," Atakan Yelkovan, who escaped from the third floor with his wife, told IHA news agency.

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