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 The government of El Salvador sent 10,000 soldiers and police to seal off a town on the outskirts of the nation’s capital Saturday to search for gang members. The operation was one of the largest mobilizations yet in President Nayib Bukele’s nine-month-old crackdown on street gangs that long extorted money from businesses and ruled many neighborhoods of the capital, San Salvador. The troops blocked roads going in and out of the township of Soyapango, checking people’s documents. Special teams went into the town looking for gang suspects. “Starting now, the township of Soyapango is completely surrounded,” Bukele wrote in his Twitter account. He posted videos showing ranks of rifle-toting soldiers. More than 58,000 people have been jailed since a state of emergency was declared followin...

Five pilot whales that were stranded on a Massachusetts beach have been returned to the ocean, but they may still be in peril, according to experts. Conservationists from the International Fund for Animal Welfare's Marine Mammal Rescue and Research team were sent to Sunken Meadow Beach in Eastham, Massachusetts, Monday night after six live pilot whales were spotted swimming close to shore around 4:45 p.m. ET, just after dark, Stacey Hedman, communications director for the research center, told ABC News. All of the whales were briefly examined, and two were given satellite tags, Hedman said. By Tuesday morning, the whales had become stranded on the beach, and one -- a calf -- had died, Hedman said. Rescues are underway for several pilot whales stranded on a beach in Eastham, M...

Wales fans are starting to feel more upbeat as kick-off approaches for their World Cup game against England. Wales must beat England and hope Iran-USA is a draw to go to the next round. If the other game is not a draw, Wales need to beat England by four or more. Earlier they began gathering on the front in Doha and at a fan party at a hotel. Rhodri Charles, from Cardiff, thought Wales were down and out after the first two games. Image caption, Ed Buckley, pictured with daughter Charlotte, has waited all his life to see Wales at a World Cup "The closer we get to kick-off, I start wondering if we can actually pull it off," the 47-year-old said. His wife Anwen, 45, added: "We have to keep believing." Julie...

Nato has pledged to give more weapons to Ukraine and help fix critical energy infrastructure badly damaged by massive Russian missile and drone strikes. At a summit in Bucharest, the secretary general of the military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, accused Moscow of "trying to use winter as a weapon of war". The Russian strikes have left millions of Ukrainians without electricity and running water in freezing temperatures. Ukraine has for months been asking Nato for more advanced air defence systems. Under the Geneva conventions, attacks on civilians, or the infrastructure vital to their survival, could be interpreted as a war crime. Earlier this week, Ukraine's prosecutor-general told the BBC that the Russian attacks amounted to gen...

Amid harsh barbs and heated geopolitics, the last World Cup match-up between Iran and the United States began with an unlikely gesture - bouquets of white flowers. The flowers, Iran's coach later said, were meant as a symbol of peace ahead of the 1998 showdown in France. Two decades later, political tensions were again high ahead of the Iran-US game in Qatar. The latest meeting, however, went without any friendly gestures. The previous match, held in Lyon, came 20 years after diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed as a result of the storming of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and subsequent 444 day hostage crisis. Just one month before kick-off, the US State Department labelled Iran the world's "most active" sta...

Tuesday, 17 January 2023 is the day analysts predict Elon Musk will become the number-one influencer on Twitter. With 120 million followers, his account, @ElonMusk, is already the second most followed, after @BarackObama, the former US president's, which has 130 million. And following a meteoric rise in the month since he bought Twitter, Mr Musk's will inevitably overtake, statisticians at Social Blade say. This will be an unprecedented moment. The social-media industry has never before seen a platform with a chief executive who is also its biggest personality. So if Mr Musk is to become both Twitter's chief executive and its "chief influencer", what are the implications - for the billionaire and for the website? BBC...