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In the news today: Senate confirms Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget; a look at the operations that took captive 2 North Korean soldiers fighting Ukraine; and a wave of antisemitic attacks has roiled Australia. Also, telescopes around the world have spotted a monster radio jet streaming from a quasar dating back to the first 1 billion years of the universe.

Russell Vought appears before the Senate Budget Committee during a hearing to examine his nomination, Jan. 22. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

POLITICS

Senate confirms Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead powerful White House budget office

The Senate confirmed Russell Vought as White House budget director on Thursday night, putting an official who has planned the zealous expansion of President Donald Trump’s power into one of the most influential positions in the federal government. Read more.

Why this matters:

• The Thursday night vote came after Democrats had exhausted their only remaining tool to stonewall a nomination — holding the Senate floor throughout the previous night and day with a series of speeches where they warned Vought was Trump’s “most dangerous nominee.”

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

• Trump administration plans to slash all but a fraction of USAID jobs, officials say
  
  

• WATCH: Judge temporarily blocks Trump plan offering incentives for federal workers to resign

   

• As Trump pushes the limits of presidential power, the courts push back
  
  

• 13 states to sue over DOGE access to government payment systems containing personal data

   

• DOGE was tasked with stopping Treasury payments to USAID, AP sources say
  
  

• After prayer breakfast, Trump creates task force to root out ‘anti-Christian bias’
  
  

• Trump signs order imposing sanctions on International Criminal Court over investigations of Israel
  
  

• Egypt lobbies against Trump plan to empty Gaza of Palestinians as Israel makes preparations
  
  

• China lashes out at US ‘coercion’ after Panama declines to renew infrastructure agreement
  
  

• Trump administration sues Chicago in latest crackdown on ‘sanctuary’ cities

   

• Trump blames ‘obsolete’ US air traffic control system for the plane and chopper collision near DC
  
  

• Trump promotes misleading claims about federal government’s media subscriptions

WORLD NEWS

Inside the operations that took captive 2 North Korean soldiers fighting Ukraine

When Ukrainian soldiers captured two North Korean prisoners of war last month, it provided the first undeniable proof of Pyongyang’s direct involvement in the war against Ukraine. Read more.

Why this matters:

• It also shed some light on the mindset and training of the conscripted North Korean soldiers sent to fight Russia’s war a continent away from their home. Highly disciplined, ready to die but also very young and with little battlefield experience, they elicited curiosity and even some pity from the Ukrainian soldiers who captured them during two separate missions on Jan. 9.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

• Trump’s Justice Department ends task force aimed at seizing assets of Russian oligarchs
  
  
• A Russian spy ship caught fire off Syria’s coast, officials say. Here’s audio of its broadcasts

WORLD NEWS

How a wave of antisemitic attacks roiled Australia and provoked claims of foreign influence

A wave of antisemitic attacks has roiled Australia, with a dozen arrests for vandalizing or setting homes, schools and synagogues on fire and hundreds more charged in just over a year with crimes targeting Jews. Read more.

Why this matters:

• Investigators are examining whether criminals for hire were paid by foreign actors to carry out the recent attacks, leaders of the taskforce said in January. They did not specify what foreign interests they believed were responsible.
  
  

• Officials said the 12 arrested by the taskforce don't share the antisemitic ideology expressed by their crimes, underscoring suggestions that the acts were orchestrated abroad.  The revelations were strange, but not unprecedented, analysts said.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

• Trump is targeting antisemitism in schools. Experts fear other civil rights will be ignored
  
  
• WATCH: As number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, one man is determined to share how he survived Nazi camps

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IN OTHER NEWS

READ

Bering Air Caravan: Search underway in western Alaska for plane carrying 10 people

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Newly unsealed documents reveal more details of prosecutors’ evidence in 9/11 attacks
Presidential election: Ecuadorian voters, many of them crime victims, head to the polls

Double-sided radio wave: Telescopes spy a monster radio jet streaming from a bright and early object in the universe

Now streaming: ‘Kinda Pregnant’, Kevin Costner’s ‘Yellowstone’, and Pharrell is made of Lego

Today in History: In 1964, the Beatles arrived for their first US tour

WATCH

Sports betting case: Baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s ex-interpreter is sentenced to nearly 5 years

Super Bowl ads: Aliens, sloths and silliness

30-minute process: How to cook the perfect boiled egg, according to science

A CHANGE OF PACE

Bar-headed geese in Nagrota Suriyan, Himachal Pradesh state, India, in January. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia) 

Tens of thousands of migratory birds have made an Indian lake their winter home
Before the day breaks on a winter morning at the Pong Lake wetland in northern India, muffled honks of geese are heard in the distance. The geese winter at the wetland, leaving their frozen homes on the Tibetan plateau and in Central Asia each year, tens of thousands of them crossing high mountain passes to settle in locations across India.

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