Iran's capital and outlying provinces have faced rolling power blackouts for weeks in October and November, with electricity cuts disrupting people's lives and businesses. And while several factors are likely involved, some suspect cryptocurrency mining has played a role in the outages.

Iran economy has been hobbled for years by international sanctions over its advancing nuclear program. The country's fuel reserves have plummeted, with the government selling off more to cover budget shortfalls as wars rage in the Middle East and Tehran grapples with mismanagement.

The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump is likely to bring big changes for one of the oldest sectors of the U.S. economy — seafood — and some in the industry believe the returning president will be more responsive to its needs.

Economic analysts paint a more complicated picture, as they fear Trump's pending trade hostilities with major trading partners Canada and China could make an already pricy kind of protein more expensive to consumers. Conservationists also fear Trump's emphasis on government deregulation could jeopardize fish stocks that are already in peril.

Scientists suspect the first complete specimen ever recorded of the world's rarest whale died from head injuries, an expert said Friday.

The first dissection of a spade-toothed whale, a type of beaked whale, was completed last week after a painstaking examination at a research center near the New Zealand city of Dunedin, the local people who led the scientific team, Te Rūnanga Ōtākou, said in a statement issued by the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

Russia launched a massive aerial attack against Ukraine on Friday, firing 93 cruise and ballistic missiles and almost 200 drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, describing it as one of the heaviest bombardments of the country's energy sector since Russia's full-scale invasion almost three years ago.

Ukrainian defenses shot down 81 missiles, including 11 cruise missiles that were intercepted by F-16 warplanes provided by Western allies earlier this year, Zelenskyy said.

It was a murder case almost everyone had an opinion on. O.J. Simpson 's "trial of the century" over the 1994 killings of his ex-wife and her friend bared divisions over race and law enforcement in America and brought an intersection of sports, crime, entertainment and class that was hard to turn away from.

In a controversial verdict, the football star-turned-actor was acquitted in the criminal trial but later found civilly liable in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Years later, he served nine years in prison on unrelated charges. His death in April brought an end to a life that had become defined by scrutiny over the killings.

An American who disappeared seven months ago into former Syrian President Bashar Assad's notorious prison system said early Friday he was released by the "liberators" who arrived in Damascus a day after the longtime ruler fled the capital.

Travis Timmerman called his release a "blessing" when he spoke to The Associated Press from a hotel room in Damascus, where he arrived late Thursday. He was among the thousands of people released from Syria's sprawling military prisons this week after rebels reached Damascus, overthrowing Assad and ending his family's 54-year rule.

An Israeli airstrike flattened a multistory building in central Gaza, killing at least 25 people and wounding dozens more, according to Palestinian medical officials, after strikes Thursday across the Gaza Strip killed at least 28 others.

The latest deadly strike hit the urban Nuseirat refugee camp just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters in Jerusalem that the recent ceasefire in Lebanon has helped clear the way for a potential deal to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

Turkey has appointed a temporary charge d’affaires to reopen its embassy in Syria, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported.

The Turkish Embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security problems during the Syrian civil war and embassy staff and their families were recalled to Turkey.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is wrapping up a visit to Turkey with talks with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday as he presses ahead with efforts to unify Middle East nations in support of a peaceful political transition in Syria.

On the second stop of his latest Mideast trip — his 12th since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last year but first since the weekend ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad — Blinken saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan late Thursday to try to bring Turkey into a consensus to prevent Syria from collapsing into wider turmoil.

Selena Gomez is having quite a year, and it's being capped with an engagement to music producer and songwriter Benny Blanco.

The Grammy- and Emmy-nominated performer announced she was off the market in an Instagram post Wednesday of her ring and an embrace with her fiancé, with the caption "Forever begins now."