Real Madrid hopes some home comfort will help the team get over yet another embarrassing loss to Barcelona.

After losing 5-2 in the Spanish Super Cup final on Sunday in Saudi Arabia, Madrid has a run of three home games over seven days.

The January transfer window is open and big names could be on the move, from Marcus Rashford to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.

It is often tricky to get big ticket deals over the line in the mid-season window, with prices inflated and budgets reduced — but the 2025 edition is teasing major moves, with Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain among Europe's giants tipped to spend before the Feb. 3 deadline.

Aircraft battling fires raging through the Los Angeles area are dropping more than water: Hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot-pink fire suppressant ahead of the flames in a desperate effort to stop them before they destroy more neighborhoods.

The fires have killed at least 24 people, displaced thousands and destroyed more than 12,000 structures since they began last Tuesday. Four fires driven by strong Santa Ana winds have charred about 62 square miles (160 square kilometers), according to Cal Fire.

Tens of thousands of naked Hindu ascetics and millions of pilgrims took dips in freezing water at the confluence of sacred rivers in northern India on Tuesday, in the first of a series of major baths in the Maha Kumbh festival, the largest religious congregation on Earth.

Holding tridents, swords, spears and small two-headed drums, ash-smeared Hindu holy men marched and rode chariots at sunrise toward the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers in the northern city of Prayagraj. The men — with matted dreadlocks and crowns of marigolds — chanted religious slogans praising Hindu deity Lord Shiva on the way to the bathing site in a large procession with singing, drumming and blowing of horns.

An introspective Pope Francis has divulged some of the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the secret 2013 conclave that elected him pope and the resistance he has encountered ever since, in his autobiography being released Tuesday that also doubles down on some of his more controversial decisions as pontiff.

"Hope: The Autobiography" was only supposed to be published after Francis' death. But at his own request, the book is hitting bookshelves now in more than 80 countries to coincide with the start of the church's Holy Year.

The Group of Seven democracies has sought to crimp Russia's oil export earnings that help fund the war against Ukraine. But Western governments and sanctions experts say Moscow has resorted to using a so-called shadow fleet of hundreds of aging tankers of uncertain ownership and safety practices that are dodging sanctions and keeping the oil revenue coming.

Here are things to know about the shadow fleet — and why it worries Western governments and environmental groups:

Elon Musk said a third person has received an implant from his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, one of many groups working to connect the nervous system to machines.

"We've got ... three humans with Neuralinks and all are working well," he said during a wide-ranging interview at a Las Vegas event streamed on his social media platform X.

President-elect Donald Trump has expressed frustration that flags will be flying at half-staff when he takes office later this month.

It's an action put in place by President Joe Biden to honor the late President Jimmy Carter, who died last month at 100. It's not a timeline that Trump can do anything about — until after he takes office — although a large U.S. flag at Trump's home in Florida has been raised to full height following Carter's burial.

U.S. wholesale inflation rose last month on higher energy prices.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — rose 0.2% last month from November, down from a 0.4% gain the month before. Compared to a year earlier, producer prices rose 3.3%, biggest jump since February 2023 and up from a 3% gain in November.

U.S. President Donald Trump will take part virtually in the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos just days after his inauguration, the forum president said Tuesday.

Børge Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister who heads the Geneva-based organization, noted that Trump had twice attended the elite gathering of business and government leaders in-person during his first term.