Fires burning homes and businesses in Los Angeles for a week killed at least 25 people, displaced thousands of others and destroyed more than 12,000 buildings in what might be the most expensive set of conflagrations in the nation's history. The blazes started Jan. 7, fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds that have posed problems for the large forces of firefighters deployed across several areas of the sprawling city. Cal Fire reported that the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth and Hurst fires have consumed a total area of about 63 square miles (163 square kilometers).

Cal Fire reported containment of the Palisades Fire at 19% and the Eaton Fire at 45% on Wednesday (Jan. 15). The Palisades Fire, along the coast, has been blamed for eight deaths, while the Eaton Fire farther inland has been blamed for 17 others, the LA County medical examiner's office said. Nearly 30 people were missing. Non-government sources put the damage and economic losses at $250 billion to $275 billion.

Yoon Suk Yeol became South Korea's first sitting president to be arrested after investigators scaled barricades and cut through barbed wire to take him into custody. Yoon, 64, is being investigated on charges of insurrection for a failed martial law order on 3 December that plunged the country into turmoil. He has also been impeached by parliament and suspended - but will only be removed from office if the Constitutional Court upholds the impeachment.

However, Yoon's dramatic arrest on Wednesday brings to an end a weeks-long standoff between investigators and his presidential security team. Investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) failed to arrest him on 3 January after being locked in a six-hour stand-off with his security detail. But just before dawn on Wednesday, a much larger team of investigators and police arrived at his residence in central Seoul, armed with ladders to climb over buses blocking its entrance and bolt cutters to remove barbed wire.

The United Nations human rights chief called for the lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Syria over its yearslong civil war, now that former leader Bashar Assad has been ousted and sent into exile. While visiting Syria, Volker Türk also urged transitional justice for victims, saying it enhances public trust in state institutions as the county moves ahead under its de facto new leaders. "Revenge and vengeance are never the answer," Türk said, a month after the Assad family's decadeslong dynasty ended when insurgent groups captured Damascus.

Türk said he met with Ahmad al-Sharaa, who leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group leading the new authority in Syria. He said al-Sharaa assured him of the importance of respecting human rights for all Syrians, and said authorities will work on social cohesion and institutional reform. "The people of Syria need every ounce of help they can get to rebuild a country that works for all Syrians," Türk said.

At least 78 dead bodies were retrieved from a discontinued gold mine in South Africa where police cut off food and water supplies for months, in what trade unions called a "horrific" crackdown on desperate people trying to eke out a living. Police on Wednesday (Jan. 14) said they ended a rescue operation and believed they had brought out all the survivors and retrieved all the bodies from the abandoned mine near Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.

The surprise announcement came a day after the police minister said the rescue operation would likely last until at least next week. Police said that 78 bodies had been recovered since the rescue operation began on Monday and more than 240 survivors had been rescued from the gold mine two kilometres (1.24 miles) below the surface. In August, police stopped food and water supplies from being taken down the discontinued mine to force people to the surface where they could be arrested.