A group of Russian rescuers and volunteers on Wednesday saved four killer whales stranded for hours off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's far east after leading them to deeper waters.
Russia's emergency situations ministry had earlier warned that the whales - two orcas and two calves - were stuck in a silted estuary.
That prompted more than 30 rescuers to use small boats to aid the whales, dousing them with water as they tried to push them into deeper waters.
SHOT Telegram channel said the whale family had been successfully escorted out and were safe.
Video published by SHOT showed rescuers trying to aid the whales in the pitch dark. "All right, everybody's safe and sound," one of the rescuers is heard saying.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 1,250-kilometre-long peninsula in the Russian far east, some 6,500 kilometres east of Moscow.
A suspected gas explosion at a department store in the central Taiwanese city of Taichung killed at least four people and injured 24 others on Thursday, the fire department said.
US President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed a desire for peace in separate phone calls with him on Wednesday, and Trump ordered top US officials to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
Israel's military has called up reservists in preparation for a possible resumption of fighting in Gaza if Hamas fails to meet a Saturday deadline to release more Israeli hostages and a nearly month-old ceasefire breaks down.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ceasefire in Gaza would end and the military would resume fighting Hamas until it was defeated if the Palestinian group did not release hostages by midday Saturday.
Officials from Bangladesh's former government and security apparatus systematically committed serious human rights violations against protesters staging mass demonstrations last summer, the UN human rights chief said on Wednesday.