WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Tuesday carried out a new strike in Yemen against four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles, two U.S. officials told Reuters, the latest move against the Iran-aligned group over its targeting of Red Sea shipping.

One of the officials said the missiles were struck because they were being prepared to target ships in the region. The U.S. strike came a day after Houthi forces hit the U.S.-owned and operated dry bulk ship Gibraltar Eagle with an anti-ship ballistic missile.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In some ways, Iowa’s Republican caucuses were practically over before they began, with Donald Trump cultivating a deep network of support over three presidential runs.

About 7 in 10 Iowans who caucused for Trump on Monday night said they have known all along that they would support a man who has remade the Republican Party through his “Make America Great Again” political movement. Trump was carried to victory by the majority of caucusgoers who say they back it, a sign of his growing influence in a state that denied him a victory eight years ago.

WASHINGTON/DAVOS, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. military carried out new strikes in Yemen on Tuesday against anti-ship ballistic missiles in a Houthi-controlled part of the country as a missile struck a Greek-owned vessel in the Red Sea.

Disruptions to Red Sea shipping caused by Houthi attacks will push up prices of consumer goods in Europe in particular, an executive from port and freight operator DP World said as the impact on commerce increased.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Police in Estonia arrested a Russian professor teaching at the Baltic country’s most prestigious university on suspicions of spying for Moscow, officials said Tuesday.

Estonian Internal Security Service, or security police, said it launched an investigation into Vyacheslav Morozov, a Russian national and professor of international politics at the University of Tartu, for his alleged involvement in intelligence activity meant to undermine the country’s national security.

PHOENIX (AP) — It’s no joke. Humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon disappear from highways and freeways across the country.

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has given states two years to implement all the changes outlined in its new 1,100-page manual released last month, including rules that spells out how signs and other traffic control devices are regulated.

ANKARA, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Turkish police detained at least 22 suspected members of the Islamic State (IS) group, local media reported on Tuesday.

Turkish authorities issued arrest warrants for 19 suspected members of the group and detained 15 of them in operations based in the western province of Izmir, the state-run TRT broadcaster reported, adding efforts to apprehend the other four suspects are ongoing.

In a separate operation in the southern province of Mersin, the police detained seven other IS suspects, according to the semi-official Anadolu Agency.

NEW YORK (AP) — An architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings was accused Tuesday in the death of a fourth woman, a Connecticut mother of two who vanished in 2007 and whose remains were found more than three years later along a New York coastal highway.

Rex Heuermann was formally charged in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, months after having been labeled the prime suspect in her death when he was arrested in July in the deaths of three other women.

TOKYO, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Two passenger planes made contact on the ground at New Chitose Airport in Japan's northern prefecture of Hokkaido on Tuesday evening, with no reports of injuries so far.

At around 5:30 p.m. local time, a Korean Air aircraft and a Cathay Pacific plane "came into contact with each other," according to national broadcaster NHK, citing the operator Hokkaido Airports Co., Ltd. as saying.

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran for consultations and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad on Tuesday in protest over Iranian strikes on northern Iraq that killed several civilians overnight, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said.

The Iranian attack was “a blatant violation” of Iraq’s sovereignty and “strongly contradicts the principles of good neighborliness and international law, and threatens the security of the region,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine Jan 16 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West on Tuesday to tighten sanctions pressure on Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and to step up its support for Kyiv to ensure that Moscow did not succeed in its war.

Western hesitation in its backing for Kyiv and fears of an escalation in the war with Russia were costing time and lives, and could prolong the fighting by years, he told the World Economic Forum in Davos in an emotional speech.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Dangerously cold temperatures affected much of the Rockies, Great Plains and Midwest on Tuesday, with wind chills below minus 30 degrees (minus 34.4 Celsius) in many parts of the central U.S.

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents of workplace diversity programs are increasingly banking on a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to challenge equity policies as well as funding to minority-owned businesses.