Republican members of Congress disrupted the closed-door proceedings of the House impeachment inquiry, preventing a Pentagon official from giving her testimony.

Arguing that the inquiry's interviews should not be held behind closed doors, GOP lawmakers entered the secure area in the Capitol Wednesday where witnesses are typically questioned.

Within a span of a few hours, former vice president and current 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden both condemned President Donald Trump's use of the word "lynching" to describe the impeachment inquiry — and apologized for doing virtually the same thing more than 20 years ago.

Two of Rudy Giuliani's associates appeared in federal court Wednesday in Manhattan, where they pleaded not guilty to charges of illegally funneling foreign donations to U.S. political candidates.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are both U.S. citizens born in the former Soviet Union: Parnas in Ukraine, and Fruman in Belarus.

At a bend in the Potomac River, about 30 miles south of Washington, D.C., there's a fleet of "ghost ships" — shipwrecks that rise eerily from the water at low tide. It's one of the largest collections of shipwrecks in the world, and they're now part of a new national marine sanctuary.

Updated at 1:30 p.m. ET

President Trump says he is lifting sanctions on Turkey after the country agreed to what he called a permanent cease-fire in northern Syria, ending Turkey's military offensive that began after the U.S. pulled troops from the area.

Trump argued that his decision to remove U.S. forces — criticized by U.S. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike — helped to bring the deal to fruition.

The biggest wildfire in 20 years in Spain's Catalonia region began on June 26, when a pile of chicken manure, baking in record high temperatures, burst into flames.

Fed by strong winds, the flames spread quickly, igniting dry brush and pine forest. In three days the fire burned more than 16,000 acres, and it took more than 500 firefighters to put it out.

It all started at the mall when a friend offered her a puff from a JUUL e-cigarette.

"It was kind of peer pressure," says Beth, a Denver-area 15-year-old who started vaping in middle school. "Then I started inhaling it," she says. "I suddenly was, like, wow, I really think that I need this — even though I don't."

Updated at 9 a.m. ET

British police say 39 bodies were discovered early Wednesday morning in a truck container in southeastern England. The driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

The story of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman unfolds like a globe-trotting mystery over more than a year.

When the two associates of President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were arrested at an airport this month for campaign finance violations, it wasn't immediately clear how — or even if — those activities were related to the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

But even before their arrest by the FBI, the two Soviet-born men were among the people whom Congress wanted to interview.

Tiny satellites are taking on a big-time role in space exploration.

CubeSats are small, only about twice the size of a Rubik's Cube. As the name suggests, they're cube-shaped, 4 inches on each side, and weigh in at about 3 pounds. But with the miniaturization of electronics, it's become possible to pack a sophisticated mission into a tiny package.