An extraordinarily violent crackdown by Iranian security forces appears to have succeeded for now in driving protesters from the streets, according to activists and analysts who mahttps://abcnews.go.com/International/bloody-crackdown-appears-quelled-iran-protests-now/story?id=129287014naged to speak with people inside the country despite the information blackout.
Demonstrations began in late December with protesters chanting in Tehran against rising inflation and the falling value of the national currency before spreading across Iran and becoming more explicitly anti-government. Authorities have shut down the internet in Iran for more than a week as security forces moved to crush the protests.
The internet blackout in Iran continues to make it very difficult to get a clear picture from the ground, but accounts are emerging from people now able to use phone lines, those few with access to working Starlink satellite terminals and Iranians who have recently left the country.
These people describe an eerie calm over Iran's cities, where heavily armed security forces are deployed on the streets enforcing what many are describing as a de-facto curfew.
Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian activist based in Washington, D.C., says he has helped send in hundreds of Starlink terminals to citizen journalists and others in Iran to help get around the government blackout.
How the U.S. and Israel Are Trying to Co-opt Iran's Protests
In Florida, Kyiv ‘s Envoys Prep for Trump-Zelensky Meeting in Davos
Preparing for meetings at the World Economic Forum, Ukrainian envoys in Florida made “substantive” progress on documents they hope to sign with US President Donald Trump in Davos, Switzerland this week.
“There have already been several rounds of negotiations,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address. “They are working on the documents needed to end the war.”
Ukraine is looking for more precise language from its allies on security guarantees should Kyiv and Moscow come to terms on a ceasefire. Zelensky has noted on several occasions that the Kremlin is quite unserious about peace, given their relentless attacks on civilian targets in recent weeks, especially energy infrastructure, leaving much of Ukraine without heating during a stretch of sub-freezing temperatures.
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov and his team met with US envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll at Witkoff’s own golf course.
“We had substantive discussions on economic development and prosperity plan as well as security guarantees for Ukraine,” Umerov posted to social media.
How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory
One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
It was an extraordinary proposal. And it originated from a longtime friend of the president who would go on to acquire business interests in the Danish territory.
The businessman, Bolton learned, was Ronald Lauder. Heir to a makeup fortune – the global cosmetics brand Estée Lauder – he had known Trump, a fellow wealthy New Yorker, for more than 60 years.
Bolton said he discussed the Greenland proposition with Lauder. After the billionaire’s intervention, a White House team began to explore ways to increase US sway in the vast Arctic territory controlled by Denmark.
Trump’s renewed pursuit of Lauder’s idea during his second term is typical of how the president operates, Bolton said. “Bits of information that he hears from friends, he takes them as truth and you can’t shake his opinion.”
US reportedly considers granting asylum to Jewish people from UK
Discussions are reportedly under way within Donald Trump’s administration about the US possibly granting asylum to Jewish people from the UK, according to the Telegraph, citing the US president’s personal lawyer.
Trump lawyer Robert Garson told the newspaper that he has held conversations with the US state department about offering refuge to British Jews who are leaving the UK citing rising antisemitism.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
Garson, 49, said he felt the UK was “no longer a safe place for Jews”. He added that recent events – namely an Islamist attack on a synagogue in Manchester and what he described as widespread antisemitism following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 – had led him to believe that British Jews should be given the option of sanctuary in the US.
’60 Minutes’ airs pulled segment on Salvadoran prison CECOT
CBS News’s “60 Minutes” segment highlighting men deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison will air Sunday evening after new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss previously pulled the piece from airwaves last month.
“Last year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This unusual move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and ten months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons,” a CBS promotion for the segment said.
“Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with some of the now released deportees, who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured inside CECOT. Oriana Zill de Granados is the producer,” the promo continued.
Alfonsi originally spoke out against pulling the segment, alleging the decision was not editorial in nature but instead “political.”
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in an internal email reported by NBC News.
Wildfires Race Across Chile, Leaving 18 Dead And Forcing Thousands To Flee
Wildfires raging across central and southern Chile on Sunday left at least 15 people dead, scorched thousands of acres of forest and destroyed scores of homes, authorities said, as the South American country swelters under a heat wave.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric declared a state of catastrophe in the country’s central Biobio region and the neighboring Ñuble region, around 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Santiago, the capital.
The emergency designation allows greater coordination with the military to rein in two dozen wildfires that have so far blazed through 8,500 hectares (21,000 acres) and prompted 50,000 people to evacuate, according to Chilean Security Minister Luis Cordero.
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Trump's Autocratic Power Is At Stake In Supreme Court Case Over Federal Reserve Firing
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court gears up to hear arguments in a crucial case over the independence of the Federal Reserve, Trump v. Cook. But it won’t even be the first make-or-break moment the country’s main economic institution has had in the past few weeks.
President Donald Trump’s effort to seize control of the Federal Reserve and its power to set interest rates escalated last Sunday when Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced that he had been served “grand jury subpoenas” and threatened with “criminal indictment” related to cost overruns for the central bank’s building restoration project.
Powell immediately pushed back. The DOJ’s claim that he had lied in congressional testimony about the project was a mere “pretext” that needed to be seen “in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure,” Powell said.
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said.
Webb telescope may have solved mystery of 'little red dots' in space
Scientists may have discovered an explanation for a cosmic mystery uncovered by the James Webb Space Telescope several years ago: the origin of "little red dots" scattered across the cosmos.
In December 2022, six months after the launch of the super-powerful Webb Telescope, the telescope spotted something previously unseen: countless small red objects in the sky, which NASA says scientists soon dubbed “little red dots” (LRDs).
A puzzle to astronomers, scientists theorised the LRDs could be very dense galaxies or supermassive black holes. "For a time, the LRDs were framed as breaking cosmology because they defied practically every expectation set by well-founded theories," writes Lee Billings in Scientific American.
Nobel Prize cannot be 'passed on' to others, Nobel Foundation says
Machado's decision to give Trump the award does not change the recipient of the prize, the Nobel Foundation said in a statement on Jan. 16. The Nobel Foundation aims to "safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration" and uphold "Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations," the statement said.
"...the prizes shall be awarded to those who 'have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,' and it specifies who has the right to award each respective prize," the statement reads. "A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed."
While President Donald Trump might have the medal in hand, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado cannot be redistributed to him, the Nobel Foundation said in a statement following Machado's move to present the president with the award at their Jan. 15 meeting at the White House.
Machado was granted the award in October 2025. Trump openly lobbied to be awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, but the honor was instead given to Machado for her "efforts to advance democracy in Venezuela,” the Nobel Committee said when she won, including in "the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela," the Nobel Prize outreach website states.
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- Israel escalates deadly strikes in Gaza; U.S. seizes another oil tanker in the Caribbean; ACLU sues Trump admin for racial profiling in Minnesota
- Explosion in Kharkiv High-Rise Kills at Least Two, Injures Others
- New York bakery staff push for union, claiming they were forced to bake for Israeli fundraisers
- Trump says he’ll sue JPMorgan Chase for allegedly cutting him off after US Capitol riot
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