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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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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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'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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