No sign of new protests in Iran as a hard-line cleric calls for executions

January 16, 2026
By The Associated Press
Iranian senior cleric Ahmad Khatami delivers his sermon during the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 5, 2018.
Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — As Iran returned to uneasy calm after a wave of protests that drew a bloody crackdown, a senior hard-line cleric called Friday for the death penalty for detained demonstrators and directly threatened U.S. President Trump — evidence of the rage gripping authorities in the Islamic Republic.

Judge rules federal agents can't arrest or use pepper spray on peaceful protesters in Minneapolis

By Jacob Rosen, Joe Walsh
Updated on: January 16, 2026 

A protestor leads a chant at a demonstration against increased immigration enforcement in Minnesota, U.S., January 16, 2026. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Purchase Licensing Rights

A Minnesota federal judge put limits Friday on the tactics that federal law enforcement are permitted to use in their handling of the ongoing protests in Minneapolis over the Trump administration's surge of immigration resources to the city. 

Global poll shows that Trump's policies enable China's Influence

efsyn.gr

And yet, Trump 'works' for China

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY

16.01.26 
Babis Michalis

Global poll shows traditional US adversaries fearing them less and their allies drifting away ● Majority of respondents see China's global influence growing in the next decade ● Only 16% of EU citizens now consider the US an ally

China and Canada announce tariffs relief after a high-stakes meeting between Carney and Xi

6 hours ago

Laura Bicker, Beijing, Suranjana Tewari, Singapore, Koh Ewe, Singapore, and Jessica Murphy, Toronto

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Canadian PM Mark Carney have announced lower tariffs, signalling a reset in their countries' relationship after a key meeting in Beijing.

Scientists observe a massive geological “ribbon” forming between Africa and the Atlantic and it’s not reassuring

16 January 2026
The helicopter windows shuddered gently as it crossed the brown-gold expanse of Ethiopia’s Afar region, a landscape that looks less like Earth and more like the first draft of a planet.

Below, the ground is split and scarred, scratched by fractures that stretch for kilometers. From the air, one crack in particular catches the eye: a long, pale band of fresh rock slicing through the dark basalt, like someone has unzipped the crust. The geologist next to the window leans in and quietly says, “That… that’s new.”

Trump threatens new tariffs on countries opposed to Greenland takeover

Daniel Bush and Paulin Kola

Reuters 

President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to place tariffs on nations that do not go along with his ambitions to annex Greenland.

Trump's Envoy tells the Danes Greenland Agreement is Inevitable - Russia Slams Western Rhetoric

efsyn.gr
EUROPE
16.01.26 17:39

«The President is serious. I think he has set the boundaries. He has told Denmark exactly what he is pursuing.»

The special envoy of US President Donald Trump for Greenland stated that he plans to visit the Danish territory in March and that he believes an agreement must – and will – be reached.

Gavin Newsom Is Backing California’s Billionaires

 Jacobin 

By Meagan Day

Governor Gavin Newsom is siding with California’s billionaires against a proposed wealth tax to fund health care. Progressives like Ro Khanna are challenging him.

At 7:30 a.m. on January 1, 2026, the Washington Post’s editorial board rang in the new year with the headline “California will miss billionaires when they’re gone.” While Americans were still sleeping off their hangovers, the Post — whose owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced a little less than a year ago that the paper’s editorial page would “be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets — was already chiding unserious progressives and “​​bloodthirsty unions” for pursuing a state ballot initiative that would levy a one-time wealth tax on California’s billionaires, whom the paper called “the Golden State’s golden goose.”

Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act over Minneapolis protests. Here’s the latest

By Karina Tsui, Amanda Musa

Tensions flared in Minneapolis again Thursday in the wake of a second shooting by a federal immigration officer in just one week, as President Donald Trump threatened to invoke a centuries-old law that would allow the deployment of US troops to Minnesota.

Venezuela’s Machado gave Trump her Nobel prize. In return she received a swag bag but no promise of support

By CNN
January 15, 2026
Jessie Yeung

When Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado walked into the White House on Thursday, she came bearing the gift US President Donald Trump has long coveted: a Nobel Peace Prize.

This Rural Congresswoman Thinks Democrats Have Lost Their Minds. She Has a Point.

Opinion

Guest Essay

Jan. 12, 2026

By James Pogue

Mr. Pogue, a contributing Opinion writer, has been covering 

rural America and the West for 15 years.

This essay is the fifth installment in a series on the thinkers, upstarts, and ideologues battling for control of the Democratic Party.

In July, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington proposed an amendment to a bill, calling for an inquiry into what she described as a “plague in this country of headlight brightness.”

What Teddy Roosevelt has to do with Trump's moves in Venezuela and Greenland

January 15, 2026
By Scott Neuman
 n  p  r 

The Monroe Doctrine. Big Stick policy. Gunboat diplomacy.
Until recently, the terms were relegated mostly to the pages of dusty history books. But President Trump is leaning heavily on his own understanding of these concepts to justify his attack on Venezuela, his bullying tactics aimed at acquiring Greenland and his latest threats to strike Iran.

At 25 , Wikipedia Now Faces its Most Existential Threat - Generative AI

Wikipedia had to fight to establish its legitimacy—and now it faces a new existential threat posed by generative AI

By Meghan Bartels edited by Eric Sullivan

Ian Ramjohn remembers the first time he edited Wikipedia. It was 2004, when the site was just three years old, and its information about the government of his home nation of Trinidad and Tobago was a decade out of date. But with little more than his Internet connection, he corrected the page in minutes. “That was huge,” he says. “I got hooked pretty much right away.”

The U.S. Is Pressing Mexico to Allow U.S. Forces to Fight Cartels

The United States is escalating pressure on the Mexican government to permit the U.S. military to target fentanyl labs, according to American officials.

By Maria Abi-Habib, Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and Tyler Pager

Maria Abi-Habib reported from Mexico City. Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt and Tyler Pager reported from Washington, D.C.

Jan. 15, 2026

The United States is intensifying pressure on Mexico to allow U.S. military forces to conduct joint operations to dismantle fentanyl labs inside the country, according to American officials.

New York governor clears path for robotaxis everywhere, with one notable exception

 Kirsten Korosec 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce legislation that would effectively legalize robotaxis in the state — except for its most populous metropolis: New York City.

Canadian prime minister hails renewed relations with China during his Beijing visit

By KEN MORITSUGU
Updated 7:19 AM PST, January 15, 2026

BEIJING (AP) — On the first trip by a Canadian leader to China in eight years, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday that the two countries are entering a new era of relations.

Iran and the Limits of American Power

What a U.S. Military Strike Would and Would Not Achieve
Andrew P. Miller, January 15, 2026

ANDREW P. MILLER is a Senior Fellow in National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in the Biden administration and Director for Egypt and Israel Military Issues on the National Security Council in the Obama administration.

Over two weeks into wide-scale protests against the Islamic Republic regime in Iran, the death toll and number of arrests are rapidly mounting. Iranian human rights organizations place the number of dead at 2,500, while other sources suggest it may exceed 10,000. Needless to say, the Iranian people have displayed remarkable bravery in challenging an authoritarian government that still retains immense repressive power. And by emboldening Iranians to turn out by repeatedly raising the prospect of U.S. military intervention to defend Iranian demonstrators, U.S. President Donald Trump is implicated as well in the outcome of the protests.

European nations to send troops to Greenland as US annexation threats escalate

By Lex Harvey
Several NATO countries are deploying small numbers of military personnel to Greenland to participate in joint exercises with Denmark as US President Donald Trump ramps up his threats to forcibly annex the Arctic island.