January 23, 2026 - Daily News Digest
On this day in 1973, US President Richard Nixon announced an end to the seemingly never-ending conflict in Vietnam. However, while the Paris Peace Accords (which were formally signed four days later) brought an end to direct US military involvement, the conflict raged on until April 1975, when Saigon was captured by North Vietnamese forces.
QotD: "We have a massive fleet heading in that direction… and maybe we won't have to use it… we have a lot of ships heading in that direction, just in case,” President Trump said about Iran to reporters on Air Force One.
US/MOTHER NATURE – Winter storm set to hammer US transportation networks.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/winter-storm-set-to-hammer-u-s-transportation-networks
As a potent winter storm barrels toward the central and eastern United States from January 23-25, 2026, freight carriers, shippers, and supply chain managers are bracing for widespread disruptions. Forecast models from the National Weather Service indicate heavy snow, sleet, freezing rain, and ice accumulations across more than 30 states, from the Southern Plains through the Mid-South, Mid-Atlantic, and into the Northeast. This clash of Arctic air and Gulf moisture could paralyze key transportation corridors, repeating recent weather extremes that have already tightened capacity and inflated spot rates in the freight market.
In recent years, repeated Nor’easters in New England, and widespread ice storms in Texas have distorted trucking capacity and shipping schedules, spiking spot rates and tender rejection rates.
The storm’s projected path threatens critical infrastructure, including major interstate highways like I-20 and I-85, vital for automotive and pharmaceutical supply chains. Freezing rain and ice could lead to downed trees, power lines, and road closures, halting trucking operations and extending transit times by 24-48 hours or more. In the Midwest and South, ice on rivers like the Mississippi and Illinois may slow barge traffic, compounding delays for grain and bulk commodities already affected by earlier winter events. Rail lines, particularly BNSF’s routes in the Northwest and Midwest, face risks from flooding and snow, potentially disrupting intermodal freight flows to export terminals.
RUS/UKR/MIL/CONFUSING TITLE – Russia, Ukraine to tackle land dispute at UAE talks; no sign of compromise.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators will tackle the vital issue of territory during two days of talks in Abu Dhabi starting on Friday, each side said, with no sign of a softening of their positions to end the four-year war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the territorial dispute would be a top priority of the next round of talks in the United Arab Emirates.
"The question of Donbas is key. It will be discussed how the three sides..., see this in Abu Dhabi today and tomorrow," he said, responding to questions in a WhatsApp media chat a day after talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos that both leaders described as positive.
The talks in the Gulf were due to begin on Friday evening, a Zelenskiy aide said, and resume on Saturday morning.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's demand that Ukraine surrender the 20% it still holds of the Donetsk region of the Donbas - about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles) - has proven a major stumbling block to a breakthrough deal. Zelenskiy refuses to give up land that Russia has not been able to capture in four years of grinding, attritional warfare.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia's insistence on Ukraine yielding the Donbas was "a very important condition".
MORE – Ukraine needs energy ceasefire as catastrophe looming, top power exec says.
Ukraine is nearing a "humanitarian catastrophe" after months of Russian airstrikes on energy systems and any future peace deal must include a halt to attacks on energy infrastructure, the head of Ukraine’s largest private power producer said.
"We need an energy ceasefire. A ceasefire on the energy assets,” Timchenko said. “How can you talk about peace and (keep) attacking people, and knowing that people are freezing? How can these things go in parallel?”
Ukraine has endured two weeks of temperatures between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees Celsius, he said, with Russia striking gas transportation, storage and production facilities.
Russia says it is targeting military and energy infrastructure used in the interests of Ukraine's armed forces.
"We are close to a humanitarian catastrophe," Timchenko said. "People get power for 3-4 hours, then a 10- to 15-hour break. We have apartment blocks without heat for weeks already."
He said Ukraine was holding on thanks to gas imports, including from the United States, as attacks had forced gas, coal and hydropower plants to run below capacity.
DTEK has lost 60–70% of its generating capacity and suffered damage worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.
US/NATO/AFGHANISTAN – ‘The ultimate insult’: Trump diminishing NATO’s Afghanistan involvement causes distress in UK.
U.S. President Donald Trump provoked outrage and distress among many in the United Kingdom on Friday with his false assertion that troops from NATO countries — other than Americans — stayed away from the front line during the war in Afghanistan.
Trump said that he wasn’t sure NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested.
“We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them,” he said in an interview with Fox News in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
More than 150,000 British troops served in Afghanistan in the years after the U.S.-led 2001 invasion, the largest contingent after the American one.
Defense Secretary John Healey said that the U.K. and NATO allies “answered the U.S. call” then, and that more than 450 British personnel lost their lives in Afghanistan.
IRAN/US/MIL – Trump threatens Iran with US fleet as death toll rises.
https://www.dw.com/en/trump-threatens-iran-with-us-fleet-as-death-toll-rises/a-75618396
US President Donald Trump renewed the threat of military action against Iran late Thursday as reports of rising death tolls from a brutal government crackdown on protests reach the outside world.
Trump delivered the threat while speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on route to Washington from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"We have a massive fleet heading in that direction… and maybe we won't have to use it… we have a lot of ships heading in that direction, just in case," Trump said when speaking of a possible US reaction to ongoing unrest in the Islamic Republic.
"We're watching Iran," said Trump. "I'd rather not see anything happen but we're watching them very closely."
FRANCE/POL – French government survives no-confidence votes over budget.
The French government survived two votes of no-confidence in parliament on Friday over its decision to ram through the income part of the 2026 budget without giving the National Assembly the final say.
A total of 269 lawmakers voted in favor of the no-confidence motion presented by the hard-left France Unbowed together with the Greens and Communists, whereas 288 votes were required to bring down the government. Even fewer backed a second no-confidence motion, brought by the far right.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu will now again invoke article 49.3 of the constitution to force the expenditure part of the budget through the National Assembly - a move that will almost certainly trigger further votes of no confidence.
President Emmanuel Macron's government is having to circumvent parliament after months of negotiations failed to deliver a deficit-taming finance bill that would pass in a lower house where no party has a working majority.
GREENLAND/DENMARK/US – Greenland ‘ready to negotiate’ better partnership, PM says.
https://www.dw.com/en/greenland-ready-to-negotiate-better-partnership-pm-says/live-75599036
Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has said he's not privy with the "details" of any potential deal on Greenland being discussed by Donald Trump and NATO and European powers in Davos or elsewhere.
He said the Danish autonomous territory wanted a "peaceful dialogue" with the United States and that it was "ready to negotiate a better partnership" with the US, including on issues like minerals access, but also said that violation of its sovereignty or right to self-determination was a red line.
"We have some red lines... We have to respect our territorial integrity. We have to respect international law, sovereignty," he told a press conference.
He said he was "glad" about Trump's claim on Wednesday that he was not entertaining the use of force to control Greenland and later that a "deal" had been struck.
UGANDA/POL/MIL – Uganda detains 2,000 opposition supporters, kills 30 after disputed election, army chief says.
Uganda's military chief said on Friday that authorities had detained 2,000 opposition supporters, killed 30, and were hunting for more following a disputed presidential election in which his father, Yoweri Museveni, won a seventh term.
The elder Museveni, 81, has led the East African nation for nearly four decades. He was declared to have resoundingly defeated Bobi Wine, leader of the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP), in the January 15 vote, held during an internet blackout.
Wine, a former musician whose legal name is Robert Kyagulanyi, rejected the result, alleging widespread irregularities including ballot stuffing, and went into hiding.
In a series of overnight social media posts, military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Museveni's son, gave the first details of the arrests and killings of NUP supporters, describing them as hooligans and terrorists.
"So far we have killed 30 NUP terrorists," Kainerugaba said on X, without explaining the circumstances of the deaths. "Most NUP terrorist leaders are in hiding. We shall get them all," he said in another post.
SYRIA/SEC – Syrian forces take control of prison housing IS members after Kurdish fighters evacuate.
Syrian government forces took control Friday of a prison housing members of the Islamic State group in the north of the country, after hundreds of Kurdish fighters who were guarding the facility evacuated the area as part of a recent deal.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the government’s prisons authority is now in charge of al-Aqtan prison, north of the northern city of Raqqa, and that the files of the detainees are being reviewed.
Al-Aqtan is the second prison to come under government control after being abandoned by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. Syrian troops entered Shaddadeh prison on Monday near the border with Iraq, from where 120 IS detainees managed to flee amid the chaos. Most of them have been recaptured, state media said.
Syria’s interim government signed an agreement last March with the SDF for it to hand over territory and to eventually merge its fighters with government forces.
US/GAZA/BOARD OF PEACE – Trump’s Board of Peace is dividing countries in Europe and the Middle East.
Divisions emerged Wednesday over U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace as its ambitions have grown beyond Gaza, with some Western European countries declining to join, others remaining noncommittal and a group of Muslim countries agreeing to sign on.
The developments underscored European concerns over the expanded and divisive scope of the project — which some say may seek to rival the U.N. Security Council’s role in mediating global conflicts. Trump is looking to form the board officially this week on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Norway and Sweden said they won’t accept their invitations, after France also said no, while a bloc of Muslim-majority nations — Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — said in a joint statement that their leaders would join.
It was not immediately clear how many countries would accept. A White House official said about 30 countries were expected to join, and about 50 had been invited.
Chaired by Trump, the board was originally conceived as a small group of world leaders overseeing the Gaza ceasefire plan. But the Trump administration’s ambitions have since expanded into a more sprawling concept, with Trump hinting at the board’s role as mediator for other global conflicts.
VENEZUELA/US/OIL – Venezuela moves to open up oil sector to private investors as demanded by Trump.
Venezuelan lawmakers on Thursday gave their initial backing to plans to throw open the oil sector to private investors, paving the way for the return of US energy majors – a key demand of President Donald Trump.
Less than three weeks after the US seized President Nicolas Maduro in an armed raid, MPs endorsed on first reading a bill allowing private companies to independently engage in oil exploration and extraction.
If adopted on a second reading, the bill would roll back decades of state controls over Venezuela's oil sector, which were tightened by Maduro's late mentor, socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez, in the mid-2000s.
The bill has been promoted by Maduro's former deputy, acting president Delcy Rodriguez, who has overseen a lightning-fast thaw in ties with Washington since taking the helm.
TIKTOK/TECH/US – TikTok sets up joint venture to avert threat of US ban.
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260123-tiktok-sets-up-joint-venture-to-avert-threat-of-us-ban
TikTok announced Thursday it has established a majority American-owned joint venture to operate its US business, allowing the company to avoid a ban over its Chinese ownership.
The video-sharing app is a global digital entertainment powerhouse but its mass appeal and links to China have raised concerns over privacy and national security.
The TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will serve more than 200 million users and 7.5 million businesses while implementing strict safeguards for data protection and content moderation, the company said.
The new structure responds to a law passed under US President Donald Trump's predecessor Joe Biden that forced Chinese-owned ByteDance to sell TikTok's US operations or face a ban in its biggest market.
Trump welcomed and claimed credit for the deal, but also thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping for approving it.
"I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok!" Trump said in a post on Truth Social late Thursday.
"It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice."
"I would also like to thank President Xi, of China, for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal," he added.
PERU/CHINA/POL – Peru’s president may be ousted over secret meeting with Chinese businessmen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/world/americas/peru-president-chinese-businessmen-meetings.html
Secret recordings of Peruvian presidents are nothing new. Nor are corruption accusations leading to impeachments. Over the past decade, Peru has had seven presidents, none of whom has managed to hang on for longer than three years. One resigned within a week.
The country’s current president, José Jerí, 39, who presided over the impeachment of his predecessor and who was then installed in her place last October, could join that list.
In a leaked video released this month, CCTV footage from Dec. 26 shows Mr. Jerí being dropped off by a car belonging to the president’s office and then attempting to cover his face with the hood of his sweatshirt as he entered Xin Yan Restaurant, which is owned by Yang Zhihua, a Chinese businessman who has come under government scrutiny.
Another video leaked a week later shows Mr. Jerí in one of the numerous corner stores that Mr. Yang owns in the capital, Lima. He can be seen shouting into his phone in front of Mr. Yang. Local media had reported that Mr. Yang’s store had been ordered shut down for violating a municipal ordinance. Three days later, the ordinance was struck down by a federal regulatory body.
According to Peruvian law, Mr. Jerí, who has acknowledged the authenticity of the videos, is legally required to log all his official activities and did not disclose his visits to the restaurant and the store.
Under withering questioning from federal lawmakers this week, Mr. Jerí has been defiant.
Mr. Yang has more than a dozen companies in Peru, including a construction firm that has won several contracts from the police, a hydroelectric company that was granted a state concession to build a dam, and a ceramics factory that, according to a national trade association, was built without proper permits.