Feb. 4, 2026 - Daily News Digest
On this day in1945, during the final stages of WWII, the Yalta Conference opened with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin meeting to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany.
QotD: "You are great,” President Trump wrote on a signed copy of The Art of the Deal for Colombian President Petro during his White House visit.
US/AFRICA/TARIFFS – US renews trade pact with African countries, bring tariff relief.
The United States on Tuesday renewed the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) through the end of the year, an agreement that allows many African countries to access the US market duty-free.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement that President Donald Trump had signed into law a reauthorisation of the trade preference program through December 31, 2026, with retroactive effect from September 30, 2025 – the date it had expired.
"AGOA for the 21st century must demand more from our trading partners and yield more market access for US businesses, farmers, and ranchers," Greer said.
Trump has used trade and tariffs – which he has called his "favorite word" – as a carrot and a stick to reshape international relations, as he sees fit.
In a statement, Greer vowed to "work with Congress over the next year to modernise the program to align with" current US policy.
A cornerstone of US-Africa trade relations for 25 years, the AGOA has allowed the United States to buy billions of dollars of duty-free cars, clothes and other items from select African countries each year.
But the deal, which operates in 32 African nations, expired last September, affecting thousands of jobs and forcing exporters to absorb high tariff duties.
US/COLOMBIA/DIPLOMACY/WH – Trump hails ‘very good’ meeting with Colombia’s Petro.
https://www.dw.com/en/trump-hails-very-good-meeting-with-colombias-petro/a-75786386
Colombian President Gustavo Petro met US President Donald Trump for the first time at the White House on Tuesday with tensions between the two leaders taking center stage after the US operation that captured Venezuela's president last month.
The talks were private and lasted for about two hours. However, after the meeting, Petro said Trump offered to mediate between Colombia and Ecuador in an ensuing trade war.
Trump said the meeting between the two leaders was "very good," adding that he was working on sanctions, among other things, with Petro.
"My impression of the meeting a few hours ago is first and foremost that it was positive," Petro told reporters.
"You are great," Trump wrote to Gustavo Petro as he signed a copy of his 1987 book "Art of the Deal."
In a seeming joke on X, Petro shared the signature, asking: "What did Trump mean by this dedication? I don't understand English very well."
Trump on Monday downplayed his tensions with Petro, signalling the Colombian president is more willing to work with Washington to stop the flow of drugs.
"Somehow after the Venezuelan raid, he became very nice," Trump told reporters. "He changed his attitude very much ... We're gonna have a good meeting," Trump said ahead of the visit.
US/CONGRESS – US: Trump signs bill ending partial government shutdown.
https://www.dw.com/en/us-trump-signs-bill-ending-partial-government-shutdown/a-75791158
The partial shutdown of government operations ended in the United States on Tuesday with President Donald Trump signing a budget package into law.
Earlier on Tuesday, the House of Representatives had approved the package in a close vote of 217-214. The upper chamber of the US Congress, the Senate, had already given its approval last week.
"This bill is a great victory for the American people," Trump said of the legislation, which was held up by Democratic opposition to funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for the controversial operations by federal agencies targeting migrants.
The approval of the budget package secures funding for most of the government apparatus until the end of September, with the exception of the DHS. As a compromise solution, the package provides the department with only temporary transitional funding until February 13.
RUS/US/NUKES – The last US-Russian nuclear pact is about to expire, ending a half-century of arms control.
The last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States is set to expire Thursday, removing any caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.
The termination of the New START Treaty would set the stage for what many fear could be an unconstrained nuclear arms race.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington follows suit, but President Donald Trump has been noncommittal about extending it.
Trump has repeatedly indicated he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons and involve China in arms control talks, a White House official who was not authorized to talk publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said Monday. Trump will make a decision on nuclear arms control “on his own timeline,” the official said.
Beijing has balked at any restrictions on its smaller but growing nuclear arsenal.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it would be a “more dangerous” world without limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles.
RUS/UKR/MIL – Ukraine, Russia wrap first day of US-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators wrapped up the first day of new U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, seeking to advance efforts to end Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two as fighting raged on.
The two-day trilateral meetings come after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had exploited a U.S.-backed energy truce last week to stockpile munitions, attacking Ukraine with a record number of ballistic missiles on Tuesday.
Photographs released earlier in the day by the United Arab Emirates' foreign ministry showed the three delegations sitting around a U-shaped table, with U.S. officials seated at the centre, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Before the talks, chief Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov said that teams would meet in separate groups to discuss specific topics and then follow up with a joint meeting to coordinate their positions.
Shortly after talks began, Russian forces struck a crowded market in eastern Ukraine with cluster munitions, killing at least seven people and wounding 15, the Donetsk region's Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Polls show that the majority of Ukrainians oppose a deal that hands Moscow more land. Kyiv residents told Reuters on Wednesday they were sceptical the new round of talks would bring any major breakthroughs.
HUNGARY/POL – Hungary’s Orban orders tax lawsuit dropped, mayor says it’s an attack on rule of law.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has ordered the termination of a lawsuit brought by Budapest over a disputed "solidarity tax," a step the city’s mayor denounced as a direct assault on judicial independence ahead of an April election.
The Budapest Municipal Court declined to comment on the specific case, but said in an email: "In general, in pending case(s) it is up to the relevant judge to take the step(s), who would assess the cases in line with his/her oath taken as a judge."
Budapest, run by liberal mayor Gergely Karacsony, has been locked in a financial dispute with Orban's government over a "solidarity tax" payable to the state. The dispute contributed to a Moody's downgrade of the city's credit rating.
Karacsony said the move was intended to prevent the city from "fighting in the courts against the extremely unjust and unlawful solidarity contribution."
"No longer even caring about pretences, the government has directly attacked the rule of law," he said in a Facebook post.
GERMANY/COVERT OPS – Germany seeks broader spy powers to counter rising hybrid threats.
Germany's government wants to give its spy agencies broader powers to confront rising hybrid threats, a sensitive step in a country where intelligence operations remain tightly constrained by post-war limits designed to prevent a repeat of Nazi abuses.
Many attacks on Germany in recent years were thwarted only thanks to intelligence shared by allies whose agencies operate with wider powers, Thorsten Frei, head of the German chancellor's office, acknowledged this week.
Frei, of the ruling conservatives, is calling for a "paradigm shift" that would allow the foreign intelligence agency, the BND, to deploy more intrusive surveillance tools, including access to private mobile phones and the ability to store data for up to a year.
"The aim is to be on an equal footing with our European partners in the field of intelligence gathering," he told Tagesspiegel newspaper.
"Intelligence services cooperate worldwide, and the only hard currency that counts is information."
Long dogged by questions over Nazi-era continuities, the BND has sought to define itself against Germany's two darkest intelligence legacies: Nazi repression and the Stasi's surveillance state.
That history must now be weighed against the heightened threats facing Germany, Frei said.
"In a time that is becoming increasingly threatening, we cannot stop at intelligence gathering alone," he said. "To protect our country, we must also put our services in a position to carry out certain operations."
NATO/ARCTIC/MIL – NATO sets Arctic mission plans in motion.
https://www.dw.com/en/nato-sets-arctic-mission-plans-in-motion/a-75790421
NATO on Tuesday said "planning is underway" for an Arctic mission, coming weeks after US President Donald Trump frayed the strategic alliance by claiming the US needs to control Greenland to avert unverified security concerns from Russia and China.
Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, told reporters that a "NATO enhanced vigilance activity" will "further strengthen NATO's posture in the Arctic and High North." He did not provide further details as planning has just begun.
It is also unclear where the exercises will take place. Denmark is currently leading an ongoing NATO exercise in Greenland called Operation Arctic Endurance.
Information about the plans was initially reported by Germany's Spiegel newsmagazine, with NATO's commander, US General Alexus G. Grynkewich, having ordered concrete plans to begin for a mission titled "Arctic Sentry."
ISRAEL/GAZA/MIL – Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza, health officials say.
Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes killed 23 Palestinians including seven children in Gaza on Wednesday, health officials said, the latest violence to undermine a truce in the enclave.
Among the dead was a medic who rushed to help victims of a strike in the southern city of Khan Younis and was then killed by a second attack on the same location, health officials said.
Other strikes hit Gaza City in the north, where health officials said a 5-month-old boy was killed. The attacks come three days after Israel reopened Gaza's main border crossing with Egypt, a major step in the U.S.-backed truce.
"While we were sleeping in our house, the tank shelled us and the shells hit our house, our children were martyred - my son was martyred, my brother's son and daughter were martyred... We have nothing to do with anything, we are peaceful people," said Abu Mohamed Habouch, speaking at a funeral for his family.
Tents in Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Younis crowded with Gazans displaced by the conflict, had been ripped apart by the strikes. Nearly all of Gaza's population of over 2 million has been forced to flee their homes.
The Israeli military said it had launched the strikes in response to militants opening fire against Israeli troops operating near its armistice line with Hamas. It said an Israeli soldier was severely injured by the militant fire, which it described as a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
IRAN/US/MIL/DIPLOMACY – Iran plays hardball with the US to throw it off balance.
Iran’s abandonment of a planned meeting with U.S. and regional officials in Turkey in hopes of holding more narrowly defined talks in Oman is right out of the regime’s hardball playbook—a last-minute curveball aimed at leaving everyone else off balance.
The diplomatic gambit along with military moves the same day, in which Iran launched a drone at an American aircraft carrier and sent gunboats to harass a U.S.-flagged oil tanker, suggest Tehran is determined to turn the tables and apply pressure on the U.S. as President Trump builds up forces in the region and tries to push Iran to negotiate on his terms.
Iran’s tactics present a challenge for Trump’s style of diplomacy, in which he prefers quick deals negotiated via a small number of trusted lieutenants. With few good options, analysts say Iran is playing for time and risking miscalculation as the armed standoff continues.
“It’s not particularly auspicious in terms of what comes next,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, the U.S. program director at International Crisis Group. “The buildup of force and the threat of force hasn’t created that much room for actual diplomacy. It seems as if the ask was capitulation, effectively. ”
Regional powers had pushed hard to set up the talks in Turkey in hopes of opening a diplomatic pathway to avert a possible war while addressing their own concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missiles and support for regional militias. By late Monday, it appeared the talks were set and would bring Iranian and regional officials together with special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in Turkey.
LIBYA/SEC – Son of late dictator Gadhafi killed in Libya.
https://apnews.com/article/libya-seif-alislam-gadhaf-killed-85f6d2b4cdd7a5067df4c790363f5f30
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, was killed in the northern African country, Libyan officials said Tuesday.
The 53-year-old was killed in the town Zintan, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan’s chief prosecutor’s office.
The office said in a statement that an initial investigation found that Seif al-Islam was shot to death, but did not provide further details about the circumstances of his killing.
Khaled al-Zaidi, a lawyer for Seif al-Islam, confirmed his death on Facebook, without providing details.
Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, who represented Gadhafi in the U.N.-brokered political dialogue which aimed to resolve Libya’s long-running conflict, also announced the death on Facebook.
Seif al-Islam’s political team later released a statement saying that “four masked men” stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination.” The statement said that he clashed with the assailants, who closed the CCTV cameras at the house “in a desperate attempt to conceal traces of their heinous crimes.”
PAKISTAN/MIL – Pakistan deploys helicopters, drones to end standoff with Baloch rebels.
Pakistan has deployed helicopters and drones to take control of a town in the mineral-rich western province of Balochistan from rebels amid ongoing fighting that has left dozens of security officials and civilians dead.
Police said on Wednesday that they secured the desert town of Nushki after a three-day battle, the Reuters news agency reports. Seven officers were killed in the fighting.
“More troops were sent to Nushki,” a security official said. “Helicopters and drones were used against the militants.”
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) launched a series of attacks in the southwestern province on Saturday, storming banks, schools, markets and security installations across Pakistan’s largest and poorest province.
“I thought the roof and walls of my house were going to blow up,” said Robina Ali, a housewife who lives in the provincial capital of Quetta, near a main administrative building where there was a powerful morning blast.
A senior official told the AFP news agency on Wednesday that “197 terrorists have been killed in the ongoing counterterrorism operations.”
Authorities have imposed security restrictions on the province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, banning public gatherings and demonstrations.