👋 Wai!*
Welcome to Friday, where U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is set to be sentenced in his hush money case days before his inauguration, the death toll in California wildfires rises to 10, and a French-Swiss archaeology team discovered the tomb of an ancient Egyptian wizard-doctor. Meanwhile, La Stampa’s Marcello Sorgi writes about how the release of an Italian journalist from Iranian detention is both a diplomatic and political triumph for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
[*Bodo, India, Nepal & Bengal]
✅ SIGN UP
This is our daily newsletter Worldcrunch Today, a rapid tour of the news of the day from the world's best journalism sources, regardless of language or geography.
It's easy (and free!) to sign up to receive it each day in your inbox: 👉 Sign up here
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was apparently detained on Thursday after joining protests in the capital city of Caracas against what is widely being seen as the illegitimate inauguration of incumbent President Nicholas Maduro. Giving Machado the moniker “Maria Courage,” daily La República in neighboring Peru wrote about her appearance at the protests after months spent in hiding since the July election. International monitors say that fellow opposition leader Edmundo González won the election, but Maduro has refused to step down since then, insisting that he won the vote. The details of Machado’s detainment remain somewhat unclear. But she released a video later saying that she was safe and urging her supporters to keep up the fight.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel confirms identity of hostage killed in Gaza. The Israeli military said on Friday that a hostage found killed in Gaza was Hamza Ziyadne, the son of another hostage, Youssef Ziyadne, found dead alongside him in an underground tunnel near the southern city of Rafah. The Hostages and Missing Family Forum renewed its call on the Israeli government to conclude a deal with Hamas and bring back the hostages, saying the father and son could have been saved through an earlier agreement. Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) in retaliation for its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
• Trump to be sentenced in hush money case. The U.S. president-elect is scheduled to be sentenced in New York on Friday for his criminal conviction stemming from what prosecutors called an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels. This comes after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Thursday a last-minute request by Trump to halt the case before his Jan. 20 inauguration. New York Justice Juan Merchan, however, has signaled he doesn’t plan to send Trump to jail or to fine him.
• Los Angeles wildfires death toll rises to 10. Four fires are still burning as officials warn more high winds and dry conditions could further fan the flames and complicate efforts next week. As many as 10,000 structures have been destroyed by the coastal Palisades Fire. Los Angeles police said they have detained a man suspected of trying to light a fire in the Woodland Hills area of the city but California fire chief David Acuna clarified that there’s currently no evidence that the wildfires were deliberately set.
• South Korea’s presidential security chief resigns. The country’s acting leader, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, accepted on Friday the resignation of Park Jong-joon amid an investigation into how his forces blocked law enforcement efforts to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol last week. The head of the Presidential Security Service said he wanted to avoid “physical clashes or bloodshed” as police are preparing to make a second attempt to detain Yoon over his short-lived declaration of martial law.
• 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5 °C global warming threshold. The EU’s Copernicus climate service said on Friday that the warmest year on record was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold, with global average temperatures around 1.6 °C above those of the pre-industrial period. This breaks the record set in 2023 by just over 0.1 °C. Read about how bodies could adapt to global warming’s rising temperatures in this article translated from French by Worldcrunch.
• TikTok to make final plea at U.S. Supreme Court against ban. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments over the fate of the popular social media platform on Friday, in the latest battle to determine whether to ban the app in the country. TikTok is challenging a law passed last year ordering the firm to be split from its Chinese-based owner ByteDance or be blocked from the U.S. by Jan. 19. The U.S. government has argued that the platform could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation. Read more in this piece by French analyst Pierre Haski: TikTok Ban: Welcome To The United States Of Chinaphobia.
• Tomb of renowned wizard-doctor discovered in Egypt. A French-Swiss archaeological team uncovered the tomb of “Tetinebefou,” a celebrated physician who served the pharaohs approximately 4,000 years ago, in Saqqara, a burial site for high-ranking officials of ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom. While the tomb is adorned with “stunning carvings and vibrant artwork,” it has been completely ransacked before its discovery and no human remains were found.
💬 LEXICON
Jabłko
When EU countries start their six month presidency of the EU Council, they get to pick a symbol for their term at the helm. For Poland, which started its presidency in the new year, the symbol is the “jabłko” (meaning apple), pointing the spotlight at Poland’s Grojec district, which grows apples protected under EU regulations because of their quality. Polish apples are internationally desired, with markets as far as India and the United Arab Emirates buying them in 2023. But when Russia banned fruit imports from Poland after starting the war in Ukraine, they became even more a point of national pride, with hashtags like #jedzjabłka (eat apples) going viral.
📹 ON THIS DAY VIDEO — 4 HISTORY-MAKING EVENTS, IN 57 SECONDS
➡️ Watch the video: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇸🇾 “Can you tell me how to find my son?” The demands have changed in the days following Syria’s liberation. The call, “release the detainees,” is no longer enough. It has turned into a cry demanding the truth.
— DARAJ
🗳️ Lebanon's parliament elected army chief Joseph Aoun as president, following extensive behind-the-scenes negotiations. This marks a beginning, not an end, for a nation left drained by Hezbollah’s war with Israel amid a region in turmoil.
— FRANCE INTER
⚖️The release of journalist Cecilia Sala from Iranian prison after 21 days is a triumph of diplomacy and urgency, orchestrated by Italy’s prime minister herself.— LA STAMPA
👓 WORLDCRUNCH MAGAZINE
Our weekly digital magazine is live — Check it out: full access for subscribers!
📣 VERBATIM
“People really need to get behind the AfD, otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany.”
— Tech billionaire Elon Musk reiterated on Thursday his support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, during a livestreamed conversation on X, the platform that Musk owns. In the conversation with Alice Weidel, one of the leaders of the AfD, the two said that Germany was being held back by excessive immigration and compared media coverage of the far-right party to Nazi censorship of Jewish voices in the 1930s. Many of the claims made during the conversation have been debunked, and watchdogs from the European Commission have said that Musk’s platform has violated the EU’s rules on protecting social media users from harm. For more about Weidel and Musk, check out a full article from Die Zeit on what the AfD leader could mean for Germany, translated from German by Worldcrunch.
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & Jacob Shropshire
Let us know what’s happening in your corner of the world!