👋 Bunâ!*
Welcome to Friday, where Israel’s security cabinet votes on a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, the president of France goes to Lebanon to meet with its new leaders and archaeologists find some notable new ruins in Pompeii. Meanwhile, Spanish magazine La Marea looks into the impact of Spain becoming an international mecca for fertility treatments.
[*Romanian]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“Who can stop him now?” asks German weekly magazine Stern less than a week before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is slated to return to the White House. Trump’s allies, namely X owner Elon Musk, have made open attempts to influence elections in Germany and elsewhere to promote far right parties that are politically aligned with the incoming president. “Donald Trump has more power than ever before,” the magazine writes, adding that, “His destructive madness is now sweeping the entire world.” Here’s a recent Die Zeit piece, translated by Worldcrunch, about Musk and far-right AFD party leader Alice Weidel.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel’s security cabinet voting on Gaza ceasefire deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that if all is finalized, the first hostages “are expected to be released as early as Sunday,” as the Israeli cabinet will meet to give final approval to the deal with Hamas. Meanwhile, at least 101 people have been killed in Gaza since the deal was announced, the Civil Emergency Service said on Friday, as Israeli warplanes kept up intense strikes. Read more about reactions to the ceasefire deal in this Worldcrunch roundup of the Arab press.
• French president visits Lebanon to show support to new leadership. Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beirut on Friday for meetings with Lebanon’s president, prime minister and speaker of parliament in a bid to help “consolidate Lebanon's sovereignty, ensure its prosperity and maintain its unity.” After two years of political vacuum, Joseph Aoun was elected president on Jan. 9 and chose Nawaf Salam as prime minister-designate, as the country attempts to recover from the devastating 14-month-long Israel-Hezbollah war. Read more in this piece by French analyst Pierre Haski: What A New President Means For Lebanon — After Two Years Without A Leader.
• Lawyers who represented Alexei Navalny jailed. Three lawyers who defended the late Russian opposition leader were given jail terms of up to five-and-a-half years on charges of taking part in an “extremist organisation” on Friday by a court in the town of Petushki. Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023 as Russian authorities intensified pressure on the jailed Kremlin critic, who died in a Russian prison camp under still-unexplained circumstances in February 2024. For more on the topic, here’s a Worldcrunch analysis published in the wake of Navalny’s death: Was Navalny Poisoned? Novichok's Creator Casts Doubt On The Current Storyline.
• Pakistan’s Imran Khan sentenced in corruption case. A Pakistani court sentenced on Friday the former prime minister to 14 years imprisonment and his wife Bushra Bibi to seven years in a land corruption case, marking the fourth major case in which Khan has been convicted. The verdicts coincide with ongoing negotiations between Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party and the current government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on several issues, including the former leader’s release.
• China to resume group tours to Taiwan. The country’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Friday it would restart group tours to the self-ruled island “in the near future,” in order to “further promote the normalization of cross-strait personnel exchanges.” There was no immediate reaction from Taiwan’s government. Tensions have been high between Taiwan and China, which sees the island as part of its own territory, with both maintaining restrictions on cross-strait travel.
• "Twin Peaks" director David Lynch dies at 78. The American filmmaker, writer and artist received three best director Oscar nominations throughout his career for his work on Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive. The cause of death hasn’t been clarified but Lynch had revealed in August last year he was battling emphysema, a chronic lung disease, from “many years of smoking.”
• NEWS QUIZ! What did archaeologists discover in a grand residence in Pompeii that they are describing as a “once-in-a-century” find?
A. a still operational pizza oven
B. a spa-like bathhouse
C. a fully stocked wine cellar
D. a trove of well preserved togas.
[Answer below]
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
1.39 million
China’s population fell by 1.39 million in 2024, from 1.409 billion in 2023 to 1.408 billion last year. The decrease marks the third consecutive year with more deaths than births, and it is widely seen as connected to the decades-long one-child policy that ended in 2015. The decrease in overall population fueled long term worries that the world’s largest manufacturing country could soon face a shortage of workers. Chinese officials, however, pointed to an increase in births and a decrease in deaths, even if the net result is still a decrease in overall population.
📹 ON THIS DAY VIDEO — 4 HISTORY-MAKING EVENTS, IN 57 SECONDS
➡️ Watch the video: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇵🇸 As Israel and Hamas reach a ceasefire deal, one major question is: who would lead Gaza in the post-war period? Among the most prominent names is Mohammed Dahlan, whose real ambition is to lead a united Palestinian state.
— DARAJ
🤰 Spain has become an international mecca for fertility treatments. But some are raising concerns over what they say is aggressive advertising, misinformation, obstacles to stopping egg freezing and procedures ending in unbearable debt.
— LA MAREA
🎨 Dafen has long been the world capital of oil painting copies. After years of reproducing masterpieces on an assembly line, these painters would now like to be considered true artists and make a living from their creations.
— LES ECHOS
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📣 VERBATIM
“TikTok is a Chinese Communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data [and] targets them with harmful and manipulative content.”
— The outgoing Biden administration says it won’t enforce a ban on TikTok which was set to go into effect Sunday after a federal law passed last year required the company to sell to non-Chinese owners. Democrats in the senate said that TikTok hadn’t had enough time to find an American buyer, but Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was highly critical of the app, pushing for it to be banned.
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & Jacob Shropshire
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Quiz Answer: B. a spa-like bathhouse.