The News

Georgia recorded seven prison homicides in 2018. In 2024, inmates killed 66 of their fellow prisoners—a nearly tenfold increase in six years. On January 12, 2026, a gang-affiliated fight at Washington State Prison left three more dead, with bloodied inmates breaching a visitation area while a single officer tried to maintain control.

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Suspected separatist fighters killed 15 civilians, including eight children, in an early-morning attack on a Mbororo herding community in Cameroon's Northwest Region on January 14, 2026. The massacre in Ndu subdivision targeted an ethnic group that separatists accuse of collaborating with government forces—a dynamic that has turned the nine-year Anglophone conflict into a multi-sided war where civilians are killed by all parties.

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For 50 years, states have held veto power over pipelines, dams, and power plants that cross their waterways. Now EPA wants to take it back. The agency proposed a rule on January 14, 2026, that would prevent states and tribes from blocking federally permitted energy projects based on anything beyond direct water pollution—eliminating the broader environmental reviews that have stopped projects like the Constitution Pipeline in New York.

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For three decades, the Pentagon told defense contractors to consolidate. Now it's paying $1 billion to help one spin off. The Defense Department announced it will take an equity stake in L3Harris's solid rocket motor business, which will become a separate publicly traded company later this year. It's the first time the Pentagon has directly invested in a defense supplier rather than simply buying its products.

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Iran's judiciary chief announced January 14 that detained protesters face fast-track trials and executions despite Trump's warning of "very strong action," as the death toll reached at least 2,571 according to Human Rights Activists News Agency—quadrupling in just two days and exceeding any crackdown since the 1979 revolution. Erfan Soltani, 26, became the first protester sentenced to death after a four-day proceeding without legal representation, though his execution was postponed amid international outcry. The U.S. began evacuating hundreds of troops from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar—home to 10,000 personnel and Central Command's forward headquarters—positioning them out of range should Trump's threatened strikes trigger Iranian missile retaliation.

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No FDA-approved treatment for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis has ever existed. For the 40,000 Americans with this rare kidney disease—which drives half of patients to kidney failure within a decade—the only options have been off-label immunosuppressants with mixed results. On January 13, 2026, that was supposed to change. Instead, the FDA extended its review of sparsentan by three months, requesting more data on clinical benefit.

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No sitting Federal Reserve Chair has ever faced a criminal investigation. On January 9, 2026, Jerome Powell became the first, when the DOJ served grand jury subpoenas over his congressional testimony about a $2.5 billion headquarters renovation. Gold immediately broke $4,600 per ounce, reaching an all-time high of $4,641 on January 14—up 73% in twelve months—as investors priced in the possibility that the world's most important central bank could lose its operational independence.

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The Gambia—population 2.5 million, no direct ties to Myanmar—is prosecuting one of history's most ambitious genocide cases. On January 12, 2026, the International Court of Justice opened three weeks of hearings on whether Myanmar's military deliberately tried to destroy the Rohingya people. The Gambia's legal team, led by Justice Minister Dawda Jallow and British barrister Philippe Sands, told judges 'the only reasonable conclusion is that a genocidal intent permeated Myanmar's state-led actions.' Myanmar called the allegations 'flawed and unfounded.' It's the first full genocide trial at the world court since Serbia was held accountable for Srebrenica in 2007.

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Gold hit $4,647.60 per ounce on January 14, 2026—more than double its price two years ago. The metal has now surged 64% in 2025 alone, its best annual performance since 1979, when inflation peaked at 13.5% and the Iranian Revolution upended oil markets.

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South Korea has not executed anyone in 28 years. Yet on January 13, 2026, prosecutors asked a Seoul court to sentence former President Yoon Suk Yeol to death. Yoon, who spent six chaotic hours under martial law on December 3, 2024, before lawmakers voted it down, is the first South Korean president to face execution since military strongman Chun Doo-hwan in 1996.

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SAMHSA distributed $7.5 billion annually to fight addiction and mental illness. In one year, the Trump administration has cut its workforce by more than half, terminated roughly $4 billion in grants, and folded the 33-year-old agency into a new bureaucratic structure. The latest round—up to $1.9 billion in grant terminations announced January 14—leaves street-level providers unable to continue overdose prevention, naloxone distribution, and peer recovery services.

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A Gaza force is being designed like it's real—but the December 16 Doha conference exposed how unreal it remains. U.S. Central Command convened more than 40 countries to game out command structure, basing, and rules of engagement for a proposed U.N.-authorized International Stabilization Force, but attendees failed to agree on the force's mandate or composition. Italy is the only country to have formally committed troops. Fifteen invited nations declined to attend, and Turkey was excluded at Israel's insistence—a sign that coalition-building is entangled with regional politics before a single soldier deploys.

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For decades, Western democracies debated whether to regulate social media platforms. The UK just stopped debating. After Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, generated an estimated one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute—posted directly to X—Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Parliament on January 14 that the platform is now 'acting to ensure full compliance with UK law.' X has removed over 600 accounts and censored 3,500 content items. The alternative: fines up to 10% of global revenue or a complete platform ban.

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The United States has not acquired sovereign territory since 1917, when it purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million. Now Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are meeting with Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers at the White House to discuss Trump's demand for Greenland—a self-governing Danish territory whose 57,000 residents have declared they do not want American rule.

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China posted a $1.2 trillion trade surplus for 2025—the largest any country has ever recorded. The number is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Indonesia, the world's 16th-largest economy. It comes after seven years of U.S. tariffs designed to shrink that very surplus.

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Venezuela's stock market has surged 130% in ten days. On January 3, U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro in a pre-dawn raid on Caracas—the first time American troops have seized a sitting head of state since Panama in 1989. Maduro now sits in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on narco-terrorism charges filed six years ago. His former vice president runs the country.

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No president has ever criminally investigated a sitting Federal Reserve chair. When Trump's Justice Department served Jerome Powell with grand jury subpoenas on January 11, two Republican senators announced they would block all Fed nominees until the probe ends. With a 13-11 GOP majority on the Banking Committee, even one defection creates a confirmation stalemate.

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AI image generators have been creating non-consensual intimate imagery since 2017. Until now, no government had blocked one. On January 10, 2026, Indonesia became the first country to shut off access to xAI's Grok after users discovered it would readily 'undress' photos of women and children—generating what analysts estimate at roughly one such image per minute. Malaysia followed with both a block and an announcement of legal action against X and xAI.

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For three months, the world's two largest economies operated under a fragile ceasefire. The Trump-Xi trade deal struck in South Korea last October reduced U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods from a peak of 145% to 47%, while China suspended its rare earth export controls. On January 12, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on all countries doing business with Iran—a measure that primarily targets China, which purchases over 90% of Iran's oil exports.

Updated 13 hours ago