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🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Helicopter crash near Kyiv kills Interior Minister: Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky died alongside his first deputy minister, his state secretary and other 15 people, including three children, in a helicopter crash in an eastern suburb of Kyiv. The cause of the crash is still being investigated.

• Philippines’ journalist Maria Ressa acquitted: Maria Ressa, a journalist in the Philippines who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, has been acquitted of tax evasion in a case she’d described as part of a pattern of harassment by former President Rodrigo Duterte to muzzle critical reporting. If convicted of the four tax evasion charges, she would have faced 34 years in jail.

• Brazil charges 39 people over riots: The office of Brazil’s prosecutor-general has presented its first charges against 39 of the several thousand people who stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in the October election. The defendants have been charged with armed criminal association, violent attempt to subvert the democratic state of law, staging a coup and damage to public property.

• Former EU member Pier Antonio Panzeri agrees to “tell all” about Qatargate: Former European Member of Parliament Pier Antonio Panzeri held in EU-Qatargate bribery probe has agreed to reveal how the network operated, what the financial arrangements were with the countries concerned, and "the involvement of known and unknown persons” within the investigation. The plea deal, which reduced his sentence to a year in jail and the confiscation of €1m in assets was released a day after an Italian court agreed to extradite the his daughter, Silvia Panzeri, 38, on suspicion of involvement in the scandal.

• UN’s Guterres slams Big Oil for ignoring their own climate science: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres used his speech at the Davos summit to condemn the world’s energy giants for having “peddled the big lie,” about the role of fossil fuels in global warming. “Like the tobacco industry, those responsible must be held to account,” he said.

• Kazakhstan ends unlimited stay for Russians: Kazakhstan will no longer allow Russian citizens to stay in the Central Asian country indefinitely by doing so-called visa runs every three months, according to a government directive published this week. Tens of thousands of Russians, mostly young and middle-aged men, relocated to Kazakhstan last year as Moscow launched its first conscription campaign since World War II.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

Lima-based daily Peru21 reports on the ongoing protests calling for the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, writing that “Lima is at stake” on its front page. In recent weeks, brutal repression by public security forces killed at least 50 protesters and injured an estimated 450 people, while hundreds have been arrested. According to a poll by IEP, 71% of Peruvians disapprove of the Boluarte regime.

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

$2.6 million

Saudi real estate mogul Mushref al-Ghamdi paid 10 million riyals ($2.6 million) to see soccer greats Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi face off during a friendly game in Riyadh. The match will pit Messi’s Paris Saint-Germain against a team of players from Ronaldo’s new club Al Nassr and roval Saudi club Al Hilal. The proceeds of the auction will go to a national charity campaign in Saudi Arabia.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

End-of-regime vibe? Supreme Leader keeps referring to Shah's final days

In recent weeks, Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, has made repeated references to the end of Iran's last regime in 1979. It may be a sign the country is indeed approaching another kind of revolution, reports Persian-language media Kayhan-London.

✊ Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered his forces to clamp down with renewed vigor on the remains of the mass protests that erupted across Iran in mid-September. Initially a reaction to police brutality, these turned into the biggest anti-state protests of the Islamic Republic's 40-year history. And they continue, in spite of thousands of arrests, more than 500 deaths on the streets and in custody, and four hangings.

🇮🇷 Khamenei makes frequent references to the monarchy that preceded this regime and Iran's last two monarchs, Reza and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It is difficult to know whether it is because he believes he has learned the lessons of history, or to fire up images of the 1979 revolution in the minds of younger agents, militiamen and policemen who hear his speeches.

⚠️ Khamenei insists that what Iranians needed today was a "campaign of clarification" to understand that the Islamic Republic is good for them. If he is indeed comparing his predicament with that of the Shah in late 1978, he may even have contemplated unleashing an "Assad-style" massacre — which the Shah refused, preferring to leave instead. He once warned officers that the Shah was betrayed by his air force. Is he fearful of a coup or personal betrayal by military elements?

📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO

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📣 VERBATIM

“I think he's a little off his rocker, on a personal level.”

— A pre-trial questionnaire designed to select jurors for the civil lawsuit against Elon Musk, which opened yesterday in San Francisco, gathered public opinions of the billionaire entrepreneur. Prospective jurors deemed the billionaire "smart, successful" but also "off his rocker". Musk is being sued by Tesla shareholders who accuse him of manipulating the company’s share price.