Category World News

A 30-day order was issued on Sunday by President Bernardo Arevalo that restricted civil liberties and made it illegal for security personnel to question or arrest people without getting permission from the court. The legislature of Guatemala still needs to approve the emergency order, but it comes into effect right away.

“These murders were committed with the intention of terrorizing the security forces and the populace,” according to the statement. But they’ll fail, Arevalo declared in a speech delivered across the country.

Following the attacks, the president declared three days of state mourning and said all hostages had been freed.

The gang leaders, including Aldo Duppie, the imprisoned leader of Guatemala’s Barrio 18, were enraged on Saturday when the administrators decided to impose restrictions on their privileges.

Barrio 18 and its rival Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), both of which were referred to as “foreign terrorist organizations” by the administration of US President Donald Trump in September, was followed by the Congress of Guatemala one month later.

On Saturday, gang-affiliated inmates held 46 prison guards and staff hostage in three prisons in and around Guatemala City, including Duppie, who is better known by his moniker El Lobo or The Wolf, in a maximum-security facility known as El Lobo or The Wolf.

Police and the military conducted a lightning strike at El Lobo’s prison early on Sunday morning, followed by subsequent raids on two more prisons the same day. The Barrio 18 leader was spotted posing with security personnel and sporting a bloody shirt.

Retaliatory attacks on police officers broke out shortly after the raids, according to authorities, killing at least seven and injuring ten. Eight police officers and one suspected gang member were among the deaths reported in some media reports.

Prior to this week’s release, Interior Minister Marco Antonio Villeda had previously attributed the police officers’ deaths to gang reprisals “in response to the actions the Guatemalan state is taking against them.”

According to Defense Minister Henry Saenz, the army will “remain on the streets” of Guatemala to continue its crackdown on gang members.

Blanche told Fox News on Sunday night that the Justice Department’s civil rights unit would not rebuff requests to look into the shooting death of Minneapolis resident and mother Good, 37, earlier this month.

“We don’t just go out and look every time an officer is compelled to defend himself against someone,” Blanche said. When necessary, we take action.

“No, we are not looking into,” we replied. And we will do so if there is a need, Blanche continued.

Since Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot behind the wheel of her car on January 7 while protesting against ICE officer Jonathan Ross, there have been increasingly heated exchanges between residents and federal officers in Minneapolis.

Blanche added that the death of Good has already been “reviewed by millions and millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones at the time of its tragic death.”

However, according to analysis conducted by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and APM Reports, questions remain regarding the shooting, including why it allegedly took more than ten minutes after Good was shot before she was administered CPR.

According to the MPR and APM reports, ICE agents “turned away a man identifying himself as a doctor who offered to help” and left Good “bleeding and alone in the car for almost three minutes.”

According to the president’s administration, Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good four times, was acting in self-defense.

ICE officers have “absolute immunity” for their immigration enforcement actions, according to top Trump figures, including Vice President JD Vance and White House adviser Stephen Miller.

Good’s family’s attorneys announced last week that they had launched their own “civil investigation” into her death.

Lawyer Antonio Romanucci said in a statement that “people in Minneapolis and across this country truly, truly care about what happened on January 7, 2026, and are committed to understanding how she could have died on the street after dropping her child off at school.

Top Minnesota Democrats under investigation

Additionally, Blanche separately confirmed reports that the DOJ is looking into former vice presidential candidate Jacob Frey and governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, alleging that the two Democratic leaders were “encouraging criminals to go out on the street and impede ICE.”

The Trump administration’s first official confirmation of Walz and Frey’s status has been through Blanche’s comments.

No matter who you are, whether you’re a governor, mayor, or someone assaulting ice on the streets, you can’t, under federal law, impede a federal officer from carrying out their duties, Blanche said.

Frey said he would “not be intimidated” in response to earlier media reports that the DOJ had begun its investigation.

In a post on X, Frey wrote, “This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me because I support Minneapolis, local law enforcement, and residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our city.”

Walz, on the other hand, indirectly responded to the reports, saying in a statement that “weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic.”

BREAKINGBREAKING,

According to official statistics, China’s economy increased by 5% in 2025, one of the country’s worst economic growth rates in a long time.

According to data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Monday, the second-largest economy in the world increased by 4.5 percent in the quarter that ended in December.

On Monday, January 19, 2018, this is how things are going.

Fighting

• In the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, Governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram on Sunday that three people were killed by Russian attacks, including a 20-year-old woman, and 11 others were injured.
• As Russian forces launched attacks using drones, air strikes, and shelling in the Kherson region of Ukraine, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on Telegram on Sunday that two people had died and one had been hurt.
• According to local officials, five people were hurt in Sumy and six were hurt in the Russian attacks on Dnipropetrovsk, according to the Kyiv Independent.
• According to Moscow-installed Governor Yevgeny Balitsky, a drone strike on the border village of Nechaivka in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia region claimed one fatality and one injured.
• In the Belgorod region of Russia, a woman was killed and a man was hurt in a Ukrainian attack, according to the regional task force’s Telegram report.
• According to Russian TASS state news agency, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that it shot down 140 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period.

Energy crisis

• According to Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, “crucial repair works” have begun on a “essential backup line” connecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine to the grid, “under another IAEA-brokered ceasefire.”
• Grossi stated on X that “an IAEA team is monitoring the progress while a Ukrainian team is doing the repairs.”
• Homes in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine were left without electricity as a result of Russian shelling, according to the regional electricity distribution company’s statement on Telegram.
• After a Ukrainian drone strike on Saturday, more than 200 000 people in the Russian-occupied region of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region were left without electricity, according to Balitsky on Telegram.

diplomacy and politics

• Rustem Umerov, the chief Ukrainian negotiator, stated that in addition to “deliberate” discussions about security guarantees for Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian representatives had met in Miami, Florida, over the weekend, with an emphasis on “practical mechanisms for their implementation.”
• According to Umerov, the US negotiators who were present included Josh Gruenbaum, White House staffer Josh Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Stephen Witkoff.
• As Trump continues to threaten the self-governing Danish territory and NATO member, Kremlin investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev hailed US President Donald Trump’s imposing 10% tariffs on European nations for sending troops to defend Greenland. In a stream of posts, Dmitriev specifically criticized European leaders, including EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, before adding that “Transatlantic unity is over”.
• In her own post on X, Kallas claimed that Russia and China “are the ones who benefit from divisions among Allies.” She added that it was crucial to keep our main objective from helping Russia end its war with Ukraine in mind.
• In an interview with the La Vanguardia newspaper on Sunday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez claimed that a US invasion of Greenland “would make]Russian President Vladimir Putin the happiest man on earth” because it “legitimizes his attempted invasion of Ukraine.”