World roundup: January 23 2026
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, and elsewhere
TODAY IN HISTORY
January 23, 1368: Chinese rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang is crowned Hongwu Emperor. Zhu, also known as the Emperor Taizu, emerged as the leading figure in the multi-factional Red Turban Rebellions against the Yuan Dynasty that began in the 1350s. His coronation marks the start of the Ming Dynasty, which ruled China until the mid-17th century.
January 23, 1963: Fighters from the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) attack Portuguese forces in the Tite region, kicking off the almost 12 year Guinea-Bissau War of Independence. Badly outgunned, PAIGC fighters were able to use the terrain to their advantage and armed themselves with weapons taken from defeated colonial soldiers. They won the war simply by outlasting the Portuguese, and when the National Salvation Junta came to power in Lisbon after the 1974 Carnation Revolution it began negotiations with PAIGC that ultimately led to Guinea-Bissau’s independence in September of that year. PAIGC also negotiated the independence of Cape Verde from Portugal the following year.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Government security forces have assumed control of a prison in Syria’s Raqqa province where the Syrian Democratic Forces group was holding Islamic State prisoners. This is one of several SDF-run prisons that the Syrian government will now find itself managing under the ceasefire that is now tenuously in place in northeastern Syria, and as Al Jazeera suggests these facilities may pose a dilemma for Damascus. On the one hand, Syrian authorities are going to be under pressure from the US and other Western governments to ensure that the prisoners at those sites remain in custody (at least until they can be transferred to Iraq, if that’s the plan). On the other hand, they’re already getting petitioned by relatives of some of those prisoners to release them. They’re arguing that in addition to the actual IS fighters the SDF locked up, the group also imprisoned many people “unjustly” during its administration of the region.
