Israeli officials tell me they have asked the Trump administration to amend a law that would essentially end aid for the Palestinian Authority's security forces, who have a cooperation program with Israel that many believe has provided stability to the West Bank.
Why it matters: The law is slated to go into effect Feb. 1, and with the government shutdown continuing with no immediate end in sight, a legislative fix is not expected to be enacted in time.
This will be a perilous year for the Iran nuclear deal and for smoldering U.S.-Iran tensions, according to a report tied to the third anniversary of the deal's implementation.
The big picture: The authors of the International Crisis Group (ICG) report argue that Iran — which is still complying with the deal even though President Trump abandoned it — is unlikely to simply walk away from the pact.But it will seek to inflict pain on the U.S. as sanctions continue to bite, likely through military means. The potential sources of escalation are many, and the risks are far more acute this year than last.
Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a high-profile visit Thursday to Serbia, Moscow's closest ally in the Balkans. Serbia's leadership has long touted cooperation with Russia, but the alliance has frayed as Belgrade has come to see it as the main obstacle on the way to EU membership.
Why it matters: The EU insists that Serbia must peacefully resolve its longstanding differences with Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, before it can join. Serbia has indicated that it’s ready to do so in exchange for an accession deal, but Russia, eager to keep Serbia from joining the EU, is trying to leverage strongly pro-Russian popular sentiment to gum up, and perhaps ruin, the fledgling compromise.
James Dyson, a vocal Brexiteer, will move the headquarters of his vacuum cleaner company, Dyson, from the U.K. to Singapore as the company thinks about "future-proofing" the business, The Guardian reports.
Between the lines: Dyson CEO Jim Rowan said the move has "nothing to do with Brexit," as the company has already moved most of its production to Singapore. But many companies are leaving the U.K. because of Brexit. Airbus announced it might be leaving Britain, and BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup are redirecting thousands of employees to continental Europe.
China's year-end economic data dump presented an ambiguous picture of the world's second-largest economy that analysts chose to paint in various ways by cherry picking data points.
The big picture: When taken as a whole, the data reflects an economy that could be slowing or could be slowly turning from one driven by high-flying export growth to one sustained by a consumer-focused, service sector that Chinese government officials have declared they want.
It's easy to lose sight of what truly matters in this Russia investigation. And, to be fair, only Robert Mueller truly knows. But lost in the buzz around the BuzzFeed story was a bombshell floated by Trump’s own lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
What he said: In remarks he yesterday tried to walk back as "hypothetical," Giuliani admitted that Trump's team may have been working on — and updating him on — a potential Trump Tower in Moscow all the way up to Election Day.
