10 things you need to know today: January 16, 2023

Biden honors MLK during service at Atlanta church.

(Image credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Jump to category:

1. House GOP seeks Biden visitor logs in classified documents inquiry
2. Biden praises MLK at historic Atlanta church
3. Hope fades as death toll rises at Ukraine apartment building hit by Russian missile
4. Thousands protest Netanyahu's judicial overhaul in Israel
5. NYC Mayor Eric Adams visits U.S.-Mexico border
6. Italian police arrest Mafia boss
7. Oxfam calls for windfall profit taxes on food companies
8. U.S. military starts new training program in Germany for Ukrainian troops
9. WSJ: Economists still predict 2023 recession despite slowing inflation rate
10. Georgia football player, recruiting staffer die in wreck after title celebration

published 16 January 2023

1. House GOP seeks Biden visitor logs in classified documents inquiry

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the White House on Sunday demanding visitor logs for President Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, residence, where Biden aides found classified documents from his time as former President Barack Obama's vice president. "Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents," Comer said in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Comer said his committee wasn't asking for visitor logs from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where FBI agents have seized more than 100 classified documents, because Democrats have been looking into Trump for years.

President Biden on Sunday paid tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a service at the historic Atlanta church the slain civil rights leader once led. Speaking ahead of Monday's national holiday honoring King, Biden called on Americans to follow the minister's example to help "redeem the soul" of a nation plagued by diminishing faith in its institutions. "The battle for the soul of this nation is perennial. ... It's a constant struggle between hope and fear, kindness and cruelty, justice and injustice, against those who traffic in racism, extremism, and insurrection," Biden said at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He was invited to speak by Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), who has been senior pastor at the church since 2005.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Search crews on Sunday made a frantic attempt to reach survivors in the debris of an apartment building blasted by a Russian missile strike in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Some people were believed to still be trapped under the rubble, but Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov told Reuters: "The chances of saving people now are minimal." The death toll from the attack rose to 30, making it the deadliest attack in a single location since a September assault in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. More than 30 survivors remained hospitalized, 12 of them in serious condition. Authorities said about 1,700 people lived in the multi-story building.

An estimated 80,000 people protested in Tel Aviv against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned judicial overhaul, which critics say will weaken Israel's Supreme Court by limiting its authority to review and strike down laws, Axios reported Sunday. The controversy has intensified political division less than two weeks after Netanyahu returned to office leading a right-wing government. Several thousand people also gathered in front of Israeli President Isaac Herzog's residence in Jerusalem. Herzog, who has faced criticism for not publicly opposing the government's proposed legal and judicial reforms, said he was focusing on preventing a "historic constitutional crisis." Netanyahu said he would move ahead with the reforms despite the protests.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams visited the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday to call attention to a surge of migrants seeking to enter the United States and increase pressure on President Biden to help New York City manage its own wave of incoming arrivals. Adams, a Democrat, told cheering migrants outside a church that he would push for them to be authorized to work in the U.S. so they could "experience the American dream." Some migrants in the crowd asked Adams to take them back to New York City. "I heard that they can help me in New York more than elsewhere. I heard the shelters are great there," Venezuelan native Kailey Marquez said outside a church shelter Adams visited.

Italian authorities on Monday arrested Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro at a private clinic in Sicily. Denaro, Italy's most wanted fugitive, had been on the run for 30 years, The Washington Post reported. The arrest marked a "landmark moment" in Italy's decades-long fight against organized crime, the Post said. "A great victory for the state," Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement. Denaro has been on Italy's most wanted list for three decades. He has been convicted in absentia for dozens of murders and faces multiple life sentences. Denaro is allegedly the leader of the Cosa Nostra crime syndicate. Pasquale Angelosanto, commander of Italy's Carabinieri police, said officers captured Denaro as he sought treatment for an unspecified illness at a Palermo clinic.

Anti-poverty organization Oxfam International on Monday called for windfall taxes on food companies that have made large profits as high inflation drives up prices for food and other basic necessities. Oxfam noted in a report released to coincide with the start of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that the richest people in the world have gotten richer as several simultaneous crises, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, have caused widespread suffering. The group said that the world's richest 1 percent gained nearly twice as much wealth over the last two years as the remaining 99 percent combined.

The U.S. military launched new, expanded combat training for Ukrainian soldiers in Germany on Sunday. The goal of the so-called combined arms training is to get a battalion of about 500 troops back to Ukraine to fight invading Russian forces within eight weeks, said U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Ukrainians will receive instructions on improving complex movement and coordination of battlefield units, including artillery, armored vehicles, and ground troops. Milley said the training and new weapons, including artillery, tanks, and other vehicles, will help Ukrainian forces win back territory occupied by Russian forces. "This support is really important for Ukraine to be able to defend itself," Milley said, according to The Associated Press.

Most economists still predict that the Federal Reserve's aggressive inflation-fighting interest rate hikes will tip the economy into a recession in the next 12 months, The Wall Street Journal said Sunday in its latest quarterly survey. Business and academic economists surveyed by the Journal on average assessed the probability of a downturn at 61 percent, only slightly below the 63 percent registered in the last survey in October, despite recent data indicating that inflation is starting to slow. The Fed has said it hopes to engineer a "soft landing," in which it cools economic growth without sparking a recession, but three-quarters of the Journal's respondents said the central bank would not be able to pull it off this year.

Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willock and a member of the university football program's recruiting staff, Chandler LeCroy, died Sunday in a one-car wreck south of the school's Athens, Georgia, campus. Willock, 20, died at the scene, and LeCroy was pronounced dead at a hospital. Two other members of the football program, player Warren McClendon and recruiting staffer Tory Bowles, were injured when the Ford Expedition driven by LeCroy, 24, went off the road and hit trees and two power police. The accident occurred hours after a parade and ceremony celebrating the Bulldogs' second straight national championship. Georgia beat Texas Christian University 65-7 in the championship game.

Explore More

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.