Morning Report

TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL story

Iran’s government rocked by protests

What happened
Protests sparked by the collapse of Iran’s currency have spread to 26 of the country’s 31 provinces, and the death toll has reached at least 19, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported today. The protests have “convulsed Iran for a week,” The New York Times said, and while not yet as large as the “last two major uprisings — one in 2022 led by women and another in 2019 set off by gasoline prices — they have rattled senior officials.”

Who said what
The protests “began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading” and becoming increasingly political, The Associated Press said. And the demonstrations “do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said ‘rioters must be put in their place.’” President Masoud Pezeshkian took a more conciliatory tone than Khamenei (pictured above), saying that “we must listen to the people” and any “unjust” policy is “doomed to fail.”

Iran’s theocratic government is facing “growing domestic unrest combined with an external military threat,” the Times said, and it “appears at a dead end in addressing both.” President Donald Trump said Friday that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready” to “come to their rescue.” He reiterated his warning last night. Trump’s threat “has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran,” the AP said.

What next?
Iran’s protests “could still spread and turn more violent,” the Times said, and officials “appear to have few tools at their disposal to deal with either the pressing challenges of a tanking economy” or the “threat of further conflict with Israel and the United States.”

TODAY’S CULTURE Story

‘One Battle After Another’ wins Critics Choice honors

What happened
“One Battle After Another” won best picture at the 31st Critics Choice Awards yesterday, becoming only the fourth film to win the “Big Four” critics’ awards, after earning top honors from the New York Film Critics Circle, National Board of Review and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Director Paul Thomas Anderson (pictured above) also won best director and best adapted screenplay awards for the film. Timothée Chalamet won best actor for “Marty Supreme” and Jessie Buckley was awarded best actress for “Hamnet.”

Who said what
The Critics Choice Awards, “presented by a group of more than 500 broadcast critics and journalists in Santa Monica, Calif., usually follow the Golden Globes and often rubber-stamp the same set of winners,” The New York Times says. But with the Golden Globes going second this year, “pundits were curious to see which direction the Critics Choice voters would take.”

Each of the early pre-Oscars awards “has its own identity, influence and taste profile,” Variety said, but the Critics Choice Awards “tend to reflect broader industry consensus,” and they boosted “Anora” to its triumph at last year’s Academy Awards. “This is the best time I ever had making a movie, and I feel like it shows,” Anderson said at last night’s ceremony.

What next?
Of the three other movies to sweep all four early critics’ awards — “Schindler’s List” (1993), “L.A. Confidential” (1997) and “The Social Network” (2010) — only “Schindler’s List” went on to win the Oscar for best picture. The Golden Globes are on Sunday

It’s not all bad

Becky and Lynn Miner purchased 100 acres of mismanaged forest in Chewelah, Washington, in 1992 and have since planted 11,000 ponderosa pines and western larch trees and installed 700 nest boxes, attracting 80 species of birds. They are donating what’s now a healthy tree farm to Washington State University Extension Forestry for teaching forest management. It’s a “really special gift,” WSU forester Andy Perleberg told Spokane Public Radio.

Under the radar

The mysterious origin of a lemon-shaped exoplanet

Scientists have unearthed a new exoplanet, PSR J2322-2650b, through NASA’s James Webb telescope. Its properties are in “stark contrast to every known exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star,” said a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “How the planet came to be is a mystery,” NASA said in a press release.

The exoplanet is about the mass of Jupiter and is “known to orbit a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star,” said NASA. This star is “completely bizarre — the mass of the sun, but the size of a city,” said Michael Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study.

PSR J2322-2650b is extraordinarily close to its star at just 1 million miles away, compared to the Earth’s distance from the sun, which is about 100 million miles. As PSR J2322-2650b is “big enough and close enough to its pulsar host,” the star’s gravity is “pulling the planet into a lemon shape,” said Scientific American.

What has interested scientists most is the planet’s atmosphere, which “nobody has ever seen before,” said Zhang. “Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet, like water, methane and carbon dioxide, we saw molecular carbon, specifically C3 and C2.”

All these cosmic anomalies raise questions as to how PSR J2322-2650b formed in the first place. While designated as an exoplanet, some theorize that the planet is the “stripped remains of a former star” because of its strange composition, said Scientific American.

On this day

January 5, 1925

Nellie Tayloe Ross was sworn in as the governor of Wyoming, becoming the first woman to lead a U.S. state. Serving for two years, she is Wyoming’s only woman governor and one of 51 women who have governed a U.S. state, including 12 currently serving.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘The oil is ours’

“U.S. raid leaves Venezuela in confusion,” The Wall Street Journal says on Monday’s front page. “Implications of Maduro raid grow,” USA Today says. “After Maduro, a common refrain: The oil is ours,” says the Los Angeles Times. Trump’s “gamble on Chavismo” could “stabilize Venezuela,” the Miami Herald says. “America enters a risky new era of control,” but “is there a way for lawmakers to push back? Is there a will?” The New York Times says. “Protesters decry U.S. military strike,” says the Austin American-Statesman. “House win a possibility for Democrats, a wave less likely,” The Washington Post says. “‘Affordability’ is the political buzzword of 2026,” says The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

UBDENIED

Illinois rejected 550 of last year’s 56,000 applications for vanity plates, including one for “IBPOOPN,” Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias revealed in a YouTube video. The plates were thrown out for being “inflammatory, profane, offensive or too difficult to read,” Giannoulias explained. Other rejects include “BLUBALN,” “PRIUSSY” and “BBL,” a term that “apparently stands for ‘Brazilian butt lift,’” he said, “which had to be explained to me.”

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.