First Thing: Israeli president labels Tehran ‘empire of evil’

Isaac Herzog also tells Davos that Gaza’s population is ‘entrenched in network of terror’. Plus, Greenland losing 30m tonnes of ice every hour

Good morning.

Israel’s president has told the Davos conference that there is an “empire of evil” emanating from Tehran, which must be faced by a very strong coalition, and that Gaza’s population is entrenched in a network of terror.

Billions of dollars, Isaac Herzog said, were being spent to destabilise the world, with Iran funding proxies all around the region to undermine any peace process.

Herzog began by telling Davos delegates that Israel’s world had been shattered on 7 October by the Hamas attacks. He cited the example ofKfir Bibas, who turns one in Hamas captivity today after he, his four-year-old brother Ariel and parents, Yarden and Shiri Bibas, were taken hostage.

Herzog said at Davos this morning that people who supported Hamas were supporting barbaric terror. He then spoke about the Hamas infrastructure Israel claims to have found in shops, living rooms, bedrooms and schools in Gaza. He said: “We care, we care, it is painful for us that our neighbours are suffering so much,” adding that they were entrenched in a network of terror, which Israel was determined to remove.

What else is happening in the Middle East? The US military has fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, marking the fourth time in a week that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen. Meanwhile, Pakistan has launched retaliatory strikes against militants in Iran in response to attacks by Tehran that targeted sites within Pakistan’s borders allegedly belonging to a Sunni separatist militant group.

Trump rages in court as E Jean Carroll testifies during defamation trial

E Jean Carroll took the witness stand yesterday in her defamation trial against Donald Trump, marking the first time she has confronted the ex-president in a courtroom. Carroll’s testimony so incensed Trump that he had numerous outbursts, prompting the judge to warn that he could be kicked out of court.

“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll testified. “He lied, and it shattered my reputation.”

When Carroll first took the stand, Trump could be seen whispering to his lead attorney, Alina Habba. He sat with slightly hunched shoulders as Carroll testified.

As Carroll spoke, Trump complained audibly and appeared to double down on defamatory denials, her lawyer said during a morning break in the proceedings.

What did her lawyer say? “Mr Trump has been sitting at the back table and has been loudly saying things throughout Ms Carroll’s testimony,” said the attorney Shawn Crowley. “It’s loud enough for us to hear it. [So] I imagine it’s loud enough for the jury to hear it.”

What was Trump saying? “He said it is a ‘witch-hunt’, it really is a con-job,” Crowley told the judge.

Ecuador prosecutor investigating gang attack on TV station shot and killed

The public prosecutor who was leading the investigation into the on-air assault on an Ecuadorian television station has been shot and killed in a brazen daylight attack in the crime-ridden city of Guayaquil.

César Suárez, who focused on cases involving organized trans-national crime in Guayas province – one of the country’s most violent areas – was ambushed in the north of the city on Wednesday afternoon.

“The criminals, the terrorists, will not hold back our commitment to Ecuadorian society,” the country’s attorney general, Diana Salazar, said in a video posted to social media. “We call on the forces of order to guarantee the security of those who are carrying out their duties.”

Her office was conducting a preliminary investigation at the site of the killing, Salazar said, expressing her grief for Suárez’s family but giving no further details about the crime.

What have the police said? In a statement, police said that the killing had the hallmarks of an assassination, adding that the victim had sustained a number of gunshot wounds, according to Reuters.

In other news …

Sheryl Sandberg is to step down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, nearly two years after quitting her executive role at the business. Sandberg was the lead architect of Facebook’s digital advertising-driven business model as Meta’s chief operating officer.

Russian forces launched nearly three dozen Iranian-designed attack drones at Ukraine overnight, and fired guided missiles at its second largest city of Kharkiv in the east, said Ukraine’s air force today. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s grain exports via the Black Sea have almost returned to prewar levels, it has been reported.

An American woman who pleaded guilty to helping kill her own mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during a luxury vacation in Bali has been sentenced to 26 years in prison. Heather Mack pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack with her then boyfriend to gain access to a $1.5m trust fund.

CNN’s new chief executive says the company needs to recapture the “swagger and innovation” of its early days – and that, he says, increasingly means embracing a future outside television. Mark Thompson, appointed CNN’s chief executive last fall, outlined a strategy to his staff yesterday.

Don’t miss this: Can ‘micro-acts of joy’ make you happier? I tried them for seven days

I come across the words “Big JOY” while idly scrolling on my phone one morning and it stops me in my tracks, writes Emma Beddington. Who’s considering even medium-sized joy, when the horror of world events unfolds around us hourly? But finding joy in hard times, personal or global, is precisely the point of Big JOY, a citizen science project based at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Anyone can take part – it requires a time commitment of just seven minutes a day for seven days. “Micro-acts of joy focus us on what is good about the life in front of us, and how we can make it better,” says Elissa Epel, a collaborator on the Big JOY project. “This is critical during these dark times; these are ways we bring in the light.”

… Or this: Guerrilla fighters turned craft brewers: Colombia’s unlikely beer company with a message of peace

Doris Suárez is one of the many former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which fought the Colombian government for decades, but since the 2016 peace deal have been trying to forge new paths in civilian lives. Stigma around fighters in the Marxist-Leninist rebel group has made reintegration hard but the Colombian government, determined to stop the country slipping back into guerrilla warfare, has made small pots of money available to support rehabilitation. Suarez and her ex-Farc colleagues set up a brewery called La Trocha in 2019 with the grant. Suárez says the brewery has given her a sense of purpose. “It’s what helps me to wake up every day.”

Climate check: Greenland losing 30m tonnes of ice an hour, study reveals

The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis, a study has revealed, which is 20% more than was previously thought. Some scientists are concerned that this additional source of freshwater pouring into the north Atlantic might mean a collapse of the ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is closer to being triggered, with severe consequences for humanity. Major ice loss from Greenland as a result of global heating has been recorded for decades.

Last Thing: ‘Good boy’ – dog saves Philadelphia neighborhood from potentially explosive gas leak

Some dogs earn the affectionate title of “good boy” for obeying their owners’ commands to sit or fetch. Others earn it by saving their neighborhoods from grappling with a potentially explosive gas leak days before Christmas. Philadelphia’s Kobe the husky belongs in the latter category, according to a viral Instagram video that has vaulted him to the status of internet hero.

Kobe’s owner, Chanell Bell, recounts in the video how she noticed her four-year-old dog kept digging in a hole that was in the concrete of her front yard. Bell said she thought to herself: “This is not like him.” She soon realised that Kobe had discovered a gas leak and workers who came to fix it said it could have blown up Bell’s whole house, making the importance of Kobe’s alertness crystal clear.

Sign up

First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com