DRC

• A spokesman for DRC's government in Kinshasa insisted that Goma "did not completely fall" to M23 rebels yet, despite the rebels' claims that they captured the city on Sunday and now control it.
• DRC says Rwanda is reinforcing the M23 with fresh troops crossing the border into Goma, and called Rwanda's direct involvement a "declaration of war."
• Kenya's Pres. Ruto called for urgent peace talks between DRC and Rwanda, but that seems too little, too late. Absent the international condemnation it faced the last time its proxies captured Goma in 2012, Rwanda will be happy to keep its prize - and its share of the mineral riches that pass through it.

• Pres. Maduro announced parliamentary and regional elections for April 27.
• Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado urged supporters to boycott the vote: Maduro showed his disregard for the will of the people when he stole the presidential election, so why bother casting votes that won't be counted again?
• That said, some opposition parties have filed paperwork with the electoral authorities for new elections, suggesting that some of the opposition may participate in the April poll despite Machado's call for a boycott. That would be bad news for the unity Machado managed to build.

• Following a meeting of EU foreign ministers, top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas said the EU had "reached the political agreement to begin easing sanctions on Syria" in order to "give a boost to the Syrian economy and help the country get back on its feet."
• However, Kallas added that the EU was still wary of how Syria's new leaders will govern the country, and would remain "ready to reverse course" and re-impose sanctions if Ahmed al Sharaa and his fellow rebels-cum-dignitaries backtrack on promises to govern fairly and uphold rights.

• India and China agreed to resume direct flights after a five-year hiatus that started with a deadly border skirmish. The rival neighbors have been cautiously restoring normal ties in recent months - and Prime Minister Modi met Pres. Xi for the first time in October - but both remain suspicious of the other's intent.

• In what famed investor Marc Andreessen called AI's "Sputnik moment," China's DeepSeek confirmed it was able to match the performance of cutting-edge Western chatbots by training its large language model with fewer, cheaper chips [export controls bar Chinese firms from buying the most advanced Western chips].
• For comparison, DeepSeek says it spent just $5.6 million training its model with 2,000 inferior chips, while Meta spent tens of millions training its model with 16,000 top-line chips.
• DeepSeek actually announced the success of its "reasoning" model a week ago - The Economist wrote an op-ed about it last week (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/01/23/chinese-ai-is-catching-up-posing-a-dilemma-for-donald-trump) - but investors didn't process what that success meant for the industry until yesterday, when they panic-sold shares in chipmakers like Nvidia and ASML.
• The good news for U.S. AI firms is that DeepSeek's model is open-source - unlike the proprietary technology driving dominant Western models - so companies like Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft should be able to incorporate the efficiencies DeepSeek discovered into their own models.

• Another subsea fiber-optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, and Latvia's prime minister blamed an "external influence" - i.e., another deliberately dragged anchor, perhaps. Swedish officials seized a vessel in connection with the incident, which it suspects was "a serious act of sabotage."