U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States will designate Yemen’s Houthi rebels (AP) as a foreign terrorist organization and add three of the group’s leaders to a list of global terrorists. The move could take effect one day before President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Aid groups and foreign diplomats warned that the designation could worsen Yemen’s humanitarian crisis (WaPo) and complicate UN-brokered peace talks between the Iran-backed Houthis and the internationally recognized government, which have been at war for nearly six years. Many of the country’s citizens need aid (Reuters) that nongovernmental organizations fear will become harder to deliver because of the U.S. sanctions.

Democrats in the House of Representatives will vote today on whether to call on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and declare President Trump unfit for office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they will move forward with impeaching Trump (WaPo) if he is not removed. The Democrats accuse Trump of inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week. Meanwhile, social media companies, including Twitter, have banned Trump’s accounts (Axios) and pro-Trump accounts that have promoted violence and conspiracies.

Authorities determined the location of black boxes (Straits Times) from a plane carrying sixty-two passengers that crashed in the Java Sea on Saturday. They also recovered debris and human remains from the crash. There have been no signs of survivors, and it is unclear what caused the incident.

Taiwan: The U.S. State Department lifted decades-old restrictions (SCMP) on interactions with Taiwanese officials, a move Chinese officials condemned. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, plans to visit Taiwan this week.

This CFR Backgrounder explains the China-Taiwan relationship.

Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission announced that Sadyr Japarov won nearly 80 percent of votes (RFE/RL) cast in the presidential election yesterday. Voters also overwhelmingly supported a proposal to redistribute political power to the president and away from parliament. Last year, protesters freed Japarov, who was serving a sentence for kidnapping, from prison amid unrest over a disputed parliamentary election.

Pakistan: Power has been restored in much of the country after a technical fault in the power generation and distribution system caused a major outage (AP).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that a Defense Ministry panel will approve plans to construct some eight hundred homes (Times of Israel) for Jewish settlers in the Israel-occupied West Bank.

This CFR Backgrounder unpacks U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Talks broke down (Al Jazeera) over the weekend between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over a dam Ethiopia is constructing on the Blue Nile river. Egypt and Ethiopia blamed Sudan for the latest impasse in the long-running dispute.

DRC: At least six rangers were killed (AFP) yesterday in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, which is home to about one-quarter of the world’s endangered mountain gorillas. Officials blamed the attack on local militias. 

The United Kingdom is rushing to vaccinate (Reuters) its population, aiming to offer first doses to about fifteen million people by the middle of February, as more than three million people have tested positive for COVID-19 and a more infectious variant of the virus spreads. The government’s chief medical advisor warned that the next few weeks will be “the worst weeks of this pandemic.”
 
This CFR In Brief looks at the new COVID-19 strains.
 
Spain: Authorities are racing to clear snow from roads (El Pais) to transport food, supplies, and COVID-19 vaccines after heavy snowfall blanketed Madrid and other regions.

A filing made by New York federal prosecutors in the case of a Honduran drug trafficker alleged that President Juan Orlando Hernandez received millions of dollars (WSJ) to help export tons of cocaine to the United States. The Honduran government denied the allegations.

Argentina: Criminal charges against women accused of having abortions will be dropped (Guardian), lawmakers announced. The country’s legislature passed a bill to legalize abortion in December.