 The United Arab Emirates (UAE) intercepted two ballistic missiles over Abu Dhabi this morning. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack. More: - The UAE has been part of a Saudi-led coalition fighting against the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen since 2015.
- On Jan. 17, a Houthi drone and missile attack struck a fuel storage facility and construction site near Abu Dhabi, killing three people.
- These two attacks mark the first time that Houthi rebels target sites within the UAE.
- A Houthi spokesperson said his group would continue to target the UAE "as long as attacks on the Yemeni people continue."
- Analysts say growing instability in the region may affect oil prices.
- A senior director from the Dubai-based bank Emirates NBD said "markets will likely add a political risk premium to oil prices in the near term."
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Roch Kabore, the President of Burkina Faso, has reportedly been detained by mutinying soldiers following gunfire near his home on Sunday night. The apparent kidnapping comes after the military complained that it has been fighting a creeping Islamic insurgency for months with limited resources and support from the government. More: - Several bullet-riddled armored vehicles were found near Kabore's residence after gunfire was heard last night.
- While the alleged attack took place, protestors ransacked the headquarters of Kabore's ruling party.
- The government of Burkina Faso denied that a military coup had taken place, but it has instituted a curfew and closed schools for two weeks.
- The French embassy warned French people in the country to avoid being outdoors at night, describing the political situation in the former French colony as "quite confusing."
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 A message from MODERN TREASURY Why you need to care more about payment operations. If your business moves money, you have payment operations. Payment operations include processes to initiate, approve, track, and reconcile payments. Just like the money they manage, payment operations are critical to a functioning business. In fact, survey data show that 86% of finance leaders view upgrading their payment operations as a priority. To better understand the current state of payment operations, Modern Treasury partnered with the Harris Poll to survey 300 leaders and uncover their top payment operations problems and priorities. In our first-ever report on payment operations, we reveal: - The costliest payment-related challenges companies face
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 More than 2 million people in Beijing's Fengtai district are being tested for COVID-19. The mass testing comes after most of the ~40 COVID-19 cases reported in Beijing since Jan. 15 were detected in the district, and is part of efforts to contain the virus ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which are set to start on Feb. 4. More: - Overall, China recorded 56 new confirmed cases in the 24 hours through Saturday but despite the low number, the country continues to follow a "zero tolerance" policy toward COVID-19.
- This policy typically includes lockdowns, travel restrictions, and mass testing.
- Residents in high-risk areas are not allowed to leave Beijing after cases detected in nearby provinces were linked to the capital.
- A Beijing city spokesperson described the situation as "grim and complicated" but "controllable."
- Travel restrictions were eased in Xi'an, a city in central China, over the weekend, after mass testing and a lockdown following a COVID-19 outbreak earlier this month.
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 GOOD NEWS: OpenAlex, a free digital index of over 200 million scientific documents and journal articles, was successfully launched earlier this month. The online catalog, which was named after the Great Library of Alexandria of antiquity, was launched to replace the Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG), a central hub for free scientific research that shut down last year. More: - Canadian non-profit group OurResearch created OpenAlex with a $4.5M grant from the Arcadia Fund charity.
- OpenAlex is currently only accessible via an application programming interface (API); a simpler search-engine function will launch in February.
- OpenAlex is sponsored by Amazon Web Services and draws data from MAG's database, Wikidata, ORCID, Crossref, and ROR.
- It also features sources from the Unpaywall database, which contains more than 30 million open-access articles.
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 A message from FLATFILE Learn how growing companies are addressing this critical, yet broken, onboarding process. 96% of our surveyed respondents report running into issues when importing customer data, AKA data onboarding. Invalid fields, messy CSV templates, Excel files that are emailed back and forth, this critical stage in customer onboarding can stifle time-to-value, and creates friction when onboarding customers. We interviewed over 100+ companies to learn how product and engineering teams of all sizes are tackling this critical, yet broken, stage of the customer onboarding process. Read the report
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 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won the right to ask the U.K.'s Supreme Court to block his extradition to the United States. The High Court ruled today that Assange, who has been held in a U.K. prison for nearly three years, has a legal argument against extradition that the Supreme Court could hear if it so chooses. More: - The Supreme Court does not have to hear Assange's petition, but the fact that he will be permitted to submit one means the case will likely continue for several months.
- Assange is wanted by the U.S. government over confidential document leaks made through WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011.
- From 2012 to 2019, Assange found refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in a bid to avoid being extradited to the U.S.
- He was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012, but was kicked out of the embassy in 2019 following disputes with embassy officials.
- He was then arrested by U.K. police and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison.
- That same year, the U.S. charged Assange under the Espionage Act and attempted to extradite him.
- A lower court blocked the extradition effort over concerns about Assange's well-being while in U.S. custody, but the High Court in December 2021 overturned the decision.
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 The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills in the playoffs for the second year in the row in a 36-42 OT thriller, and the Los Angeles Rams beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 30-27 despite a comeback effort from Tom Brady. The AFC and NFC title games will be played next week: the Rams will play the 49ers for the NFC championship, and the Chiefs will play the Bengals for the AFC championship. Chiefs vs. Bills: - With the Bills leading 36-33, the Chiefs got the ball back with just 13 seconds to go.
- Two plays later, Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker nailed a 49-yard game-tying field goal. The Chiefs went on to score on the first drive of overtime.
- The 25 points scored in the last two minutes of regulation are the second most of any game since the Super Bowl began in 1967.
- Bills receiver Gabriel Davis set an NFL playoff record with four touchdown receptions.
- Bills center Mitch Morse said after the game: "We just ended up on the wrong side of maybe one of the greatest games in postseason history."
Buccaneers vs. Rams: - The Rams held a 27-3 lead in the third quarter, but Tom Brady brought his team back to a 27-27 score late in the fourth quarter.
- The game ended with a 63-yard drive by the Rams that led to a game-winning field goal.
- The goal ended the Bucs' hope for a second consecutive Super Bowl win.
- Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford said: "I would have loved to have been taking a knee up three scores, but it's a whole lot more fun when you've got to make a play like that to win the game and just steal somebody's soul."
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- The U.K. has begun to withdraw diplomatic staff from Ukraine over concerns about an imminent Russian invasion. While officials said there were no specific threats to British diplomats, roughly half of the staff in the Kyiv embassy will return to the U.K.
- A plane towing the message "BOOT HIM OUT! STOPBORIS.COM" was photographed flying over two Premier League matches in Manchester and Leeds. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces calls to resign over reports that high-ranking government officials broke lockdown rules when they organized parties in the early months of the pandemic.
- Journalist Lourdes Maldonado Lopez was killed yesterday in Tijuana, Mexico, a week after photojournalist Margarito Martinez was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head. Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.
- Retired tennis star Martina Navratilova criticized the Australian Open for banning T-shirts supporting Chinese player Peng Shuai. In a viral tweet, Navratilova described the tournament's ban on political clothing as "pathetic."
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 Skull of Zurbaran by Salvador Dalí. 1956
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 |  | Daniel Smith is an Inside Analyst who currently resides in Miami, Florida. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Daniel spent the last four years as a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He is fascinated by tech, business, politics, venture capital, and everything in between. When he’s not writing for Inside he can be found kicking a ball on the nearest rugby pitch. Follow him on Twitter @DanSmithInside. |  | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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