Germany answers Ukraine's plea for tanks

Plus, heavy snow causes havoc in Japan as a cold snap sweeps through Asia

Hello Germany agrees to send heavy Leopard tanks to Ukraine, a Microsoft cloud outage hits users around the world, and Indian students defy Modi by Linda Noakes   World News Ukrainian servicemen fire a 2S7 Pion self-propeled gun toward Russian positions on a frontline near Bakhmut in Donetsk region, January 24, 2023. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak Germany announced plans to deliver heavy tanks to Ukraine, and the United States was poised to do so too, a breakthrough hailed as a decisive military boost by Kyiv and condemned by Moscow as a reckless provocation. Here's what you need to know about the conflict right now. Heavy snow blanketed wide swaths of Japan, snarling traffic, forcing hundreds of flight cancelations, disrupting train travel and leaving at least one person dead. Indian students said they would show again a BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the government has dismissed as propaganda after a campus screening was disrupted by a power cut and intimidation by rivals. Africa must fight against a slide towards strongman authoritarianism that has resulted in a series of military coups and a clampdown on civil society in many countries, Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim said. Ibrahim's foundation launched its Index of African Governance, which warned that advances in human development and economic opportunities were undermined by worsening security and widespread democratic backsliding. European Union member states must grant public access to documents circulated in their working groups for adopting laws, an EU court ruled, as efforts to prise open the bloc's legislative machine make further progress. U.S. News Flowers are pictured in a public square near the City Hall to honor the victims, the day after a mass shooting at two locations in the coastal city of Half Moon Bay, California, January 24, 2023. REUTERS/Laure Andrillon  The man accused of shooting and killing seven farm workers near San Francisco in the latest of two back-to-back gun rampages in California that claimed 18 lives overall is due in court for his initial appearance before a judge. We spoke to immigrants whose fear of U.S. gun violence has been heightened by the California massacres. Half of the mass attacks in the United States from 2016-2020 were sparked by personal, domestic or workplace disputes, according to a new U.S. Secret Service report that aims to prevent violence by identifying warning signs. Documents marked as classified were discovered at former Vice President Mike Pence's Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI, his attorney said in letters seen by Reuters. A Georgia prosecutor investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat in the state's 2020 presidential election told a judge that decisions on whether to bring criminal charges are "imminent." Embattled Republican freshman U.S. Representative George Santos skipped his invitation to a White House reception and appears to have been joined by several hardline newcomers in snubbing President Joe Biden.   Business & Markets Microsoft offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, January 25, 2023. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes  Microsoft was hit with a networking outage that took down its cloud platform Azure along with services such as Teams and Outlook, potentially affecting millions of users globally. An Azure outage can impact a variety of services and create a domino effect as almost all of the world's largest companies use the platform. Earnings from major European companies offered some reasons for optimism about the region's corporate health, even as investors worry about the slowing global economy. Fourth-quarter earnings from ASML exceeded expectations and the Dutch technology company, Europe's largest, forecast a rise of more than 25% in 2023 sales. A glitch at the New York Stock Exchange prevented the opening auctions for a slew of stocks, prompting widespread trading halts, confusion over whether orders were being filled at correct prices, and trades in more than 250 securities being busted. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk testified that he expected strong financial support when he tweeted that he would take the electric car maker private in 2018, but admitted he lacked specific commitments from potential backers. Rupert Murdoch withdrew a proposal to reunite News Corp and Fox Corp as the company is also exploring a sale of Move, which operates the Realtor.com website, to CoStar Group. Several top shareholders had publicly said they opposed the proposed Fox-News Corp combination. Hindenburg Research said it held short positions in Adani Group, accusing the Indian conglomerate of improper extensive use of entities set up in offshore tax havens and expressing concern about high debt levels. The group is led by Gautam Adani, the world's third richest man according to Forbes. And Finally Canned whale meat is displayed on one of the machines of a vending machine shop, opened by a Japanese whale-hunting company, in Yokohama, Japan, January 24, 2023. 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