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Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of cities and towns throughout Iran since December 28 in militant protests against the theocratic regime that has ruled the country since the 1979 revolution. 

Labor backbencher Michael Danby charged taxpayers $4574 for two advertisements in The Australian Jewish News attacking the ABC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The MP for Melbourne Ports, who has long been an outspoken defender of Israel, used his parliamentary communications allowance to fund the ads.

One advertisement accused ABC journalist Sophie McNeill of covering the eviction of a Palestinian family but ignoring the murder of three Jewish settlers by a Palestinian.

Figures released on December 28 by the Australian National Audit Office revealed the Australian Defence Force has spent $10.3 billion on weapons and military equipment from the United States in the past four years. The report estimated about half the money was spent supporting Australian Defence Force activity in Syria and Iraq in that four-year period.

The Traditional Owners of the Mount Jowlaenga area in Western Australia’s Kimberley have won an appeal in the Federal Court against miner Sheffield Resources and the West Australian government over one of the country’s biggest mineral sands deposits.

The win means the Traditional Owners have succeeded in preventing Sheffield Resources from constructing its multi-million dollar Thunderbird project on their land without having reached agreements with them in key areas, including compensation and the management of Aboriginal heritage sites.

This year marks 230 years since British military forces invaded Gadigal land and declared British rule over this continent. One hundred and fifty years later a group of Aboriginal men and women met in the Australia Hall in Sydney to declare January 26 a Day of Mourning.

Every year the Invasion Day protests grow as more and more people realise it is not a day to celebrate but a day to say "enough is enough" and stand with first nations’ people of this country.

A rally of members of the Kurdish community and their supporters was held in Sydney on January 8 to demand justice for Sakine Cansız, Leyla Şaylemez and Fidan Doğan, three Kurdish women activists who were assassinated in Paris five years ago by a suspected agent of the Turkish secret police.

There has still been no adequate inquiry into their deaths and the rally, outside the French consulate, called on the French authorities to publicly investigate all the available evidence in this case.

A snap solidarity action organised by a network of Iranians brought more than 100 people together in Parramatta on January 6 to declare their support for those protesting in Iran.

Mansour Razaghi from the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People (Sydney) told the rally that those protesting were workers, teachers, women, students, nurses and many others who are fed up with high unemployment, extremism and religious tyranny.

 When flying foxes drop dead from the heat, parts of the Hume Highway melt and Penrith in Sydney’s west is the hottest place on Earth with a temperature of 47.3°C, it is clear that extremes of heat are having a devastating impact.  

The extreme heat during early January in south-east Australia was global news and follows the “angry summer” of 2016–17.

Nepal’s Communists have won a landslide victory in the elections for House of Representatives of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal held in two phases on November 26 and December 7. In the 275-seat parliament, the elections were held for 165 seats under the first past the post system (FPTP), with the remaining 110 seats determined by a proportional system.

Venezuela’s socialists scored an overwhelming victory in mayoral elections on December 10, taking over 90% of the country's municipalities. 

President Nicolas Maduro’s United Venezuelan Socialist Party (PSUV), along with its allies, have secured victory in 308 of Venezuela’s 335 municipalities. According to preliminary results, the governing socialist party managed to take 21 out of the country’s 23 state capitals as well as the Caracas Capital District.

One of the most hyped "events" of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, "They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way".

At least 22 people are dead and hundreds have been arrested, as Iranian authorities move to quell the largest anti-government protests since 2009. President Donald Trump responded to the protests on Monday in one of his first tweets of the new year, writing ”TIME FORCHANGE!” “This is the same president who, not more than three months ago, announced a ban on Iranians from coming to the United States,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Glenn Greenwald told Democracy Now!. “He’s somebody who has aligned with the world’s worst, most savage dictators.”