7 news stories you might have missed while freaking out about #blizzardof2015

BOSTON — Have you heard? It's snowing in Boston. It's SNOWING in Boston. IT'S SNOWING IN BOSTON.

If you live anywhere in the northeast United States, you've spent the last 24 hours inundated with snow, but if you leave anywhere even remotely near the northeast US, you've spent the last 72 hours inundated with news reports about that snow.

There's nothing quite like TV news during a blizzard. Politicians are wearing fleeces and baseball hats. People are cross-country skiing places, which is apparently reason enough to interview them on camera. Reporters are showing the size of snow drifts by using their own bodies for scale. Graphics editors are breaking out all their favorite blizzard graphics, banners, and alerts. 

Well — surprise — the world didn't stop just because your local Whole Foods is out of eggs, Target is out of sleds, and CNN is out of non-snow-related news.

Here are some things that happened in the past couple of days that you might have missed.

1) Kobani was liberated from Islamic State

The Syrian town of Kobani, which sits at the border with Turkey, has been a frontline in the battle against the Islamic State for months.

Now, after four months of intense ground fighting led by Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga — along with significant US military coordination and air support — it looks like Kobani is once again under Kurdish control.

The news came first from Kurdish troops and was later confirmed by US Central Command, which said IS had been driven from 90 percent of the town.

It’s a major victory against IS, but don’t think for a second that the battle for Kobani is finished. IS has dedicated a huge of material resources and manpower in Kobani, and the town has become as much a symbol as a strategic target. Don't expect them to give it up easily.

Read more about how it went down here.

2) The FBI busted a Russian spy ring in NYC

This is either a real story or a very clever false flag created by FX to promote this week’s season three premier of “The Americans.”

The FBI arrested one man, Evgeny Buryakov, and identified two others who no longer live in the United States, Victor Podobnyy and Igor Sporyshev. They worked for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in a unit known as “Directorate ER,” which focuses on intelligence collection relate to economic matters.

According to the FBI’s complaint, the agents were attempting to recruit intelligence assets, including "several individuals employed by major companies, and several young women with ties to a major university located in New York,” and a "number of other Russian-origin individuals associated with" the same university.

Cold War: It's on.

3) Greece elected a ‘coalition of the radical left’ to run the country

Greece was hit hard by the global financial crisis, as you've probably heard. A euro zone bailout kept the national economy afloat but came with austerity demands that seemed to make things much worse for Greeks. Unemployment ballooned. Social services disappeared. Standards of living declined. Lots of people got mad.

Many Greeks blame creditors in Brussels and Berlin and Greece's conservative and center-left political establishment that both created the conditions for economic collapse and then agreed to the punishing conditions of the euro zone bailout.

And voters made those feelings about as clear as they possibly could in Sunday’s general election, voting by landslide margins for the Coalition of the Radical Left party, also known as SYRIZA. Greece’s newly elected prime minister Alexis Tsipras promises to fight back against austerity, invest in jobs and public services, restore taxes on the wealthy, and lead Greece as it “leaves behind five years of humiliation and anguish.”

Anti-austerity parties are gaining ground in other hard-hit EU countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and the rise of SYRIZA could add fuel to their campaigns.

For now, EU officials deny that the power shift in Greece will lead to changes in the country’s debt obligations, but if a wave of anti-austerity parties sweep southern Europe, the pressure will be on.

4) An Egyptian court convicted a doctor for female genital mutilation for the first time ever

Female genital mutilation (FGM), the controversial ritual of removing part or all of the clitoris, has been illegal in Egypt since 2008. But despite that ban and diligent campaigning by NGOs, the practice is still widespread. According to UNICEF, 91 percent of Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone FGM.

There was some good news this week in the fight against FGM in Egypt. On Monday Jan. 26, an Egyptian appeals court found a doctor guilty for performing FGM on a 13-year-old girl named Suhair el-Batea, who died in June 2013 after undergoing the procedure in her small village near the city of Mansoura. Her doctor, Raslan Fadl, received a sentence of three months for the procedure and two years of hard labor for manslaughter.

It’s the first FGM conviction under Egyptian law.

5) Russia’s credit rating dropped to “junk” status

For the first time in more than a decade, Russia’s foreign currency credit rating has fallen below investment grade to BB+, according Standard and Poor’s. The ratings agency also said the outlook for Russia, where the economy is suffering under Western sanctions and low oil prices, is “negative.”

“Russia’s monetary-policy flexibility has become more limited and its economic growth prospects have weakened,” S&P said in the statement. “We also see a heightened risk that external and fiscal buffers will deteriorate due to rising external pressures and increased government support to the economy.”

S&P is the first of the three major ratings agencies to list Russia’s credit at junk status. Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service both recently downgraded Russia to the lowest possible investment grade above junk: BBB-.

6) Germany (maybe) suspended arms deals to Saudi Arabia

German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday that a secretive committee in charge of the nation’s arms exports had decided to suspend exports to Saudi Arabia due to regional instabilities. 

A government spokesperson wouldn’t confirm or deny the report during a press conference on Monday, saying that members of the council couldn’t discuss its decisions publicly.

In 2013, Germany approved $400 million worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia. It’s not clear whether the decision to halt exports was influenced by the death of King Abdullah Jan. 23, although it’s possible Angela Merkel’s government wants to feel out King Salman for a bit before sending him weapons.

7) Canada put its own Patriot Act on deck

Canada could be getting its own Patriot Act soon if Prime Minister Stephen Harper has his way.

Law enforcement agencies in Canada already have expanded powers under the 2013 Combating Terrorism Act, but the lone-wolf attack on Canada’s Parliament in October has led to calls for even stronger police powers. With federal elections less than a year away and Harper’s Conservative party needing a boost in the polls, it’s prime time for a new terrorism law.

Harper announced the new legislation on Sunday during a speech in Ottawa.

"These measures are designed to help authorities stop planned attacks, get threats off our streets, criminalize the promotion of terrorism, and prevent terrorists from traveling and recruiting others," he said. "It will contain a range of measures to ensure that our police and security agencies have the tools they need to meet evolving threats, and keep Canadians safe."

The legislation will go to Parliament on Friday.

Meanwhile, similar things are happening in France in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. More on that here.