ISRAEL - The IDF began strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Thursday afternoon, following the military's Arabic-language spokesperson Colonel Avichay Adraee's urgent evacuation notice to locals. The IDF announced that it struck several Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in civilian areas. "The presence of the weapons storage facilities constituted a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon." IDF tells Lebanese civilians to flee strike areas. "The IDF will attack military infrastructure belonging to the terrorist Hezbollah in various areas of southern Lebanon in the near term to address the prohibited attempts by Hezbollah to rebuild its activities in the region," Adraee said, warning that remaining in the area would expose individuals to danger.

GERMANY - Germany’s conservatives have moved to scrap subsidies on heat pumps and tear up the country’s controversial green heating law as part of a backlash against net zero targets. Leaders of the centre-Right Christian Social Union [CSU] party, which is part of the coalition government, have said that the “excessive” subsidies “must be stopped”. The rise of the heat pump has even been blamed for a surge in support for the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is deeply sceptical of green energy policies.

GERMANY - The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has expelled a member after he sparked controversy by delivering a speech reminiscent of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler at a youth event for the party over the weekend. Identified as Alexander Eichwald, the man was vying for a leadership position in the ‘Generation Germany’ youth movement. In his application speech, he appeared to be speaking and gesticulating in a Hitler-like manner as he urged fellow party members to “protect German culture from foreign influence.” “We don’t want people like [him] in our party,” Chrupalla said, calling Eichwald’s performance at the event “bad satire,” while noting that the man only joined the party a couple of months ago.

USA - A regime change war in Venezuela would be disastrous for the US president. After the US Navy authorised a second round of strikes against an alleged Venezuelan drug boat, President Donald Trump declared that the US was at “war” with drug cartels in the South American country. Trump warned of imminent strikes on terrestrial targets and suggested that other Latin American countries could become theatres of US military activity. While the US used anti-narcotics as a pretext for military action in Venezuela, its offensive actions could have a much further-reaching agenda. While the US is right to be alarmed by Venezuela’s trajectory, its anti-narcotics justification for military action is flimsy. Venezuela is a minor player in the drug trade to the US and does not serve as a large-scale trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine.

USA - Challenger, Gray & Christmas said layoff plans totaled 71,321 in November, a step down from the massive cuts announced in October but still enough to bring the 2025 total up to 1.17 million. Announced job cuts from US employers moved further ahead of 1 million for the year in November as corporate restructuring, artificial intelligence and tariffs have helped pare job rolls, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday. November offered some relief from the more than 153,000 cuts announced in October, which was the highest total for the month in 22 years.

USA - “Panspermia” is the idea that life began in outer space, arriving on earth either by random chance (such as on an asteroid) or by design (sent here by intelligent aliens). This idea is supposedly bolstered by an “analysis of [asteroid] samples [which] suggests that some of the building blocks of life are present in the asteroids, raising the prospect that those same building blocks, and perhaps even life itself, could have been delivered to Earth.”

USA - Will President Trump meet Elon Musk again before the end of the year? Will the share price of Google owner Alphabet hit $355 before the end of 2025? Will Lando Norris win the Formula 1 world drivers’ championship? Those are just a tiny sample of thousands of future events that customers of Polymarket, the American prediction market platform, can place a bet on against another user. Prediction markets have become one of the hottest sectors on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley this year as start-up platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, founded by entrepreneurs who are still in their twenties, attract millions of users and billions of dollars in trading volume. America’s booming prediction markets are being propelled by an anti-elite sentiment that favours the perceived wisdom of the crowds.

RUSSIA - The Russian-US negotiations on the Ukraine conflict concluded in the Kremlin after some five hours of intense negotiations, which had reportedly gone late into the night. Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov indicated the US side of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner presented four more documents concerning the peace settlement during the Kremlin talks; however, a sticking point remains territory. "Some American proposals are acceptable to Russia, while others are not," the aide stated bluntly. Crucially he at one point responded to a question of whether peace had become closer or further following these talks, to which Ushakov responded, "Definitely not further." Having just announced it's taken military control of Pokrovsk, amid a string of steady advances in the east, Moscow knows it is firmly in the driver's seat - yet the proxy war continues its dangerous path of escalation.

FRANCE - France will tighten security around Christmas markets after its interior minister warned of a “very high” terrorist threat. In an urgent letter sent on Wednesday, Laurent Nunez ordered state officials to treat festive gatherings as high-risk targets and mobilise intelligence agencies accordingly. He cited how Christmas markets were targeted in last December’s deadly attack in the German city of Magdeburg and the 2018 shooting in Strasbourg, according to the letter seen by BFMTV, the French broadcaster. Regional authorities across France have been told to step up crowd-management measures, restrict vehicle access around major events, and monitor all relevant video surveillance networks.

USA - A rare flurry of bipartisanship is overtaking the US Congress. Some Republican as well as many Democratic legislators are demanding scrutiny of the US navy attacks being carried out in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific against unarmed boats allegedly carrying narcotics. At least 83 people have been killed since the first such airstrike on September 2. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has acknowledged it would have been possible to seize the boats — a third of the US navy is deployed in the region — but said the administration was determined to send a signal by destroying them.The reality is that the airstrikes represent sabre-rattling against Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, widely acknowledged as leader of a state-sponsored drug cartel.

USA - It is far easier to start wars than it is to end them. As we watch global events develop, so many of us have a really bad feeling about what is ahead. Without a doubt, 2025 has been a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, but it appears that things are ready to go to the next level in 2026. Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Maduro and President Trump all say that they are ready to fight, and they aren’t the only ones. A really bad case of “war fever” has gripped leaders all over the world, and that is not good news for any of us. Tensions between the Chinese and the Japanese have been rising for weeks, and we just witnessed a very tense confrontation in contested waters… Because if the Chinese and the Japanese actually start shooting at one another, we will be involved. All over the world, events are taking us toward war, and the fate of our entire planet hangs in the balance.

UK - Wes Streeting has ordered an independent review of the diagnosis of mental health conditions as Labour seeks a fresh crackdown on welfare spending. The health secretary is concerned about the sharp rise in diagnoses of mental illness, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which have become the most common reason for a sickness benefit claim. Some 4.4 million working-age people claim disability or incapacity benefit, a rise of 1.2 million since 2019. Record numbers of young people are dropping out of the workforce and Streeting has warned previously that “overdiagnosis” means too many people are “written off”. The number of 16 to 34-year-olds off work with long-term sickness because they have a mental health condition rose by 76 per cent between 2019 and 2024.

UK - Nigel Farage is set to make a major announcement as fury grows over Labour’s decision to postpone mayoral elections. The Reform UK leader has already branded the Government “despots” while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch vowed to fight the delay “every step of the way”. Mr Farage is now set to lead a press conference setting out Reform’s plan to oppose the delay, at a Westminster event this afternoon. Elections for four new powerful regional mayors, in Greater Essex, Norfolk & Suffolk, Hampshire & the Solent, and Sussex & Brighton, had been due to take place next May. But they are being delayed, with opposition politicians claiming Labour fears it will suffer humiliating defeats. An official announcement today is expected to confirm that votes won’t be held until 2028. Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, said: "It’s an act of a desperate Government who are clinging on to power by any means necessary.”

UK - This Government has lost all legitimacy. Labour lied to us. It deceived us. It sold itself on a false prospectus. It perverted every democratic norm to orchestrate one of the greatest political heists of all times, promising voters they would be electing one kind of government – centre-Left, technocratic, boring – while delivering instead a radically socialist and authoritarian administration. I do not write this lightly, but Starmer and Reeves have become a threat to British democracy: they must go as soon as possible. Our institutions cannot function if voters (and even the Cabinet and senior officials) cannot trust anything their PM and Chancellor says. The system can cope with ordinary political dishonesty, but not with this level of lying.

GERMANY - Germany’s industrial leaders — increasingly under pressure by the political elite’s maladministration — are, yet again, sounding the alarm as the country enters what many now call its worst economic crisis since the founding of the Federal Republic. Industry representatives, according to a report by the German newspaper Die Welt, warn that the damage is not just temporary but structural — and largely self-inflicted. Peter Leibinger, head of the Federation of German Industries, says Germany’s industrial engine is in “free fall.” He argues that the ruling globalists in Berlin still — despite repeated and continual warning sigals — refuse to acknowledge how badly its own policies have undermined the economy. Germany once stood as Europe’s industrial backbone, powered by reliable energy and disciplined economic management. Now, after years of ideological decision-making, the nation faces a crisis entirely of its own globalist classes' making.