World News

Summary

Jagmeet Singh announced plans to introduce a motion to topple Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government.

Singh's announcement comes after a difficult week for Trudeau, who is facing growing calls to resign from his own Liberal Party following the exit of his most senior cabinet minister.

The move marks a turn for the NDP leader, whose centre-left party helped prop up Trudeau's minority government in exchange for support on their shared political priorities.

Summary

Eight people were convicted in France for their roles in the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, killed after showing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad during a free expression lesson.

Convictions included aiding the attacker, a Chechen-Russian teen shot by police, and leading an online hate campaign. Sentences ranged up to 16 years.

The case highlighted France’s commitment to free speech and secularism but drew criticism from Paty’s family over downgraded charges and defendants’ lack of accountability.

The attack followed global protests and threats linked to caricatures republished by Charlie Hebdo.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Friday added the 27 countries that make up the European Union to the list of trade partners he’s threatening with tariffs — unless the group takes steps to import more U.S. goods.

“I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas,” Trump posted shortly after 1 a.m. on social media. “Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!”

Summary

A car ploughed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killing at least two people, including a child, and injuring 68 others, 15 critically, in what authorities are treating as a terror attack.

The suspect, identified as Taleb A., a Saudi Arabian psychiatrist living in Germany since 2006, was arrested at the scene. He allegedly drove a rented BMW through the crowded market, targeting families and children.

The attack raised concerns about security at Christmas markets despite preventive measures like bollards. German and French leaders expressed shock and condolences.

This incident follows heightened vigilance since a 2016 truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 13 people.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Santa Claus is coming to town ... on a Jet Ski.

Dozens of children with disability gathered on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach on Tuesday to receive presents — and joy — from the white-bearded man himself, a joint effort by the city’s firefighters and nonprofit associations.

Under 27 Celsius degrees (80 Fahrenheit), firefighter sargeant Thiago Carvalho de Paiva wore Santa Claus costumes in tropical Rio, moving through the water as beachgoers cheered.

Summary

Elon Musk expressed support for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on X, stating “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

Party leader Alice Weidel welcomed his endorsement, urging followers to review her criticisms of German politics.

The AfD, polling at 19% ahead of February’s federal election, is officially under scrutiny as an extremist group by German authorities.

Musk has previously questioned the party’s “far-right” label. Controversy surrounds the AfD, including links to a meeting discussing deportation of migrants.

Summary

Donald Trump has demanded the European Union reduce its $131.3 billion U.S. trade deficit by purchasing more American oil and gas or face tariffs.

Trump’s comments, posted on Truth Social, come as the EU works to phase out Russian energy imports and diversify suppliers.

EU officials, while open to U.S. energy imports, criticized Trump’s approach as transactional, warning of potential retaliation.

Analysts highlight risks of tariffs to inflation and global trade. The EU plans to engage pragmatically but has prepared for heightened U.S. protectionism under Trump’s leadership.

Summary

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a televised year-end press conference, said Russia should have invaded Ukraine earlier with better preparation.

He defended his policies, highlighting strengthened ties with China, Russia’s aggressive nuclear doctrine, and military gains in Ukraine, while dismissing claims of setbacks.

Putin claimed economic "stability" despite sanctions but acknowledged 9.1% inflation.

He emphasized “sovereignty” as a key success of reducing Western reliance.

The press conference was highly choreographed and tightly controlled.

Bashar al-Assad’s face has been ripped away from posters at the abandoned checkpoint that separates Sheikh Maqsoud, a neighbourhood in the north of Aleppo, from the rest of the city. No cars dare use the wide boulevard any more because the road is still watched by Kurdish snipers allied to the regime. The units retreated into the warren of bombed and burnt-out buildings when Islamist rebel groups launched an unprecedented attack on the city at the end of November, triggering a chain reaction that led to the swift collapse of the Assad dynasty.

Civilians hurry past, some with small children in pushchairs, others rolling cooking gas canisters down the road, all trying not to attract undue attention. A man had been shot and killed here the night before, picked off from the upper floor of a windowless apartment block. Aleppo fell to an umbrella of Sunni Arab factions led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) three weeks ago, but the Kurdish units stationed in Sheikh Maqsoud refused to surrender when HTS came in, afraid of what would happen if they surrendered. Now, they appear to be waiting for something to shift in Syria’s new and fragile status quo.

But a decade on from the Guardian’s last visit, during the four-year-long battle for Aleppo between the Assad regime and rebel forces, it is clear that Syria’s vicious civil war has ripped it apart, tearing at the social fabric and wreaking physical destruction that cannot easily be mended. At least 30,000 people were killed here, hundreds of thousands more lives ruined, and centuries’ worth of priceless human heritage has been destroyed for ever.

Aleppo quickly became one of the most dangerous places on Earth: jihadist groups infiltrated what began as a nationalist uprising, turning it into an ideological battle with seismic impact both inside and outside Syria’s borders. Vladimir Putin intervened in the war on Assad’s behalf in 2015, turning the tide, adding Russian airpower to the Syrian barrel bombs dropped on east Aleppo’s hospitals and White Helmet rescue workers.

Summary

Kenyan business student Nelson Amenya leaked documents in July exposing a proposed $2 billion deal between Kenya and India’s Adani Group to lease and modernize Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

Amenya criticized the deal as financially skewed against Kenya and lacking transparency, sparking public outrage and strikes by JKIA workers.

Though Adani denied wrongdoing, Kenya canceled the airport deal after U.S. authorities indicted Adani’s founder for bribery.

Amenya faces defamation lawsuits and threats but remains resolute, calling his actions a duty to fight corruption in Kenya.

Cyclone Chido swept through Mayotte, which lies between Madagascar and Mozambique, on 14 December, destroying vital infrastructure and flattening many of the tin-roofed shacks that make up its large slums. Almost a week after its worst storm in 90 years, France’s poorest territory still has shortages of water.

Throughout Thursday, the French president was confronted by angry Mahorais demanding to know why aid had not yet reached them. At one point he told a crowd: “You are happy to be in France. If this wasn’t France, you’d be in a bath of shit 10,000 times worse. There is no other place in the Indian Ocean where people are helped as much, that’s a fact.”

Summary

Malaysia announced it will resume the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared in 2014 with 239 people aboard.

The government accepted a proposal by US exploration firm Ocean Infinity to search a 15,000-square-kilometer area in the southern Indian Ocean.

If significant wreckage is found, Ocean Infinity will receive $70 million. Two prior searches, including one in 2018, yielded no results.

Families of the victims, including over 150 Chinese passengers, continue to seek closure and compensation from involved companies.

Summary

A New York man, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty to operating an undeclared Chinese police station in Manhattan for China’s Ministry of Public Security.

The station, part of a transnational repression scheme, aided Beijing in locating and suppressing pro-democracy activists in the U.S., violating American sovereignty.

Authorities say the station also served routine functions like renewing Chinese driving licenses but had a more sinister role, including tracking a California-based activist.

Chen faces up to five years in prison, while a co-defendant has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.

Summary

Quebec has passed a law banning the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Starting in 2034, advertising gas-powered vehicles of the 2035 model year or later will be prohibited, and by the end of 2035, selling or leasing new gas-powered vehicles will be banned.

Exceptions include emergency, rental, and off-road vehicles, while used gas-powered cars can still be resold and driven.

Quebec aims for 2 million EVs on its roads by 2030, though challenges remain as EV rebates phase out starting in 2025.

If you get a divorce in North Korea, you and your spouse will be sent to a labor camp for one to six months to atone for your “crimes,” residents in the country told Radio Free Asia.

Divorce is considered an anti-socialist act, and is generally frowned upon in Korea.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/50245837

“In 2024, Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza reached catastrophic proportions. Relentless aerial bombardments, ground invasions, and siege tactics deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians, leaving children to suffer the most,” DCIP’s report says.

The number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons also reached a record high in 2024, the group said.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed one Palestinian child every four days this year, “an escalation made possible by decades of impunity,” the group said.

Israel’s violence included using children as human shields “systematically” this year, as DCIP has documented throughout the genocide.

This includes an incident in March in which Israeli tanks surrounded a group of Palestinian children waiting in line for aid in Gaza City. Soldiers stripped the children and tied them up, depriving them of food and water and forcing them for an entire day to walk in front of tanks and in front of buildings that the military wanted to enter, as DCIP found.

Israeli forces’ weaponization of starvation, meanwhile, has put children, especially newborns and children with disabilities, at heightened risk, with babies as young as two months old starving to death, the group said; in August, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel killed 210 newborn babies a month on average in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide.

Summary

Panama reported that 55 migrants have died and 180 children were abandoned this year while crossing the dangerous Darién Gap, a key route for US-bound migrants from South America.

The deaths include 10 drownings in July, though the true toll may be higher due to the jungle’s inaccessibility.

So far, 300,000 migrants have crossed in 2024, a 41% drop from 2023’s record.

Panama, under US pressure, has closed some routes and started deporting migrants using US-funded flights to address the crisis.