UK - Answering questions at a conference recently on the implications of artificial intelligence, I realised there was only one answer to all of them: things could go very well, or alternatively very badly. We don’t know which. Could AI move us into a golden age of medical discoveries with new cures for terrible diseases? Yes, absolutely it could. Or could it be used to create deadly pathogens that wipe most of us out instead? Er, possibly. Might it lead to breakthroughs in developing nuclear fusion and thereby save the planet? Yes, let’s hope so. But could it consume so much energy in vast data centres that climate change gets even more out of control? Yes, that too.

CHINA - China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027, a US report has found. Beijing is refining its military options to take the territory by “brute force” via tactics that could include launching strikes up to 2,000 nautical miles from China, the Pentagon said. The report into Chinese military ambitions, obtained by Reuters, noted that Beijing has probably loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles across its new three silo fields. The findings will probably raise concerns in Washington after a US government assessment in November found that China would defeat the US military in a war over Taiwan. China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has never ruled out using force to “reunify” with the island.

USA - The US will commission a new “Golden Fleet” of heavily armed Navy ‘battleships’ named after Donald Trump. The president announced that the laser-armed vessels would be the “largest battleships in the history of the world” to maintain his country’s military supremacy. He said construction on the Trump Class USS Defiant – the first US warship to be named after a sitting president – would begin soon, and it was expected to be operational within two and a half years. Mr Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Florida: “Each one of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest battleship in the history of the world ever built. They’ll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American ship-building industry and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world.”

USA - Administration says turbines can interfere with radar systems and potentially generate false targets. The Trump administration halted construction of five offshore windfarms, blaming national security fears. Doug Burgum, the secretary of the interior, said suspending the leases of the wind farms off the East Coast would address “emerging national security risks” and the “rapid evolution of relevant adversary technologies”. The department said the turbines can interfere with radar systems and potentially generate “false targets” and suspending the leases will enable the administration to work with developers and states to mitigate any security risks. Mr Trump has made no secret of his dislike of wind farms. At a rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania on December 9 he said: “Wind is the worst... That’s a scam. They ruin your valleys. They ruin your peaks. And [it’s] the most expensive energy.”

UK - An ex-neighbour of mine came up to me in our local shop. “Just wanted to tell you to keep going,” he said. He is a GP. “I agree with you on all the gender stuff. But we are having real difficulty with some of the younger doctors.” This kind of thing happens to me a lot – approaches from individuals who have not bought into gender self-ID nonsense and explain to me that they work for institutions that are riddled with it. Like the NHS. They are forever given rules and guidelines and the possibility of sanctions if they do not adhere to policies produced by a lanyard class who never goes near an actual patient. There are so many things that need repairing in our health service right now that fiddling at the outer edges of trans ideology feels deliberately obtuse. Such fiddling never stops but its purpose these days is to find ways to defy the Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman. Presumably the correct gender here means whatever that person feels themselves to be that day? Medical staff, then, are not only meant to accommodate a delusion but will be in trouble if they don’t.

UK - Non-crime hate incidents are to be scrapped under plans that police chiefs will present to the Home Secretary next month. Police leaders have decided that NCHIs are no longer “fit for purpose” after warnings that recording them undermines freedom of speech and diverts officers away from fighting crime. Under the plans, NCHIs will be replaced with a new “common sense” system, where only a fraction of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour. An NCHI falls short of being criminal but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic. They stay on police records indefinitely and can come up in background checks.

EUROPE - Ten years after the arrival of a million migrants ushered in the era of closed borders and paved the way for the rise of the political right across Europe, the Syrians and Afghans who changed the face of the Continent are going home. The overall trend in migration into Europe is down and likely to drop again next year, officials from UN agencies and Frontex, the EU border force, told the Times. The reasons? Governments sealing their borders and the toppling of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. Nearly 711,000 Syrians have returned home since Assad fell last December, and asylum requests made by Syrians in the EU, Norway and Switzerland fell from 16,000 in October last year to 3,500 in September this year. “Two thirds of the drop-off in arrivals this year is due to Syrians no longer coming,” a Frontex source said.

GERMANY - Germany is on track to post its largest budget deficit since reunification, the country’s central bank has warned, as Berlin ramps up military spending and financial aid to Ukraine. In its December forecast, published on Friday, the Bundesbank said the government shortfall will rise steadily and reach 4.8% of economic output by 2028, the highest level since 1995, when deficits peaked in the years following German reunification. Public debt is also expected to increase over the same period. The Bundesbank has linked the rising deficit mainly to higher defense spending, continued financial support to Ukraine, large infrastructure projects, tax cuts, and increased social payments.

GERMANY - Ever more acquisitions of German companies as foreign investors – Chinese, Indian, Polish, Czech – take advantage of a deep economic crisis and record SME insolvencies. The economic crisis in Germany is enabling a growing number of takeovers of German companies by foreign investors. On the one hand, Germany’s major corporations are in trouble while, on the other, industry is currently facing a wave of insolvencies above all among once resilient Mittelstand, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Just recently, the plastics and chemicals group Covestro became the first DAX-listed company to be swallowed up by a corporation from the Gulf States. A growing number of German SMEs are threatened with bankruptcy. Germany has become the main target in the EU for foreign takeovers.

USA - Hundreds of millions of people all over the western world are enjoying the holiday season as if nothing has changed. But meanwhile the pounding of the war drums just continues to intensify. If the world keeps going down this path, next year’s holiday season could look completely different. Unfortunately, most people seem to assume that everything will magically work out just fine somehow. That greatly frustrates me, because ignoring the reality of the crisis that we are facing is not going to fix anything. If ordinary citizens in the western world truly understood what was at stake, they would be going completely ballistic right now. Global war is rapidly approaching, but the vast majority of our entertainment-addicted population doesn’t seem to get this.

ISRAEL - Bit by bit, a Turkish front is forming, more dangerous than Israel’s seven arenas since October 7. Erdogan’s ideology and ambition require Israel to refocus on a higher strategic risk. Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s political and military leadership has claimed that seven different arenas threaten it. It seems that, bit by bit but consistently, an eighth menacing front is forming, one that in many ways is more dangerous than the others. This is the Turkish front. Turkey, which until about 23 years ago was one of Israel’s greatest friends, has become a real enemy since Erdogan rose to power. The main factors that explain Turkey’s defiant and threatening approach toward Israel, Cyprus, and Greece are its religious outlook, its national outlook, and its megalomania. Turkey's radicalization reflects willingness to act against Israel.

UK - After divisions over same-sex blessings and women’s ordination, many clerics now feel Rome offers a ‘more enduring’ approach to Christianity. Fr Matthew Topham, converted from the Church of England to Catholicism in 2023, saying it is no longer ‘a branch of the true Church’. Many of them are now fearful that, as it approaches its 500th anniversary, the Church of England’s days may be numbered given it is riven by division amid the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullaly as its first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury and a row over same-sex blessings that has set conservatives and liberals at loggerheads.

UK - Father Christmas has been dragged into the culture wars after a museum declared the festive icon is 'too white' and should stop sitting in judgment over children's behaviour. In a startling intervention ahead of Christmas, Brighton and Hove Museums argued Father Christmas must be 'decolonised' in the name of diversity, claiming his traditional role reinforces damaging ideas about power, authority and Western superiority. The claims appeared in a blog post published on the museum's website, which suggested Santa's familiar naughty-and-nice routine promotes a 'Western binary' and casts the bearded gift-giver as a global moral judge. And in a further twist, the blog floated the idea of replacing Father Christmas altogether. Alternatively, Santa could become 'Mother Christmas'.

CANADA - There is at present a stand-off between Santa Claus and the baby Jesus. I refer to the Quebec government’s secularism programme, as part of which the secularism minister, Jean-François Roberge, declared that: “We can wish someone merry Christmas. We can sing Christmas songs. This is nothing but tradition. But we shouldn’t make any references to the birth of baby Jesus… When we wish someone merry Christmas, we can think of Santa Claus and his elves, but nothing Catholic.” So in Quebec, you mustn’t even think about the baby whose name is embedded in the name of the feast: Christ’s Mass.

JAPAN - A source within Japan's prime minister's office said Thursday that the country needs nuclear weapons, remarks that deviate from the country's long-standing non-nuclear principles and could trigger backlash at home and abroad. "I think we should possess nuclear weapons," said the source, who is involved in devising security policy under the government led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, while also indicating that such a move is unrealistic. The remarks came as Takaichi, known for her hawkish security views, is considering reviewing Japan's non-nuclear principles, long upheld given the country's status as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings.