USA - In a bold move, the incoming US President is set to shake up the Oval Office decor, hinting at a significant shift in international relations and cultural values. Incoming US President Donald Trump is set to wage a war on woke… with a little help from Sir Winston Churchill. The first thing the new Commander-in-Chief will do after his inauguration on January 20, according to sources close to the transition, is rearrange the furniture in the Oval Office - replacing a bust of union leader César Chávez with one of Britain’s fabled wartime leader. But Trump, who romped to victory at the November 5 poll, will make redecorating the most famous office in the world a priority and ensure the bronze bust of the British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Britain’s Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945, is dusted off and becomes the centrepiece of his nerve centre.

UKRAINE - Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads. With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich uranium, wartime Ukraine would have to rely instead on using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors. Ukraine still controls nine operational reactors and has significant nuclear expertise despite having given up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in 1996. The report says: “The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons…"

SPAIN - Heavy rain has caused widespread flooding in Malaga only two weeks after storms led to Spain’s worst natural disaster in decades. The southern port city remained on the highest weather alert on Wednesday night after flood waters closed off main roads and its high-speed rail link with Madrid. The Spanish state weather forecaster, AEMET, issued red alerts on Wednesday morning for the eastern Tarragona and southern Malaga provinces, saying it expected them to receive as much as 180 mm (7.1 inches) of rain within 12 hours that could cause rivers to overflow and generate flash floods. The new floods came as authorities confirmed a total of 223 people had died and 17 were still missing following flash flooding in the Valencia region two weeks ago.

EUROPE - President-Elect Donald Trump had made peace in Europe a key campaign pledge, but several NATO member states are dedicated to total Ukrainian victory and will discuss how to “thwart” him and keep Kyiv in the war even if Washington withdraws support. London, Paris, and Warsaw are to form the nucleus of a European effort to keep Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia going even if the Trump Presidency from January 2025 tries to bring an end to the Ukraine war. Exactly how he will achieve this campaign pledge has not been publicly articulated to date. However, a ‘land swap’ between Kyiv and Moscow or a Korean-style demilitarised zone has been discussed as options open to Trump, neither of which aligns with Ukraine’s official ambition of total victory.

GERMANY - Date agreed after the chancellor’s three-party coalition fell to pieces less than 24 hours after the US election last week, after talks over the economy broke down. A vote of confidence is set to take place in the Bundestag on December 16, paving the way for President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to dissolve parliament on December 27, German media reported separately. Steinmeier gave his preliminary backing for the timeline on Tuesday evening. Scholz was under pressure from all sides to bring a swift resolution to the country’s political crisis after his government collapsed as Europe struggled to muster a coherent response to the imminent presidency of Donald Trump in the United States.

USA - Donald Trump is considering establishing a “warrior board” to review senior officers in the US military and weed out “woke generals”, according to reports. A draft executive order under consideration by the president-elect’s transition team would set up a board of retired senior officials to audit top brass that do not meet standards of “leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence”. The move is thought to be Mr Trump’s first step in tackling the issue of “woke generals”, which he complained about on the campaign trail, arguing that diversity and inclusion politics had become more important than war-fighting ability. The Republican platform policy document formally signed off at the party’s National Convention before the presidential election promised to “get woke Left-wing Democrats fired as soon as possible”.

UK - The Chancellor introduced a new tax burden for farmers who are already struggling with low prices for their goods and export headaches. Ports could be blockaded and food shortages could hit the high street this month as more than 10,000 angry farmers are expected to march on Westminster in protest at Rachel Reeves' Budget. The Chancellor could face French-style farming unrest with rural workers committed to direct action in retaliation for her introduction of a new tax burden on farms worth £1 million or more from April 2026.

UK - The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has resigned after the Church of England was rocked by a high-profile abuse scandal. Mr Welby has apologised after the independent Makin Review concluded that barrister John Smyth, who is thought to have been the most prolific abuser associated with the church, might have been brought to justice had the archbishop formally alerted authorities in 2013. Sir Keir Starmer would not comment directly on Mr Welby’s position, saying it was a “matter, in the end, for the church”, but he made clear that Smyth’s victims had been let down. He said: “Let me be clear: of what I know of the allegations, they are clearly horrific in relation to this particular case, both in their scale and their content. My thoughts, as they are in all of these issues, are with the victims here who have obviously been failed very, very badly.”

ZIMBABWE - Capable of holding a staggering 185 cubic kilometres of water, the world's largest man-made lake is in crisis as water levels hit an almost record low. The world’s largest man-made lake, which stretches across two southern African countries and took five years to be filled, is in crisis. A punishing drought has drained the huge reservoir close to record levels, raising the prospect that the Kariba Dam, which powers the economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe, may have to shut down for the first time in its 65-year history. The dry spell has led authorities to ration water allowed to flow through the Kariba Dam, and, in recent months, power cuts of up to 21 hours a day in Zambia on the lake’s northern side and 17 hours in Zimbabwe to the south.

USA - The US is accusing Russia of preparing to cut undersea cables which carry Internet traffic all over the world, and Russia is accusing western powers of preparing to do the exact same thing. In some cases, these undersea cables literally stretch from one continent to another, and so it is impossible to guard them. That means that they are an exceedingly vulnerable target, and it is probably just a matter of time before someone decides to attack them. Of course if the undersea cables that connect one global superpower to the Internet get hit, they will probably start cutting key undersea cables that connect their enemies to the Internet. Needless to say, such a scenario would have the potential to turn apocalyptic very rapidly. Over the past two decades, our entire economy has become exceedingly dependent on the Internet. If we were suddenly cut off from the rest of the globe, there would be widespread economic chaos…

USA - Republicans are projected to take control of the House of Representatives, giving the party a trifecta as Republicans also took control of the Senate and the presidency. Decision Desk HQ projected that the Republicans had won enough seats for them to take control of the House. Republicans were projected to have secured a 218-209 majority. The news that the Republicans had won the majority in the House comes a week after the presidential election in which President-elect Donald Trump won the election over Vice President Kamala Harris after he secured a pathway to over 270 votes in the Electoral College.

USA - Donald Trump is set to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement for the second time - even quicker than during his first term in office. Donald Trump is understood to be poised to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement for the second time - after declaring climate change is “all a big hoax”. The US President Elect’s clear vow to withdraw is set to once again leave America as one of the only countries not to be a party to the 2015 pact, in which nearly 200 governments have made non-binding pledges to reduce their planet-warming pollution. Climate scientists have warned that the US’s absence from the deal will mean other countries are forced to make bigger reductions to their pollution. But it will also inevitably raise questions from some countries as to how much more effort they should put in when the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter is walking away.

GERMANY - In the immediate aftermath of Donald J Trump’s victory in the American Presidential Election, the German governing coalition collapsed when Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Finance Minister Lindner from the FPD party over irreconcilable differences about an economic plan. Without FDP support, Scholz has to call for a vote of confidence to try to lead a minority government, which he is widely expected not to get – let’s remember he is the least popular German Chancellor in recorded history. When he loses the confidence vote, early elections will be called. The thing is: Scholz wants to delay this process until next year, a move that generated strong reactions both from the opposition and from inside his own crumbling coalition. Scholz wants to have these months to ram through legislation to have any chance in the upcoming election.

GERMANY - With the German government collapsing, one of the main proponents of an Alternative for Germany (AfD) ban, CDU politician Marco Wanderwitz, is pushing for a speedy procedure right before new elections. In order to submit a motion to ban the AfD, he needs 37 fellow MPs, or 5 percent of the Bundestag MPs, to vote with him. No matter what happens, a ban on the AfD could take years. Any final ban would have to be approved by the Federal Constitutional Court, and the burden for such a ban is supposed to be very high. Notably, the AfD party routinely polls between 16 and 20 percent of the national vote, and is the second most popular party in the nation. The courts have never banned such a popular party, setting the stage for a potential national crisis should the motion go through. Another wild card in a potential AfD ban is Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Musk has come out as a quasi-supporter of the party on his X platform. Any move on democratic backsliding in Germany, including a ban on a major opposition party, could result in US sanctions and increased tensions with a Trump-led United States.

UK - Alexander Rogers took his own life after being shunned by his peers – his death highlights the dangers of ‘righteous’ censorship.