GERMANY - Germany’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is set to cease production at its 'Transparent Factory' in Dresden on Tuesday, several media outlets have reported. Rising energy prices coupled with weak sales and US tariffs have subjected the company to considerable cash flow pressure in recent months. The plant’s closure on Tuesday will be the first time in Volkswagen’s 88-year history that it has shut down a production line in its home country, Germany. Volkswagen has recently seen a significant slump in profits due to weak sales in Europe, China, and the US. Several other German carmakers, including BMW and Mercedes-Benz, have been grappling with similar problems this year.

UK - Police chiefs are under pressure to follow two of Britain’s biggest forces in cracking down on those who chant “globalise the intifada”. Sir Mark Rowley and Sir Stephen Watson, the respective heads of the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester police, said on Wednesday that activists caught chanting the slogan would face arrest. Hours later, the Met detained two people for racially aggravated public order offences after they allegedly shouted “slogans involving calls for intifada” at a rally in central London. It is understood the police chiefs hope the crackdown will encourage prosecutors to be “bolder” in their willingness to test more cases in court. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, suggested West Midlands police, the force in her own constituency, should follow suit. She told Times Radio: “The Metropolitan Police have made the right decision in this instance, because I cannot think of any interpretation other than that it is inciting people to violence which has terrible consequences.”

USA - America is waking up. After years of being told that gender is fluid, that chromosomes are incidental, and that masculinity is toxic or obsolete, America is rediscovering a truth our culture worked hard to bury: The Y matters. The crisis began the moment the “Y” was dismissed. Influential voices turned identity into a DIY project, erased the Y chromosome as a marker of manhood, blurred essential boundaries, and loosened every anchor that once helped boys grow. Time-tested anchors of family, faith, community, mentors, and clear expectations were discarded.

USA - California has been rattled by multiple earthquake swarms over the past four days, with the latest hitting on Tuesday. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported a 3.1-magnitude quake at 5.53 am PT (8.53 am ET) near San Ramon, the epicenter of the recent seismic activity. The uptick in seismic activity has raised concerns among some residents, with fears that the clusters of quakes could be a warning sign of a much larger earthquake. However, experts say the small tremors do not indicate that a major event is imminent. Records from the USGS highlighted similar swarms in 1970, 1976, 2002, 2003, 2015 and 2018. Sarah Minson, a research geophysicist with the USGS's Earthquake Science Center at California's Moffett Field, told SF Gate: 'This has happened many times before here in the past, and there were no big earthquakes that followed.'

UK - The Children’s Commissioner has told parents not to be friends with their child. In a message to parents ahead of the Christmas holidays, Dame Rachel de Souza urged families to take a tougher line on their children’s access to technology, warning: “My message is simple: you are not supposed to be your child’s friend.” She suggested parents’ own doom-scrolling habits may be rubbing off on children, and called on families to start honest conversations about the time spent and content viewed online. Her comments accompany the launch of a new guide offering advice for parents on how to address online safety, negative experiences online and artificial intelligence (AI).

UK - English Heritage has admitted promoting a “nonsense” theory about why Christmas is on December 25. The heritage charity claimed that the birth of Jesus Christ is only celebrated on that date because the Roman Empire repurposed a sun god’s festival for the occasion. In a now-deleted post on X, the social media platform, on Wednesday, English Heritage wrote: “Why do we celebrate Christmas on 25 December? It was celebrated by the Romans as the birth of the sun god, Sol Invictus. After the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, it was changed into a Christian holy day, and parts of the winter festivals were brought together.”

GERMANY - The era of ‘Pax Americana’ is over for Europe, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said, adding that the global economy and political order are undergoing a “tectonic shift” in centers of power worldwide. The term ‘Pax Americana’ (American Peace) describes the transatlantic order that emerged after 1945 and was institutionalized through NATO, with the US as Europe’s primary security guarantor and leading military power. Speaking at the Christian Social Union (CSU) party convention in Munich on Saturday, Merz urged Europeans to prepare for a “fundamental change in the transatlantic relationship.” “The decades of the Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well. It no longer exists in the way we knew it,” he said. “Americans are now very, very firmly pursuing their own interests.” The chancellor pointed to changes in tariff policy under US President Donald Trump, which led to a trade deal between Brussels and Washington that many criticized as disadvantageous for the EU.

USA - Recently, the White House issued the annual National Security Strategy. The document is mandated by law and describes in very broad terms the administration’s vision of the world. Rarely does the document go into details of how the challenges must be addressed – it does not prescribe “how,” but tells “what” and “why.” This latest attempt at defining the foreign policy of the United States is historical in three aspects. It paints the world without friends or enemies. It declares the former and current interests outside of the Western Hemisphere of less importance. It finally puts an end to the status and the ambitions of the country as the superpower. The document officially declares the end of American world power. It concludes almost two decades of declining power coupled with unwillingness and inability to wisely exercise it.

AUSTRALIA - As the civilised world united in horror at Sunday’s terrorist atrocity on Australia’s Bondi Beach, one man far away in the Middle East may well have felt somewhat pleased with himself. Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is the current global head of Islamic State – the terror group in whose name at least one of the gunmen apparently acted. Sunday’s slaughter on Bondi Beach – in which father-and-son duo, Sajid and Naveed Akram, shot dead 15 people – was a stark reminder, though, that even when at an ebb, the threat from Islamic State remains a real one. Sydney’s beach-goers were not the only Western lives claimed by the terror group over the weekend – Islamic State fighters also killed two US soldiers and their interpreter in Syria. But were these just one-offs – a bloody last-blast from a dwindling cohort of diehard followers? Or might they be part of a wider resurgence in the group’s fortunes, one which, in part, is capitalising on Muslim anger over the post-October 7 war in Gaza?

UK - Jihadists like the evil pair who carried out the Bondi Beach massacre are laughing at the West and its craven leadership. There must be a cast-iron understanding, inculcated in every single child at school, that anyone who moves here must do as the Jews did. Adopt British values, become patriotic and show respect for our country. The UK must stop importing ideologies which are not only hostile to Jews and women, but which will eventually destroy us all. If it can happen at Hanukkah, don’t think Christmas is safe. How can we fight the growing threat when most Western leaders are too frightened to even name the problem they help create? Kemi Badenoch also took no prisoners when she addressed the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) Hanukkah reception. "We know the evil that we face – we know how it operates, how it abuses our democracy, subverts our institutions… Let us be plain: it is radical Islamism that is a threat to Western civilisation and the rest of the world.” A courageous and much-needed statement.

UKRAINE - Nato nations need to arm themselves with “as many drones as bullets” to win a war with Russia or China, a senior Ukrainian military adviser to the alliance has said. “Millions” of cheap kamikaze drones must be manufactured if European states are to stand a chance at defending their borders, Oleksandr Voitko said. During a Nato weapons and technology demonstration in southern Finland this week, the senior lieutenant said it can now take “dozens” of drones to destroy one Russian battle tank. Many more are needed to intercept waves of dive-bombing devices in the air, he added.

UK - Blaise Metreweli, in her first public speech as head of the intelligence agency, says the world is being remade by technology that was once the stuff of fiction. In a speech that focused largely on Russia, she also said that President Putin was “dragging out negotiations” to end the war in Ukraine, and Britain was now operating in a “space between peace and war”. “Our world is being actively remade with profound implications for national and international security,” she said, as Sir Keir Starmer headed to Berlin for talks on a Ukraine peace deal. She said technologies could create “peril” as weapons, drones and robots inflicted devastation on the battlefield, and some algorithms could “become as powerful as states”.

UK - Dame Sarah Mullally is due to take up the role next year, following Justin Welby’s resignation over his handling of abuse allegations. However, last week, it emerged that she is the subject of a formal complaint being considered by Church of England officials over her handling of an allegation of abuse made by an individual known as ‘N’. ‘N’ claimed that the lack of investigation into his claims by Bishop Mullally caused him to have such a severe breakdown in his mental health that he made two attempts on his life.

USA - I recently wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal under the headline “Is ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ real?” It went viral almost instantly. Within hours my inbox was flooded with angry messages. I was accused of defending a fascist, labelled a protector of paedophiles, told I had blood on my hands, and sent messages wishing me dead. A surprising number came from fellow therapists. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so revealing. Many of the same people who preach emotional maturity responded with volatility and cruelty, mirroring the very traits they usually claim to condemn. Their outrage became a form of moral elevation. Their sense of injury became a license to attack.

USA - Donald Trump has filed a $10billion lawsuit against the BBC after the embattled corporation was found to have doctored his speech in a Panorama episode. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, includes one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law. Trump's legal team are demanding $5 billion in damages for each count. In a 33-page complaint document, attorneys for the president accused the BBC of publishing a 'false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction' of him 'that was fabricated' in the Panorama episode Trump: A Second Chance? The documentary, which was aired just a week before the US election, spliced together two parts of a speech in a way which appeared to show him inciting his followers to storm the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.