But there’s more! Now farmers in Germany are protesting, and it’s barely being reported on the news. I couldn’t find any international mainstream media reporting on this story. By being subscribed to my Substack you are now one of the few people in the English speaking world that is informed on this story!

Without farmers, we don’t have any food. One of the most important things for a country is to have a secure food supply. Now it seems like farmers are being attacked because they are deemed to be bad for the environment. It really doesn’t make any sense. Farmers will no longer get tax breaks for diesel and they won’t get an exemption from car tax for farming vehicles under the new plans.

They say that these new measures will help protect the climate… Great idea. Let’s make farming much more expensive, thus making food more expensive in the name of climate change! Farmers are not happy about this, so they have been protesting. Last month some 40,000 farmers blocked the streets of Berlin with an estimated 8,600 tractors – a 10 kilometre long convoy.

Claude.ai predicted the first AI models would begin to show signs of AGI - ‘artificial general intelligence.’ AGI is a theoretical intelligent agent able to complete any intellectual task a human can - and the arrival of AGI is forecast to cause huge changes to human society.

Bard predicted that 2024 could see biotechnology breakthroughs that ‘upgrade’ the human race. The AI suggested that these could include breakthroughs in ‘Brain-Computer Interfaces,’ where human brains connect to computers. Elon Musk’s Neuralink is set to test such technology in volunteers in the coming year.

Personalized medicine, where treatments are tailored to the individual based on their DNA, has the potential to change human life on a grand scale. Bard predicted that AI could power new breakthroughs in personalized medicine in the coming year. ‘Personalized medicine, also known as precision medicine, aims to tailor treatments and preventive strategies to the unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors of each individual. ’

With the Presidential election looming in the US, Google’s Bard predicted malicious actors would try to undermine the election using technology. Such attacks could include attacks on voting machines in an effort to undermine trust in the result, Bard with Gemini Pro warned. Bard said: ‘Malicious actors might target voter registration databases, voting machines, or election results reporting systems to disrupt the voting process, sow doubt in the outcome, or manipulate results.

Anthropic’s Claude predicts tensions between the US and China will continue to rise in 2024. Tensions between Taiwan and China, which views the democratically governed island as its own territory, have soared in the past four years as China seeks to assert its sovereignty claims with political and military pressure. Claude said: ‘ The relationship between China and the US and its Western allies has become increasingly tense in recent years due to several key factors. 'If Taiwan makes moves towards formal independence in 2024, that could provoke more aggressive posturing or even military action from China.’

Electric cars were the vehicle of choice for the rich and were vastly popular and widespread. In 1900, of the 4,192 registered vehicles on the streets of America, over 1,500 were powered by electricity. The reason for their popularity was that the alternative power sources were so poor.

Bought new, a car like this would have cost $1,600 in 1908, or around $44,000 (£34,803) in modern terms. By 1909, the Fritchel Electric even claimed to be able to travel 100 miles on a single charge. It wasn't until the creation of the Model-T Ford, which sold for around half the price of an electric vehicle, that the popularity of the electric car began to decline.

Take road construction — just one example among many, as political scientist Christian Mölling told DW. Roads and bridges in Germany, he said, would have to be upgraded because many current roadways and bridges are not designed to support the weight of tanks and other heavy military equipment.

"Many people, not least in Germany, fail to understand that in defense matters, you cannot push a button and then have tanks rolling off assembly lines the next day". These realities have gained even more urgency when factoring in the possibility of a US presidential comeback for Donald Trump, who, some fear, could pull the US out of NATO altogether.

Scholz’s biggest challenge is winning over FDP leader Christian Lindner, the finance minister, who sees himself as a guarantor of fiscal rectitude. He is refusing to grant his partners carte blanche by lifting Germany’s constitutional debt brake in 2024 to compensate for the money the court ruled off-limits.

Trouble is, without those funds, the basis for the parties’ cooperation essentially evaporated. Much of the money was earmarked for subsidies for everything from solar panels to electric vehicle charging stations to heat pumps. Without that support, investors and consumers have little incentive to switch to greener energy alternatives.

A bigger worry is next year’s presidential election in the US and the prospect that Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for Germany, could return to power. Such an outcome, which could rob Germany of its most important ally and protector overnight, would make Scholz’s other challenges seem minor. Given that troubled outlook, even Scholz might conclude that his coalition isn’t long for this world.

Tens of thousands of houses and buildings have been turned to rubble and left terrified survivors to brave sub-zero temperatures on the streets. Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, said the Prime Minister urged the government to 'put lives first' and to 'understand the situation' of the devastation caused by the earthquake. He said: 'To the people of Japan, please be on alert that there may be earthquakes for about a week of an intensity scale of up to seven.'

Hayashi said there are 120 'cases of people' who are waiting to be rescued and then adding 'a total of 57,360 people have evacuated'. Dozens of people are still missing and unaccounted for amid the New Year's disaster, with the death toll expected to rise sharply as rescuers begin to recover victims buried beneath the debris.

Of course once they get here many migrants realize that things aren’t so nice. New York City is supposed to be a “sanctuary city” and a place where everyone has a “right to shelter”, but at this point the Big Apple simply does not have enough beds for everyone. As a result, migrants that have “run out their time in shelters” are being forced out into the streets to make room for more migrants that have just arrived…

Why are we allowing vast numbers of migrants to overwhelm our cities when we already have so many people sleeping in the streets? It doesn’t make any sense at all. We have reached a point where Americans “are often too terrified to walk the streets” because homelessness has become so pervasive… Residents are often too terrified to walk the streets and fear for the safety of their family, while rampant lawlessness is increasingly driving tourists and trade out of cities – with many companies shutting up shop altogether due to looting.

Thanks to a process known as “thermal runaway,” which causes lithium ion batteries to reach incredible temperatures, 36,000 gallons were needed to put the fire out. A normal fire in an internal-combustion car only takes 500 gallons. “This was a first for Autauga County. Electric vehicle fires are unusual and present unique challenges and dangers to firefighters,” the statement from Pine Level Fire Department read.

“These vehicles can reignite hours or days after they are first extinguished. They burn at temperatures exceeding 2500 degrees C. The smoke from these burning electric cars produces Hydrogen Fluoride and Hydrogen Chloride gases – both of which are toxic to breathe and requires firefighters to wear breathing apparatus.”

A major tsunami warning was issued for Ishikawa as well as lower-level tsunami alerts or advisories for the rest of the western coast of the island of Honshu. The largest of the quakes prompted broadcasters to switch to special programming and make urgent calls for affected residents to leave for higher ground. Fears are mounting that Japan's coastal nuclear power plants could be affected in the wake of the quake.

Because of this, the past year has undoubtedly been one of the starkest periods of global turmoil since the run up to the first World War, and the historical parallels are uncanny. As a unipolar political order fragments with new challenger powers emerging, the world has descended into a security dilemma fraught with explosive regional conflicts, widespread struggles for influence, arms races and weaponization of trade. Following on from 2022, this has ushered in a new and less secure era.

Thus, 2023 has been a geopolitically divisive year that will certainly be remembered by the history books, especially in reference to the Middle East, and will usher in 2024 as another decisive year which may determine the outcomes of many of these conflicts. The old world, the comfortable world of American privilege, is evaporating, and we potentially now face the return of a world we had hoped was confined to the experiences of our forefathers.

Following a triumphant Moon mission and the prestigious hosting of the G20 Summit, India is poised to enter 2024 with a renewed sense of optimism for further economic expansion (it is aiming at a $5 trillion economy by 2025) and aspirations to play a bigger geopolitical role.

The nation’s allure as an investment hub remains robust, leveraging a skilled talent pool, homegrown technologies and innovations, and tailored central and state government policies to attract global companies such as Apple and Tesla. Peering into the future, the nation eyes attaining developed economy status by 2047. No wonder growth, infrastructure development, and investment have been at the center of the pitch to voters by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as the country heads into a 2024 general election.

Wu went on to denounce such deployments as indicative of a “Cold War mindset,” echoing past condemnations of US military activity across the region, including regular transits of the disputed Taiwan Strait by American naval vessels.

Earlier this month, US Air Force General Kenneth Wilsbach told Japanese media that the Pentagon would soon make major progress in reclaiming the abandoned Tinian airfield – which was used for the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, but has since fallen into disrepair. The general noted that the renovation project was part of a broader plan to station American warplanes across the region.