UK - Britain is preparing to launch air strikes against Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea if the rebels continue to fire at vessels in the region. Under the plans, the UK will reportedly join forces with the US and another European country to unleash the strikes against targets based in the ocean or in Yemen, where the attacks are being coordinated from. It comes as Foreign Secretary David Cameron warned Tehran that it shares responsibility in preventing the attacks, after the US said its navy sank three Yemeni rebel's boats which were targeting a container.

USA - If the US economy really is in “good shape”, then why are so many prominent businesses rushing to permanently shut down locations that were once profitable? US banks are closing thousands of branches and US retailers are closing thousands of stores. If a new golden age of prosperity is dead ahead, that wouldn’t make any sense at all. Of course the truth is that most Americans are really struggling in our current economic environment, and conditions are going to get even worse in 2024.

USA - According to the late Freeman Dyson, computer models do a good job of helping us understand climate but they do a very poor job of predicting it. “As measured from space, the whole earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so it’s increasing agricultural yields, it’s increasing the forests and it’s increasing growth in the biological world, and that’s more important and more certain than the effects on climate,” Dyson said during an interview with Conversations that Matter in 2015.

GERMANY - The Bundeswehr is facing a dramatic shortage in personnel. Now Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has rekindled the debate over reintroducing conscription. At the end of October, the Bundeswehr said it counted 181,383 soldiers in its ranks — that's still some distance from the target of 203,000 that the German military hopes to reach by 2025. This has given rise to concern in times of Russia's war against Ukraine, which has once again reminded Germans how quickly conflicts can erupt in Europe.

RUSSIA - Russia and Iran have finalized an agreement to trade in their local currencies instead of the US dollar, Iran's state media has reported. Both countries are subject to US sanctions. "Banks and economic actors can now use infrastructures including non-SWIFT interbank systems to deal in local currencies," Iran’s state media has declared. Moscow has lately been cozying up to Tehran, with Iran revealing in November it will provide Russia with Su-35 fighter jets, Mi-28 attack helicopters and Yak-130 pilot training aircraft. The global de-dollarization drive has been going on for years with BRIC countries and the so-called pariah states trying to ditch the American dollar in favor of other currencies. Russia has declared it will no longer accept the American currency as payment for its energy commodities but will instead switch to Chinese and Emirati currencies.

CHINA - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday vowed that Taiwan will be reunited with the mainland, saying Beijing will "resolutely prevent anyone from splitting" the two sides in any way. The comments came during a symposium in Beijing commemorating the 130th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, the founding father of Communist China. In 1949, Mao led his country to defeat the Republic of China government, which then fled the mainland for Taiwan. To this day, Beijing regards the democratically-governed island nation as part of its own territory, despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei. Over the past year and a half, China has staged multiple rounds of major war games around Taiwan and regularly sends warships and fighter jets into the Taiwan Strait.

VENEZUELA - Britain has been warned not to 'mess with Venezuela' as President Nicolas Maduro slammed the 'decadent, rotten, ex-empire of the UK' for sending a Navy warship to protect Guyana. President Maduro on Thursday ordered more than 5,600 military personnel to participate in a 'defensive' exercise near the border with Guyana, in response to Britain sending a warship to the area. Maduro said he was launching 'a joint action of a defensive nature in response to the provocation and threat of the United Kingdom against peace and the sovereignty of our country.' Britain said on Sunday it would divert the patrol vessel HMS Trent to Guyana, a former British colony, amid the South American country's simmering territorial dispute with neighboring Venezuela over the oil-rich Essequibo region.

CHINA - The ban includes technology for making rare earth magnets used in various industries. China, controlling 90% of the refined rare earth metal market, seeks to maintain its processing monopoly. The US has made efforts to incentivize domestic mining of critical minerals, but challenges remain due to China's market dominance. The clean energy economy is a metals energy economy, and rare earths constitute a substantial and key part of that metals energy economy.

USA - Sadly, [many of] today’s teachers are groomers. They’re in the classroom to do one thing: teach children the progressive way of life. Reading, writing, and arithmetic have taken a backseat to politics, but this isn’t a new problem. It’s actually been going on for well over 30 years now. As a matter of fact, one teacher named Ezola Foster was sounding alarms back in the ’80s, pointing out all the Marxist tricks that liberals were using to influence our kids’ minds. If only we had listened to Ezola back then, we could have saved ourselves a lot of confusion and heartache.

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations' 'two-faced' refugee agency has sent scores more asylum seekers to Rwanda – despite opposing Britain's scheme. Officials in Rwanda announced that they had welcomed 153 people who had been evacuated from Libya under a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) programme. Last night, the agency was accused of 'hypocrisy of the highest level' for its role in thwarting Britain's Rwanda deal while operating its own scheme with the east African nation. The UN agency hired a legal team to set out its 'grave concerns' about Britain's scheme during a Supreme Court hearing just three months ago. The latest batch of refugees brought the total number of people relocated to Rwanda by the UNHCR to more than 2,000.

INDIA - In a stunning discovery, hundreds of revered stone balls known as “Kuldevtas” or family deities have been found to be fossilized dinosaur eggs, estimated to be around 175 million years old. The villagers of Padlya in Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, had long considered these sacred stones, locally known as “Kakad Bhairav”, as protectors of their farms and livestock. Recent scientific tests have revealed that these revered stones played a significant role in local customs, having been worshipped as family deities for generations. Vishal Verma, a local paleontologist, emphasized the importance of preserving these traditions, underscoring that the area was also once home to a thriving population of dinosaurs in the Mesozoic era. Dhar district is home to the Dinosaur Fossil National Park, which preserves the fossilized remains of ancient dinosaurs.

MIDDLE EAST - With American service personnel increasingly in a dangerous firing line and with US and allied naval assets on high alert after multiple drone attacks, the deteriorating situation is leading to a tense holiday period for the White House. The rising possibility of US combat deaths and the worsening security situation from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and stretching through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel represents an unwelcome new foreign crisis as President Joe Biden’s re-election year dawns. And it is becoming a petri dish for a new geopolitical trend — endless tests of America’s will and credibility by its adversaries and their proxies.

ISRAEL - Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee that Israel is engaged in a war on seven fronts, and all of Israel’s enemies are potential targets. He added, “We have already responded and acted in six of these areas, and I say here in the clearest way: Anyone who acts against us is a potential target, there is no immunity for anyone.”

MIDDLE EAST - The US launched a retaliatory strike against Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah, the White House said on Monday — just hours after a drone launched by the Iranian-aligned group injured three American service members. President Joe Biden ordered the airstrike on Monday afternoon after a call with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and they hit the militia bases around 8:45 pm Eastern, according to the White House and the military’s Central Command. The strikes were directed at three locations the White House said Kataib Hezbollah and other armed groups were using for “unmanned aerial drone activities.” Central Command said the strikes destroyed the drone facilities and killed Kataib Hezbollah fighters, with “no indications” of civilian casualties.

MIDDLE EAST - “A full-blown open-ended regional war would be horrific,” warned a letter to Biden signed by over 30 organizations. Dozens of anti-war organizations on Friday urged US President Joe Biden to rule out any military escalation in Yemen as tensions in the Red Sea continue to rise following a series of Houthi attacks on shipping vessels.