SAUDI ARABIA - A tour throughout Western nations and a commitment to fight violence against women is what the prince of Saudi Arabia, whose kingdom now leads a UN commission, is trying to show the world. However, at the same time, at home, his nation broke the record for executions: over 300 so far in 2024. What’s more, the record was broken when it exceeded 300 and reached 304 individuals executed via capital punishment. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the last four people sentenced to the death penalty were three convicted of drug trafficking and another for murder. That is the highest number in the last 30 years and the last 100 were carried out in about a month. Although Saudi lives have equal value, what is most striking is that a third of those executed were foreigners: 100 people. This would show that Saudi Arabia does not fear the repercussions of other countries, as it takes the lives of their citizens.

UK - Economic changes and the movement to push back against total digital surveillance of daily life by using cash rather than cards to buy things appears to be having an impact, with cash transactions rising for the second year in a row, industry says. Debanking activist and Brexit leader Nigel Farage has long beat the ‘cash is king’ drum on the importance of not allowing digital transactions to totally dominate everyday life as a protection against banks being able to arbitrarily turn off the ability of individuals to make payments if, say, they have the wrong political views. The view that cash still has utility appears to be permeating, as the British Retail Consortium states cash use has just risen for the second year running, starting a slow fightback against decades of decline against cards.

AUSTRALIA - A new “religion” is rapidly becoming mainstream, with tens of thousands of Australians suddenly embracing the exploding trend. Dressed head-to-toe in black, Owlvine Green’s fingers hover over a steaming cauldron as a cat looks on, ominously. Candles flicker, casting eerie shadows on the wall. Incense smokes, and a spell book — filled with mystical, arcane symbols — is laid open in front of her. It’s a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in a Harry Potter film. But this isn’t a movie. This is an unassuming home in suburban Melbourne, and Owlvine is a real-life witch. “We’re everywhere — young and old, in the inner city and out in the middle of the bush,” the 36-year-old told news.com.au. “You could be sharing a desk with one of us, or living on the same street.” Today, tens of thousands of Australians identify as witches and globally, we’re in the midst of a bona fide witchcraft boom.

UKRAINE - Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected a call by US President-elect Donald Trump for an immediate truce and peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Following a meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, the US president-elect issued a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform saying, “there should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin” to settle the Ukraine conflict. According to Trump, Ukraine “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.” However, Zelensky made it clear that this is not the case, in a post published on X on Sunday, in which he said the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.” Trump has repeatedly claimed that he could end the Ukraine conflict within a day of returning to the White House, and has criticized the outgoing US administration for spending too much on arming Kiev.

SYRIA - While radical Sunni militants were conquering Damascus, Israel was conducting an absolutely massive bombing campaign inside Syria that is unlike anything we have seen before. The IDF is telling us that more than 350 targets were hit. Basically the goal was to destroy as much military hardware as possible so that it would not fall into the hands of the militants. The Israelis were concerned that the militants might use the military hardware that they inherited against them, and so they took pre-emptive action. Unfortunately, the militants are now steaming mad, and some of them are already publicly threatening Israel. Syria never had a large navy to begin with, but now it has been completely neutralized.

ISRAEL - Warplanes have reportedly hit more than 250 military targets in the country. Israel has launched a large-scale attack on targets in Syria, with warplanes pounding at least three airports and other infrastructure following the demise of former President Bashar Assad’s government, according to several media reports. An unnamed Israeli security source told Israeli Army Radio that “more than 250 military targets were attacked in Syria,” describing the assault as “one of the largest attack operations in the history of… [the] air force.” The targets included “bases of Assad's army, dozens of fighter jets, dozens of surface-to-air missile systems, production sites and warehouses… and surface-to-surface missiles.”

MIDDLE EAST - For the moment, there is jubilation on the streets of Damascus, and rebels are having a grand time looting Assad’s presidential palace… Assad was an absolutely brutal leader, and he was deeply hated by large portions of the Syrian population. Obviously, Russia is one of the big losers in this saga. Syria was Russia’s closest ally in the Middle East. Now the Russians have been forced to pull all of their forces out of the country and will be losing their sole naval base on the Mediterranean Sea… Russia is evacuating its ships and transporting leftover weapons by air from its bases in Syria as the regime of Bashar al-Assad falls, according to the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU).

USA - Collins dictionary went with “brat”. Oxford chose “brain rot”. But in a brutally divided country, the US’s premier dictionary skipped the slang: Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “polarization”. The announcement comes in an election year that put the concept on display, as Kamala Harris warned of fascism under Donald Trump, while Trump resorted to name-calling and claimed his opponent was running on “destruction”. As the dictionary put it, polarization “happens to be one idea that both sides of the political spectrum agree on”. Merriam-Webster defines polarization as “division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes.” In other words, as Peter Sokolowski, the dictionary’s editor-at-large, told the Associated Press, it “means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center”.

PHILIPPINES - More than 87,000 people have been evacuated following the eruption of a volcano, with fears that it could erupt again. Some 87,000 people have been evacuated after Mount Kanlaon erupted in the Philippines, spewing out a towering plume of ash and superhot streams of gas and debris down its western slopes. There are fears that it could erupt again, so authorities have scrambled in an attempt to keep as many people as safe as possible. Visibility across the central regions is poor as a result of the ash cloud. At least six domestic flights and one Singapore-bound flight were cancelled and two local flights have been diverted. Although no fatalities have as yet been reported, Philippine chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol said the area poses a huge risk to residents and the evacuations are essential.

TAIWAN - The approach of a fleet of 90 Chinese naval and coastguard vessels has put the Taiwanese military on high alert as Beijing accelerates its menacing of the self-ruled island. Taiwan said the ships, the largest number sent by Beijing towards the country in months, were targeting the “entire island chain”. An official in Taipei told Reuters: “They are meant to achieve total military intimidation by positioning to control the inner part of the island chain.” The show of force eclipses the 34 Chinese naval vessels and 125 aircraft that were deployed in October. Taiwan said the vessels were seeking to establish seven zones of “reserved airspace”, apparently in preparation for large-scale war games. Taiwan accuses China of pursuing “grey zone” manoeuvres, including daily air force and navy activity, that fall short of warfare but increase pressure on the island’s military.

SYRIA - The country is a patchwork of armed factions and opposition groups – trying to reconcile feminists with jihadists will be tough. As they celebrate the downfall of the Assad regime, many Syrians have been too busy revelling in their present joy to worry about the future. Few would begrudge them their moment. Yet Viktor Chernomyrdin’s famous aphorism will be lurking in the back of many minds among those who watch the Middle East: “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.” Syria remains a patchwork of armed factions and opposition groups with wildly different, frequently competing aims. They will all be jostling for a privileged position under the new dispensation, ideally at the expense of their rivals.

RUSSIA - Within hours of Syrian rebels entering Damascus, Russian state television attempted to downplay the significance for Moscow of the collapse of President Assad’s regime, the Kremlin’s biggest ally in the Middle East. It was a hard sell. When President Putin launched a military campaign in Syria in 2015, the move was portrayed in Moscow as evidence that Russia was re-emerging as a global power with the potential to challenge the West. Over the following years, the Kremlin spent billions of pounds on propping up Assad, while milking the optics of its military intervention, even flying western journalists to its air and naval bases in Syria. The message was clear: Russia was in Syria to stay. Yet by Sunday evening, after Assad and his family had been granted asylum in Moscow, Kremlin propaganda had switched to telling Russians that the dramatic events in Damascus were relatively unimportant.

MIDDLE EAST - No country is better placed than Turkey to emerge as the great winner from the fall of Assad. While the extent of Ankara’s involvement in last week’s rebel advance remains unclear, Turkey has provided the longest, the strongest and at many times the most controversial support for the armed Syrian opposition. From Barack Obama’s refusal to honour the red line he drew over the Assad’s regime’s use of chemical weapons to the oscillating commitment of various Arab allies, Turkey was the only state that never gave up on the Syrian opposition.

IRAN - Iran is teetering on the brink — why this could make regime more dangerous than ever. 2024 must rank as one of the worst years for the Iranian regime. Israel has humbled and decapitated Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon, with key assassinations along the way, including Revolutionary Guards commanders and Hamas leaders. The deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash earlier this year scuppered succession plans for Tehran into the bargain.

SYRIA - The fall of Assad is a disaster for Putin. More dominoes may fall across the Middle East. The events now unfolding in Syria could bring many things: the beginning of the end of three, maybe four wars, the unravelling of the so-called axis of evil – or the dawn of a new dark age which will propel millions more refugees to Europe. We may see all of these. The direction of travel, I believe, will be apparent within days.