FRANCE - France is on the verge of government collapse as lawmakers - led by Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) - fail to agree with former Brexit negotiator and political grandee, Michel Barnier, over a proposed budget endorsed by the EU. Prime Minister Barnier was ostensibly brought in by President Emmanuel Macron to be the grown up in the room. The new PM also had the broad backing of RN, not least for his newfound tough rhetoric over mass immigration.

ISRAEL - Israelis greeted news of Wednesday's Lebanon ceasefire with mixed emotions: hopeful it will pave the way for a deal to free hostages held in Gaza yet sceptical of its durability. The truce follows more than a year of cross-border exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which escalated into open war in September. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled the ceasefire deal on Wednesday night, without disclosing if the roughly 60,000 people displaced by fighting in northern Israel could safely return home.

USA - The US is deploying High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Japan’s Nansei Islands and Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTFs) to the Philippines to strengthen defense against China’s growing military presence near Taiwan. The plan, a joint effort between the US and Japan, aims to increase anti-ship capabilities and protect the strategic islands in the event of a Chinese invasion. HIMARS will also enhance strike precision under the “first island chain” strategy. Logistical support will be provided by the Japan Self-Defense Forces, including ammunition and fuel. This strategic deployment is a direct response to China’s increasing military drills and growing regional influence. The US is making it clear that it stands ready to defend regional stability and block Beijing’s expansion, though China and Russia have strongly criticized the move, arguing it escalates tensions and threatens peace.

USA - US President-elect Donald Trump is “not safe,” Russian President Vladimir Putin believes. The Russian president made the remarks on Thursday at a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, following a two-day Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit. Putin said he was astonished by the way the US election campaign had unfolded, citing the “absolutely uncivilized methods used to battle against Trump, including repeated assassination attempts.” Putin said he was even more astonished that Trump’s political opponents had targeted the Republican’s family and children. He called such behavior “revolting” and indicative of the US political system’s decline, noting that even criminal groups would not resort to such methods. “In my opinion, he is not safe now,” Putin emphasized, noting that “various incidents have happened in US history.”

USA - Whatever media you read, you read that “Russia invaded Ukraine.” The lie is not limited to official narrative-controllers, such as the NY Times, Washington Post, Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, CNN. Wikipedia, NPR, ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC, Telegraph, Guardian. It appears in alternative media, such as the Epoch Times and Breitbart. Indeed, the lie is repeated as fact almost everywhere, in the houses of Congress, the UK Parliament, Wall Street, European media and other governments.

LEBANON - The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is good news not just because it promises to bring the terrible bloodshed of the past few months to an end. It also represents a major setback for Iran, the primary backer of the Lebanese terrorist group that provoked the conflict in the first place by maintaining a continual missile barrage against civilians in northern Israel. As the key backer of Hezbollah and Hamas – responsible for causing the year-long hostilities in the Middle East – Iran has a great deal to answer for.

UK - When the drive for net-zero means endangering the lives of patients, we know for sure that lunatics are firmly in charge of the asylum. Nearly one in ten people in this country, me included, have asthma. If you’re not one of them, you’ll know someone who is. And you’ll be aware that the blue inhaler can quite literally save lives, stopping an asthma attack in its tracks. About a thousand asthmatics each year in the UK die from an attack, but it’d be an awful lot more without the sixty million blue inhalers prescribed by doctors. Yet, incredibly, that’s not enough for the fanatics. It’s not enough to stop asthmatics dying. So, get this, doctors are being told not to prescribe blue inhalers because they damage the planet. Worse, they are being encouraged to hand out leaflets to asthmatics telling them that the inhaler their life depends on can have “a greenhouse gas effect”. Oh my goodness. We really have stooped this low. We’ve hit rock-bottom. Yes, vulnerable asthmatics are going to be guilt-tripped by their own doctors into changing their medicine.

CHINA - China is nearly ready. Laser-focused for more than two decades on building up a military force that could feasibly cross the Taiwan Strait, land on Taiwanese beaches and then march on Taipei, the Chinese Communist Party is preparing to finally achieve its ultimate goal: brutally “reunifying” Taiwan’s young democracy with China’s entrenched autocracy. “The stakes scarcely could be higher,” analysts Andrew Erickson and Gabriel Collins wrote in a new volume for the US Naval War College. Ominously, the coming clash could occur at a nadir for American strength and resolve. Inasmuch as Taiwan is counting on the United States to save it, it’s risking its own future.

USA - Alec Baldwin has claimed Americans are “uninformed about reality” and do not understand the world’s important issues like Israel or climate change. The actor, 66, said he believes the country’s population is uneducated and the “vacuum” is filled by the media and film industry. Speaking at a press conference as he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Torino Film Festival, he said: “Television news in the United States is a business. They have to make money... There’s a hole. There’s a vacuum. There is a gap, if you will, in information for Americans.” Baldwin added: “Americans are very uninformed about reality – what’s really going on. With climate change, Ukraine, Israel… You name it, all the biggest topics in the world, Americans have an appetite for a little bit of information.”

USA - On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Washington Post columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria stated that Russia is getting help from China, North Korea, and Iran and “the axis of Russia, China, North Korea, they’re collaborating more than the Japanese and the Germans did during World War II.” Zakaria said that he’s not sure he would describe things as World War III, but “I think it’s fair to say that you now have the outlines of a global coalition. The Russians are being actively assisted by the Chinese, by the North Koreans, by the Iranians. And Ukraine, of course, has the support of a very large cohort of Western and significant non-Western countries. And if you think about the axis of Russia, China, North Korea, they’re collaborating more than the Japanese and the Germans did during World War II."

USA - Target and Amazon will be put under pressure to drop their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies after Walmart said it would institute a crackdown on woke measures. Robby Starbuck, the conservative activist who pushed the retail giant into its U-turn, said in a video that “we have our eyes on Amazon and Target” because they are “acting crazy out there with wokeness”. Walmart, the biggest private employer in the US, will phase out terms like “diversity, equity and inclusion” in company materials and end sales of items such as chest binders for children who express a trans identity, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

ISRAEL - Binyamin Netanyahu warns his country will retaliate if the Iranian-backed militia breaks terms of the deal as the displaced fear returning to northern Israel. Celebrations were under way in Beirut, with the sounds of gunfire and car horns filling the air, after a fragile ceasefire to end nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah came into force on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of Lebanese began their journeys home to the southern suburbs of the capital and the far south of the country, defying a warning from the Israeli military to stay away from previously evacuated areas, as soon as the truce officially began at 4am local time (2am GMT).The agreement, brokered by the US and France, marked a rare victory for diplomacy in a region traumatised by two devastating wars for more than a year. However, Israel vowed to strike back if the Iran-backed militants broke the terms.

UNITED NATIONS - There are moments in history when we are called upon to pause, reflect, and confront the troubling realities of how far humanity can deviate from its noble intentions. One such moment lies before us now, as the United Nations finds itself embroiled in a grotesque distortion of truth. The United Nations, long criticised for its diminishing role as a moral arbiter, has once again revealed the depths of its political bias. Its latest decision to refuse the renewal of Alice Wairimu Nderitu’s contract as the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide is both disheartening and deeply troubling. Ms. Nderitu, a respected Kenyan mediator and a globally recognised voice in peacebuilding, is being dismissed — not for incompetence, but for her refusal to politicise the term "genocide" in the context of Israel’s war with Hamas.

USA - Household debt in the United States grew by another $147 billion over the third quarter of 2024, with credit card debt being one of the leading drivers of the new debt. This is according to the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Center for Microeconomic Data, which noted that the $147 billion increase in household debt amounts to a 0.8 percent increase in the total household debt at the end of the third quarter, which is now $17.94 trillion. Credit card balances as they stand are now at a record-high of $1.17 trillion, around 8.1 percent higher than they were at the end of the third quarter of last year.

UK - More than two million people at time of writing have signed a petition calling for another general election in the UK. It follows a raft of broken campaign promises and downright horrendous policies enacted by the far left Labour government since it was elected in July, including imprisoning people for social media posts. The petition was created last Wednesday and quickly passed the 100,000 signatures mark, the amount needed for it to be considered for a debate in parliament. The petition, which now stands at over 2 million signatures, states that the “current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.”