With just days of the Biden administration left to go, a ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Hamas over their war in the Gaza Strip. Fighting will formally pause on Sunday, although the devil remains in the details as to how such an agreement can be transferred into a permanent peace. The Gaza Strip lies in a state of devastation, overwhelmed by destruction, poverty, disease, and famine, a byproduct of Israel's very destructive campaign against it in retaliation to the events of Oct. 7, 2023, initiated by Hamas.

In four days time, TikTok will face a de-facto ban under American law which will not prohibit access to it entirely but will force it to be removed from US app stores such as Apple and Google. As it stands, TikTok is the most influential social media app on the planet. Based in Singapore, but owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, McCarthyist American congressmen ultimately spun paranoid scare stories that the application represented a threat to national security, without due evidence, and subsequently passed a law last year affirming that it must be sold or faced restrictions.

We've all heard that phrase before, "The end of history." Famously coined by Francis Fukuyama, America's victory in the Cold War in 1991 ushered in a wave of optimism. Authoritarianism and conflict between states, so it went, was a thing of the past. "History" as we knew it, was therefore over, and the transition to liberal democracy was an inevitability. Relics of that bygone era, such as North Korea or Cuba, would surely collapse, while China, now being integrated into the global economic order, would transition to become like America by virtue of that influence.

Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk has decided to poke his nose into British politics. Fresh off the hubris of having potentially swayed the election in favor of Donald Trump, turning the social media platform into a full-on MAGA cheerleader, Musk has now turned his sights to across the Atlantic, believing he can exert the same kind of influence in the United Kingdom.

2024 has come to an end. The year has been another period of turmoil and instability in global affairs that marks the continuation, if not consolidation, of a world fraught with geopolitical competition between states. Few would look back on this year in history and state it has been a optimistic or hopeful one as a result, with the last 12 months being defined by Israel's wars in the Gaza strip and Lebanon, confrontation with Iran, the continuation of the war in Ukraine and of course, the looming return of Donald Trump to the White House.

It was announced on Sunday evening in US time that former President Jimmy Carter had passed away. Having reached the golden milestone of a century, President Carter had been in hospice care since early 2023 due to the irreversible complications of his cancer and undoubtedly defied the odds by surviving a lot longer than he expected, including outliving his late wife, Rosalyn.

Earlier this week incoming US President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Chinese soldiers had been stationed in the Panama Canal. For those who don't know what that is, the Panama Canal is the most strategic waterway in the Americas, cutting through the country of the same name which defines the narrowest point in Central America and providing a gateway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.

China and Japan are currently undertaking a reproachment in relations.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is set to appoint Peter Mandelson as the UK's ambassador to the United States, a move which has been met with anger by China hawks.

For the past week or so, a "Chinese spy scandal" has dominated the headlines in Britain. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, is accused of having close ties to a so-called agent affiliated with China's "United Front Work Department" which is depicted as an influence operation to get close to elite individuals in the country. This is a hangover from his days as a British trade envoy.

In a surprise move, Donald Trump invited Xi Jinping to his presidential inauguration. It is not yet known how China will respond to the invitation, with the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C declining to comment. However, precedent usually involves the inviting party making some kind of political concessions in order to get such a privilege, hence when Queen Elizabeth II passed away and Xi was invited to her funeral, he did not attend but sent another high-ranking official.

The regime of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria has fallen.

Late last night South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol randomly declared Martial Law. Stating that the opposition Democratic Party was collaborating with North Korea, he vowed on television to effectively purge them. The decision came as he faced impeachment proceedings, with his reputation dogged by low popularity and a series of political scandals, and soon enough soldiers were deployed onto the streets of Seoul and descended upon the Gukhwi (national assembly) building.

Beginning at the weekend, the Syrian Rebel Forces, pinned in a distant northwest corner of the country, suddenly launched an offensive against the territory of the Bashar Al-Assad government. Disorganized and ill-prepared, the rebels almost immediately recaptured the city of Aleppo, which had been reclaimed in a hugely destructive and deadly battle back in 2016. Mainstream liberals began cheering on social media again for the prospective fall of the Assad regime, although that seems premature.

Yesterday it was announced that Germany's Volkswagen will sell its plant in China's Xinjiang autonomous region to a local owner, as well as its testing track, and withdraw from production there.