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Longevity of a regime, democratic or otherwise, rests on its popularity. A dispensation has its days numbered after meting out reprisal to its people for what it considers to be acts of defiance. Myanmar's military junta is one such dispensation. Once feared as a monolithic regime, its signs of decay are looking at it in the face. Many of its men in uniform have turned against it. These soldier-spies are referred to as "watermelons' for being employed in the junta while serving the cause of the rebels.

In the right-wing imaginary, the War on Christmas had a good run. Fox News host John Gibson alleged in a 2005 book that liberals were planning to “ban the sacred holiday,” and a moral panic was born, yielding outrage after outrage almost every year. This year, however, the defenders of all things merry and bright have been pretty quiet, and polling shows that even among conservatives and Donald Trump supporters, a declining minority of Americans believe that the beloved holiday is under siege. Sensitive neighbours (and corporations hoping to avoid their ire) may continue to wish us a “Happy Holidays,” the ACLU may continue to object to religious iconography in the town square, yet Americans are ignoring the likes of Tucker Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, instead adulting with a “live and let live” attitude.

A year back when we entered the New Year 2024, we all hoped that the year would bring an end to the conflicts around the world and reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, even though this hope was filled with fear and scepticism. Despite the global voice for peace, truce in any of the conflict zones seems remote at the end of the year.

From the early indications so far available, the New Year—2025— is all set to be tumultuous for all nations. India must be wary and take every possible caution and steps to navigate the forthcoming year of uncertainty. The USA, with its sheer size and weight in the world economy and power equation, matters for all. The president-elect’s esoteric doctrines, which can be pieced together from his constant verbal output, is about to introduce a new world order and system.

The United States Congress has recently passed a horrific piece of legislation calling for the infusion into the nation’s public school system of a curriculum that teaches middle and high school students about the alleged evils of communism, including the absurd claim that communists have killed 100 million people.

In the run-up to the holiday season, the diverse, working-class New York City borough of Queens seemed to suddenly erupt with labour militancy. Both the Amazon Teamsters and the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) took action on December 19 to demand the same thing: that management come to the table with good-faith bargaining that could lift the living conditions of tens of thousands of working New Yorkers and their families.

As the Biden administration prepares to relinquish power next month, it may leave without accomplishing a much-discussed diplomatic goal: the normalisation of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, accompanied by a formal US security agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif securing a $7 billion package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in September was accompanied by a commitment to break Pakistan's longstanding reliance on bailout programmes. Since 1958, it has taken recourse to it 20 times. The country is struggling with a worsening unemployment crisis and a brain-drain. There are recent reports of the World Bank cancelling a $500 billion loan for a clean energy programme.

The Democratic Party in the US has failed to earn the support of what was once its working-class base. This ought to be a moment of reckoning for the party. The anger it faces is justified and necessary to intensify pressure to abandon its tepid political strategies and overreliance on big donors who oppose large-scale redistribution and pro-worker policies. But while the party deserves a lot of blame, understanding the depth of the crisis on the Left requires a much broader analysis than finger-pointing at Democratic campaign officials and strategists allows.

Consecutive monthly decline in GDP marking the first back to back contraction since the Covid-19 lockdown are signals to UK economy policymakers to clear the decks for a precarious balancing act. This is necessary to stabilise short-term economic performance while fostering long-term growth.