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China has scored a major diplomatic victory in Myanmar by helping the conclusion of a truce between the ruling military junta and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in the provinces bordering China. The MNDAA rebels took control of large areas around the border by driving out the junta troops last month. China was negotiating a deal as the mediator for the last two weeks and it was finally announced on Saturday.

LONDON: Donald Trump’s presidency is an opportunity to challenge Britain’s “special relationship” with Washington and the NATO war machine. Both Trump and his liberal opponents present his movement as one disrupting these old alliances. Trump derides allies for not pulling their weight and even talks of seizing their territory. Liberals on both sides of the Atlantic see this as a threat to the US-policed world order.

PARIS: French Prime Minister François Bayrou comfortably survived his first confidence vote on Thursday, a little over one month after the veteran centrist became France’s prime minister. The January 16 vote, called by the left-wing force La France Insoumise (LFI), came two days after Bayrou’s inaugural “general policy” statement to the National Assembly on Tuesday. In the end, however, the no-confidence motion won the support of only 131 MPs in the 577-seat lower house — two hundred votes less than the no-confidence vote that sunk the short-lived government of Bayrou’s predecessor, Michel Barnier.

NEW YORK: Until pretty recently, if you thought of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, you’d probably come up with a flesh-and-blood automaton whose mission to connect the world turned into the upending of political systems and poisoning of our information environment — not to mention that weird metaverse side project. Accusations that his platform helped get Donald Trump elected in 2016 led to a series of scandals that the company struggled to effectively respond to — at least until another billionaire rose to take his crown.

The Gaza ceasefire deal came as a win for Donald Trump, even before he started his next stint as the 47th American President. Though, both the outgoing and the incoming presidents- Biden and Trump claimed it as their victory, yet in real terms the deal fructified due to Trump’s adamant and no-nonsense attitude in dealing with Netanyahu.

NEW YORK: Why is Donald Trump so obsessed with Greenland? During his first presidency, Trump surprised many by voicing his intention in 2019 to buy the Arctic island from Denmark as part of a real estate deal.

The outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden said in his farewell address to the American nation on Thursday that the democracy in U.S. is sliding into an oligarchy dominated by the big tech billionaires. He did not name Trump but it was clear that he was mentioning of the incoming Presidential tenure of Donald Trump which starts from January 20 following his inauguration.

Global labour market is under immense pressure with economic deceleration, geopolitical tensions, the rising costs of climate change and unresolved debt issues. Though, in 2024, global employment expanded in line with a growing labour force, keeping the unemployment rate steady, similar to previous year, young people continued to face much higher unemployment rates with few signs of improvements.

The imperialist countries led by the US have been imposing unilateral sanctions that do not have any backing from the United Nations against countries that dare to defy their diktat. According to one estimate almost one third of the countries of the world have been subject to such sanctions at one time or another. Such sanctions include the freezing of those assets of the sanctioned countries that are held in western financial institutions, as has been the case with Iran, Cuba, and North Korea among others earlier, and with Russia most recently.

LONDON: The ceasefire in Gaza, at least pausing a 15-month-long genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people waged by a depraved Israeli state, must be welcomed. If the ceasefire takes hold — always a doubt given Israel’s record in these matters — it offers some relief to the people of Gaza, whose suffering and losses are matched only by their resilience and resistance in the face of a terrifying onslaught.