1. The US Congress will officially certify the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election four years after he incited a violent rebellion to stay in office

2. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's cabinet approves a new record-high military budget--equivalent to $US55.3 billion-- for 2025

3. Ann Telnaes, an award-winning editorial cartoonist, resigns from the Washington Post after being censored

The Ann Telnaes sketch that The Washington Post refused to publish

4. Paintings that pulse with energy and a sense of possibility-- important works by Parisian Orphists are displayed in New York City

Robert Delaunay, First Disk, 1913

5. An historic assault on free speech in Australia: the University of Sydney moves to enforce "civility" by prohibiting all political dissent on campus

6. The hype behind AI and the return of a Trump administration in the US feeds Wall Street's growing stock market bubble

7. IYSSE students will move a lecture about the IMF's influence on Sri Lanka to a venue in Kandy after administrators at Peradeniya University refused to allow them to hold it on campus

8. 320 unionized workers at an IKEA distribution center in northern Maryland vote to remain on strike into the new year

9. German foreign minister's absurd and reactionary “Guidelines for a Feminist Foreign Policy” on show at a state visit with "reformed" HTS terrorists now governing Syria

10. Remember the historic strike that would save jobs and improve working conditions? UPS shed jobs to automate a major hub facility in Portland, Oregon

11. The US, France, and Saudi Arabia exert intense pressure on Lebanon's parliament to select a president in line with their strategic interests in the region

12. The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee in the UK continues its fight on behalf of Royal Mail workers and against a billionaire's takeover attempt

13. Further Education teachers at English sixth form colleges extend their strike into the new year

14. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!