03 World

Blurb:

Canada’s government-run euthanasia program increased its death toll again last year, taking more than 16,000 lives, and placing medically assisted suicide as the fourth leading cause of death in the country.

According to an annual report published by the Canadian government, 16,499 people were killed through the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program in 2024, increasing 6.9 percent from the previous year. Close to 75 percent of the 22,535 people who applied for the program were approved.

The report authors stated that the number of deaths is possibly stabilizing, while admitting that “long-term trends” have not yet been identified. Based on 2023 numbers, an estimated 1 in 20 deaths are government-directed.

Blurb:

President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday reiterated Mexico’s opposition to foreign interventions and interference as the United States ramps up its aggressive posture against Venezuela.

Speaking at her morning press conference, Sheinbaum also called on the United Nations to assume its “role” and prevent bloodshed in Venezuela.

Her remarks came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on social media that he was ordering “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela,” a move the Venezuelan government called a “grotesque threat.”

Trump also wrote that “the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. government, and declared that “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America.”

Blurb:

Democrats in the United States repeatedly praise Australia’s 1996 gun confiscation law as a successful model to emulate, while many Australians — especially after the Bondi Beach terror attack earlier this week — argue that the confiscation helped but failed to go far enough. Yet the supposed benefits of this policy rest on deeply flawed statistical analysis.

After the Minneapolis school shooting in September, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claimed, “When they had a school shooting in Scotland or they had an incident in Australia, they simply made changes. … And since they did those things, they don’t have them. We’re an outlier amongst nations in terms of what happens to our children.” Prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, have echoed this praise for Australia’s 1996 gun confiscation law.

Blurb:

Australian police announced on Wednesday that the suspected gunman who killed 15 people in a shooting on Sydney’s Bondi Beach has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder.

24-year-old Naveed Akram was arrested at the scene of the incident and taken to a Sydney hospital following a shootout with police that killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.

Naveed Akram was charged with one count of murder for each victim who died and one count of committing a terrorist act after waking from a coma on Tuesday.

The pair allegedly opened fire on those attending an event to mark the start of an eight-day Hanukkah festival at Bondi beach on Sunday.

The men had reportedly pledged allegiance to the radical Islamic State group (IS) and flags of the terrorist group were found in their car where police also discovered at least two improvised explosive devices.

Blurb:

British authorities sentenced a Dorset man to 18 months in jail for inciting hate and violence on X in the heated aftermath of the 2024 Southport stabbings that left three children dead and another 10 people injured.

Luke Yarwood’s posts were viewed a total of 33 times before being taken down. If I’ve done my math correctly, that’s nearly 17 days of jail time per view. If I know anything about people, half of those views were Yarwood checking his mentions.

There’s no denying the nasty nature of Yarwood’s posts, sent to X before the identity of the killer — 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana — was known, but was widely misreported to have been a Muslim immigrant. Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, but his parents were evangelical immigrants from Rwanda.

Yarwood’s posts called for “slaughter in the streets” of Muslims and encouraged people to “Head for the hotels housing them and burn them to the ground.”

Blurb:

A growing number of ultra-wealthy Chinese nationals are turning to U.S. surrogates to have children on American soil, taking advantage of America’s largely unregulated market and birthright citizenship, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

In one such case, Chinese video game billionaire Xu Bo has sought parental rights for at least four unborn children in Los Angeles, having already fathered or arranged surrogacy for at least eight additional children, according to the WSJ. The trend coincides with intensifying debates over the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of U.S. citizenship for anyone born in the country, a policy the Trump administration has sought to reinterpret.

Blurb:

At least 15 people were murdered at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia on Sunday after two alleged Islamic terrorists opened fire.

One of the suspects, Sajid Akram, moved to Australia in 1998 on a student visa before becoming a permanent resident, while his son, Naveed Akram, was born in Australia, according to Sky News. Authorities previously investigated the son “on the basis of being associated with” alleged terrorists, but authorities ultimately determined “there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence,” according to the report.

Blurb:

 

The last time I reported on the hostilities between Cambodia and Thailand, President Donald Trump was planning to call officials from both nations to try to salvage the summer cease-fire.

Unfortunately, there was no deal, and the conflict appears no closer to ending; Cambodia officially closed its border to Thailand this weekend.

The move comes as border clashes between the Southeast Asian nations have continued, despite US President Donald Trump saying Friday that they had agreed to a ceasefire.

“The Royal Government of Cambodia has decided to fully suspend all entry and exit movements at all Cambodia-Thailand border crossings, effective immediately and until further notice,” the Cambodian Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The announcement comes after Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said that his country would keep up military strikes on Cambodia until it no longer felt under threat from its neighbor, telling local media there was no ceasefire in place.

Blurb:

The U.S. has agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal to end Russia’s nearly four-year war, and more talks are likely this weekend, U.S. officials said Monday following the latest discussions with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin.

The officials said talks with President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, led to narrowing differences on security guarantees that Kyiv said must be provided, as well as on Moscow’s demand that Ukraine concede land in the Donbas region in the country’s east.

Trump dialed into a dinner Monday evening with negotiators and European leaders, and more talks are expected this weekend in Miami or elsewhere in the United States, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly by the White House.

Blurb:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has unveiled its newest blueprint for “digital health transformation,” and critics warn it’s the clearest signal yet that the unelected global body intends to normalize trackable wearables, AI-driven monitoring, and centralized “health” data control for the world’s population.

Released this month, the updated “Global strategy on digital health 2020–2027” lays out a sweeping plan to expand the use of digital IDs, biometric devices, AI analytics, and remote-surveillance tools, all under the banner of “universal health coverage.”

WHO says digital health means everything from phone apps to “artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics and smart wearables,” and the organization wants governments worldwide to accelerate adoption.

Its own language makes clear this will not remain optional.

Blurb:

Anthony Albanese has insisted there is no link between Canberra’s recognition of Palestine and the Bondi Beach attack

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has rejected his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Canberra’s policies were to blame for a deadly attack on a Jewish holiday gathering near Sydney.

Two Islamist gunmen killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others during a Hanukkah celebration in the iconic Sydney suburb of Bondi Beach on Sunday. In the aftermath, Netanyahu said Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood earlier this year had “poured fuel” on an “antisemitic fire.”

Blurb:

According to wide-angle footage obtained by Australian news outlet the Sydney Morning Herald, Akram was later able to get back up and turn the weapon on the couple, firing at least two shots.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the couple, yet to be publicly identified, was seen in drone footage lying together dead on the pavement.

The mass shooting at Bondi Beach on Sunday by Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, has claimed the lives of at least 15 victims, including a 10-year-old girl.

This is the second reported instance of bravery involving bystanders who attempted to stop the shooting.

Blurb:

Alleged shooter Naveed Akram emerges from coma

Alleged Bondi shooter Naveed Akram, who has been in hospital in a coma since the incident on Sunday, has regained consciousness, NSW police have confirmed. We’ll bring you more on this when we have it.

NSW health authorities provide update on injured victims

As of 4.30pm, there were 24 patients receiving care in Sydney hospitals for injuries sustained in the Bondi shooting, according to the latest update from NSW Health.

Blurb:

“It’s a day that I think we were all dreading in the Jewish community. It was the day that we had, I suppose, in many ways, warned government and higher authorities of the possibility and the risk. And it feels almost like we were unheard, almost invisible.” “This was a massacre, a pogrom here in our city, here at one of our most cherished landmarks, Bondi Beach. Lives shattered irrevocably in a single moment. Young children, who from this point forward, will never have a father. Parents who have lost their beloved 10-year-old daughter.

Blurb:

It’s getting nightmarish for Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro.

First, there was the tanker seizure.

According to Axios:

The Trump Administration dramatically escalated its standoff with Venezuela on Wednesday by seizing a large tanker loaded with crude oil bound for Cuba.

Why it matters: President Trump’s pressure campaign on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has now struck at the heart of Venezuela’s oil-based economy.

Blurb:

A student who “fell in love with terrorism” has been detained, suspected of “preparing a mass murder attack” at a European Christmas market. The student, named only by officials as Mateusz W., is believed to be attending the Catholic University of Lublin and wanted to commit an attack using explosives and planned to join a terrorist organisation, Jacek Dobrzynski, a spokesperson for Poland’s special services, said on Tuesday.

The student who is said to have become “deeply infatuated with Islam sought cooperation with the Islamic State”, planned to bomb a Christmas market in Poland using explosives, police said. He prepared, gathered information on how to construct explosives, and his goal was to kill and intimidate Poles,” Mr Dobrzyński said at a press conference. According to the Internal Security Agency (ABW), on November 30, officers of the Internal Security Agency (ABW) conducted searches and detained the student.

Blurb:

Rights groups say the demolition order, which will affect 100 Palestinian homes, is an attempt to ‘cage in’ Palestinians.

The Israeli military will demolish 25 residential buildings in the occupied West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp this week, according to local authorities.

Abdallah Kamil, the governor of the Tulkarem governorate where Nur Shams is located, told the AFP news agency on Monday that he was informed of the planned demolition by the Israeli Defence Ministry body COGAT.

Blurb:

The resurgence of the political right in Latin America and Mexico’s recently approved tariffs were among the issues spoken about at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Monday morning press conference.

Here is a recap of the president’s Dec. 15 mañanera.

Sheinbaum: Shift to the right won’t happen in Mexico 

Citing the victory of José Antonio Kast in Chile’s presidential election on Sunday as well as the results of recent elections in Argentina and Bolivia, a reporter asked the president about the shift to the right of “some voters in Latin America.”

Sheinbaum responded that the situation in “each country” would need to be analyzed to determine why voters in some Latin American nations have recently supported right-wing candidates and parties in large numbers.

Blurb:

The daughter of one of the victims of Sunday’s Bondi Beach terror attack told CBS News on Monday that her father was “shot dead for being Jewish,” and she now believes Australia is not a safe home for Jewish people.

Sheina Gutnick said that her father, Reuven Morrison, a 62-year-old Soviet-born member of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Australia, was killed while attempting to stop one of the two gunmen during Sunday’s mass shooting, which Australian authorities have called an antisemitic terror attack.

“From my sources and understanding, he had jumped up the second the shooting started. He managed to throw bricks at the terrorist,” Gutnick told CBS News in Bondi on Monday, referencing an attempt to stop one of the gunmen that was caught on camera during the attack the previous day.