Flagship

2024 saw 1.5°C threshold breached

The world was 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial average during 2024, the first time the threshold has been broken for an entire calendar year. The target refers to decades-long averages so has not been missed, yet, but there is not far to go. One climate scientist told the BBC that “It’s not like 1.49°C is fine, and 1.51°C is the apocalypse — every tenth of a degree matters,” but the number has political and symbolic importance. The hottest 10 years on record are all in the last decade, extreme weather such as floods and droughts is on the rise, and one study found that ocean temperatures last year were the highest ever recorded.

Fires to worsen LA’s housing crisis

The Los Angeles fires will exacerbate southern California’s already crippling housing crisis. More than 180,000 people have been evacuated and 10 killed, and at least 9,000 buildings destroyed, by the five fires in the city’s suburbs. Thousands are in temporary accommodation, some staying with family or friends. But even those whose houses remain standing are likely to see impacts: The city already has a shortage of about 337,000 homes, and the displacement, plus damage to housing stock, means “a positive shock in demand, and a negative shock in supply,” one economist told The New York Times, driving rental prices up around the city and possibly leading to an increase in homelessness.

US court cases at pivotal points

Two major US court cases involving US President-elect Donald Trump reach pivotal junctures today. In one, Trump will be sentenced in a New York court after being found guilty over a hush-money case involving an adult film star, after the Supreme Court rejected his request to halt proceedings: The case comes barely a week before his inauguration, and his electoral success points to the apparently limited effect his legal issues have had on his popularity. In the other, Supreme Court justices will begin hearing oral arguments over a law that bans TikTok unless its Chinese owners sell it. The case itself does not favor the company — an appeals court has upheld the law — but Trump has supported the app.

Xi to send envoy to Trump inauguration

China will reportedly send a top-level envoy to US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, a move that Beijing hopes will reduce friction between the two countries. Unusually, Trump invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping: He is unlikely to attend, but even another top official’s presence would be significant, since China is usually represented only by its ambassador to Washington. Beijing is “desperate” to smooth relations with Washington, the Financial Times reported. But it is also looking to exploit US divisions with its allies: It signalled willingness to ease restrictions with Canada, The Globe and Mail reported, in the wake of Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on its neighbor.

Maduro to be inaugurated

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be inaugurated today for a third six-year term in office. Maduro has ramped up his crackdown on the opposition, which international observers believe comfortably won last year’s election. Hundreds have been arrested, and many forced into hiding or exile. Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, has maintained he will soon arrive in Venezuela to assume the presidency. However analysts believe Gonzalez’s chances of securing power remain low given the army’s support for Maduro and an ambivalent position from the incoming US administration. “Long odds, but no dictatorship lasts forever,” the editor-in-chief of America’s Quarterly wrote on X.

Tusk promises Bibi safe passage

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested if he attends a Holocaust memorial service, the Polish prime minister said. Jan. 27 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by Allied forces during World War II, and the museum plans a commemoration of the mainly Jewish victims. But Netanyahu is subject to an International Criminal Court warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza, and could be arrested in any ICC signatory country. Polish opposition figures requested a promise of safe passage for Netanyahu should he attend, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that any Israeli figure attending “will not be detained.” Netanyahu has not said he plans to travel.

Africa’s buoyant prospects

Sub-Saharan African growth will accelerate this year, the ratings agency Moody’s said, outpacing global growth, which is expected to stay stable. Major countries such as Nigeria and South Africa are implementing reforms to improve their individual prospects, while regional investments in energy and infrastructure should further strengthen the continent’s economy, Moody’s said. The upbeat assessment offers some welcome news for a region that has grappled with high food and commodity prices as a result of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as substantial debt burdens made worse by rising rich-world interest rates in prior years. Global growth, meanwhile, will likely remain stable, the UN said, with economic recoveries in Europe and Japan offset by China’s slowdown.

What do the big tech leaders want, and where will they push the media in 2025?

The Consumer Electronics Show introduced a range of new gadgets, screens, and robots, but will these innovations actually transform how we consume media? Or will the real shifts come from Washington, where tech giants like Meta and Amazon are directing their focus? Ben and new co-host Max Tani delve into these questions with Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, to discuss how tech and its leaders will shape the media industry in 2025 and beyond.

Egypt’s worsening malaise

Egypt is seeking international support in a bid to stave off an economic collapse that would have far-reaching consequences. The Arab world’s most populous country has been particularly affected by recent global conflicts: The war in Ukraine — from where it imported a significant share of its grain — has fuelled rapid inflation, fighting in the Middle East has slowed traffic through the Suez Canal, and the crisis in Sudan has pushed hundreds of thousands of refugees to seek refuge within its borders. Cairo has turned abroad for help, with the European Union recently fast-tracking an $8 billion aid package to fund migration enforcement, while Gulf powers such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE have upped their investments.

7-day work week call

The chair of India’s largest engineering and construction company sparked uproar by calling for his employees to abandon their weekends in favor of work. SN Subrahmanyan said he wished he could get Larsen & Toubro staff to work seven days a week, before saying in jest, “How long can you stare at your wife?” His remarks come amid a debate in India over the country’s work culture: The co-founder of Indian tech giant Infosys last year called for a shift to 70-hour work weeks, adding he “was not very happy” with the notion of a two-day weekend. Elsewhere, officials are experimenting in the opposite direction, with Tokyo set to trial a four-day work week.

World’s oldest ice core recovered

Scientists drilled the world’s deepest ice core from the Antarctic, a 1.2-million-year-old sample which should provide insights into the ancient atmosphere. The 1.7-mile-long core took four years to extract. Each year, snowfall creates a layer of ice, and those layers — like tree rings — reveal secrets about the world they were made in. Air bubbles trapped in the ice can show atmospheric composition, such as how carbon dioxide levels interact with temperatures. In particular, scientists are interested in whether a slowing of Earth’s ice-age cycle a million years ago was linked to a simultaneous near-extinction of humanity’s ancestors. The core “will undoubtedly enlarge our window on our planet’s past,” one scientist told the BBC.

• Japan’s prime minister visits Malaysia as part of a Southeast Asia tour.
• The US ambassador to Japan — famed for his often-undiplomatic tweets about China — holds his final press conference as the American envoy to Tokyo before departing his post.
• The Detroit Auto Show opens.

The amount of time it would take Boeing to fulfil its order backlog if it continues producing planes at the current rate. The company has struggled with production faults — which have forced it to redesign some of the world’s best-selling aircraft — and a labor strike that brought output to a halt. Although upstart Chinese and Brazilian producers, as well as industry leader Airbus, have been able to meet some of the excess demand, the crisis has revealed just how dependent world travel is on the US manufacturer.

Get Millie Black. The TV series by Booker prize-winner Marlon James follows a former British detective who returns to her family home in Jamaica to work in the missing-persons team. “One of the standout qualities of Get Millie Black is its double-edged critique — one of the hallmarks of crime fiction — that shines a light on the true crimes that remain entirely hidden or absent from typical detective stories,” a reviewer wrote for El País. Watch the trailer on YouTube.

Less than two weeks before taking office, Donald Trump is already shaping Middle East dynamics, Semafor’s Mohammed Sergie writes. The US President-elect reiterated Tuesday that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages by the time of his Jan. 20 inauguration. “It will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone.”