The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah acknowledged on Saturday that its supply route through Syria had been cut off by rebels who toppled the government last weekend, dealing another blow to Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.

Before its collapse, the Syrian government had provided a land corridor for Iran to supply weapons and materiel to Hezbollah in Lebanon, bolstering the militant group’s power and Iran’s influence as its main backer.

. . .

He added that Hezbollah — which recently agreed to a cease-fire with Israel after months of war — would look for alternate means of getting supplies or see if its Syria route could be re-established under “a new regime.”

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The European Union is set to impose its first sanctions targeting Russia for disinformation and hybrid activities.

The proposed measures target more than a dozen individuals and three entities, including Russian intelligence officers and media entrepreneurs, according to Bloomberg. The sanctions aim to counter destabilizing operations globally.

. . .

The proposals follow EU ambassadors' approval of a 15th sanctions package against Russia, targeting its "shadow fleet" of aging tankers used to bypass oil export restrictions, the Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council announced on Dec. 11.

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One month ago, during a meeting in Beirut, a senior western diplomat was venting his frustration: when would international sanctions be lifted from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad? Though the dictator had few friends, it seemed that the brutal killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of protesters had succeeded in finally crushing Syria’s 13-year revolution.

It was time to face facts, the diplomat said. Assad had won the war, and the world needed to move on.

As diplomats in Beirut talked, rebels in Syria were planning. A year earlier, figures in the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in north-west Syria had sent a message to rebels in the south: get ready.

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One bright recent morning, Culiacán threw a party like old times, with chefs serving up aguachile, a Sinaloan-style ceviche, and musicians blasting a riot on their trumpets and drums.

“It used to be like this every weekend,” said Alexis, one of the apprentice chefs, taking a moment in the cool quiet of the cathedral.

But away from this show of spirit in the city centre, the very violence they were defying continued. One body turned up in a river; another was burned to bones in a field on the edge of town.

Three months of war between rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel have left more than a thousand dead or disappeared, and a city in a unique kind of humanitarian crisis. Culichis, as the city’s inhabitants are known, are trying to return to normality – but are constantly reminded that they live at the whim of organised crime.

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The downfall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has humiliated his main backer, Russia, exposing the limits of the Kremlin’s military power and global influence.

Yet to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the loss of his closest Middle Eastern ally may only be a temporary setback in his quest for a much greater geopolitical prize: triumph in Ukraine.

Military and political analysts said winning the war in Ukraine has become an all-encompassing goal for Mr. Putin. That outcome, they said, would justify to the Russian leader the conflict’s tremendous human and economic losses, safeguard Russia’s statehood and global stature and compensate for strategic failures elsewhere, such as in Syria.

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The streets of Damascus have been filled with celebrations since Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia last Sunday in the face of an unexpected rebel offensive, ending more than 50 years of his family’s brutal rule over Syria. But at a public funeral for Mazen al-Hamadah – before his disappearance in 2020 one of the most vocal survivors of torture in the regime’s prisons system – the joy gave way to sorrow, as the country begins to grapple with the fact that many of the estimated 130,000 people missing may be lost forever.

Thousands of people flooded the streets on Thursday, following Hamadah’s body, wrapped in a traditional white shroud, as it was driven slowly from a hospital to the Abdulrahman Abu al Ouf mosque for funeral prayers. At a vigil afterwards in nearby al-Hijaz square, thousands of men, women and children cried and hugged each other, many carrying pictures of their own disappeared loved ones.

The initial euphoria of finding missing people alive after rebels broke down prison cell doors on their astonishing advance to the capital has faded; many anxious families have searched prisons and morgues, and combed through ransacked regime documents and records, and have found nothing. But even so, such a public outpouring of grief would have been unthinkable less than a week ago, when Syria was still a repressive police state.

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Donald Trump’s plan to tap the retired US lieutenant general Keith Kellogg as US envoy to Ukraine and Russia has triggered renewed interest in a policy document he co-authored that proposes ending the war by withdrawing weapons from Ukraine if it doesn’t enter peace talks – and giving even more weapons to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t do the same.

Trump is said to have responded favorably to the plan – America First, Russia & Ukraine – which was presented to him in April and was written by Kellogg and the former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump’s national security council from 2017 to 2021.

The document proposes halting further US weapons deliveries to Kyiv if it does not enter peace talks with Moscow, while simultaneously warning Moscow that, should it refuse to negotiate, US support for Ukraine would increase.

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A neo-Nazi group scattered fliers across lawns and doorsteps in three Waterloo, Iowa, neighborhoods just before Veterans Day. The handouts offered a chilling assessment of the group’s proximity, in capital letters: “We are your neighbors! We are the random stranger holding the door open for you!” it read. “We are everywhere.”

About a week later, about a dozen people marched through a part of Columbus, Ohio, that is known for arts and culture, carrying Nazi flags and using a bullhorn to shout racial slurs against Jews and people of color. A similar scene unfolded in downtown Nashville over the summer.

Flash displays of hate and white power are happening more frequently in the United States, a trend that experts say is a reaction to changing demographics, political turmoil and social catalysts. More than 750 such incidents have taken place since 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League, with more than half of them occurring in the last 18 months.

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Matt Gaetz running the justice department. Fox hosts in charge of the Pentagon and transportation. Elon Musk as head of layoffs. And Robert F Kennedy Jr and Dr Oz overseeing the nation’s health.

Some have likened Donald Trump’s administrative picks to a clown car; others are calling our incoming leadership a kakistocracy, or “government by the worst people”, as Merriam-Webster puts it.

The word has been trending online, with a burst in search traffic in recent weeks and a new dedicated subreddit. It’s not the first time Trump has (accidentally) made the term famous; many discovered it in his first term. But the kakistocracy of 2016 looks like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood compared with the president-elect’s new batch of sidekicks.

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Around 30,000 properties were still without power on Vancouver Island on Thursday morning, as B.C. Hydro crews continued to repair the damage from the "bomb cyclone" that began battering the region late Tuesday.

Environment Canada is now warning that another storm is approaching southwestern British Columbia and, while it's forecast to be less intense than the previous one, it still has the potential to cause damage and disruption and slow down clean-up efforts.

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Elon Musk has said UK MPs “will be summoned to the United States of America to explain their censorship and threats to American citizens” in a fresh escalation of tensions between the world’s richest man and Labour.

Musk, who has been a fixture at the side of Donald Trump since his re-election as US president, was responding to a Guardian report on Wednesday that the Commons’ science and technology select committee would call him to give evidence in the new year in its inquiry into the spread of harmful content on social media after the August riots.

The committee’s chair, Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP, said she wanted to see how Musk, who owns the X social media platform, “reconciles his promotion of freedom of expression with his promotion of pure disinformation”.

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Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum united to condemn the decision by a three-judge panel of the international criminal court to issue arrest warrants for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Netanyahu’s office described the warrants as “an antisemitic decision … equivalent to the modern Dreyfus trial”, referring to the 1894 trial of a French artillery captain of Jewish descent that has become one of the most prominent examples of antisemitism.

Netanyahu added: “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions and charges against it by the international criminal court, which is a biased and discriminatory political body.”

Under the Rome statute that established the ICC, the court was set up to be an independent body that stands apart from international politics.

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