Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“Relations between China and India – the world’s two most populous nations, which also rank among its top five economies – have been fraught and frosty for decades, starting with armed conflict in 1962 along their shared Himalayan border and, more recently, a serious clash in 2020. But going into this new year, there are encouraging signs of a gradual thaw between the two nuclear-armed Asian powers. Even this slight warming – which one Indian diplomat described to a news magazine as a “state of armed coexistence” along disputed border areas – helps temper potential military flash points. On the political and economic fronts, the prospects are somewhat brighter. The leaders of both countries have met in recent months; flights and tourist travel are slowly resuming. And officials are exploring avenues for economic diversification and integration – moves that could boost regional growth as well as strengthen Global South economies jolted by the unexpectedly steep U.S. trade tariffs of 2025.” (01/02/25)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2026/0102/Asia-giants-find-warmer-ties-may-cool-conflict
Source: Space.com
“Rogue planets — worlds that drift through space alone without a star — largely remain a mystery to scientists. Now, astronomers have for the first time confirmed the existence of one of these starless worlds by pinpointing its distance and mass — a rogue planet roughly the size of Saturn nearly 10,000 light-years from Earth. Planets are typically found bound to one or more stars. However, in 2000, astronomers detected the first signs of a “rogue planet” — a free-floating world that orbited no star. Then, in 2024, researchers detected an object distorting the light from a distant star, simultaneously from both Earth and space using several ground-based observatories as well as the European Space Agency’s now-retired Gaia space telescope. These observations helped scientists estimate that the object was a newfound world found about 9,950 light-years from Earth in the direction of the Milky Way’s center, with a mass about 70 times larger than Earth. (Saturn, on the other hand, is about 95 Earth masses.)” (01/02/26)
https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/astronomers-detect-rare-free-floating-exoplanet-10-000-light-years-from-earth
Source: The Daily Economy
by Peter C Earle
“Elon Musk recently put forth a bold vision: that within two decades, AI will automate virtually all productive activity, work will be optional, and money will lose meaning. Coming from Musk, such pronouncements carry gravitas. And noticeably, the expressed vision unsurprisingly dovetails neatly with Musk’s admittedly exciting entrepreneurial visions. Yet variants of those claims have circulated for years, usually without reference to economic theory, institutional constraints, or political risk. Rigorously examining those assertions is essential to decouple technological optimism from the practical realities that will shape the next two decades.” (01/02/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/even-elons-techno-utopia-wont-make-money-meaningless/
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Michelle Ellner
“Overnight, the United States government bombed civilian and military sites across Venezuela and illegally kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. These are blatant and illegal acts of war by the Trump Administration. This act of aggression is a continuation of US attempts to seize and plunder Venezuela’s natural resources and undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty as well as the sovereignty of other countries in Latin America. This war also does not reflect the will of the people. Nearly 70% of Americans oppose another war and reject the endless cycle of military interventions carried out in their name. … The U.S. now claims Maduro will face ‘criminal charges’ in a US court. This sham proceeding will be done under the auspices of ‘drug trafficking’ — but we know it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with Trump’s policy of regime change.” (01/03/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-venezuela-2674845101
Source: Axios
“Tesla vehicle sales declined for a second consecutive year in 2025, hitting their lowest point since 2022. Tesla vehicle sales are critical to funding CEO Elon Musk’s AI ambitions, including humanoid robots and self-driving cars. The company on Friday reported a 8.6% drop in deliveries — a close approximation to sales — to 1.64 million for the year. The full-year drop came despite an unexpected boost to sales in the third quarter as consumers rushed to buy EVs to qualify for the federal tax cut before it expired at the end of September. Deliveries are now down 9.5% since their all-time high in 2023.” (01/02/26)
https://archive.is/4JkTD
Source: Reason
“Taxes, benefits, and household data make America look more unequal than it is.” (01/02/26)
https://reason.com/2026/01/02/why-americas-inequality-story-doesnt-add-up/
Source: The UnPopulist
by Daniel M Rothschild
“Both extremes are recycling old ideologies, but liberalism has a far stronger hand to counter them before they cause the death and destruction of the last century.” (01/02/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/fortunately-liberals-can-more-easily
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Sven Beckert
“It is impossible to pinpoint an exact place or moment when capitalism began. Capitalism is a process, not a discrete historical event with a beginning and an end, and it did not drop fully formed into a particular location. Even today, no society is organised along fully capitalist lines, and some have argued that a fully capitalist world is a theoretical impossibility. Efforts to isolate one patch of soil as capitalism’s place of origin — Florence, Barbados, Amsterdam, Baghdad, the southern English countryside, or Manchester, for example — have all proved insufficient. That is because the capitalist revolution had always been a process that drew energy from myriad sources.” (01/02/26)
https://fee.org/articles/where-did-capitalism-really-begin/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Italian pasta is set to be spared from high-level US tariffs that the Trump administration had threatened against 13 producers. The move could have resulted in American importers being taxed at a rate greater than the value of the actual pasta itself, and prices rising sharply for US consumers. But on Thursday, the Italian foreign ministry said the proposed rate had now been drastically cut back. In a statement of its own, the US said the 13 firms had addressed many of its concerns. It previously accused the companies of selling their products at unfairly low prices and threatened tariffs of almost 92%. Tariffs are a type of tax paid by a consumer who imports a product.” (01/03/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70lw7w89epo
Source: Albuquerque Journal
“A 20-year-old was killed in a shootout with a homeowner during an apparent burglary in Clovis just after midnight Thursday.Clovis police were dispatched to a house in the 2500 block of East 7th Street, near Hillcrest Park, around 12:30 a.m. Friday after a 911 caller said he had been shot by a burglar, according to a news release shared on the department’s Facebook page later in the day. The man told police he had shot back at the intruder — identified as Keilyn Parker– and that he and a woman were hiding inside a closet in the home, the release states. Officers arrived and transported the man and Parker to Plains Regional Medical Center. Parker did not survive his injuries, according to the release.” (01/02/26)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/clovis-homeowner-kills-intruder-marking-040400257.html
