World roundup: December 2 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
December 2, 1805: At the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon wins what was arguably his greatest victory against a larger joint Russian-Austrian army. The Allies suffered 36,000 dead/wounded/captured compared with only 9000 for the French. The French victory was so complete that not only did it end the War of the Third Coalition, it allowed Napoleon to create the Confederation of the Rhine among the German states that had become French clients. Emperor Francis II was then forced to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire, which had been in existence continuously since 962 and traced its origins back to Charlemagne’s coronation as “emperor of the Romans” in 800. He refashioned himself as “Emperor of Austria,” though, so he wound up OK.
December 2, 1899: A force of just 60 Philippine soldiers is defeated by an American unit some ten times that size at the Tirad Pass in northern Luzon Island. Nearly all of the Philippine fighters were killed, but their defensive action delayed the Americans for several hours and allowed retreating Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo to escape capture. Sometimes referred to (at least according to a cursory Google search) as “the Philippine Thermopylae,” the battle’s legacy remains prominent.
December 2, 1942: Enrico Fermi and his team create the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at “Chicago Pile-1,” a rudimentary reactor built under the campus of the University of Chicago. This was the first milestone achievement for the Manhattan Project in its race to build a nuclear bomb before Nazi Germany.
INTERNATIONAL
The United Nations COP30 climate summit wrapped up while this newsletter was on its Thanksgiving break, and it probably goes without saying that, as Juan Cole writes, it was another in what’s become a string of annual busts:
COP30 in Belém, Brazil, has ended without an agreement by member states to reaffirm the phasing out of fossil fuels, which is the only way to avert rolling climate catastrophes. COP28 at Dubai had included such language. The vague advice to countries to cut down on their carbon dioxide emissions is useless without fingering the main culprit in those emissions. It is like urging people to cut down on their lung cancer rates without bringing up the need to reduce the use of cigarettes, or urging less drunk driving without mentioning the need to avoid imbibing alcohol before getting behind the wheel.
When corporations engage in this sort of duplicity, we call it greenwashing. And that is what the whole COP30 became, an exercise in greenwashing the world’s nations, all of which bear responsibility for a looming set of disasters that is already befalling countries like Bangladesh and Jamaica, and will inevitably strike all humanity over the coming decades. We have it in our power to reduce the severity of those calamities substantially. We have decided, on the whole, not to bother. Our children and grandchildren will quite rightly curse our memories.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a reply (of sorts) on Tuesday to Donald Trump’s insistence that he maintain “a strong and true dialogue” with the Syrian government. All Netanyahu wants is a hearty chunk of southern Syria. Well, technically he wants Syrian leaders to establish a “demilitarized buffer zone” extending “from Damascus to the buffer area, including the approaches to Mount Hermon and the Hermon peak.” The “buffer area” around Mount Hermon is currently occupied by the Israeli military (IDF). It’s not entirely clear whether Netanyahu would actually be willing to end that occupation were the Syrian government to give him what he’s demanding, but even if he did end the overt occupation this would still seemingly leave Israel as the ultimate authority over much of southern Syria.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
At The Nation, Palestinian writer Hassan Abo Qamar argues that Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire has only reduced the intensity of the genocide:
After two years of genocide, the American president’s deal has not fully ended the suffering, though it has paused some of it. Since the truce went into effect on October 11, at least 357 people have been killed, and over 900 injured, mostly by Israeli bombs. The world calls this “peace,” yet in reality “peace” here does not mean the end of anything; hunger, fear, and death remain, while the occupation continues to strangle Gaza through crossings, restrictions, and deliberate obstruction of recovery.
After the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces under the agreement, some coordination for humanitarian movement is no longer required. Yet Israel still controls crossings, convoy movements, and the pace at which aid enters. Every truck, every patient transfer, and every piece of construction equipment still requires Israeli approval. This suffocating blockade makes a lasting recovery impossible. Humanitarian teams are unable to retrieve bodies or clear rubble because of a critical shortage of heavy and specialized equipment.
Meanwhile, with Israel closing crossings and threatening renewed mass killing, the Palestinian Civil Defense estimates that around 10,000 bodies remain trapped under rubble. Families have been deprived of a chance to say farewell or bury their loved ones in proper cemeteries—while the media and the world turn a blind eye.
Hamas turned a body over to the International Red Cross/Red Crescent on Tuesday that may be the remains of one of the two yet unaccounted Gaza captives. I haven’t seen any indication yet as to whether it has been positively identified. This is significant inasmuch as the Israeli government has said that it will not proceed with the remaining steps outlined in Trump’s ceasefire framework until all of these bodies have been repatriated. Trump’s framework is, as we know, also frozen because he can’t find countries that are willing to participate in its proposed security/occupation force.
Also on Tuesday, the IDF killed at least three people in multiple strikes in Gaza, including a photojournalist whom Israeli authorities have accused of participating in the October 7 2023 attacks because he took photographs during those events. Another term for that sort of behavior is “journalism.” And Israeli forces killed two teenaged Palestinians in separate incidents in the West Bank, one near Hebron and the other at a settlement near Ramallah. Israeli officials claimed that they were responding to a car ramming attack in the Hebron incident and a knife attack in the Ramallah incident.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Unspecified gunmen attacked a government vehicle in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday, killing at least four people—a local administrator, two bodyguards, and a bystander. There’s been no claim of responsibility but it would be surprising if this were not a Pakistani Taliban operation.
Uzma Khanum, the sister of imprisoned former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, told reporters in Rawalpindi on Tuesday that her brother is alive and “physically well,” though he is chafing under the conditions of his virtually solitary confinement and has characterized it as “mental torture” that is “worse than physical abuse.” Her remarks came one day after Kasim Khan, one of Imran Khan’s sons, told Reuters that his family had not been given proof of life for over three weeks and he feared that “something irreversible” had happened to his father. That apparently jolted the Pakistani government enough that it allowed Khanum to visit Imran Khan in prison, albeit only “briefly.”
BANGLADESH
At The Diplomat, journalist Saqlain Rizve warns that the interim government that took power in Bangladesh last year has only marginally improved the dismal human rights record of Bangladeshi security forces:
The fall of the Awami League (AL) government in August 2024 was a turning point in Bangladesh’s recent history. The widespread mobilization, which was driven by anger at inequality, corruption, and abuse of power by the state, led to the toppling of the AL government and paved the way for an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. Many had hoped that this changeover would lead to greater transparency and accountability in governance and respect for human rights.
However, the regime change has not resulted in weakening the deep-seated culture of rampant abuse of human rights by state institutions.
This is evident from human rights reports of the situation over the past year. Between January and October 2025, 35 people were killed in extrajudicial violence by state forces, according to data from Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), one of Bangladesh’s leading human rights organizations. These included at least 14 who were killed in “shootouts” prior to arrest. Nine died due to torture after they were taken into custody. The numbers show that the tactics of the previous regime have been carried over into the current one.
The “one positive” that Rizve notes is that there were no cases of forced disappearances reported during that January-October period. Security forces carried out 677 documented disappearances during the 15 years in which the Awami League was in power under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudanese military is insisting that it still controls the town of Babanusa in West Kordofan state, which the Rapid Support Forces militant group claimed to have captured on Monday. Reporting suggests that the RSF has entered the town and, while the military claims to have “decisively repelled” the attack, fighting is continuing and the militants have seized control of the army base. Babanusa is strategically positioned as a potential staging point for a military invasion of the neighboring Darfur region, which is almost fully controlled by the RSF. The Sudanese military is nowhere close to being able to mount such an invasion right now, but losing Babanusa would make it harder to organize one down the road.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Electoral officials in Guinea-Bissau say they are unable to reveal the final results of last month’s presidential election because “armed men” broke into the electoral commission’s office in Bissau and seized the tally sheets. They won’t identify the “armed men,” but this incident happened on November 26 which in a heck of a coincidence was also the same day on which a military coup ousted President Umaro Sissoco Embaló and arrested him along with the main opposition candidate, Fernando Dias. I guess we’ll never know who those armed men were.
Junta leader Horta Inta-A has since appointed a new interim government full of people who are generally aligned with Embaló, and while I still can’t get on board with the conspiracy theory that says Embaló arranged this coup to prevent a Dias victory I certainly couldn’t blame anyone else for coming to that conclusion. At the very least it seems reasonable to conclude that Embaló’s circle had some hand in the coup in order to maintain power, whether or not Embaló himself was involved.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
With Donald Trump planning to host Rwandan President Paul Kagame and DRC President Félix Tshisekedi in Washington on Thursday to sign their new peace deal, Congolese officials and leaders of the Rwanda-backed M23 militant group are each claiming new violations of their ceasefire:
Both sides accused the other on Tuesday of trying to sabotage the peace deals with attacks in South Kivu [province].
The Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) said its troops had come under attack in Kaziba, Katogota and Lubarika from the M23 rebel group and its allies.
“These attacks clearly show the coalition’s intention to sabotage the Washington and Doha peace agreements,” army spokesperson Major General Sylvain Ekenge said in a statement.
Corneille Nangaa, leader of a rebel alliance that includes M23, said on X that Congolese forces, together with the Burundian army and other allies, had launched attacks in the same province since morning.
“Faced with this violation of the ceasefire within the framework of the Doha peace process, the [alliance] has no choice but to defend itself and protect civilian populations,” he said.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Vladimir Putin threatened to “cut Ukraine off from the sea” on Tuesday, in response to a series of drone strikes that have targeted vessels linked to Russia’s sanctions-evading “shadow fleet.” Two such strikes took place in the Black Sea on Friday, and a third was reported on Tuesday targeting a tanker that was allegedly “carrying sunflower oil to Georgia.” I have not seen any indication as to damage or casualties. AFP is also reporting that a fourth ship dealt with “four external explosions” off the coast of Senegal last week, having made its way there from Russia. Again there’s no indication of casualties or damage in that incident, which to be fair may not have had anything to do with Ukraine though the coincidence is striking.
Cutting Ukraine off from the sea would entail capturing the city of Odesa, which I’m sure Putin would love to do regardless of these drone attacks but seems like a tall order for his military given where his Ukraine invasion stands at present. On that subject, Putin met with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for somewhere around five hours in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the Trump administration’s latest attempt to broker an end to the war. It’s unclear how much progress they made but at the very least they do not appear to have suffered any major setbacks.
UKRAINE
The Russian military circulated video on Monday purportedly showing its forces in control of the city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Pokrovsk has been under heavy Russian pressure for weeks so it would not come as a huge surprise if it has finally fallen. However, the Ukrainian military is claiming that its forces are still battling in the city and have even driven Russian soldiers back a bit from positions they were seen occupying in those videos.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the biggest recent shift in this conflict hasn’t been territorial—it’s been the Russian military’s improving drone capabilities:
The four Ukrainian soldiers were speeding down a supply road more than 20 miles behind the front line when a Russian drone exploded behind them, throwing the rear of their Nissan Pathfinder into the air.
Capt. Stanislav Derkach was slammed into the dashboard, dislocating his kneecap. He and the three other soldiers hobbled into the woods and watched as a second fixed-wing Molniya drone finished off the SUV.
A few months ago, such rear areas were relatively safe. Now any movement can come under attack. “I consider us very lucky,” said Derkach, who is recovering in a hospital.
Russia’s growing prowess at hitting Ukrainian supply lines with drones is the most important shift in the war in 2025, Ukrainian front-line fighters and analysts studying the conflict say—more significant than Russian forces’ incremental gains in territory.
These developments, and the territorial changes they’ve enabled, are coming at the worst possible time for Ukraine from a diplomatic perspective. In short, it’s getting harder for Ukrainian leaders to convince an already-skeptical Trump administration that they can still turn the tide and prevent further losses the longer the war continues.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
The Venezuelan government on Tuesday resumed accepting repatriation flights from the United States. It had halted those flights when Donald Trump summarily declared Venezuelan airspace closed on Saturday, but apparently the Trump administration “requested” that the flights resume. This could suggest that military action is not as imminent as it appeared to be over the weekend, though that’s pure speculation on my part. Nicolás Maduro may be hoping that his compliance here will buy him some good will with Trump, though that would probably be pure speculation on his part.
HONDURAS
Former Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura’s slim lead in the Honduran presidential election has, after further vote counting, turned into a slim deficit as fellow conservative Salvador Nasralla has edged into the lead. Donald Trump, who publicly backed Asfura over the weekend, is not taking the situation well. Late on Monday, when Asfura was still leading but Honduran officials had characterized the race as a “technical tie” that would likely require a manual recount, Trump once again took to social media to accuse those officials of “trying to change the results” of the vote and to threaten “hell to pay” if they did so. One assumes that he’s not pleased about the updated count though I had not seen any new comments from him on this subject at time of writing.
MEXICO
The Guardian reports on the environmental destruction that US manufacturing is wreaking on one Mexican city:
An industrial boom in a US manufacturing hub in Mexico is contributing to a massive air pollution crisis that is threatening residents’ health, according to new research by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab.
The polluting facilities in Monterrey include factories that are operated by companies from around the world – including the US, Europe, Asia and Mexico – but export largely to the US.
And the facilities are pumping more toxic heavy metals into the city’s air than the totals reported in many US states, the analysis finds for the first time, as well as more earth-warming carbon dioxide than nearly half the nations in the world.
The industrial pollution in Monterrey, a metro area of 5.3 million people that is 150 miles (241km) from the Texas border, has contributed to it ranking as the metro with the worst fine-particulate air pollution in Mexico, the US or Canada in a recent study that looked at trends up to 2019.
HAITI
In something of a surprise, Haiti’s transitional presidential council adopted a new electoral law late Monday, which means it can now go ahead and schedule the country’s 2021 general election. I kid, a little, but this election has been delayed multiple times across multiple governments, including once by this council. There had been speculation that the council would try to delay again in order to maintain its time in power (such as it is under the circumstances), but so far at least that fear has proven unfounded. The plan now is to hold a two round election in August and December of next year. Of course that plan will have to contend with the fact that criminal gangs control almost all of Port-au-Prince and are expanding their territory beyond the capital, but one thing at a time I guess.
UNITED STATES
Finally, in the wake of new revelations about the US military’s killing spree in the Caribbean The Intercept’s Nick Turse argues that a number of senior Pentagon officials may now be in potential legal jeopardy:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under increasing fire for a double-tap strike, first reported by The Intercept in early September, in which the U.S. military killed two survivors of the Trump administration’s initial boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2.
The Washington Post recently reported that Hegseth personally ordered the follow-up attack, giving a spoken order “to kill everybody.” Multiple military legal experts, lawmakers, and now confidential sources within the government who spoke with The Intercept say Hegseth’s actions could result in the entire chain of command being investigated for a war crime or outright murder.
“Those directly involved in the strike could be charged with murder under the UCMJ or federal law,” said Todd Huntley, a former Staff Judge Advocate who served as a legal adviser on Joint Special Operations task forces conducting drone strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere, using shorthand for the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “This is about as clear of a case being patently illegal that subordinates would probably not be able to successfully use a following-orders defense.”
Hegseth, brave Warrior that he is, has already started throwing subordinates under the proverbial bus. He’s insisting that he didn’t know anything about the second strike and only later learned that it had been ordered by Admiral Frank Bradley, who at the time was the head of the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command. The White House has also laid the followup strike at Bradley’s feet. And while Hegseth and the White House have given their rhetorical support to Bradley’s apparent decision, the implication is crystal clear: the buck stops with him, not with any of his civilian superiors.