“the return of the 20 remaining living hostages who had been taken by Hamas. The terrorist group is still looking for the remains of the 28 hostages they killed, to hopefully return the bodies to the families of those still grieving their loss. Meanwhile, 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were released back to the West Bank and to Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, to fulfill the terms of the deal.
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“The main issue still hasn’t been solved: Hamas’s weapons,” Akram Atallah, a London-based Palestinian journalist, told The New York Times. “The Israelis are demanding Hamas disarm, which is not a simple administrative measure. Hamas was founded on the basis of bearing arms.” The most likely possible outcome looks like Hamas refusing disarmament, the Israeli military responding with some amount of continued surveillance and physical presence in the Strip, and some amount of conflict bubbling up sporadically.”
Israel’s decision to go into Gaza City, Hamas’s remaining stronghold, helped get Hamas to agree to a cease fire. Israel’s failed strike on Hamas in Qatar helped put countries like Qatar on notice that Israel was serious, and helped get them to more strongly support a deal. Trump sending people perceived as close to himself as negotiators helped convince Middle East actors that Trump was serious about a deal and that these negotiators negotiated on his behalf. Trump made very strong demands that effectively would amount to a Hamas surrender. Hamas agreed to some, but quibbled with others. Trump just accepted the yes and said we’ll figure out the other stuff later, creating a cease fire.
The United States military is making extrajudicial illegal killings of potential drug traffickers, apparently killing a boat of Colombians this time. The U.S. is threatening a regime change war with Venezuela.
“A coalition of investors from Oracle, MGX, and Silver Lake has agreed to buy TikTok and run an American version of the company, separate from ByteDance’s ownership.
“The deal is aimed at helping TikTok comply with a federal law, which banned the app in the United States in January out of concern that Beijing could use it to gain access to Americans’ sensitive data or to spread propaganda,” reports The New York Times. President Donald Trump “has delayed enforcement of the ban repeatedly. The Thursday order gives negotiators until mid-January to finalize the deal.”
MGX is technically not American; it’s an investment firm that was established by the government of Abu Dhabi in 2024. Emiratis tend to have very strong ties with China.
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it’s not clear that part-Emirati owners will be all that much better, or that the Trump administration’s frequent insistence on meddling in private business affairs sets a good precedent.”
“Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Friday that he is putting Hungary’s national interests first in rejecting a call by President Trump for all NATO allies to halt the purchase of Russian fossil fuels.
Orbán, in remarks to state radio and reported by The Associated Press, said he told Trump that ending Russian oil imports would be an economic “disaster” for Hungary that would put the Hungarian economy “on its knees.”
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Trump seemed to cut Hungary and Slovakia some slack in continuing to purchase Russian oil.
“I just don’t want to have people go blaming them when, you know, we spoke to them at length today and it seems like that, for them it’s a little bit,” the president said from the Oval Office on Thursday, trailing off and turning to his pressure campaign on Turkey to stop buying Russian energy.”