A New Year Dawns, but the World Feels Less Certain Than Ever
From unresolved wars to fires in the Alps, a sense of permanence is slipping.
As we step into a new year, the mood across much of the world feels heavy. Wars drag on, new crises erupt, and even places long seen as safe or permanent are no longer immune. Yet World Briefing begins 2026 with a simple commitment: to confront hard realities without flinching - and to keep searching for stories that uplift, illuminate, and speak to the resilience of the human spirit.
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Dozens of people were “presumed dead,” and about 100 were injured, many gravely, after a fire in a bar at a ski resort in southern Switzerland during a New Year’s celebration early Thursday, the Swiss police said. The blaze broke out in the early morning hours at Le Constellation, a bar in Crans-Montana in the canton of Valais, a French-speaking area in the Swiss Alps, the police said. Officials said they were still investigating the cause of the fire and a resulting explosion at the site, but they ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack. Smoke was first seen emanating from the bar around 1:30 a.m., the authorities said, and the central police dispatch received a call for help soon after. Emergency services sent 10 helicopters and 40 ambulances to transport the injured to hospitals, officials said at a news briefing on Thursday morning, adding that the emergency ward and operating theaters of the nearest major medical center had run out of space to treat the victims. Three specialized jets took burn victims to Zurich, the country’s largest city, about 90 miles away. Teams of doctors and counselors were also dispatched to offer psychological help for survivors, the officials said - NYT
Protesters and security forces clashed in three Iranian cities on Thursday, with six people reported killed – the first deaths since demonstrations erupted over soaring inflation and began taking on an increasingly political tone. The protests began on Sunday in Tehran, where shopkeepers went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, and have since spread to other parts of the country. Some protests have included chants against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and calls for the overthrow of the Iranian regime. On Thursday, Iran’s state-linked Fars news agency reported two people killed in clashes between security forces and protesters in the city of Lordegan, in the province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, and three in Azna, in neighboring Lorestan province. Earlier Thursday, state television reported that a Basij member of Iran’s security forces was killed overnight during protests in the western city of Kuhdasht. The Basij is a volunteer paramilitary force linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the Islamic Republic, and has previously been used by authorities to suppress protests. The demonstrations are smaller than the last major outbreak of unrest in 2022, triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women. Her death sparked a nationwide wave of anger that quickly evolved into calls for regime change and left several hundred people dead. The latest protests began peacefully in the capital and spread after students from at least 10 universities joined in on Tuesday. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has sought to calm tensions, acknowledging protesters’ “legitimate demands,” and called on the government Thursday to take action to improve the economic situation. Authorities, however, have also promised to take a “firm” stance, and have warned against exploiting the situation to sow chaos - Al Arabiya
Aid workers allowed into Sudan’s el-Fasher for the first time since it fell to militants described traumatized civilians living on the verge of famine, characterizing the largely deserted city as the “epicenter of human suffering.” After a 500-day siege, the city — which once held more than a million people — is “a ghost of its former self,” a UN aid official told AFP, with most fleeing the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Sudan’s Black population. Almost three years since the start of the Sudanese civil war, there are few signs of the hostilities ending soon, with experts fearing the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis could yet worsen - Semafor
In my first CNN interview of the New Year, I spoke live from Chișinău, Moldova - just across the border from Ukraine - about the long, torturous and increasingly fragile road toward a possible peace deal. Listening to the New Year addresses of President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Vladimir Putin, one thing is clear: the two leaders are heading in entirely different directions, with vast daylight between their visions for the war’s end. I explain why there is deep unease inside Ukraine over what is being negotiated behind closed doors. As Holos party leader Kira Rudyk warned, the current 20-point peace proposal contains “a lot of ticking time bombs” and could prove dangerous. Few Ukrainians take foreign security guarantees at face value after the bitter failure of the Budapest Memorandum. We also discuss the most explosive issue of all - territorial concessions - and why many Ukrainians are asking: Why was so much blood spilled if land is now to be surrendered? Finally, I address the practical impossibility of holding a nationwide referendum while millions of Ukrainians remain displaced abroad, diplomatic missions are overstretched, and the country is under constant attack - as well as my growing concern over Putin’s ambitions in southern Ukraine, including the risk of rendering the country landlocked by pounding Odesa and key infrastructure.
Connecting the dots, so you don’t have to.
A vessel seized in Finland suspected of damaging an undersea telecommunications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn was transporting Russian steel subject to European Union sanctions, Finnish customs officials said on Thursday. On Wednesday, Finnish police detained the Fitburg, a 132-metre-long cargo ship en route from St Petersburg in Russia to the Israeli port of Haifa. Its 14 crew members were also detained following suspicion the ship’s anchor had damaged the telecoms cable in the Gulf of Finland. “Preliminary information indicated that the cargo consisted of steel products originating in Russia, which are subject to extensive sanctions imposed on Russia,” Finnish Customs said in a statement. “According to the assessment of experts at Finnish Customs, the structural steel in question falls under the EU’s sectoral sanctions,” it said. “Import of such sanctioned goods into the EU is prohibited under EU sanctions regulations.” Finnish Customs said it was still investigating “the applicability of EU sanctions legislation to this case.” The steel remained impounded pending clarification, it said, and Finnish Customs has opened a preliminary inquiry “with a view to launching a pre-trial investigation into a potential sanctions violation.” Finnish police said on Wednesday they were investigating the damaged cable incident as “aggravated criminal damage, attempted aggravated criminal damage, and aggravated interference with telecommunications.” - Euronews
U.S. President Donald Trump slammed actor George Clooney and wife, human rights lawyer Amal, after the couple acquired French citizenship. French authorities fast-tracked granting citizenship to the Clooneys and their children on Dec. 26, a move that became public earlier this week. France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot backed the process, stressing the couple’s philanthropic work. On New Year’s Eve, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Good News! George and Amal Clooney, two of the worst political prognosticators of all time, have officially become citizens of France which is, sadly, in the midst of a major crime problem because of their absolutely horrendous handling of immigration.” Trump continued his attack by dismissing Clooney’s film career. “Clooney got more publicity for politics than he did for his very few, and totally mediocre, movies. He wasn’t a movie star at all, he was just an average guy who complained, constantly, about common sense in politics,” Trump wrote. According to the actor, Trump and Clooney know each other since before Trump entered politics. In a BBC interview in 2021, after Trump’s first and before his second term, Clooney said about him: “He was just this knucklehead … He was just a guy, who was chasing girls … that’s all he was.” - Politico
The journals……
