The Debate

So much for the primaries. Donald Trump is all but killing suspense this January with an 11-point win in New Hampshire over Nikki Haley, his sole Republican rival left standing. Never Trumpers can try the "it’s only 11 points" argument in a state he won by 20 points during his first run in 2016, but New Hampshire is an outlier that lets independents vote in primaries. Exit polls suggest the former president won the votes of three quarters of the party faithful.

As pressure on Israel to formulate an exit strategy mounts, the fighting in Gaza seems to only intensify, with more than 25,000 Palestinians killed. And while the Israeli military claims to have encircled the southern city of Khan Younes, it is also burying its dead after the army's deadliest single day since October 7. We hear reactions to the death of 21 Israeli reservists.

India's prime minister calls it a "new era". Narendra Modi has consecrated the Ayodhya temple in the nation's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, fulfilling a decades-old promise to build a proper shrine to the Hindu deity Ram on the site where a Moghul-era mosque was torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. That destruction sparked deadly riots that killed some 2,000 people, mainly Muslims.

Has Iran just opened a new front? On top of support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, now come tit-for-tat strikes with Pakistan to the east. Both sides say they targeted separatist Baloch insurgents, but the sudden escalation between usually friendly neighbours adds a whole new layer of uncertainty to a region that's already close to boiling point.

2024 began with conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East that are sending shockwaves around the world. It continues with a scramble for innovation in energy and tech that's got the superpowers beefing up protection for homegrown industry and along the way, a series of elections that often pit populists against the guardians of globalised trade.

He is charged with inciting a mob to try to overturn his defeat in 2020. So why is it that just three years later, Donald Trump may have already killed suspense in the race to the 2024 Republican nomination? We ask about the former president's record win in the Iowa caucuses, where he barely campaigned in person and stayed so far ahead of the rest of the field that he did not even bother with candidates' debates.

Beijing’s message to Taiwan’s voters just does not seem to be getting through.

Three candidates, two superpowers and one island. Taiwan is picking a president and a parliament on Saturday amid steadily surging nationalism in mainland China and all the talk of decoupling and derisking by the United States. Who will succeed the outgoing pro-Western president, Tsai Ing-wen? How high are the stakes?

It is only on a voluntary basis. So how much to make of Russian authorities offering their citizens a ride out of Belgorod? The western city across from Ukraine's Kharkiv is increasingly the target of Moscow's own medicine: a steady diet of missiles from the sky. As NATO leaders meet in Brussels, the battle for air superiority is squarely on the radar of both sides.

New year, new face. France's youngest-ever president has named the country's youngest-ever prime minister. We ask why Emmanuel Macron chose to replace Élisabeth Borne with Gabriel Attal and chart the meteoric rise of a 34-year-old Parisian who has already enjoyed stints as city councillor, party spokesperson, budget minister, government spokesperson and most recently, education minister.