The World Today

When Donald Trump is sworn in as President of the United States, he will be the leader of a divided nation. Someone who has been struggling to understand the deepening social and political rift in her country is Arlie Russell Hochschild, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. To write her book 'Strangers in their own land', she went to live in a small working class community in Louisiana where residents generally vehemently oppose initiatives like Obamacare, embodying what she calls 'the red state paradox'.

New research shows your energy bills are about to become harder to afford. Big multinational LNG companies are facing significantly higher costs, which are now expected to be passed on to local suppliers, and, ultimately, Australian households.

Trade Minster Steve Ciobo says the Trans-Pacific Partnership has a chance a survival, despite US President-elect Donald Trump's promise to pull America out of the deal. The Opposition, meanwhile, says the Government is wasting its time.

Stunned European leaders are reacting with defiance to the incoming US President's latest statement about NATO, with Germany's Angela Merkel saying, 'We Europeans have our fate in our own hands.' Donald Trump called the long-standing political and military alliance between the US and its European allies 'obsolete' and also predicted that the European Union would continue to fracture.

The International Monetary Fund has lifted its forecasts for US growth, based on Donald Trump's expansionary policies. But the IMF is warning that Mr Trump's spending plans could force US rates higher and have global spillovers.

Computer security experts are calling for an urgent audit of Australian government email accounts in response to a major data breach. The ABC revealed today that thousands of Australian government officials are among the victims of the latest Yahoo data breach. The officials include federal politicians, high-ranking defence officials and ambassadors.

The Northern Ireland Parliament has called a snap election collapse of the power-sharing Government. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has resigned over the Government's handling of a green energy scheme. His party, the pro-republican Sinn Fein, has refused to re-nominate a replacement, effectively ending its power-sharing agreement with the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party.

The connection between humans and the Moon is a little more distant today, with the death of the last man to have walked on the Moon. Astronaut Gene Cernan travelled to space three times, including Apollo 17, the last of the crewed lunar missions. He's being remembered for his love of lunar exploration and for his desire to inspire a whole new generation of space travellers. Gene Cernan died in hospital, after an ongoing illness. He was 82 years old.

The US President-elect Donald Trump has given a wide-ranging interview where he's detailed his views on world leaders and foreign policy. He's declared Brexit will be 'a great thing', and that he'd reach for the phone to call Germany's Angela Merkel before Russia's Vladimir Putin in a crisis. But on the domestic front, civil rights activists are rallying in Washington DC, just five days out from his inauguration.

After warnings from the outgoing CIA director John Brennan to be cautious in relaxing sanctions against Russia and aware of the effects of his statements, the plausibility of US president-elect Donald Trump is again under the spotlight. A former counterintelligence officer with the National Security Agency, John Schindler, says he's never seen a president go against the US intelligence community, so openly, and that Trump's presidency could have unforeseen intelligence implications for Australia.