The Burundian government has been detaining troops for refusing orders to deploy to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Burundi is trying to stop the advances of a rebel group backed by Rwanda. The focus now is on the key border city of Goma.
The background: The area around Goma is rich in minerals, which armed groups and their backers have vied to control for years. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group began taking territory two years ago and funneling the spoils back to their patrons. UN peacekeepers have been largely unable to stop violence that has pushed hundreds of thousands of people into dangerous refugee camps.
A Kenyan-led intervention force managed to hold Goma last year, but withdrew in November, opening the way for M23. In December, Burundi intervened, but troops say they are fighting blind, hence the desertions. That leaves a South African-led coalition as Goma’s best bet.
What’s next? The fighting will be brutal, with 2 million residents of Goma in the crossfire. M23 is angling to cut the city off from the rest of the DRC. If they succeed, the rebels – and their Rwandan supporters – will be in a commanding position to extract concessions from Kinshasa.US President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter prior to signing an executive order on AI next to Sriram Krishnan, Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and David Sacks, chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on December 11, 2025.
Artificial intelligence and Donald Trump's foreign policy are creating huge tail risks for markets.
Last week, Microsoft released a new report offering an in-depth look at AI adoption across the United States, with state- and county-level insights for the first time. While more than 30 percent of working-age Americans now use AI tools, adoption remains uneven across regions, with significantly higher usage in urban areas and communities tied to universities. The findings point to a broader challenge: without stronger access to infrastructure, skills, and education, AI’s benefits risk remaining concentrated rather than broadly shared. Read the full blog here.
The maker of the large-language model Claude became the latest AI giant to file to go public.
Hundreds took to the streets in Kenya after the US announced plans to build an Ebola quarantine center on a Kenyan air base, with protesters warning the facility risks introducing a disease the country has never recorded. President Ruto is defending the project.