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US President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington after Israel and Lebanon accepted a ceasefire deal on Nov. 26, 2024.
The Israeli Security Cabinet has approved a ceasefire for Lebanon, President Joe Bidenannounced on Tuesday, welcoming the opportunity to start reestablishing peace in the Middle East. “Under the deal reached today, effective at 4 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end,” Biden said.
While earlier reports suggested the US-brokered agreement would involve a 60-day transition period to pave the way toward a more lasting peace, Biden emphasized that the truce is meant to be permanent. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed — I emphasize, will not be allowed — to threaten the security of Israel again,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged approval of the deal, and it was passed “with a majority of 10 ministers in favor and one opposed,” his office said just before Biden announced the news.
The Israeli leader said it was the right time for a ceasefire because it would isolate Hamas, give Israel’s military space to regroup and resupply, and allow the Jewish state to focus more on the threat from Iran.
In the hours leading up to Netanyahu’s announcement on Tuesday, Israel continued to pound Lebanon with airstrikes. But 13 months of fighting ended early Wednesday as the ceasefire took hold, and thousands of displaced Lebanese civilians have begun returning to their homes in the South.
The US pushed hard for the agreement and while the Biden administration is taking credit, the deal could provide a boost for Donald Trump as he enters the White House in January. Trump — who has a close relationship with Bibi — has promised to bring peace to the region, and his administration will soon be on deck with efforts for a more permanent peace between Israel and Hezbollah, and perhaps a resolution for Gaza and the remaining hostages.
In the meantime, we’ll be watching to see if the truce holds as the region remains on edge with the war in Gaza raging on amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran.
Read: “War,” by Bob Woodward. The famed Watergate journalist dropped another book this year, this time delving into the corridors of power involved in the Middle East and Ukraine wars. He also looks at the upended Democratic ticket, the rise of Kamala Harris, and the 2024 presidential election. Woodward predictably fawns over Joe Biden and criticizes Donald Trump, but his fly-on-the-wall glimpses at conversations between leaders like Biden, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jake Sullivan, and Volodymyr Zelensky at pivotal geopolitical moments over the last four years are worth every penny and page. – Tracy
Watch: “Gladiator II.” This movie was a lot of fun. Ridley Scott is truly a master at epic battle scenes. As a huge fan of the first movie, I never expected to get a sequel and was admittedly skeptical when I initially heard this film was being made. But Denzel Washington delivered one of his best performances in years, and the movie (whether intentionally or not) touched on a lot of political themes that hit close to home in the present day for the US. It’s not the most thought-provoking or sophisticated movie you’ll see this year, but it’s quite a spectacle and well worth seeing in theaters. – John
Read: the case for tariffs.As Trump heads back to the White House promising even more potent protectionism, it’s worth understanding the leading arguments for a rethink of free trade. Robert Lighthizer’s 2023 book “No Trade is Free” and Oren Cass’s 2018 “The Once and Future Worker” are good places to start. Both say that policymakers’ focus on boosting consumption has wrecked America’s social fabric by destroying millions of productive and meaningful manufacturing jobs, and both argue the US hasn’t stood its ground against the anti-free trade practices of major partners, especially China. But Lighthizer focuses on trade and China specifically, telling fascinating stories from his time leading Trump’s trade agenda against Beijing and NAFTA. Cass, a rising star among the new economic populist right, casts a wider net, calling for a rethink not only of trade but also for more work-oriented approaches to education, the social safety net, immigration, and environmental regulation. Agree or not, you should know these arguments as they will shape US policy for (at least) the next four years. – Alex
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks after reading a letter to be sent to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, warning that tariffs would cause inflation and job losses in both countries, at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, November 26, 2024.
Last night, Donald Trump made clear that no country will be immune to his tariff agenda. In a post on Truth Social, he accused Canada and Mexico – America’s top two trading partners – of not doing enough to curb the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigration and threatened them each with 25% tariff hikes. He also vowed to impose an additional 10% tariff on China for its role in producing the precursor chemicals for fentanyl.
The announcement caused Mexico’s peso to slide, suffering a 1.7% drop against the US dollar, and for Canada’s dollar to hit a four-year low, dropping 0.7%.
In a press conference on Tuesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s threat by arguing that tariffs would not solve the migration or drug crisis and would come at the cost of the auto industry – noting that cars from America’s biggest auto manufacturers are some of Mexico’s principal exports to the US. Auto stocks fell in response to the post – with General Motors down as much as 7% on Tuesday. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hopped on the phone with Trump, seizing the moment to show voters he knows how to handle the incoming US president.
Meanwhile, Chinese stocks remained relatively solid – dropping just 0.2% – likely because the 10% tariff was lower than many investors’ worst expectations.
The US economy was also unphased by the news, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both making gains in response to Trump appointing hedge fund manager Scott Bessent as treasury secretary. Bessent is expected to be a steward of the stock market and a moderator of Trump’s wildest economic ambitions.
How likely is Trump to follow through? Eurasia Group US analyst Noah Daponte-Smith says it’s hard to predict. “What we do know,” he says, “is that Trump is serious about the tariffs and has the legal means to implement them if he wants.” Even if Trump doesn’t implement them on day one, “the threat of implementation will hang over the USMCA relationship for the entire Trump term if these underlying grievances are not addressed in the manner Trump desires.”With the US Thanksgiving holiday approaching, millions of American families will soon sit down to a turkey dinner.
That makes it as good a time as any to ask an important question: Why are turkeys, which are not actually from Turkey, called turkeys?
It’s a story of commerce, cuisine, and general confusion.
The bird that we know as a turkey is actually native to the Americas, where it was first domesticated by indigenous peoples thousands of years ago. Until Columbus showed up, no one in Europe had ever seen what we call a “turkey,” much less eaten one.
But in the 15th and 16th centuries, traders based in the Mamluk and Ottoman Empires – both known colloquially as “Turkey” – began exporting various species of tasty, exotic guinea fowl to Europe from Africa. People began referring to those birds first as “Turkey birds.”
Then, in the 16th century, colonists in the Americas began sending back to the Old Country the guinea fowl-like birds they found there. And people called those birds the same thing: turkeys. So in a case of mistaken identity, turkeys became turkeys.
But all of this naturally raises an even more pressing question: What are turkeys called in Turkey? (Türkiye, these days.)
Glad you asked. In Turkey, where turkeys are not from, turkeys are referred to as hindi, meaning “Indian birds.” This comes from the mistaken belief that the turkey-rich lands that Columbus and the other explorers had “discovered” were actually “India.”
You find this error reflected in the Russian word indeyka, the Georgian indauri, and the French dinde, a contraction of de Inde, meaning “from India.” The Dutch are, as is often the case, weirdly specific – for them it’s a kalkoen, meaning a “Calcutta hen.”
But we are still far from where the bird is actually from, the Americas.
And there the plot thickens further. In Brazil, the bird is known in Portuguese as a perú, because from the Portuguese empire’s perspective the birds came from somewhere near the Spanish-controlled territory of Peru. But in today’s Peru, a turkey is known in Spanish as a pavo, from a generic Latin word for pheasants.
In fact, to find an Indigenous word for this Indigenous bird, you have to go to Guatemala, where the local Spanish dialect calls it a chompipe, a word of Mayan origin thought to describe the sounds the bird makes.
Of course, everyone hears it differently. The Czechs call the bird a “krocan,” because that’s what it sounds like to them, while the Italians hear our “gobble gobble” as a tacca tacca, giving us their word for the bird: tacchino.
It gets weirder still. Macedonians call the bird a misirka, from the Arabic name for Egypt, Misr, which was the heart of the “Turkish” Mamluk empire. But in Egypt, it’s known in Arabic as diik ruumi meaning “Roman rooster.”
What’s Rome got to do with Turkey? A lot! In Arabic, “Roman” can refer to the Byzantine Empire, whose capital was Constantinople, later Istanbul, which is, to bring things full circle, Turkey.
So in a year when you may want to avoid talking openly about topics like trade, colonialism, and immigration at the Thanksgiving dinner table, you can now talk about all of those things by just talking turkey. Enjoy.
The Snoopy balloon prepares to join the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on West 77th street in New York, on November 23, 2023.
100: This Thursday marks 100 years since the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade first took New York City by storm with “floats, brass bands ... and clowns in profusion.” The event – famous for its seven-story tall balloons of cartoon characters – was originally themed around Christmas, to whet people’s appetites for holiday shopping. The pageantry has had its run-ins with political issues and culture wars over the years. Last year’s installment, for example, drew boycott demands from ultra-conservative groups upset about the inclusion of two non-binary performers.
288,000: Economic need, meet political reality. To offset declining birth rates and the retirement of skilled workers, Germany will require an influx of as many as 288,000 foreign workers every year until 2040. Is that feasible at a moment when anti-immigrant backlash is one of the leitmotifs of German and wider European politics?
44: Pudge tried to dodge, but his plan was too plump by half. A South Korean man was sentenced to a suspended prison term for deliberately gaining more than 44 pounds in a bid to escape military service. South Korea runs a conscription system in which all able-bodied men serve for nearly two years.
2 million: President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants has scared the stalks off of the US agriculture industry, where roughly half of the country’s 2 million farm workers are thought to lack legal status. Industry leaders warn that deportations from the fields could cause inflation to soar, and have sought assurances that Trump’s plans will focus more narrowly on undocumented migrants with criminal records.
1,006: Africa is home to some of the most vibrant tech hubs in the world – Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town among them – but also to increasingly sophisticated cybercrime operations. Over the past two months, Interpol has arrested 1,006 people across 19 African countries on charges of ransomware schemes, digital extortion, fraud, and trafficking. Those nabbed in the crackdown had scammed or fleeced at least 35,000 people out of nearly $200 million.“Fight to the end:” Islamabad on edge after day of violent protests
Security force personnel walk as smoke billows from tear gas shells fired to prevent an anti-government protest by supporters of the former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) demanding the release of Khan, in Islamabad, Pakistan, November 26, 2024
Supporters of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan broke through numerous barricades and clashed with police in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday, leaving at least six people — two civilians and four security officers — dead. Led by Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, protesters occupied D-Chowk, a large square in the city center, for several hours before retreating at dusk.
Bibi said the protests would continue until her husband — currently serving a three-year sentence on corruption charges he denies — was released. Khan, for his part, has urged supporters to “fight to the end” on social media. But on Wednesday, Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, said the demonstrations were “temporarily suspended” owing to “government brutality.”
It’s unclear where the protesters, many of whom came to the capital in large convoys, went as they dispersed on Tuesday. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who’s been in discussions with protest leaders, said he had suggested areas on the outskirts of Islamabad where protest rallies could be held as a compromise.
Despite the pause, more violence seems likely in the days ahead, and the government has invoked its power to deploy the army to quell public unrest. Naqvisaid police were “showing restraint” with protesters but warned that they were authorized to use deadly force if demonstrators again tried to cross into central Islamabad. Khan’s PTI claimed police had already used live rounds against protesters and that 12 of them had been injured.
A view of the anchor of the Chinese ship, the bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, in the sea of Kattegat, near the City of Grenaa in Jutland, Denmark, on Nov. 20, 2024.
A year ago, you’ll recall that another Chinese-flagged vesseldragged an anchor that damaged an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia.
This latest Chinese vessel is now anchored in international waters between Sweden and Denmark, and Swedish authorities, without leveling any accusation, have requested that the ship enter Swedish waters and welcome inspectors on board to investigate. It remains unclear whether the Chinese ship will comply.
This episode comes at a time of heightened alert for Russian sabotage attacks on European infrastructure in response to EU support for Ukraine. In particular, Russian involvement is suspected in a number of fires and mail bombs across the continent.