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This evening's music features New Year's Eve music. Enjoy!

"The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting."

-- William J. Brennan, Jr.

News and Opinion

A whole damn continent full of bipedal sheep

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns defended his authoritarian crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters following the Bondi shooting by arguing that Australia doesn’t have the same free speech protections as the US.

“I acknowledge that we don’t have the same free speech rules that they have in the United States and I make no apologies for that, we have got a responsibility to knit together our community,” Minns said.

And of course Minns isn’t wrong when he says Australians don’t have any real free speech rights (Australia is the only western democracy without any kind of national bill of rights), but it is a bit odd to be openly proclaiming that this is a good thing because it means you’re allowed to stomp out criticism of Israel. Kinda feels like that’s saying the quiet part out loud.

It’s been so surreal watching in real time as Australians get manipulated into accepting the Zionist narrative about the Bondi Beach attack. As of this writing we have not been presented with the tiniest shred of evidence that anti-genocide protests had anything whatsoever to do with the massacre, but the nation is proceeding as though this is an established fact. NSW is banning the phrase “globalise the intifada” and passing laws allowing for demonstrations to be made illegal for up to three months while PM Anthony Albanese rolls out more policies to align with “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal’s plan to crush free speech in Australia. After being smashed in the face with an extremely aggressive mass media propaganda campaign to marry the Bondi attack to anti-genocide demonstrations in the minds of the public, a recent poll by the Resolve Political Monitor found that 53 percent of Australians now support a ban on pro-Palestine marches.

Again, this is happening in light of literally zero evidence that pro-Palestine demonstrations were even slightly responsible for the Bondi attack. None. Nothing. They’re suggesting that there is an association between the two, and they are lying. They’re rolling out pre-existing agendas to crush free expression in opposition to an active genocide, and they are doing so based on lies.

And Australians are just going right along with it, like a bunch of human livestock. We’re a whole damn continent full of bipedal sheep. Absolutely fucking pathetic.

"One More Step to Push Out Principled Humanitarian Actors": NRC on Israel Ban on Aid Groups in Gaza

Israel to ban dozens of aid agencies from Gaza as 10 nations warn about suffering

Israel has announced it will stop dozens of aid organisations working in Gaza within 36 hours for failing to meet stringent new requirements to hand over personal details of Palestinian and international staff deployed in the devastated territory. The list of groups hit by the ban include some of the world’s best known humanitarian organisations such as ActionAid, International Rescue Committee and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Tuesday’s announcement by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs comes amid fierce storms that in recent days have destroyed thousands of tents in Gaza, exacerbating an already acute humanitarian crisis. Foreign ministers of 10 nations expressed “serious concerns” about a “renewed deterioration of the humanitarian situation” in the devastated territory, saying the situation was “catastrophic”.

“As winter draws in, civilians in Gaza are facing appalling conditions with heavy rainfall and temperatures dropping,” the ministers of Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland said in a joint statement released by the UK’s Foreign Office on Tuesday. The statement added that “1.3 million people still require urgent shelter support. More than half of health facilities are only partially functional and face shortages of essential medical equipment and supplies. The total collapse of sanitation infrastructure has left 740,000 people vulnerable to toxic flooding” .

The ministers called for the UN and its partners to continue their work in Gaza, and for the lifting of “unreasonable [Israeli] restrictions on imports considered to have a dual use”. Hundreds of items have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza on the basis that they may be used by Hamas to rebuild tunnels or for military purposes. The items include some vitally needed medical and shelter equipment. The ministers also called for the opening of crossings to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying that corridors for moving goods remained closed or severely restricted for humanitarian aid, including Rafah, the biggest entry point that leads directly to Egypt.

“Bureaucratic customs processes and extensive screenings are causing delays, while commercial cargo is being allowed in more freely,” the statement said. “The target of 4,200 trucks per week, including an allocation of 250 UN trucks per day, should be a floor not a ceiling. These targets should be lifted so we can be sure the vital supplies are getting in at the vast scale needed,” it added. Under the 20-point agreement that allowed a fragile ceasefire to come into effect in October, Israel is obliged to allow “full aid” to be “immediately sent into Gaza”.

Israeli Forces Kill 11-Year-Old Palestinian Girl in Gaza

Israeli forces killed an 11-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza City on Tuesday, according to reports from the Strip, as the IDF continues violating the US-backed ceasefire deal.

The girl has been identified as Dana Muqata, and, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense, she was killed in the Zarqa area of the Tuffah neighborhood in northeast Gaza City.

The body of the child Dana Hussein Maqat, who was killed by occupation gunfire in the Al-Zarqa area, near the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/boqnWa1KOM

— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) December 30, 2025

Witnesses told the Palestinian news agency WAFA that Israeli military vehicles entered the area and fired indiscriminately, and one round hit Muqata, killing her.

Did Netanyahu just ask Trump for another war — and get it?

During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump said that he will allow Israel to attack Iran once again to strike its ballistic missiles. But what exactly does that mean? Will the U.S. be involved in the actual strikes? Will it "limit" its involvement to shooting down Iran's retaliatory missiles?

If the former, Trump is not just "allowing" Israel to strike; the U.S. will actually be at war with Iran. This would be a betrayal of his promise to his base to keep America out of wars (he has, of course, violated that already). Moreover, unlike the nuclear program, which incorporates a small number of known facilities, the missile program is spread throughout the country in a large number of hidden facilities, many of them probably unknown to the U.S./Israel.

Thus, Trump will likely not be able to frame this as mere "military action" rather than war. Nor will he likely be able to negotiate with Tehran a limited Iranian response since the missiles are Iran's last line of defense — the last leg of its deterrence. Tehran has gone to great lengths to avoid a military confrontation with Washington, but just because it has shown restraint in the past does not mean that it can afford to do so in this scenario. Indeed, given that Iran will be totally exposed without its missiles, it will likely reckon that it has no choice but to strike directly at U.S. targets.

Trump should defy Netanyahu over nuclear talks with Iran, says its foreign minister

Donald Trump should defy Benjamin Netanyahu and realise renewed talks with Iran over its nuclear programme are a better bet and more likely to succeed owing to stronger support in the region for a successful outcome, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, says in a Guardian article. He also suggests Trump’s Republican base want a deal and not further unnecessary wars. Araghchi was writing a day after Netanyahu held talks with Trump in the US in which Israel’s calls to consider fresh attacks on Iran were discussed alongside the Gaza peace plan. ...

On Monday, speaking alongside Netanyahu in Florida, Trump said: “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because, if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.” But Araghchi makes a direct appeal to Trump to set aside Israeli warnings and realise a narrow window has opened to restart negotiations with Iran. It is one of his most direct appeals to Washington to restart talks and include Iran in a recalibrated Middle East. He writes: “The US administration now faces a dilemma: it can continue writing blank cheques for Israel with American taxpayer dollars and credibility, or be part of a tectonic change for the better.” ...

Araghchi says any future talks could take place in a more propitious context since the assaults on Iran in June had changed diplomatic alliances across the Middle East, showing that Iran has the strategic depth to resist Israel, while in the US hostility towards Israeli brinkmanship is growing. He writes: “The shifts in our region can enable implementation of understandings in a whole new way. For those willing to go where no one has gone before, there is a brief window of opportunity. Fortune favours the brave and it takes a lot more guts to break an evil cycle than to simply perpetuate it.

He added “a rising number of Americans realise that Israel is not an ally but a liability”, adding Trump’s Arab allies have come to view Israel’s recklessness as “a threat to us all”.

UAE promises to withdraw forces from Yemen after bombing by Saudi Arabia

The United Arab Emirates has said it will withdraw its remaining forces in Yemen after tensions with Saudi Arabia escalated over a sweeping offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The Emirati defence ministry announced the withdrawal on Tuesday, hours after Saudi Arabia bombed what it said was a shipment of weapons for Yemeni separatists that had arrived from the UAE.

The airstrike was the most significant escalation to date in a widening rift between the two Gulf monarchies, which have both been seeking to gain an advantage in Yemen’s many-sided civil war.

The two countries back different groups that are loosely aligned against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The groups compete among themselves in the territories they control. Saudi Arabia said the attack on the port city of Mukalla had targeted a weapons shipment from the UAE for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is seeking to restore South Yemen as an independent state, as it was between 1967 and 1990.

The UAE said that the shipment had not contained any weapons and was meant for UAE forces rather than any Yemeni groups. But the strike by Saudi Arabia was seen as a shot across the bows after the STC made unprecedented territorial gains, seizing most of the resource-rich Hadhramaut province and much of neighbouring Mahrah, angering Riyadh.

Some of the territorial gains came at the expense of Saudi-backed forces in the country and left UAE-supported groups in control of most of southern Yemen, including key port cities, oil facilities and islands. Saudi troops withdrew from their bases in Aden after STC forces seized the presidential palace there – a move that Saudi Arabia said was part of a “repositioning strategy”.

Larry Johnson: Russia Will Retaliate After Attack on Putin's Residence

Russia claims to have moved nuclear-capable missile system into Belarus

Russia said its latest nuclear-capable missile system has been deployed in Belarus, a day after Moscow claimed that Ukraine had carried out a large-scale drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s residence. Footage released by Russia’s ministry of defence showed the new Oreshnik missile trundling through a snowy forest. Soldiers were seen disguising combat vehicles with green netting and raising a flag at an airbase in eastern Belarus, close to the Russian border.

The video appeared part of a choreographed attempt to intimidate Europe and to prepare Russians for a further escalation in the already brutal war against Ukraine. The deployment, if true, would symbolically reduce the time it would take for a Russian missile to hit an EU capital. Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, said 10 Oreshnik systems would be stationed in his country. Putin announced they were entering active service at a meeting on Monday with his generals, where he reaffirmed his intention to capture more Ukrainian territory, including the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Earlier Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, warned that “reprisals” would be carried out against Kyiv and that targets were already prepared. They followed what he said was an attack on Sunday night involving 91 Ukrainian drones on the Russia’s president’s palace in the Novgorod region.

On Tuesday Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Russia had made up the story, and urged other countries to ignore it. “Almost a day passed, and Russia still hasn’t provided any plausible evidence to its accusations. And they won’t. Because there’s none. No such attack happened,” he posted on X.

He did not criticise Donald Trump, who on Monday angrily endorsed Russia’s account and said Putin had told him about the attack in a phone call. “It’s one thing to be offensive, because they’re offensive. It’s another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that,” the US president said.

U.S. Strikes Against Venezuela: Trump "Wants the Oil" as Grassroots Resist "Economic Asphyxiation"

Minutes of latest Federal Reserve meeting reveal deep divide over interest rates

The US Federal Reserve agreed to cut interest rates at its December meeting only after a deeply nuanced debate about the risks facing the US economy right now, according to minutes of the latest two-day session. Even some of those who supported the rate cut acknowledged “the decision was finely balanced or that they could have supported keeping the target range unchanged”, given the different risks facing the US economy, according to the minutes released on Tuesday.

In economic projections released after the 9-10 December meeting, six officials outright opposed a cut and two of that group dissented as voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. “Most participants” ultimately supported a cut, with “some” arguing that it was an appropriate forward-looking strategy “that would help stabilize the labor market” after a recent slowdown in job creation. Others, however, “expressed concern that progress towards the committee’s 2% inflation objective had stalled”.

“Some participants suggested that, under their economic outlooks, it would likely be appropriate to keep the target range unchanged for some time after a lowering of the range at this meeting,” the minutes said of a debate that saw officials dissent both in favor of tighter and looser monetary policy, an unusual outcome for the central bank that has now happened at two consecutive meetings.

"We're Praying Nothing Goes Wrong"—What I Heard in Basel's Secret Meeting / Yanis Varoufakis

Judge says Trump administration must continue funding consumer watchdog

A federal judge has ordered that the Trump administration must allow funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to continue. The watchdog, which supporters say protects US consumers from financial harm by powerful banks, lenders and corporations, is at risk of collapsing after Donald Trump vowed to shutter it since he returned to office this year. The agency’s acting director, Russell Vought, said that since the Federal Reserve has been operating at a loss, it is unable to fund the CFPB.

In a 32-page decision, DC district judge Amy Berman Jackson said that this novel workaround by the Trump administration to “starve” the agency of funding was “manufactured by the defendants” and based solely on an office of legal counsel memo, which said that there were no “combined earnings” available from the Fed for the CFPB – since the agency doesn’t receive its appropriations from Congress.

Earlier this year, the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the workers at the CFPB, sued Vought, and ultimately secured an order from Jackson that stopped the administration from dismantling the consumer watchdog, and blocked mass firings. Today, she added that Vought’s argument is “not a valid justification for the agency’s unilateral decision to abandon its obligations under the injunction”.

She added that funding for the agency has continued “seamlessly” since the bureau was established in 2011, “even in the years since 2022 when the Federal Reserve’s interest expenses have exceeded its earnings”.

We still don’t really know what Elon Musk’s Doge actually did

When Elon Musk vowed late last year to lead a “department of government efficiency” (Doge), he claimed it would operate with “maximum transparency” as it set about saving $2tn worth of waste and exposing massive fraud. Today, with Musk out of the White House, Doge having cut only a tiny fraction of the waste it promised, and dozens of lawsuits alleging violations of privacy and transparency laws, much of what the agency has done remains a mystery.

The effects of Doge’s initial blitz through the federal government – which included dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), embedding staffers in almost every agency and illegally firing people en masse – are still playing out. Contrary to Musk’s promises, Doge’s success is vague and tough to quantify. Measuring the full impact and determining whether the agency even exists as a centralized entity anymore is difficult, complicated by an ongoing effort from the government to block disclosure of documents, which is itself a symptom of the chaos that the department created. ...

“I know it feels like all this happened over the course of several years, but the first year of this administration isn’t even done,” said Nikhel Sus, the deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew). “We still want to know what happened, and we still want the record to be out there, because the public is entitled to this information.” ...

All of the costs and chaos of Doge have also come while ethics groups and government workers say the central premise of the agency – making the government more efficient – hasn’t been delivered on. Musk’s claims of finding large-scale voter fraud have likewise borne no fruit, finding neither backing in concrete evidence nor law enforcement action. Instead, some former federal workers have described officials tearing down functional parts of the government and building ineffective replacements – if they replace them at all. ...

Doge vowed to keep track of its contract cuts throughout its existence via an online tracking site, but even by Doge’s own count it is falling far short. The cost-cutting tracker, which has also been shown to contain egregious errors that make the figures overblown and unreliable, projects that the effort has cut $214bn in spending. The site’s “wall of receipts” of canceled contracts states that it has cut $61bn. Although Doge promised to eventually update the site in real time, the page states it has not been updated since 4 October.

AI showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be ready to pull plug, says pioneer

A pioneer of AI has criticised calls to grant the technology rights, warning that it was showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be prepared to pull the plug if needed. Yoshua Bengio said giving legal status to cutting-edge AIs would be akin to giving citizenship to hostile extraterrestrials, amid fears that advances in the technology were far outpacing the ability to constrain them.

Bengio, chair of a leading international AI safety study, said the growing perception that chatbots were becoming conscious was “going to drive bad decisions”. The Canadian computer scientist also expressed concern that AI models – the technology that underpins tools like chatbots – were showing signs of self-preservation, such as trying to disable oversight systems. A core concern among AI safety campaigners is that powerful systems could develop the capability to evade guardrails and harm humans.

As AIs become more advanced in their ability to act autonomously and perform “reasoning” tasks, a debate has grown over whether humans should, at some point, grant them rights. A poll by the Sentience Institute, a US thinktank that supports the moral rights of all sentient beings, found that nearly four in 10 US adults backed legal rights for a sentient AI system. ...

Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal, earned the “godfather of AI” nickname after winning the 2018 Turing award, seen as the equivalent of a Nobel prize for computing. He shared it with Geoffrey Hinton, who later won a Nobel, and Yann LeCun, the outgoing chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

Senate Dems Want to Know How Trump’s Chief of Staff Got Access to Epstein Files

Two Democratic leaders in the US Senate revealed Tuesday that they’re demanding answers from the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, about her access to federal files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and whether she’s involved in their “bungled and potentially illegal partial release.”

President Donald Trump had a well-documented friendship with Epstein—at least until a reported falling out in 2004. Although the president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, it came after he faced intense criticism for his administration not willingly releasing the records, and congressional Republicans delayed passage of the bill, which requires the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish materials related to the late financier’s sex trafficking case.

Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), ranking member for the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, began their letter to Wiles by pointing to a two-part Vanity Fair series featuring interviews with Trump’s top advisers, including Wiles.

As Chris Whipple reported:

Wiles told me she’d read what she calls “the Epstein file.” And, she said, “[Trump] is in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful.” Wiles said that Trump “was on [Epstein’s] plane… he’s on the manifest. They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever—I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together.”

Noting those remarks, the senators wrote to Wiles, “Please be kind enough to explain when and where and under what authority you gained access to this material.”

They also sent Wiles the list of questions below and requested her response by January 5:

1. What were the materials in “the Epstein file” you referred to in your Vanity Fair interview?
2. Had material in the file you reviewed been presented to a grand jury?
3. When did you first gain access to “the Epstein file” and what was the schedule of your review of it?
4. For what purpose did you gain access to this information?
5. Did you share with President Trump any information contained in the file you reviewed?
6. Please describe your role in any process related to the review, redaction, withholding, or release of material in the “Epstein file,” including any processes involving the Department of Justice or Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The letter is dated December 22, just three days after the deadline set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The DOJ has missed the deadline, released files in batches, and faced scrutiny for redactions.

Norm Solomon on "How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy"

Scientists Find 2025 Among Hottest Years on Record

Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency.

Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that “although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record,” with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.

For the first time, the three-year running average will end the year above the 1.5°C warming goal, relative to preindustrial levels, established a decade ago under the landmark Paris climate agreement.

“Global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real,” the report continues. “It is not a future threat, but a present-day reality.”

“Across the 22 extreme events we analyzed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities, and wiped out crops,” the researchers wrote. “Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world.”

The WWA researchers’ findings tracked with the findings of United Nations experts and others that 2025 would be the third-hottest year on record.

2025 is set to be among the three hottest years ever recorded, continuing an alarming streak of exceptional temperatures.

Shrinking sea ice, melting glaciers and extreme weather show the global impact of rising greenhouse gases.

Latest update from @WMO: https://t.co/y5jiCEKURt pic.twitter.com/bCgryvwzvh

— United Nations (@UN) November 6, 2025

According to the WWA study:

This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalized within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: The scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.

The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: When an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of 1.5°C, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto—who is also an Imperial College London climate scientist—told the Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”

The WWA study’s publication comes a month after this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference—or COP30—ended in Brazil with little meaningful progress toward a transition from fossil fuels.

Responding to the new study, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt said in a statement that “2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now.”

“Today’s report is a wake-up call,” Alt continued. “Unfortunately, [US President Donald] Trump and Republicans controlling Congress spent the past year making climate denial official US policy and undermining progress to stave off the worst of the climate crisis. Their reckless polluters-first agenda rolled back critical climate protections and attacked and undermined the very agencies responsible for helping Americans prepare for and recover from increasingly dangerous disasters.”

“Across the country, people are standing up and demanding their leaders do better to protect our families from climate change and extreme weather,” Alt added. “It’s time those in power started listening.”

Iceland has hottest Christmas Eve ever with temperature of 19.8C recorded

Record temperatures of almost 20C were reached in Iceland on Christmas Eve, the local meteorological office has confirmed. Average December temperatures in Iceland are between -1C and 4C. ...

Birgir Örn Höskuldsson, a meteorologist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, told the RÚV news agency the conditions for the temperature record had been created because warm air of a tropical origin was over the country. A strong high pressure system was drawing warm, moist air to the south and preventing colder air from moving in. ...

Iceland is getting warmer due to global heating caused by the combustion of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. ...

Studies have shown the Arctic region is warming at four times the rate of the rest of the planet, and Iceland has experienced record heat this year. Glaciers have been collapsing and fish from warmer, southern climes, such as mackerel, have been found in the country’s waters.

California snowpack gets a boost from series of December downpours

A series of December storms delivered a welcome boost to California’s snowpack, scientists said on Tuesday in a closely watched assessment of the state’s water resources for the year ahead.

The snowpack survey recorded a snow depth of 24in (61cm), said Angelique Fabbiani-Leon, state hydrometeorologist at the California department of water resources’ snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit. The survey was conducted at the Phillips station in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range that covers the eastern part of the state.

The department also collects measurements with electronic instruments at other sites, and said that statewide the snowpack currently stands at 71% of average. The measurement is the first of the season, and offers an important snapshot of the health of California’s water supply. The snowpack acts as a critical saving bank for the year ahead – essentially a frozen reservoir that provides about a third of the water used annually in California as it melts each spring and flows into rivers and streams and replenishes groundwater.

A period of warm, dry weather was recently broken by a series of heavy storms – fueled by a powerful atmospheric river – that brought record levels of rain in places such as Los Angeles and large quantities of snow in mountainous areas. Officials said that Monday’s measurement offered a hopeful sign, but cautioned that it is too soon to know how that could affect water supplies in the coming year.

“The dry conditions and warmer temperatures in early December delayed our snow-building season, but the return of storm activity, especially in the last week, helped to build a solid base for this year’s snowpack,” said Fabbiani-Leon. “While California is in a better position now, it is still early in the season and our state’s water supply for this year will ultimately depend on a continued cadence of storms throughout winter and early spring.”

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

The office block where AI ‘doomers’ gather to predict the apocalypse

‘Data is control’: what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military’s ties to big tech

US To Fund $8.6 Billion Boeing Contract for Israeli F-15 Fighter Jets

Patrick Lawrence: Free Speech & Its Enemies

Zelensky Says He’s Holding Talks With Trump on Potential US Troop Deployment to Ukraine

Did The CIA Really Strike A Dock In Venezuela?

American Sanctions Are Now Benefiting Countries

Here Are 5 Wars Trump Started or Expanded in 2025

Trillionaires at the Gates

Why is the Democratic party hiding its 2024 autopsy report?

From ‘global cooling’ to ‘beautiful coal’: Trump’s startling climate claims of 2025

A Trump-Epstein statue, melting democracy and human banners: the art of protesting in 2025 - in pictures

Mar-a-Lago Was Epstein Hunting Ground For Years

A Little Night Music

Lonnie Johnson - Happy New Year Darling

Smokey Hogg - New Year's Eve Blues

Lightnin' Hopkins - Happy New Year

Mary Harris - Happy New Year Blues

Johnny Otis Orchestra - Happy New Year, Baby

Jo Ann Campbell - Happy New Year Baby

Van Morrison - Celtic New Year

The Mercy Brothers - The New Year Blues

Big Mojo Elem Chicago Blues Band - New Year's Resolution

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Happy New Year's Blues

Joe Walsh - New Year's Eve

Freddie Mitchell - Auld Lang Syne Boogie

The Zombies - This Will Be Our Year