The Biden administration has sent messages to the Houthi rebels in Yemen via several channels recently warning them to stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea and against Israel, two U.S. officials said.
Why it matters: The Houthi attacks have created tensions in the region and are posing a growing threat to ships navigating one of the region's main commercial shipping routes.
Israel's war in Gaza needs to "transition to the next lower intensity phase in a matter of weeks, not months," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the war cabinet in a meeting on Thursday, according to two U.S. and Israeli officials.
Why it matters: The Biden administration has backed the Israeli response to the Oct. 7 attack and says it supports Israel's stated goal of ousting Hamas in Gaza, but the White House is under mounting international and domestic pressure to tell Israel to end the war.
Heat waves, floods and wildfires dominated the news cycle this year with climate-change related disasters, and global average temperatures, on the rise.
Why it matters: Every month since June has been the hottest such month on record, and the rapid warming is playing out in the form of deadly extreme events worldwide.
With November ranking as the warmest such month on record, NOAA is projecting greater than 99.5% odds that this year will be the world's warmest since instrument records began in the 19th century.
Why it matters: The record, a result of both human-caused climate change and an El Niño event in the tropical Pacific, demonstrates how quickly and significantly the world is heating up.
Chileans on Sunday will vote on whether to adopt a new constitution that was mostly written by a right-wing party and likely faces an uphill battle.
State of play: The current constitution was written during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who was in power from 1973 to 1989, and is considered outdated and inflexible.
French media and entertainment group Vivendi said that it's weighing a split into three separate businesses.
Why it matters: This would be a strategic reversal for the conglomerate, which has been seeking to tighten bonds between businesses that remained after Vivendi spun off Universal Music Group via IPO in 2021.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Thursday that U.S. and Russian officials are in a "dialogue" to secure the release of two Americans that Russia has wrongfully detained, the BBC reports.
Why it matters: Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan have been wrongfully imprisoned by Russia since March 2023 and December 2018, respectively.
Central banks in Europe and the U.K. kept interest rates at historically high levels on Thursday, while officials pushed back on expectations that borrowing costs would be lowered anytime soon.
Why it matters: That stance contrasts with that of the the Federal Reserve, which all but declared the rate hiking cycle over and signaled cuts would be ahead in 2024.
