8: DOGE has been DOGE’d, with a White House official declaring that the Department of Government Efficiency – which, under Tesla owner Elon Musk, tried to slash government spending– no longer exists. The department still had eight months left before the end of its charter.
12,000: A long-dormant Ethiopian volcano, Hayli Gubbi, erupted for the first time in nearly 12,000 years, sending ash 9 miles high and drifting across the Red Sea. No casualties were reported, but ash is strangling the local vegetation and threatening local herders’ livelihoods.
1.5: As COP30 comes to a close, the conference concludes with an agreement projecting that the world will likely exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming in the next five years, with few promises made to stop it. The agreement did not mention fossil fuel curtailment, and instead focused on climate change adaptation, in a sign that countries are prioritizing energy security over climate commitments.
Is China’s economic model reaching a breaking point? In GZERO’s 2026 Top Risks livestream, Cliff Kupchan, Chairman of Global Macro at Eurasia Group, highlights mounting pressures on the Chinese economy.
2026 is a tipping point year. The biggest source of global instability won’t be China, Russia, Iran, or the ~60 conflicts burning across the planet – the most since World War II. It will be the United States.
While surgeons remain fully in control, technological advances are expanding the use of surgical robots in operating rooms. As adoption accelerates, so do the expectations for patient outcomes and surgical care. Track medical innovation trends with Bank of America Institute.
Europe enters 2026 under mounting strain as it confronts external threats, internal political pressures, and a weakening relationship with the United States. In GZERO’s 2026 Top Risks livestream, Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director for Europe at Eurasia Group, describes a continent that is “exhausted, fatigued, weak, and vulnerable.”