426 stories · Page 31 of 43
Between 19–20 Dec 2025 Washington moved an aircraft-carrier strike group and thousands of troops into the Caribbean and announced a "total blockade" on sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers, while President Trump said he "doesn’t rule out" war and Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to forcibly change Caracas’s status quo.
On 22 Dec 2025 a confidence vote in Governor Hideyo Hanazumi removed the last local-consent barrier, allowing TEPCO to fire up Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Unit 6—idle since 2011—from 20 Jan 2026.
On 22 Dec 2025 the Interior Department ordered an immediate construction pause on five nearly-finished Atlantic offshore wind farms—together ~6 GW—invoking classified radar-interference threats.
On 22 Dec 2025, Niigata’s 53-seat prefectural assembly endorsed Governor Hideyo Hanazumi’s pro-restart stance, giving Tokyo Electric Power Co. final local consent to bring the first reactor at the 7-unit Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex back online after 14 years offline.
On 21 Dec 2025 the U.S. Coast Guard moved to seize a third ‘dark-fleet’ tanker near Venezuela just 24 hours after boarding the Centuries and 11 days after capturing the Skipper, signalling the start of President Trump’s announced oil-tanker “blockade.”
On 22 Dec 2025, Prime Ministers Modi and Luxon declared FTA negotiations finished after just nine months, clearing the way for signing in early 2026 and granting Indian goods zero-duty entry to New Zealand while phasing out duties on nearly all New Zealand exports.
At dawn on 20 Dec 2025, American helicopters boarded and took control of the tanker Centuries in international waters near Venezuela—the second seizure since President Trump announced a total blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil on 10 December.
In a 19-20 Dec 2025 podcast blitz, Sam Altman revealed OpenAI has already entered emergency “code red” mode several times this year—halting side projects for 6-8-week sprints to harden ChatGPT after Google’s Gemini 3 and other rivals—and expects to repeat the drill one to two times every year.
On 18 Dec 2025, Paris and Rome formally withheld consent at the Brussels summit, stripping Ursula von der Leyen of the qualified majority she needed to sign the 780-million-consumer EU-Mercosur free-trade agreement in Brazil two days later.
The Bank of Japan raised its overnight call rate by 25 bp to 0.75 % on 19 Dec 2025, its first move since January and highest setting since 1995, signalling willingness to tighten further as wage-led inflation embeds.
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