Politics

President-elect Donald Trump has doubled down on his vow for a “total and complete shut down of Muslims from entering the United States” and dismissed suggestions he will back down from his hardline stance. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Thursday, Trump told reporters: “You’ve known my plans all along. I’ve been proven to be right, 100% correct. What’s happening is disgraceful.“ Trump was speaking the day after an Islamist hijacked a lorry, killed the driver and ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least 12 people and injuring 48.

The battle for Aleppo is officially over.

Having concluded the evacuation of rebels from their last enclave in the eastern part of the city, the Syrian army said Aleppo has returned to government control, ending the 4-year rebel control over parts of the city that years ago was the largest metropolitan center in Syria and is now a landscape out of Call of Duty.  The evacuees have been taken to rebel-held territory in the countryside west of Aleppo and in Idlib province.

In a curious convergence of superpower opinions, earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for the country to reinforce its military nuclear potential. In a speech that recapped military activities in 2016, Putin said the army's preparedness has "considerably increased" and called for continued improvement that would ensure it can "neutralise any military threat".

Donald Trump is calling on President Barack Obama’s administration to veto a U.N. resolution that denounces illegal Israeli settlements and backs the Israeli government. A planned vote Thursday on a draft resolution calling for an immediate end to Israeli settlement activity on occupied land that Palestinians want for a state was postponed amid pressure from Israel, NBC News reported.

After suffering two record budgets shortfalls in 2015 and 2016 as a result of plunging oil prices, and which nearly brought both Saudi Arabia's economy and banking sector to a standstill, not to mention billions in unpaid state worker wages at least until generous foreign investors funded the Kingdom's imminent cash needs with its first, and massive, bond sale ever, today Saudi Arabia released it budget outlook for the next year.