Footage shows Thai civilians huddling in bunkers and Cambodian children fleeing classrooms after Thailand launched dawn airstrikes on Cambodian border forces on Monday. Both nations accuse the other of breaching a ceasefire brokered by Donald Trump. At least four Cambodian civilians were killed.
The Hollywood award season in the United States is hitting high gear, with nominations unveiled for one of the biggest contests of 2026: the 83rd annual Golden Globes.
Often seen as a bellwether for the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes honour achievements in both television and filmmaking — a distinction that, with the advent of streaming over the last two decades, has become all the murkier.
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Limping post-pandemic box office numbers and high-stakes mergers have also complicated the future of the motion picture industry, with streaming giants like Netflix making a play for the century-old studio Warner Bros.
Still, several big-name blockbusters and critical darlings topped this year’s Golden Globe nominations.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s political thriller One Battle After Another was a standout, making good on its star-studded cast to sweep up five acting nods, plus nominations for Best Comedy, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It leads the field with nine nominations overall.
Anderson was not the only cinematic “auteur” to receive laurels from the Golden Globe Foundation.
Chloe Zhao’s historical tear-jerker Hamnet — based on the relationship between playwright William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes — nabbed six nominations in various drama categories.
And Ryan Coogler’s springtime crowd-pleaser Sinners — a vampire film and cultural commentary, wrapped in one — scored seven nods, including Best Drama, Best Director and Best Cinematic Achievement.
While the Golden Globes are often seen as a cozy, champagne-clacking affair for Hollywood titans, this year’s nominations also suggest an ever-more international scope for its honourees.
The meditative Norwegian drama Sentimental Value scooped up eight nominations, and the French nominee It Was Just an Accident, by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, earned four.
South Korea and Brazil also broke free from the Non-English Language Film category, scoring nominations in the acting, songwriting and animation competitions for films like KPop Demon Hunters, No Other Choice and The Secret Agent.
Some pieces of award bait, meanwhile, failed to deliver on their potential. Director Luca Guadagnino’s slippery, post-MeToo drama After the Hunt, for example, only scored a single nomination for star Julia Roberts.
Likewise, the musical film Wicked: For Good — the sequel to last year’s award-season juggernaut — disappointed its expectations. While it scored nods in acting and song categories, it failed to land in contention for some of the biggest prizes, including Best Motion Picture: Comedy or Musical.
The 83rd annual Golden Globes are scheduled to air on January 11, 2026. Here is the full list of nominees:
Yemen’s main southern separatist group has claimed broad control of the southern part of the country, marking a major shift in power for the area.
Amr al-Bidh, a senior official of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), told the Reuters news agency on Monday that the group had extended its presence in all southern provinces – including the port of Aden, the base of the internationally-recognised government over the past decade – following a military operation codenamed “Promising Future” launched last week.
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The eight southern governorates “are under the protection of the Southern Armed Forces”, al-Bidh said by text message.
“We are concentrating on unifying the operational theatre of our armed forces to enhance coordination and readiness to reinforce stability and security in the south, as well as combatting the Houthis should there be a willingness to head in this direction.”
The STC’s advance marks a major shift in control in southern Yemen. The group seeks greater autonomy for the south, which was an independent state until unification with the north in 1990.
The STC said senior figures from other groups had left Aden, including the head of the eight-member body that acts in place of a president, and the prime minister.
The STC, which has been backed in the past by the United Arab Emirates during Yemen’s decade-old civil war, has clashed with other groups in the Saudi-backed government, which relocated to Aden after the Iran-aligned Houthis captured the capital Sanaa in 2014.
Since 2022, the STC has served in an administration that controls southern areas outside the grip of the Houthis, under a Saudi-backed power-sharing initiative.
Presidential Council head Rashad al-Alimi, who briefed diplomats in Riyadh on Sunday, said in a statement on Monday that the STC’s actions across the south “undermine the legitimacy of the internationally recognised government” and violate power-sharing agreements.
A UAE official told Reuters on Monday that the country’s position on Yemen “is in line with Saudi Arabia in supporting a political process” based on Gulf-backed initiatives and United Nations resolutions. The official did not directly address the STC’s moves in southern Yemen.
Firefighters evacuated residents and their pets from a nine-storey apartment building in Ukraine’s Sumy region after a Russian drone strike. The strikes come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with leaders of the UK, France and Germany in London to discuss the US peace plan.
Paramount has gone hostile in its bid for Warner Bros Discovery, challenging Netflix, which reached a $72bn takeover deal with the company just days ago.
Paramount said on Monday that it is going straight to Warner Bros shareholders with a bid worth about $74.4bn, or $30 per share in cash. Unlike Netflix, it is also offering to buy the cable assets of Warner Bros, and asking shareholders of the company to reject the Netflix bid.
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It said its offer is worth about $18bn more than the competing bid from Netflix, which it says is based on an “illusory prospective valuation” of those cable assets.
It is the same bid that Warner Bros rejected in favour of the offer from Netflix in a merger that would alter the United States entertainment landscape.
Paramount criticised the Netflix offer, saying it “exposes WBD shareholders to a protracted multi-jurisdictional regulatory clearance process with an uncertain outcome along with a complex and volatile mix of equity and cash”.
Paramount said it had submitted six proposals to Warner Bros Discovery over a 12-week period.
“We believe our offer will create a stronger Hollywood. It is in the best interests of the creative community, consumers and the movie theater industry,” Paramount Chairman and CEO David Ellison said in a statement. “We believe they will benefit from the enhanced competition, higher content spend and theatrical release output, and a greater number of movies in theaters as a result of our proposed transaction.”
On Friday, Netflix struck a deal to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the Hollywood giant behind Harry Potter and HBO Max. The cash and stock deal is valued at $27.75 per Warner share, giving it a total enterprise value of $82.7bn, including debt. The transaction is expected to close in the next 12 to 18 months, after Warner completes the previously announced separation of its cable operations. Not included in the deal are networks such as CNN and Discovery.
But US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the deal struck by Netflix to buy Warner Bros Discovery “could be a problem” because of the size of the combined market share.
The Republican president said he would be involved in the decision about whether the federal government should approve the $72bn deal.
Usha Haley, a Wichita State University professor who specialises in international business strategy, said Paramount’s ties to Trump are notable. Paramount CEO David Ellison is the son of longtime Trump supporter Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person.
“He said he’s going to be involved in the decision. We should take him at face value,” Haley said of Trump. “For him, it’s just greater control over the media.”
In October, Paramount said it had bought the news and commentary website The Free Press and installed its founder, Bari Weiss, a conservative opinion writer, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, saying it believes the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based.
It was a bold step for the television network of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and 60 Minutes, long viewed by many conservatives as the personification of a liberal media establishment. The network placed someone in a leadership role who has developed a reputation for resisting orthodoxy and fighting “woke” culture.
Paramount’s tender offer is set to expire on January 8, 2026, unless it is extended.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have signed a formal agreement to construct high-speed rail connecting their capitals, the first project of its kind between the two Gulf states that were once deeply at odds.
According to a statement in official Saudi media on Monday, the “high-speed electric passenger railway” would connect Riyadh’s King Salman International Airport with Doha’s Hamad International Airport.
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The Saudi cities of Al-Hofuf and Dammam are also expected to be on the network.
The train would reach speeds exceeding 300km/h (186mph) and the trip would take roughly two hours between the two capitals.
A direct flight between the cities clocks in at around 90 minutes.
The project, set to be completed in six years, expects to serve 10 million passengers per year and create 30,000 jobs across both countries, the statement said.
The agreement was signed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during the latter’s visit to Riyadh.
The project, considered one of the most significant modern infrastructure undertakings between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, marks the latest in a series of moves marking the drastic improvement in ties between the two Gulf countries in recent years.
Saudi Arabia and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt had cut all diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar in June 2017.
The four nations accused Doha of backing groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and seeking closer ties with Saudi Arabia’s archrival Iran – allegations Qatar vehemently denied.
Relations were fully restored in January 2021 after a summit in the Saudi desert city of AlUla.
MBS visited Doha in December 2021 for the first time since the thaw in ties, as part of a regional Gulf tour.
Since then, leaders from the two kingdoms have met regularly and joined forces to back diplomatic initiatives including calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s more than two-year genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.
Riyadh also threw its support behind Qatar following Israel’s first known attack on Qatar in September, which targeted leaders of the Palestinian group Hamas, housed in a Qatari government residential complex, as they gathered to discuss a ceasefire deal proposed by United States President Donald Trump.