This week, Hanna Bilinski and Amanda Stephens weigh in on what they feared would happen, what did happen, and what could happen following the United States' "decaptiation mission" in Venezuela at the beginning of the year. Read along with us! The U.S. action in Venezuela: 1. Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro ‘captured’ after huge US military strikes (Al Jazeera Staff and News Agencies, Al Jazeera), 2. Trump plans to use Venezuela’s huge crude reserves ‘to cut US oil price to $50 a barrel’ (Jillian Ambrose, The Guardian) A Multi-Polar world: 1. An American Strategy for a Multipolar World (Zack Cooper, Emma Ashford, and Nevada Joan Lee, The Stimson Center)

Hanna and Amanda ignore the PLA elephant surrounding the island in favor of some other newsworthy topics, including North Korea's involvement in Russia's war in Ukraine, the new tax China is levying on condoms and other contraceptives, and the obnoxious way the super-rich rang in the new year.

This week, hosts Amanda and Hanna (mostly) take a break from current news to reflect on how we manage to stay high-information, low stress by talking to some other professionals in the news world about how they achieve work-life balance when their job literally is the news (especially in these crazy times)! We'll be hearing from Eric Gao, a copy-editior and anchor at Taiwan Plus, Iris Hsu host of Rti's own The Divide and current breaking news writer, and anchor and reporter Leslie Liao, also from Taiwan Plus. Read along with us: The 12/19 Taipei metro attack: 1. Suspect in Taipei attacks that left 2 dead, 7 injured jumps to death (Focus Taiwan), 2. Taipei mass stabbing likely 'lone wolf' attack: Police (Focus Taiwan), 3. Local governments move to honor man killed trying to stop Taipei attacks (Focus Taiwan)

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda reflect on the news story that most impacted Amanda in the year 2025: the on-going saga of U.S. "Secreatary of War" Pete Hegseth. They also briefly discuss events from the past week, including the Bondi Beach terror attack, Jimmy Lai's verdict, and the Vanity Fair whitehouse article. Read along with us: Weekly event recap: 1. What we know about the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting (Tom McArthur, Emily Atkinson, and Malu Cursino, BBC), 2. Former Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai convicted in landmark national security trial (Kanis Leung, AP News), 3. Vanity Fair Goes to the White House: Trump 2.0 Edition (Mark Guiducci, Vanity Fair) Hegseth's appointment: 1. The New Yorker: Pete Hegseth forced out of veterans’ advocacy groups over misconduct allegations (Eric Bradner, CNN), 2. Pete Hegseth sworn in as US defence secretary after tie-breaking vote (Ana Faguy and Ben Hatton, BBC), 3. Hegseth confirmed as Trump’s defense secretary in ...