157 companies worldwide are currently actively developing flying cars and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles / aircraft. 🇺🇸The United States leads the sector with 64 companies, followed by India with 16, and Germany with 13. Around 59 of these companies are funded, having collectively raised nearly $7 billion in venture capital and private equity. Notable Players: • Alef Aeronautics (US) is developing a dual-use vehicle designed to drive on regular roads and take off vertically; its Model A has captured immense industry attention by demonstrating vertical takeoff directly over ground obstacles; Model A uses a unique mesh body that hides internal electric rotors, allowing it to take off vertically like a drone while maintaining the footprint of a traditional car that fits in a standard garage; it has received special FAA airworthiness authorization for limited flight testing; • Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation (US) focus primarily on electric air taxi services; • EHang (🇨🇳China) has achieved milestone certifications and pilotless test flights for its autonomous passenger drones; • Xpeng Aeroht Land Aircraft Carrier (China) features a six-wheeled, off-road intelligent mother vehicle that houses and deploys a separate, fully electric two-seat eVTOL aircraft from its rear cargo bay, effectively bypassing the engineering compromises of combining road driving and flight dynamics into a single chassis; • PAL-V Liberty (🇳🇱Netherlands) claims to have the world’s first “fully certified flying car”, having achieved official road-use certification in Europe; it operates as a three-wheeled car on the road and transforms into a gyrocopter for flight, using a fold-away unpowered top rotor and a rear propeller to achieve a flying range of 500 km at speeds up to 180 km/h; • Klein Vision AirCar (🇸🇰Slovakia) is a sports-car/airplane hybrid that successfully completed actual inter-city flights and earned official airworthiness certification in Europe; It transforms from a sleek car into a fixed-wing aircraft in just 3 minutes by deploying retractable wings and a tail section, reaching air speeds of 200 km/h and requires a traditional runway to operate; • Jetson ONE & Astro (🇸🇪Sweden) is an ultralight carbon-fiber personal multicopter operated by a simple joystick; it has achieved significant real-world traction, notably with the unveiling of “Astro” - a specialised police variant, which reaches speeds of over 100 km/h with a 20-minute flight time; • SkyDrive (🇯🇵Japan) is compact, multi-rotor aircraft designed to act as clean, quiet urban air taxis capable of taking off from rooftops and existing heliports; • Doroni Aerospace H1X (US) is a two-seat personal eVTOL which features 8 enclosed lift fans and two rear thrusters; for a 100-mile (160 km) range, the project uses an automated digital piloting system designed to make flying safe and intuitive for non-seasoned pilots. Who will succeed in this increasingly competitive market?

🇪🇺Europe is entering an extended period of political paralysis as a massive wave of upcoming national elections threatens to stall critical, long-term decision-making at the EU and national level, according to an analysis by the Economist. Triggered primarily by 🇪🇸Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling early elections, more than half of EU citizens are scheduled to elect new national leaders between late 2026 and the end of 202 - including the voters in 🇫🇷France, 🇮🇹Italy, 🇬🇷Greece, 🇵🇱Poland and 🇫🇮Finland. This impending gridlock, dubbed Europe’s “lame-duck year,” arrives at a painfully inopportune moment due to several overlapping regional and global crises: • Geopolitical threats & security - the ongoing war in 🇺🇦Ukraine demands urgent economic and military aid; with the disengaging 🇺🇸US in mind, Europe must aggressively fund and build its own collective defense - a task political candidates are hesitant to compromise on during active campaigns; • Economic stagnation & the “🇨🇳China Shock” - the continent is grappling with weak growth and the decline of its traditional economic model, which relied heavily on cheap Russian energy and affordable Chinese imports; EU leaders face divisive choices regarding whether to erect protective trade barriers against predatory Chinese competition; • Fiscal crises & sovereign debt - major eurozone economies, particularly France, are facing intense bond-market pressure and soaring public debt; • Rise of populism - is a distinct risk exists that upcoming elections will empower right-wing populists who are fundamentally hostile to EU integration and further funding of Brussels, including but not limited to Marine Le Pen; While regular EU summits will continue and regulations will still be drafted, European leaders already appear to be retreating into defensive political postures. This might leave EU unable to execute crucial overhauls to its single market, AI competitiveness, and long-term budget. Will Europe still be able to shape global events in the coming year: A) Yes; B) No?

Police in the southern 🇩🇪German state of Bavaria have detained a suspect over a fire at Adolf Hitler’s Alpine mountain retreat. A major fire broke out at a heavily-fortified former mountain residence of Hitler, the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle’s Nest). The remote mountaintop building sits at an altitude of 1,834 metres (6,000 feet) on Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden. Around 200 firefighters and emergency personnel deployed to the scene, facing extreme difficulty battling the flames due to the high altitude and difficult alpine terrain. No injuries were reported, and no one was found inside the building. The historic structure, which has operated as a tourist destination, café, and restaurant since the post-war era, was left largely destroyed and “could probably not be saved”. Was this a “lone wolf” arson, or a hybrid attack?

Sacha Baron Cohen has spent a career provoking people through his larger than life characters. This week-end his new movie,“ Ali G: Who Iz I?”, hits the screens. “I’ve always designed my characters and comedy as vehicles to expose prejudice, bias, and stupidity, though I realize not everyone sees them that way,” writes Baron Cohen in a new essay for Time. This list of people Baron Cohen has pulled pranks on includes powerful politicians, including Donald Trump, who he interviewed as Ali G two decades ago. So why is Baron Cohen reviving Ali G for his new film? “The world he’s returned to is, in many ways, worse than the one he left twenty years ago,” writes Baron Cohen. “All the prejudices I’ve spent the past decades exposing haven’t just lingered—they’ve metastasized.” Now, in an increasingly polarized society and media environment, Baron Cohen wants to know how people find commonality through a shared human experience. “I made this latest film for the same reason I’ve always done this work,” Baron Cohen writes. “Not only to make people laugh, but to bring them face-to-face with the danger of fanaticism and conspiracy theories.” “As satire has done since ancient times, it can help sound the alarm.” time-magazine.visitlink.me/Y…

🇫🇷“The marches went well”, said French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. He referred to this week-end’s clashes with the police that resulted in near 1,000 arrests across France - but no looting amid the heavy government security protocols, curfews and the shopkeepers sealing the stores in problematic districts. The authorities had deployed 70,000 security forces across the country for the new marches, called to protest the “cost of living”.  “An extremely elevated level of violence came from black-clad “ultra-left” extremists”, according to Nuñez.  The violence came a week after the heaviest rioting that saw public buildings vandalised, hundreds of shops looted and 2,700 people arrested. The organiser of the marches, the CGT trade union, said Saturday’s demonstrations drew up to 800,000 people across the country. France goes to the polls in 6 months to choose a successor to Emmanuel Macron after his 10 years in office. Is the worst violence behind: A) Yes; B) No?

An investigative book “Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East” by Matthew Cole, excerpted in Vanity Fair, alleges that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had access to secret financial accounts and foreign policy slush funds involving Middle Eastern leaders during the first Trump administration. 🇳🇱Dutch intelligence operatives reportedly monitored Kushner’s iPhone in 2018 after gaining access to a 🇷🇺Russian-linked server via a cooperating hacker, observing screenshots and data related to Gulf-linked bank accounts. The report alleges Kushner was listed as a signatory on a bank account at First Abu Dhabi Bank tied to the Watani Al-Emirat Foundation (a 🇦🇪UAE-funded charity) that received nearly $750 million. The funds allegedly moved through intermediate accounts, including a Dubai-based account that received money routed from a bank in 🇦🇿Azerbaijan. The key claim is that Kushner transferred money from the Dubai account to various individuals, including a warlord, a mercenary, and a former hitman. UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) and 🇸🇦Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) set up arrangements for Kushner involving up to $2 billion in total, including roughly $1 billion routed to an account in Israel - allegedly arranged with support or encouragement from 🇮🇱Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then 🇺🇸US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.l - intended for Kushner’s personal benefit or as government-disguised assets. Jared Kushner, his legal team, and some figures named in the report have strongly denied the claims, calling them “100% false”, “completely insane,” “outrageous fabrications,” and “never happened”. Is the KushGate 2018 just the tip of an iceberg of what’s happening now: A) Yes; B) No?

Nature offers clever solutions, and the Namib desert beetle shows one of the best. This small insect survives by collecting moisture from fog on its bumpy shell. Tiny water droplets gather on special surfaces and roll toward its mouth for a drink. Engineers studied this process and created advanced three-dimensional fog-harvesting nets. Groups like the 🇩🇪German WaterFoundation developed systems such as CloudFisher. These use special meshes that catch fog droplets as wind carries them through. The water gathers and flows into collection points without any electricity or moving parts. In places with frequent fog, such as mountain areas in 🇲🇦Morocco, these nets can deliver around 10 to 22 litres of clean water per square meter on good days. Larger installations have provided tens of thousands of liters in a single day for villages, schools, and farming. Similar projects operate in 🇳🇦Namibia, 🇵🇪Peru, 🇹🇿Tanzania, and other dry regions, helping communities access drinking water from the air. Turning a natural survival skill and observing wildlife can lead to simple and reliable tools that work with the environment rather than against it. Smart solutions should not necessarily be high tech?