From January 1 to December 31, 2025, the world gears up for a year packed with pivotal events and milestones. Donald Trump returns to the White House for his second presidency, while major elections unfold in Germany, Ecuador, Bolivia, Norway, Canada, and Chile. India unveils its state-of-the-art Navi Mumbai International Airport, Venice tightens its grip on overtourism with extended entrance fees, and the world pauses to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. On the sporting front, fans can look forward to the FIFA Club World Cup, the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, and the Women’s Rugby World Cup, promising unforgettable moments on the global stage.
JANUARY
1. Donald Trump is to be inaugurated as the 47th President of the U.S., four years after he left the White House.
2. Non-Europeans visiting the UK need an ETA (electronic travel authorization), which costs £10. ETA will expand to Europeans in April.
3. China marks the Year of the Snake. People born under this sign are considered intuitive, calm, and intelligent.
FEBRUARY
4. German voters go to the polls seven months earlier than planned amid a political crisis triggered by the collapse of the ruling coalition.
5. Ecuador holds presidential and legislative elections.
6. The Super Bowl LIX will be held in New Orleans. Rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline the half-time show.
MARCH
7. The F1 season starts in Australia, the last before a new engine era and major rules revamp in 2026.
8. A partial solar eclipse is visible from parts of North America, Greenland, Europe, northwest Africa, and northwest Russia.
9. The 97th Academy Awards take place in Los Angeles.
APRIL
10. Venice will double the number of days it charges tourists an entrance fee of €5, for a total of 54 days.
11. India’s financial capital is set to open its new Navi Mumbai International Airport, which could handle 90m passengers annually.
12. The World Expo 2025 is held in Osaka, Japan.
MAY
13. Europe’s biggest airline Ryanair goes fully digital and phases out paper boarding passes and check-in desks.
14. The 80th anniversary of VE Day marks the end of World War II in Europe following the defeat of Nazi Germany.
15. Basel in Switzerland hosts the 69th Eurovision Song Contest.
JUNE
16. France and Saudi Arabia host an international conference in New York aimed at establishing a Palestinian state.
17. The music, technology, and film festival South by Southwest, “SXSW,” held each year in Austin, Texas, is coming to London in a new European edition.
18. The FIFA Club World Cup, the first under an expanded format with 32 teams, begins in the U.S.
JULY
19. The UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 football tournament kicks off in Switzerland.
20. Russia plans to begin an “extensive introduction” of the digital ruble, a government-issued crypto coin.
21. The 112th edition of the Tour de France starts in Lille.
AUGUST
22. The 80th anniversaries of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are commemorated in Japan.
23. Bolivia holds a general election.
24. The 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup starts in England.
SEPTEMBER
25. Italian rocker Damiano David (left), the iconic frontman of 2021 Eurovision winning band Måneskin, embarks on his first-ever solo world tour, starting in Warsaw.
26. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in Norway.
27. Tokyo hosts the World Athletics Championships.
OCTOBER
28. Canada’s federal election must be held before Oct 20.
29. Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 which launched in July 2015.
30. Palisades in Michigan is the first of several decommissioned nuclear power stations in the U.S. due to come back online in a move signifying the growing popularity of this energy source.
NOVEMBER
31. Brazil hosts the COP30 climate conference in the Amazon city of Belém, bringing delegates closer to nature.
32. Chile holds general elections.
33. South Africa, the first African country to hold the G20 presidency, hosts the group’s summit in Johannesburg.
DECEMBER
34. The African Cup of Nations (AFCON) football finals begin in Morocco after a six-month delay to avoid a clash with the revamped Club World Cup.
35. Jane Austen enthusiasts around the world mark the 250th anniversary of the author’s birth.
36. James Cameron’s upcoming sequel, Avatar: Fire and Ash, will take audiences on another journey to the world of Pandora.
TIPP Takes
Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, And More
1. U.S. Military Hits Several Houthi Sites Inside Yemen Ahead Of 2025 – Al Arabiya
The U.S. military said that it had conducted multiple precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen’s Sanaa and coastal locations within Houthi-controlled territory over the last 24 hours.
“The strikes are a part of CENTCOM’s effort to degrade Iran-backed Houthi efforts to threaten regional partners and military and merchant vessels in the region,” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.
2. Ukraine Ends Transit Of Russian Gas To EU – BBC
Russian gas supplies to EU states via Ukraine have ended after a five-year deal between Ukraine’s gas transit operator Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom expired.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that his country would not allow Russia to “earn additional billions on our blood” and had given the EU a year to prepare. The European Commission said the continent’s gas system was “resilient and flexible” and that it had sufficient capacity to cope with the end of transit via Ukraine.
3. Finnish Investigators Find An Anchor Drag Mark On The Baltic Seabed After Suspicious Cable Damage – A.P.
Finnish investigators probing the damage to a Baltic Sea power cable and several data cables said they found an anchor drag mark on the seabed, apparently from a Russia-linked vessel that has already been seized.
The discovery heightened concerns about suspected sabotage by Russia’s “shadow fleet” of fuel tankers — aging vessels with obscure ownership acquired to evade Western sanctions amid the war in Ukraine and operating without Western-regulated insurance. The Estlink-2 power cable, which transmits energy from Finland to Estonia across the Baltic Sea, went down on Dec. 25 after a rupture.
4. Xi Says China’s Annexation Of Taiwan Can’t Be Stopped – UPI
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a New Year’s address, declared Taiwan and China to be one people and said no nation can stop China from annexing the island nation.
“We Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same family,” Xi said during his 2025 New Year Address that was televised nationwide. “No one can ever sever the bond of kinship between us,” he said.
5. Nippon Steel Promises No Cuts To U.S. Steel’s Output For 10 Years – Kyodo News
A media report said Nippon Steel Corp. has promised not to cut output capacity at United States Steel Corp.’s mills for 10 years in its latest proposal to President Joe Biden’s administration aimed at winning approval to acquire the struggling producer.
The Washington Post said the Japanese steelmaker sent its proposal to the White House after a panel of U.S. federal agencies failed to reach consensus on whether to approve the $14.1 billion sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel, leaving the final decision to Biden.
6. Iran Security Chief Says ‘New Resistance’ Against Israel To Emerge In Syria – Al Arabiya
“With the occupation of Syrian territories by the Zionist regime, a new resistance has been born that will manifest itself in the years to come,” said Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, IRNA news agency reported.
Tehran’s allies in the region, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have suffered severe blows in conflicts with Israel since the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023.
7. South Korea’s Yoon Will Be Arrested Within Deadline, Anti-Graft Chief Says – Al Jazeera
The country’s chief anti-corruption investigator has said that South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol will be arrested before a warrant issued over his short-lived declaration of martial law expires next week.
Oh Dong-woon, the head of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials, told reporters that the arrest warrant against Yoon would be executed “within the valid period”, the last day of which is Monday. Speculation about when and how authorities would take Yoon into custody has swirled since the country’s Joint Investigation Headquarters sought a warrant for his arrest, which a Seoul court granted.
8. Trinidad And Tobago Declares Gang Crime State Of Emergency- D.W.
The government issued the 48-hour warning anticipating reprisal shootings after an attempt on a gang leader’s life. The per capita homicide rate in the small Caribbean islands is among the highest on the planet.
Trinidad and Tobago, with a population of around 1.4 million, recorded 61 homicides in December, bringing the annual total to 623, Young said. That’s an increase from 577 in 2023 and 599 in 2022.
9. UN: Taliban Ban On Afghan Women In NGOs ‘Absolutely’ Wrong – D.W.
The UN’s Volker Turk has repeated an appeal to Afghanistan’s Taliban to revoke the “deeply discriminatory decree.” An Afghan ministry recently told NGOs they would lose their licenses if they continued to employ women.
The ban on Afghan women working in foreign-based NGOs originally dates back to December 2022, but the Economy Ministry issued a circular, also publishing it online on Sunday, warning international groups to comply or risk suspension. The European Court of Justice defines Afghan women as a persecuted group.
10. In 2024, Artificial Intelligence Was All About Putting AI Tools To Work – A.P.
If 2023 was a year of wonder about artificial intelligence, 2024 was the year to try to get that wonder to do something useful without breaking the bank.
There was a “shift from putting out models to actually building products,” said Arvind Narayanan, a Princeton University computer science professor and co-author of the new book “AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell The Difference.”
The first 100 million or so people who experimented with ChatGPT upon its release two years ago actively sought out the chatbot, finding it amazingly helpful at some tasks or laughably mediocre at others.
11. Stock Market Caps Best Two-Year Gain Of 21st Century – IBD
The stock market had a weak finish, but 2024 was another strong year. The S&P 500 index boasted its best two-year performance of the 21st century. A lot of the credit goes to Nvidia (NVDA) and mega caps.
The S&P 500 jumped 23.3% after 2023’s 24.2% advance. That’s a 53.2% gain, the most since 1997-1998, when it rose 65.9%.
12. Stock Market Forecast For 2025: How Trump’s Return Will Weigh On The Markets – IBD
Trump’s win gave stocks a lift unlike anything seen in past elections. Not even the market’s jubilation following Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 commanded the same percentage gains.
Wall Street likes the stock market’s chances for next year. Many experts making stock market forecasts for 2025 are convinced that if everything goes as planned, stocks should enjoy not only a rally, but broad-based prosperity that could include a number of sectors within the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes.
13. African Crypto Revolution Continues As Ethiopia Ranks Among Global BTC Mining Leaders – Crypto.News
2024 was a pivotal year for Ethiopia as its state-backed crypto mining operation generated around $1 billion in BTC mining profits due to its access to cheap, reliable, and renewable energy sources. Its revenue is expected to reach up to $5.4 billion in 2027.
In 2024, Ethiopia contributed 2.25% of the global hash power in Bitcoin mining. According to Luxor Mining, Ethiopia is the next biggest hash power contributor after the USA, Hong Kong, and Asia.
Ethiopia’s success demonstrates that governments can use cryptocurrency to finance infrastructure development and lift local economies. Ethiopia emerged as a Bitcoin mining leader without compromising environmental sustainability. Notably, green mining requires easy access to clean energy, while profits are reinvested in the dam’s development, representing a win-win scenario.
14. Study Suggests Estrogen May Trigger Binge Drinking – HealthDay News
The female hormone estrogen appears to promote binge drinking in women, a new mouse study published recently in the journal Nature Communications shows.
Specifically, estrogen causes women to “pre-game,” or consume large quantities of alcohol within the first half-hour after it’s offered, results show. These results could point a way to treating binge drinking by inhibiting either estrogen levels or the effect of estrogen on brain cells, researchers said.
During the pandemic lockdown, women increased their heavy alcohol consumption more than men, recent studies have shown.
Republished with permission from TIPP Insights
