Fidel Castro may have vanished from the scene in Cuba, and Cubans spearheaded by the military will be resisting a rush of Cuban exiles from Miami who want to return to Cuba to reclaim properties from which they were dispossessed.

The United Nations, having undertaken marginal reforms, will be seeking a successor to the outgoing Kofi Annan. The United States will press for someone with the energy and clout to achieve further reforms, but the Asian and Latin American blocs will be jousting for someone congenial to their own agenda.

Tony Blair, who has stood so strongly with the United States on Iraq, will have come to the end of his prime ministership in Britain and will be on a lecture assignment at some think-tank or university of distinction in the United States.

India's economic strength will continue to grow fast. As U.S. companies farm out more and more high-tech work to India, salaries there will escalate, and U.S. companies will start looking for alternative lower-salaried workers in other countries.

China's economy will start cooling off, but China must still be reckoned with as a coming superpower. Its ruling regime will try to maintain internal authority with a communist system but will be increasingly challenged by capitalism in the marketplace and a younger generation using the Internet for a window on the outside world.

Modern technology in communications and transportation will continue to develop at a rate almost beyond our comprehension. Much of the good new stuff under the Christmas tree in 2005 will be overtaken by amazing new stuff by Christmas of 2006.

Newspapers will still be around despite the Internet, because the Internet will have little to attract without the content and information that news organizations supply.

Thus, fortunately for me, this column will still be on file somewhere for readers to determine how close my possibilities and probabilities came to reality in 2006.

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John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com