Corax
Social media platforms are loosening censorship amid layoffs, cost-cutting and pressure from the right, YouTube announced in June that it will no longer delete content alleging fraud, errors and flaws during the 2020 presidential election, and earlier in September the Supreme Court issued a temporary ruling that limit the ability of the Biden administration to contact social media to delete content they don't like
Miscellaneous
The environmental issue increasingly important to the far right in Hungary and Poland according to the author of the book Far-Right Ecologism, Balsa Lubarda, who believes that there is something fundamentally ideological about the need to associate environmental protection with the nation's collective well-being and to compare immigrants with an invasive species that threatens the garden of the nation
Media
The hashtag #BanTheADL is trending on X/Twitter after the platform's CEO Linda Yaccarino met with the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt days after Greenblatt's close associate Merrick Garland sued Tesla for hiring Americans before refugees and asylum seekers
Former VICE journalists start new media company called 404 Media, write they believe that if they do this journalism well enough, their readers will be willing to subscribe because they think it's important and because they feel they're personally getting value of it
Politics
Florida's governor Ron DeSantis (R) announces proposal to permanently ban Covid-19 mandates in the state, includes banning mask and vaccine requirements, prohibiting Covid passports in the state and prohibiting employers from hiring or firing based on vaccination status, also promises to
Jordan Bardella, 27, succeeds Marine Le Pen as leader of the National Assembly, says he wants to maintain continuity and build on the legacy of his predecessor
Vandals in New Zealand write LABOUR on election posters during local elections in the country last week to smear candidates from the party represented by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, party members call it an attack tactic, the right gains ground in most cities while the incumbent government plans to tax farmers for their climate impact
Greta Thunberg says that it would be a very bad idea for Germany to focus on coal power when the nuclear power plants are still in place, would be shut down this year but is still being debated within the German government, she also says that it is completely forbidden in Sweden to talk about reducing energy use and that people then say ‘Oh no, this is communism and so on’, which she says is completely insane
Liz Truss wins race to be elected leader of the ruling Conservative Party and the new UK prime minister, defeated former finance minister Rishi Sunak by 57% to 43% in the final runoff which was a smaller margin than opinion polling had suggested, the 47-year-old foreign minister campaigned as a tax-cutting, anti-woke candidate who would take a hard line on post-Brexit dealings with the EU
The European parliament votes to end sale of petrol and diesel car by 2035 in EU, MEPs still have to negotiate the final law with ministers from the 27 national governments, the proposed law is part of a broader climate crisis response with the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by the end of the decade
Boris Johnson calls for a return to the workplace to drive up productivity and revive Britain's town and city centres, says his experience of working from home involves spending an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and walking very slowly to hack off a small piece of cheese before forgetting what it was he was doing when returning to the computer
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the idea of defunding the police is not the position of the Democratic Party as community safety is their oath of office, the slogan was frequently used during the 2020 elections but Pelosi now quotes her far left colleague Ritchie Torres' statement that "defund the police" is dead
Opinion
Eliezer Yudkowsky: The most likely outcome if AI systems become much more intelligent than humans is the extinction of all life on Earth, I refrain from signing the open letter demanding a six month pause in AI development as it underestimates the seriousness of the situation, it is not obvious when critical lines are crossed, we are not prepared and there is no plan
David Miller: Those who took advantage of the situation in the UK and caused the pound to fall make George Soros look like an amateur, it is said that the markets did not like Kwasi Kwarteng's budget and of course this is the case since market manipulators have become so intoxicated with quantitative easing and artificially low interest rates that the realization about having to get off your lazy fat backsides and start doing a real job was like a curse to them
Ewen Stewart: The real cause of today's problems lies in the Mark Carney-led Bank of England's money printing between 2013 and 2020, and the quintupling of the national debt in the last 15 years, not the latest budget proposal by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng which has been condemned with almost religious conviction by a host of commentators from the IMF to the Chancellor of Germany and from the old regulars like the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the BBC, what they all parrot is that things were OK until these two philistines ran the good ship Britannia aground, do they really believe that?
Peter Hitchens: All parties have been captured by deadly dogmas of equality and diversity, living in fear of the BBC, which – like the medieval church – decides which ideas are acceptable and which are heretical, and will seek to destroy anyone who steps outside its chosen limits, so there is nothing left for the ambitious politician but stunts, gimmicks and silly initiatives that come to nothing
Jeffrey Tucker: The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is given to Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig for their research on banks and financial crises while we live in an inflationary hell with an energy crisis caused by the responses they advocate, we are now forced to watch as laboratory intellectuals give awards to each other for a job well done while the life expectancy declines dramatically and families worry about heating their homes this winter
Kevin Barrett: When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the destruction of Nord Stream led to enormous opportunities, he assumed that the entire operation was out of order, but according to Gazprom, one in four pipelines should still be intact, so Germany can still ask Russia to turn the tap back on, and also if not, the plan to sell overpriced gas to Europe could backfire on the US itself which could have thrived in the post-Cold War era but instead has managed to alienate most of the world through psychopathic arrogance and blood-spattered vandalism
Scott Shackford: Black people represent less than 15% of the US population but account for more than half of all exonerations with 55% of the ones due to murders, 59% of the sexual assaults and 64% of the robberies, the reasons are more complicated than racism even though a factor in the rape exonerations is misidentification by the mostly white victims
Ryan McMaken: States have surpassed and replaced the monarchs and expanded their powers far beyond what even the most ambitious monarchs of centuries past dreamed about, monarchies of today should not be confused with the pre-state 16th and 17th century monarchies where monarchs' income depended largely on rents collected from their private estates in essentially a system of private law where the king often tended to business personally and feudalism otherwise kept things local, rising wealth then enabled decentralization and a growing bureaucracy leading to the state overwhelming the monarchs
Europe
Home video from the 90s in Raseborg in Finland shows Vladimir Putin on a representative trip playing table tennis, wearing blue adidas pants, fishing and a source present says that the character of the Russian leader was different from the others and that he was very restrictive when it came to alcohol and did not smoke cigarettes
Croatian authorities enter Liberland and destroy and remove property and Liberlanders are threatened with arrest if they interfere, when asked about a written notice or report they were told there is none and there will be none
Close to 300 schoolgirls are defying the ban on the Muslim abaya in French schools introduced on Monday and 67 of them refuse to change and are sent home, ten percent of the population of France are Muslims, most of whom come from North Africa
Ukrainian oligarch and backer of Zelensky's 2019 presidential campaign, Ihor Kolomoisky, is in custody pending authorities' investigation into fraud charges against him, the US State Department sanctioned him in 2021 on the grounds that his corrupt actions undermined the rule of law and the Ukrainian public's faith in their government's democratic institutions and public processes
North America
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D) faces federal bribery charges along with his wife on suspicion of accepting bribes in exchange for helping Egypt and businessmen Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes, 13 gold bars and USD 636 000 in cash reportedly found in their home
44-year-old Adrian Paul Aispuro was arrested during an event with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy disguised as a US Marshal and claimed to be part of Kennedy's security team, the brother, who dropped him off was also briefly detained and said it was all a misunderstanding and that Adrian Paul, an unemployed emergency medical technician knowing there was a security job for him there
Latin America
Honduras plans to set up prison on Islas del Cisne island 250 kilometers from land to house 2,000 gang leaders, President Xiomara Castro has promised to introduce drastic measures against criminal gangs such as Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), biologists are worried about the island's ecosystem
China and Russia positive to Venezuela's intentions to be included in the BRICS cooperation, in a meeting with Brazil's re-elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro declared the country's strive to join the organized cooperation between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
Hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters storm the National Congress building as well as the presidential palace and the Supreme Court in Brasília after clashes with police, claim the election was stolen and call for military intervention to overthrow President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Asia
China bans seafood imports from Japan after Japan began releasing filtered and treated cooling water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, according to a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, it is irresponsible and selfish to shift the risk of contamination to other countries
India bans the export of rice abroad except for basmati due to concerns about under-harvest, the country accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's rice exports that go to more than 140 countries
China's exports down 12.4 percent and imports down 6.8 percent in dollar terms in June compared to June 2022, in May the decline was 7.5 percent and US imports from China was down 24 percent in June
Thailand's 69-year-old Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha resigns after nearly nine years in office, seized power in 2014 by military coup
China begins to control the export of the rare earth metals gallium and germanium citing national security and now a license is needed to sell abroad, gallium is most common in semiconductors and transistors and germanium in rectifiers and transistors
Europeans and Americans cannot distinguish between Asians and Asians cannot become Westerners and should know where their roots are, said Wang Yi, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, during a meeting of the International Forum for Trilateral Cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea, the three countries expressed willingness to make efforts to improve cooperation between the countries
Africa
At least four murders of farmers in South Africa after communist leader Julius Malema sang about killing Boers in front of an audience of nearly 90,000, in 2023 farms have been attacked 96 times and 29 people have died
Senegal shuts down the internet after opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was arrested for planning a rebellion, according to Communications Minister Moussa Bocar Thiam, who justified the decision by saying hateful and subversive messages had been spread on social networks
Military leader Abdourahamane Tchiani proclaims himself on national television as the head of state in Niger after the coup d'état and says that they can no longer continue in the same way with the risk of witnessing the country's gradual and inevitable downfall and therefore they decided to intervene and take responsibility
Economy
FTX founder and cryptocurrency profile Sam Bankman-Fried is in custody awaiting trial as his bail is revoked by Judge Lewis Kaplan on suspicion of trying to intimidate witness Caroline Ellison in connection with his New York Times interview
Vladimir Putin signs a law that entails a one-time tax of 10 percent of the company profits he believes are excess profits, but certain companies are exempt, such as oil and gas companies and coal mines, will come into effect from January 1, 2024
The European Central Bank raises key interest rates by 0.25 percentage points, communicates that future decisions will be set at sufficiently restrictive levels as long as necessary to reach the inflation target of 2 percent
Asset manager BlackRock appoints Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco's CEO Amin Hassan Ali Nasser as a board member, Nasser overlooked the world's largest IPO ever when the oil company, which is the world's largest, went public
Elon Musk announces the formation of a new company called xAI, which according to its own statement aims to understand the true nature of the universe, Musk early supported OpenAI which launched the product ChatGPT, but has since its launch been critical, among other things, because the platform took to much account for political correctness
Price increases in the US economy lower than the previous month as the consumer price index in June comes in at a 3.0 percent annual rate according to new figures published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, smallest increase since March 2021 but still an increase
American technology giant Intel is investing USD 4.6 billion in a new semiconductor factory in Poland's fourth largest city, Wrocław, to be part of a planned European supply chain along with an existing facility in Ireland and a planned one in Germany, CEO Pat Gelsinger points to Poland's infrastructure, workforce and its competitiveness in terms of cost level
Technology
Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 lands on the moon's south pole, becoming the third country to make a soft landing on the moon after the United States, the Soviet Union and China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says he is confident that all countries in the world, including those from the global south, are capable of achieving such enterprises
The new MSG Sphere arena in Las Vegas with a high-definition screen in 360 degrees on the outside, 20,000 seats where each seat has its own speaker and vibrating technology, has a premiere concert with U2 on September 29, the initiator and financier is James Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden and the New York Rangers, among others, and the construction has cost 2.2 billion USD
French Senate votes in favor of law allowing law enforcement to secretly activate camera and microphone on suspects' cellphones, must be approved by National Assembly to take effect
For the first time, the traffic to OpenAI's service ChatGPT, which was launched in November 2022, is decreasing, as in June it had almost 10 percent less traffic than in May, the analysis firm Semianalysis estimates that it costs USD 700,000 per day to run the service
American authorities as well as the BBC and British Airways are hit by a cyber attack and are said to have been carried out by a Russian hacker group called Lace Tempest who demand ransom from large companies for not publish their data but says that they deleted all government data they came across, the attack which exploited security holes in the file transfer program MOVEit has been certified by the US Cyber Security Agency CISA
Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin wins contract with NASA to build spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon, means the company will get the second trip to the moon after NASA awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX the first trip scheduled for the end of the decade
Rocket launched from Esrange in Kiruna municipality lands in mountain range 15 kilometers into Norway after taking a longer and more westerly trajectory than expected, reached 250 kilometers altitude and was launched for weightlessness research, the space base is surrounded by landing area twice the size like Luxembourg
Science
Humanity consisted of 1280 individuals between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago, according to research using newly developed coalescent method, bottleneck is thought to have lasted for 117,000 years during which the species was close to extinction
US intelligence publishes report on the links between the Wuhan institute and the emergence of Covid-19, pointing to the institute's extensive research on the coronavirus and genetic modification, but claims that there is no indication that the virus was created as a biochemical weapon or with genetic modification
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s three-hour appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast is criticized by pro-vaccine pediatrician Peter Hotez who claims misinformation, Rogan promises to donate USD 100,000 to a charity of Hotez's choice if he debates Kennedy Jr. with no time limit and investor Bill Ackman is chipping in with USD 150,000, seems like the debate might happen
First babies with DNA from three people born in UK, after experiment with innovative IVF treatment called Mitochondrial Donation Threatment in hopes of preventing rare genetic diseases
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel plans to be cryogenically frozen after death with the hope of one day returning to life, says he doesn't really believe it will work and sees it as more of an ideological stance
Author and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari warns that artificial intelligence could create religious scriptures and attract worshippers, saying that of course religions throughout history have claimed that their holy books were written by unknown human intelligence, which has never been true but could very quickly become the case with far-reaching consequences
Mammoth meatballs are made by Australian company Vow by taking the DNA sequence from the extinct animal's myoglobin, filling in the gaps with elephant genetic material and replicating the sequence in sheep stem cells, co-founder Tim Noakesmith says the mammoth was chosen because it is a symbol of the loss of diversity and for climate change