Corax
Christian baker Jack Phillips at Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado loses an appeal in his latest legal fight as the Colorado Court of Appeals rules that that the pink and blue cake a trans activist ordered explicitly to test him is not a form of speech and that state law makes it illegal to refuse to provide services to people based on sexual orientation, Phillips won a partial US Supreme Court victory in 2018 after refusing to make a gay couple's wedding cake because of his faith
World
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan calls allowing Rasmus Paludan’s Quran-burning outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm an attack on 85 million Turkish citizens and a vileness that makes it clear that Sweden can no longer expect any charity from Turkey, also criticizes Sweden for allowing demonstrators to wave PKK flags as that is to let terror organizations run wild on avenues and streets
US says about 30 Islamist al-Shabab militants were killed in a US air strike assisting government troops in Somalia, the Somali army and al-Shabab militants have fought for control of the town of Galcad about 260km northeast of Mogadishu the past few days, the air strike came as the army was being attacked by more than 100 militants
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia among other Arab countries condemn Rasmus Paludan's Quran burning outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Saudi Arabia comments that it calls for spreading the values of dialogue, tolerance and coexistence while rejecting hatred and extremism, Turkey calls it a racist action and Pakistan says that the Muslim principle of respecting all religions must be supported by all but that the burning is hate speech inciting people to violence
The French historian Emmanuel Todd says in an interview that the war in Ukraine is about Germany as combating its rapprochement with Russia has become a priority for the US and that NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe was directed against the Germans, meaning it is obvious that it was the US that sabotaged the Nord Stream but that the the important question really is how a society can believe that it could be the Russians
Elon Musk tweets that the World Economic Forum is increasingly becoming an unelected world government that the people never asked for and don’t want, the WEF holds a high-profile conference in Davos in the days where many of the world's elite participate
For the first time ever, Iran's navy will establish a presence in the Panama Canal later this year, according to the statement of Rear Admiral and Commander Shahram Irani, in recent years the country has strengthened its presence in Latin America and sought to strengthen relations with Venezuela in particular
The World Economic Forum's annual conference in Davos in Switzerland kicks off next week with a record number of 52 heads of state and government, nearly 300 ministers and 600 CEOs, the agenda is filled with discussions on ideas, innovations and public-private cooperation on issues such as energy, climate, investment, trade, future technologies, jobs, health and social mobility
Miscellaneous
Henry Åström wins Swedish newspaper Flamman's Erdoğan satire contest with his paraphrase of Goya's Saturn devouring his son, comments that he often turns to Goya to capture mania and paranoia and that it struck him that the Turkish president swallows his own people, more than 400 contributions submitted
Pig about to be slaughtered kills Hong Kong butcher after first being stunned with stun gun but then unexpectedly wakes up and pushes 61-year-old man who appears to have fallen and sustained 40 cm wound from a meat cleaver, colleague finds the injured man who was taken to hospital and there confirmed dead, police say the cause of death is still unclear and an investigation has begun
World Athletics proposes allowing trans women to compete against women in international track and field events but halving the allowed amount of blood testosterone from the current five nanomoles per litre, studies show that male puberty results in permanently increased muscle mass and bone density as well as changes to the shape of the skeleton and the haemoglobin levels which are all significant contributors to performance, voting to be held in March
Russian NHL defenseman Ivan Provorov's jerseys selling out after media condemning him for not donning Pride colors during pregame warmups, Provorov has commented that he respects everybody's choices and that his choice is to stay true to himself and his Russian Orthodox faith
30-year-old Italian Filippo Bernardini pleads guilty to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts via impersonating hundreds of people in the world of publishing by sending emails from fake accounts, registered more than 160 fraudulent domains, motive unclear as he never demanded money nor published any works online or on the dark web, the crime carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison
Treasure hunt in rural Ommeren in the east of the Netherlands after map believed to indicate where German soldiers hid four large boxes filled with precious stones and metals looted at a bank in 1944, National Archive spokeswoman Anne-Marieke Samson says the institute had found the story reliable and that various failed attempts to find the treasure were made in 1947
Football legend Pelé dies aged 82, introduced himself to a global football audience at 17-years of age in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden where Brazil won the final against the host nation 5-2, the only footballer to win three World Cup golds
Malaysians appalled that their cuisine ranks lower than American and English in Taste Atlas' list of world's best cuisine, Italy tops followed by Greece, while Spain and Japan are tied for third, the food catalogue company says it receives a lot of anger every year on publication, even calls from embassies
Media
One of America's most influential conservatives Pat Buchanan retires from writing at the age of 84, was a former adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, three-time presidential candidate and popularized the concept of America first
Russian state-owned media channel RT's French-language branch shuts down after their bank accounts were frozen since the outbreak of war, the channel's director Xenia Fedorova tweets that the authorities have achieved their goal of shutting down RT France after five years of harassment, according to the French finance ministry, the assets have been frozen in accordance with the EU: s sanctions and not at the initiative of Paris
YouTube and Twitter follow Indian demands to take down links to the BBC documentary "India: The Modi Question" on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role in the 2002 Gujarat riots where over a thousand people died, the documentary is stated to having been checked by senior officials from multiple ministries who found it to be "undermining sovereignty and integrity of India, and having the potential to adversely impact India's friendly relations with foreign states"
Meta removes the Azov Regiment from its list of dangerous individuals and organizations, means that members of the unit can create Facebook and Instagram accounts and posts without being automatically removed and that unaffiliated users now also allowed to praise it, Meta comments that they recently began viewing the Azov Regiment as a separate entity from other groups associated with the far-right nationalist Azov Movement and that the Ukraine war has made it clear that the Regiment does not meet their strict criteria for designation as a dangerous organization
Public arguing between Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro's company The Daily Wire after Crowder was offered a USD 50 million four-year contract with deductions for demonetizations and deplatforming, Crowder calls the structure essentially enforcing Big Tech's policies while The Daily Wire says it is a way of dealing with the realities of making money
The abduction of Greta Thunberg by the German police that was spread in the media was probably only a PR stunt, something that can be considered to have been revealed after video clips were spread of the climate girl posing and smiling with police officers
Jeffrey Tucker: To get spread on Facebook you now need to write something insignificant, my decision in 2020 to focus solely on oppression in the name of the pandemic led to me losing all spread and my account has long been irrelevant to me but test with publishing picture on sweet dog, on the other hand, resulted in a large reach with comments, shares and many hundreds of likes
Meta says it is removing content supporting or praising the Brasília storming, comments that Brazil has been designated as a temporary high-risk location and the storming a violating event meaning that the situation is actively followed
Meta's Oversight Board overturns decision to remove a Facebook post containing the phrase "death to Khamenei", says the slogan is often used to mean "down with Khamenei" and thus does not constitute a violent threat, says such statements differ from threats posted around January 6 as politicians were then clearly at risk
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 protect medical professionals' freedom of speech giving them the right to disagree with the "preferred narrative of the medical community"
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
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?
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
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
Vladimir Putin: For 30 years we have tried to come to an agreement with Nato regarding equal and indivisible security in Europe but have faced a continued military expansion despite our protests and concerns, a hostile anti-Russia fully controlled from the outside is taking shape in territories adjacent to Russia and this crosses the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions, we are acting to defend ourselves from the threats created for us and from a worse peril than what is happening now
Jeffrey Tucker: The world seemingly forgetting about natural immunity despite it being documented since the Peloponnesian War might constitute what Murray Rothbard called "lost knowledge" where known truths are forgotten and have to be rediscovered, remarkable that the hysteria keeps festering when everyone carries access to nearly all the world's information in their pockets
Europe
Germany decides to send tanks of the model Leopard 2 to Ukraine after a period of uncertainty, Chancellor Olaf Scholz also approves that other countries send their
The Netherlands government plans to close Europe's largest gas field Groningen due to concerns about seismic activity nearby, since the 1980s there have been 100 earthquakes around the area annually, production has already declined significantly and was on the verge of ending completely, something that has been questioned due to the rising gas price and the loss of deliveries from Russia
Slovenian police catch 32,042 illegal migrants at the border in 2022, which is an increase of 214 percent from the previous year and the highest figure since 2015, Afghanistan the largest part with 6,010 people while 5,000 from Burundi, which in previous years was barely registered, took advantage of being able to travel visa-free to Serbia from where they tried to enter the EU
Five Germans with ties to the Reichsbürger scene charged with treason for planning to to attack power infrastructure to cause a nationwide blackout, abduct Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, overthrow the government and replace it with a government based on the model of the German Empire
21-year-old Afghan Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai is convicted of murder after stabbing a 21-year-old in the chest with a 10 cm knife during a fight earlier this year in Bournemouth, England, previously convicted of double murder in his absence by a Serbian court and had lived in Norway and Italy while on the run and then ending up in England where he told the authorities that he was a 14-year-old boy whose parents were killed by the Taliban and was then deployed to a foster mother who, according to her own statement, had to accept the age
Estonia and Russia expel each other's ambassadors after Russia was first asked to reduce its embassy staff in Tallinn, the Russian Foreign Ministry claims total Russophobia and hostility towards the country, Latvia also follows its neighbor and expels the ambassador
71,000 UK children reportedly suffering from long Covid, common symptoms include fatigue and brain fog, 14 hubs across England dedicated to treating children with long Covid, no mentions of vaccination status in the article
Turkey cancels Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson's upcoming visit to the country, Turkish National Defence Minister Hulusi Akar says no measures were taken after neither the hanging of a doll portraying President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan nor regarding Rasmus Paludan's Quran burning outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm, Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın writes on Twitter that the Quran burning is a hate crime and a crime against humanity which constitutes modern barbarism
North America
Christian baker Jack Phillips at Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado loses an appeal in his latest legal fight as the Colorado Court of Appeals rules that that the pink and blue cake a trans activist ordered explicitly to test him is not a form of speech and that state law makes it illegal to refuse to provide services to people based on sexual orientation, Phillips won a partial US Supreme Court victory in 2018 after refusing to make a gay couple's wedding cake because of his faith
Las Vegas judge Melanie Andress-Tobiasson, 53, found dead a year after she was forced to resign after she tried to direct police attention to her 16-year-old daughter's workplace, the clothing store Top Knotch, which she said was a front for prostitution recruitment specifically targeting children of judges and other law enforcement officers, conducted private investigations against the superintendent Shane Valentine who later was officially linked to a double murder, reported to be suicide
The accusations against the Republican George Santos who has just been elected to the House of Representatives in the United States are growing, in addition to his merits, his lies include that his mother was in the South Tower during 9/11 and survived, that he owns 13 properties in Brazil worth 1 million USD, that he lost four employees in a nightclub shooting, and that his grandparents were Jews who fled Ukraine during World War II
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission certifies the design for what will be the country's first small modular nuclear reactor meaning the design is finally determined to be acceptable and can't be legally challenged, the 50-megawatt light-water reactor is designed by Oregon-based NuScale Power and the first module is expected to be operational by 2029
At least 10 killed and 10 injured in mass shooting inside a crowded dance studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park during a Lunar New Year celebration, no characteristics given regarding the shooter who remains at large, more than 65% of the area's population identify as Asian American
Gay married couple and LGBTQ activists William Dale Zulock and Zachary Jacoby Zulock in Georgia charged with with molesting their two adopted 11-year-old and 9-year-old sons and pimping them out to a local pedophile ring, the boys were adopted from a Christian special-needs adoption agency, the men each face over nine life sentences if convicted
At least 74 Illinois sheriff's departments vow to defy the state's recent gun-control law banning assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches, say the law violates the Second Amendment, Governor J.B. Pritzker vows to ensure that law enforcement members who fail to do their job will lose it
New Jersey introduces law mandating K-12 schools to teach information literacy such as the difference between opinions and facts and how information is created and produced, state senator Michael Testa (R) says the law is not about teaching that any specific idea is true or false but that it is rather about helping to research, evaluate and understand
Latin America
58 injured in Peru as anti-government tensions flare again, 1,500 protesters attacked a police station in Ilave, a police station in Zepita was set on fire and the Lima police used teargas to repel demonstrators throwing glass bottles and stones, the clashes follow President Dina Boluarte's vow to get tougher on vandals after a historic mansion was burned to the ground
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 Lula da Silva
Honduras declares war against gangs, several hundred police officers involved in operations during a state of exception in 162 neighbourhoods to combat rising extortion and to counter allegations that the government has not done enough to combat rampant crime, follows example set by neighbouring El Salvador where a crackdown on gangs has led to the detention of more than 2% of its adult population
At least 29 people killed in wave of violence involving arson, robbery, and looting sweeping northern Mexico after the arrest of notorious drug lord El Chapo's son Ovidio Guzmán, Guzmán who is described as a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel is wanted by the United States and his arrest comes days before Joe Biden's visit to the country but Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard denies any connection between the arrest and the summit
47-year-old Ecuadoran René Salinas Ramos legally changes gender to help gain custody of his two daughters as the country's laws favors mothers in custody battles, LGBTQ groups express concern that the move will result in the Assembly starting to legislate against them and say it does not make sense to change gender without being a trans person
Juan Guaidó ousted as opposition leader in Venezuela after the US and several European countries recognized him as the legitimate leader in 2019 and an interim government was established ready to take over after the supposed resignation of President Nicolás Maduro
After the turn of the year only Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay in South America will not be ruled by socialists or Marxists, Lula da Silva is sworn in as president on January 1 in Brazil
Venezuela claims the English-speaking area of Essequibo in Guyana with 125,000 inhabitants, insists that the 1777 border of the Essequibo River is the more natural one as opposed to current borders established by an arbitration court in Paris in 1899, now instead of refugee flows from Guyana, instead people flee to the country, including Anneris Valenzuela, 23, who says life is better than in Venezuela, although it is quite tough as they use lanterns since there is no electricity.
Asia
The indigenous Khasi tradition of archery lives on in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya through betting called tim, whose name derives from the English team, and events are held every day in the state capital Shillong except Sundays and public holidays, in one form of the archery competitions, participants use four-row poetry to disturb the opponents
Thai professors pay themselves into research articles through companies such as Science Publisher Company who offers that service and to be accredited in an article related to agricultural research, for example, costs between USD 800 and 1 000, some professors have published 100 articles in a year while universities usually require lecturers to publish at least two per year
China reports 59,938 Covid-19-related deaths between December 8 and January 12 after accusations by WHO and US of under-representing the severity of the outbreak, formerly reported 37 deaths by only listing patients who succumbed with respiratory failure
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen renews threat to seize properties belonging to people who accuse him and the ruling party of stealing last year's local elections where his party secured 80% of the contested seats, Sen who has ruled the country since 1985 comments that the choice is between using the law and using a stick and that his party cannot accept the word "vote fraud", former opposition politician Oum Sam says that Sen is a dictator who uses the law as a tool to persecute the opposition
Visitors to Thailand again must show proof of at least two Covid-19 vaccinations and those travelling onward from Thailand to a country requiring a negative PCR test result must provide proof of insurance, Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul says the measures are necessary and must be non-discriminatory as the virus is spreading in all countries, the measures are expected to start before the awaited increased arrival of visitors following China scrapping its quarantine requirements
North Korea closes borders to entry from China after the recent outbreak of covid-19 after China eases restrictions, all travelers that just arrived must undergo 30-day quarantine
Pakistani rapist acquitted in court since he and victim married after settlement reached with her family with help of local traditional council jirga, the man the and woman come from same extended family
South Korea prohibits customs from confiscating imported sex dolls which has been done citing a clause in the law that bans the import of goods that harm the country’s beautiful traditions and public moral, importer Carenshare Co. think people's rights to seek happiness have been limited by the state and that there are different types of people who have a use for these such as those who are sexually alienated or those who need them for artistic purposes
MIDDLE EAST
Turkish airstrikes in the Syrian city of Azaz kill at least 11 Kurdish fighters, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry, the country has deployed troops in northern Iraq and Syria under the pretext of fighting PKK terrorists and has drawn criticism from Iraqi and Kurdish authorities for violating Iraqi sovereignty, Iranian state media reports
Saudi Arabia jails Wikipedia administrators Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani for 32 and 8 years respectively in bid to control the website content, investigation by parent body Wikimedia finds the Saudi government has penetrated Wikipedia's senior ranks in the region
Benjamin Netanyahu's new government says expanding settlements in the West Bank is a top priority and promises to legalize illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory
The Taliban in Afghanistan ban women from universities according to Taliban government spokesman, they are also banned from parks, gyms and most professions
Turkey launches airstrikes over northern Syria and Iraq, targeting Kurdish groups it holds responsible for last week's bomb attack in Istanbul, Turkish defense ministry tweets picture of military aircraft taking off and that the hour of reckoning has come
Protesters in Iran set fire to Ayatollah Khomeini's childhood home, where founder of Islamic republic said to have been born, according to social media, regional authorities deny arson, has been a museum celebrating the late leader's life
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi responds to Joe Biden's statement on freeing Iran by saying during a speech that the country was liberated 43 years ago and is determined not to be occupied by the United States, pro-government demonstrations were held during November 4th, which marks the anniversary of the takeover of The American Embassy in Tehran in 1979
Benjamin Netanyahu is heading towards victory in the Israeli election and towards becoming prime minister for a third time, his Likud party is expected to form a majority in the Knesset together with ultra-Orthodox parties and the far right, including the Otzma Yehudit party with the anti-Arab and nationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir as party leader
Africa
Burkino Faso orders French troops to depart the country within a month, the decision comes five months after France left neighboring Mali after falling out with its authorities, analysts comment that the announcement adds to growing concerns over a rise in Islamist insurgency
Six state broadcaster journalists arrested over footage of 71-year-old South Sudan president Salva Kiir urinating on himself during the national anthem at an official event, debate in the country regarding the president's health as well as over the ethics of posting such footage on social media and allegations of lack of empathy towards an elder, Kiir has ruled the country since its independence in 2011
32 Cameroonian Under-17 football players disqualified from the national team in the last month due to failed MRI age tests, the scans ordered by Cameroonian Football Federation President Samuel Eto'o in an attempt to deal with the rising problem of age fraud in the country
Zambian politician Davies Mwila says the US is only interested in democracy while China is the country that has the money and can provide loans for infrastructure projects and hospitals, urging President Hakainde Hichilema to swallow his pride and negotiate with the Chinese instead of the EU and America
Zimbabwe bans export of raw lithium, says batteries should be developed in the country and that it expects to meet 20% of the world's total lithium demand when all known resources are fully exploited, Chinese companies Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine Resource Group and Chengxin Lithium Group exempted from the ban
Economy
The number of Swiss banks decreased between 1990 and 2021 from 625 to 239, during the period 1960 and 1990 the number increased from 319 to 625, the cost of maintaining the banking license is significant but collaborations in the sector stronger trend than mergers and acquisitions
Spotify to cut about 600 people respresenting 6% of its global workforce, CEO Daniel Ek comments that he takes full accountability for being too ambitious when investing ahead of the revenue growth in hope of sustaining the strong tailwinds from the pandemic, Dawn Ostroff who joined the company as head of content in 2018 and led the deal to get exclusive podcast rights to Barack and Michelle Obama, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and Kim Kardashian among others leaves the company
Google's parent company Alphabet to cut 12,000 jobs representing 6% of its worldwide workforce, the announcement comes days after Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts and weeks after Amazon announced axing 18,000 jobs
Saudi Arabia's Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan says he is open to discuss trade in a currency other than the USD, saying they do not rule out any discussion that contributes to improving trade around the world, the country has recently approached China and Russia
FTX's former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried publishes defense speech in which he blames the problems on falling prices of cryptocurrencies and that law firm Sullivan & Crowell threatened him to appoint their chosen new CEO who bankrupted the company despite according to Bankman-Fried there were several financing offers, says he dedicates nearly all of his personal assets to customer
Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball releases list of banks the state won't do business with because they boycott companies that work with fossil fuels according to law passed last year, saying tax dollars shouldn't go to an ideology that actually targets and hurts the state's major industries, in the past West Virginia and Texas have also taken similar measures
Ant Group says that Jack Ma will cede control of the company, Ma who has withdrawn from the public spotlight after criticizing government regulators in 2020 currently indirectly owns 53.46% of the shares but will only possess 6.2% of the voting rights after the adjustment, the company says the change is being made to further improve the stability of the company structure and the sustainability of the long-term development
Technology
Reviewers only able to identify ChatGPT generated scientific abstracts 68% of the time and incorrectly identified 14% of real abstracts as being AI generated, Dr. Catherine Gao who led the study comments that the reviewers knew what to look for and were very suspicious and that such hard-to-detect fake abstracts could undermine science as other people risk building their science off incorrect studies
Joe Biden's infrastructure bill contains wording that all new cars after 2026 must contain a so-called "kill switch" which is said to be there to counteract drunk driving, the system will be able to detect whether you are under the influence or not and the car will decide whether you can start it or not
New York bans the chatbot chatGPT on all devices and networks in public schools as it can be used to cheat, the developing company OpenAI is developing the possibility of identifying text generated by the system as they do not want it to be used for misleading purposes
Startup Make Sunsets says it has released its first two weather balloons full of sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere, the idea is to combat climate change by selling USD 10 cooling credits where each gram of sulfur particles offsets the impacts of 1 ton of carbon emissions, the company claims it can completely offset current warming with USD 30 million per year
Chatbot ChatGPT reaches one million users in its first week after launch, responds in depth in what resembles human written text to instructions or questions asked by users, among other things, there is speculation as to whether it can compete with Google's search engine
Mullvad VPN launches hardware product Tillitis Key, a programmable USB key with enhanced security features, both software and hardware are open source
Teenager hacks Uber and announces it in company Slack channel, poses as IT worker from corporate in text message and convinces employee to send password giving him access, enabling him to access company VPN, scan the intranet, and find Powershell scripts containing credentials for multiple services, Uber warnes employees to stay away from Slack, but many keep logging back on to check out everyone's joke responses
Google fires engineer Blake Lemoine who despite lengthy engagement from the company maintained that the AI language technology Lamda is sentient, Google comments that Lemoine's claims are wholly unfounded and that they take the responsible development of AI very seriously, Lemoine who tested if the program used discriminatory or hate speech found that it showed self-awareness and could hold conversations about religion and emotions
Science
20,000-year-old inscriptions apparently deciphered by hobby archaeologist Ben Bacon, who spent seven years solving the problem, are believed to be lunar calendars and are at least 10,000 years older than other similar finds
The durability of Roman concrete is due to millimeter-scale lime clasts that used to be disregarded as evidence of sloppy mixing practices or poor-quality raw materials, according to a team of investigators from MIT and Harvard University, professor Admir Masic says that the idea of low quality control always bothered him as the Romans put so much effort into following detailed recipes optimized over many centuries
December 2022 the coldest month in hundred years in Reykjavik in Iceland with an average temperature of minus 3.9 degrees Celcius which is 4.9 degrees below the average in the last ten years, despite the cold the number of hours of sunshine was more than usual
How attractive one perceives oneself has a significant effect on the willingness to wear a mask, according to a Korean study published in Frontiers in Psychology
Invasive black rats cause tropical reef fish to be less aggressive to eachother and to need larger territories as the available nutrient content drops, first time such behavior change is noticed, islands with invasive rats have up to 720 times smaller seabird density which leads to 251 times less nitrogen flowing onto the coral reefs, the study is claimed to further add to the evidence base behind the need to eradicate invasive rat populations
Doctors and their families are less likely to comply with the guidelines about prescription drugs, according to a study published in the American Economic Review: Insights that examined Swedish data from 2005 to 2016 and included nearly 6 million people of whom about 150,000 were doctors and their relatives, the authors believe that the reason is that doctors have an information advantage about the drugs and the difference between experts and laymans is greatest when it comes to the use of antibiotics
Birth control can affect sexual preferences, says psychologist Sarah Hill at Texas Christian University, hormones affect our preferences and can sometimes cause a different direction than what brain would normally do, support from scientific studies as well as anecdotal evidence from online forums
More than 70 percent of children between the ages of 7 and 12 are concerned about climate change, according to a survey of 1,000 participants by eco-grocery start up Modern Milkman, 85 percent think it's everyone's responsibility to address the issue and 91 percent believe personal actions can have an impact
Second-generation immigrants in European countries are much more left-wing than their host-nation peers, comparable to the urban-rural discrepancy, in European study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, using data on individual voting behavior in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017