On Friday, United States secretary of state Antony Blinken said he was canceling a high-profile diplomatic visit to Beijing following the discovery of a large, high-altitude Chinese balloon that has been drifting over the US this week. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday that …
Read More »A China Tennis Star Accused A Top Official Of Sexual Assault. Then She Disappeared.
The message was only online for a few minutes, but its shock waves have reverberated around the world. “I was so scared that afternoon,” tennis player Peng Shuai wrote in her Nov. 2 message on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “I never gave consent, crying the entire time.” Peng, a …
Read More »How The Pandemic Severed One Of Southern Africa’s Main Economic Lifelines
Before the borders closed, Michele, 31, made a modest income buying clothes and electronics in South Africa and reselling them for profit across the border in Zimbabwe. But when the pandemic shut down most traffic between the two countries, she said, her revenue dried up and she had to try …
Read More »You Could Lose Your Job To ChatGPT If You’re In These 5 Industries
ChatGPT is taking the world by storm, and while many are praising its ingenuity, others are worried that their jobs might be at stake. Launched in November 2022, the chatbot by OpenAI could potentially disrupt these five industries, causing many to lose their jobs or switch careers. These are the industries …
Read More »‘Poker Face’ Is the New ‘Columbo’ and That’s a Good Thing for Fans
Poker Face, writer and director Rian Johnson’s new murder mystery, premiered last week on Peacock to fawning reviews, with Natasha Lyonne’s character Charlie Cale—a DIY crime solver on the run from casino baddies with a preternatural ability to spot a lie—quickly becoming a cult favorite. Who would have thought a …
Read More »US filings for jobless aid lowest since April
US applications for jobless aid fell again last week to their lowest level since April, further evidence that the job market has withstood aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve as it attempts to cool the economy and bring down inflation. Applications for jobless aid in the United States for …
Read More »Democracy ‘on trial’ as Hong Kong 47 prepare to face court
Hong Kong’s largest national security trial gets under way on Monday, with 47 pro-democracy activists and politicians standing trial for “conspiring to commit subversion” by organising an unofficial ballot of the public in 2020, days after a sweeping new security law had been imposed. Sixteen people are expected to plead …
Read More »Guantanamo detainee freed to Belize after 20 years in captivity
A Guantanamo Bay prison detainee who endured torture in CIA custody has been transferred to Belize nearly a year after finishing his sentence at the US-run detention facility. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that Majid Khan was freed, bringing the number of prisoners at Guantanamo to 34, including 20 who …
Read More »Senator asks Apple and Google to ban TikTok from their app stores
TikTok is facing yet another call from a prominent lawmaker for the app’s ban, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent to Apple and Google urging the companies to ban TikTok from their respective app stores. In the letter, Bennet says that “TikTok, …
Read More »Why Facebook Shutting Down Its Old Facial Recognition System Doesn’t Matter
Meta — the company formerly known as Facebook — announced that it would be shutting down “the Face Recognition system on Facebook,” a technology that has been raising privacy alarms since it debuted. In a blog post, the company described the move as “one of the biggest shifts in facial …
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