Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

All 41 Indian labourers rescued from collapsed tunnel

Summary: After 17 days stuck in a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayan mountains, 41 miners have been successfully rescued by a specialist team that was flown in to manually drill an escape hole.

Context: This has been an ongoing and emotional drama in the region, as it was anything but certain that these miners would be able to survive for this long in the road tunnel they were constructing, which partially collapsed following what seems to have been a landslide on early November 12; an escalating series of rescue efforts wore on everyone involved, even as oxygen, food, water, and medical supplies were delivered to the miners through a small water pipe; a higher-risk process, sometimes called “rat-hole mining,” was what ultimately allowed them to escape through a vertical pipe just large enough for a human to wriggle through, and there’s been a lot of celebration throughout the region now that they’ve all been set free, though experts are now reassessing the tunnel project, which is part of a larger highway expansion plan and which has already faced all sorts of criticisms from environmental and safety experts.

—The Guardian

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UAE planned to use climate talks to make oil deals

Summary: The United Arab Emirates team tasked with running the COP28 summit which kicks-off in Dubai today reportedly planned, and possibly still plans, to use its position as host of the UN-backed climate meeting to strike oil and gas deals with other leaders, based on leaked documents obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting, working alongside the BBC.

Context: This isn’t terribly surprising, as the UAE’s economy is heavily reliant on its fossil fuel exports, and though they’ve banged the drum about their purported renewables-related accolades, they will almost certainly remain reliant on those exports for a long while into the future; that said, this is being seen as a bit of a scandal, atop the earlier scandal of having an oil-focused nation, and the head of that nation’s state oil company, hosting and running a climate change summit, as it suggests the summit may be more aligned with the priorities of fossil fuel interests rather than more holistic interests that—most climate experts agree—necessitate the rapid winding-down of fossil fuel usage, globally.

—BBC News

Sports Illustrated published articles by fake, AI-generated writers

Summary: The publisher of Sports Illustrated, The Arena Group, saw its stock plunge by nearly 30% following allegations that they had published articles on the publication’s website produced by AI and published under fake author bylines.

Context: Following questions by Futurism about what seemed to be AI-generated content and fake bylines (the images of the supposed writers also seemingly produced by AI), The Arena Group said they hired out the production of this content to a third-party vendor and have now fired that company, despite apparent assurances from that vendor that it didn’t provide AI-generated work—this new reporting suggests otherwise, but it’s kind of a he said, she said situation at the moment; a slew of seemingly AI-generated work has now disappeared from the Sports Illustrated site, and this is just the most recent of numerous instances over the past year or so of mostly private equity-owned publications (allegedly) attempting to publish AI-generated work instead of work produced by human writers, likely in order to reduce their overhead, as it’s a lot cheaper to use AI for these purposes than to pay human employees or freelancers.

—Futurism

Shein, the fast-fashion behemoth from China that has grown and grown and grown over the past few years, has confidentially filed the necessary paperwork for a public listing in the US, which could arrive as soon as 2024 and which could result in an anticipated valuation of nearly $90 billion.

—Chartr

$12.4 billion

Sum spent on online purchases by Americans on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) this year.

That’s up from 9.6% over 2022’s Cyber Monday.

This year’s Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend (this is one of those consumption-focused “holidays” that just keeps sprawling to cover more of the calendar) saw a total of around $38 billion spent online in the US, which is up 7.8% from the same span in 2022.

—Axios

Trust Click

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