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

US pressing Israel to allow same levels of aid into Gaza as during ceasefire

Summary: Now that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas has ended, the US government and other allies are pressuring Israel to allow the same volume of humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip as was allowed during that pause in the fighting.

Context: Aid groups have warned that there’s a substantial and still-growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, especially southern Gaza where many Palestinians from the northern portion of the Strip have been forced to flee by Israel’s invasion, and though more aid is being brought in, now, than before the ceasefire, it’s still substantially less than was imported before the fighting began—it’s estimated that about 4% of the average daily aid that was brought into the region pre-invasion is now being allowed into Gaza by Israel.

—Axios

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The X Prize is taking aim at aging with a new $101 million award

Summary: The X Prize Foundation has announced a new prize aiming to address the mental and physical decline that often comes with aging, which will award $101 million to anyone who can prove they’ve reversed a decade’s-worth of such decline in older adults by 2030.

Context: Previous X Prizes have stimulated developments in private space flight, fuel efficiency for vehicles, oil cleanup efforts, and health sensors in small gadgets, and the general model involves making a bunch of money available to anyone who wants to make progress in these spaces, incentivizing more private investment in solving specific problems, which then tends to evolve entire industries (though with mixed success, as in some cases the industries or fields they’re meant to stimulate evolve past X Prize goals before they’re met, as was the case with a 2013 genomics-focused prize); this new prize is meant to help increase healthspan, if not lifespan, and is primarily aimed at an emerging category of therapies that seem to be able to help older human beings enjoy a higher quality of life in their latter-years by helping them remain more physically and mentally capable, longer.

—MIT Technology Review

South Korea launches first military spy satellite, intensifying space race with Pyongyang

Summary: Less than two weeks after North Korea launched its first successfully installed spy satellite, South Korean officials announced that they had done the same—though in their case using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to get into orbit, while the North Koreans used their own launch systems.

Context: This is notable in part because North Korea has been working on launching their own satellites for a while, unsuccessfully until now, and in part because these launches would seem to be upping tensions on the peninsula, where both nations—which are persistently on a knife’s edge with each other—can now spy on each other’s military installations without relying on anyone else’s in-orbit assets; South Korea has said it plans to launch another four spy satellites by the end of 2025, and the South is reportedly keen to launch at least some of them using their own rockets, in part because they want to demonstrate that the North has not pulled ahead of them, technologically, in this regard.

—The Guardian

Between 1950 and 2022, the US provided Israel with more than 70,000 weapons, as tallied by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfers Database; that number is expected to increase substantially in 2023, following the sneak-attack by Hamas militants that sparked a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s military.

—Axios

15%

Percent by which Russian President Putin has decreed troop numbers in Ukraine will be increased—which means something like 170,000 new soldiers will need to be recruited.

That’s a sizable increase, but Russian officials have said they don’t plan to conscript more soldiers for the effort and would rely on volunteers (though the term “volunteer” has been used loosely in Russia, of late, with some recruitments looking a lot like forced conscriptions, by international standards).

—France 24

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

Taiwan urges elderly and young to avoid China visits due to respiratory illnesses

Summary: The Taiwanese health ministry is advising people in at-risk groups, including the elderly, the very young, and those of any age who are immunocompromised to avoid traveling to China as the latter is experiencing a surge in pneumonia and other respiratory illness cases.

Context: There are some parallels between what’s happening in Chinese hospitals, today, and what we saw right before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked-off in late-2019, but the World Health Organization has said that the numbers are not quite as severe as back then, and there doesn’t seem to be any new pathogen involved—it’s likely that this infection surge is the consequence of people having been isolating and mask-wearing for years, and now that they’re going back out into the world without as many precautions, they’re being exposed to flus and colds and such, without that backlog of built-up, exposure-derived immunity to lean upon, which doesn’t mean this isn’t a notable upswing in cases, but does mean it’s probably not an indication that we should expect another COVID-like pandemic, as a result.

—Reuters

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Estonia says it is 'prepared' to close Russia border

Summary: The Estonian foreign minister has said that the country is prepared to entirely close its border with Russia, following Finland’s move to seal its borders with the same.

Context: These existing and potential border closures are the consequence of Russia allegedly engaging in a type of hybrid warfare, helping large numbers of undocumented migrants reach the borders of Baltic nations in an attempt to cause disruption and chaos in those countries; Estonia and Finland have been staunch supporters of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, and these Russia-supported waves of would-be immigrants have increased (possibly because of that support) over the past year.

—Barron’s

An Indian official plotted to assassinate a Sikh separatist leader in New York, US prosecutors say

Summary: Just a few months after Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau announced allegations that the Indian government was linked to the assassination of a Canadian Sikh activist, US officials have announced charges against a man who allegedly attempted the same against a Sikh activist living in New York, the charged man purportedly linked to an Indian official.

Context: The US Drug Enforcement Agency set up a sting to catch the charged man in the act, and the Sikh man who was the target has been designated a terrorist by the Indian government for his activism toward the creation of a sovereign Sikh state within India’s borders; there’s likely more to this story than has been divulged, so far, but at the moment this would seem to indicate there’s a covert effort to knock-out enemies of the Indian government, globally, and this evidence of such efforts taking place on US soil will likely complicate the burgeoning relationship between the US and Indian governments, which are attempting to build a chain of favorable economic and military relationships in Southeast Asia and across the Pacific to counter China’s growth.

—The Associated Press

The ongoing COP28 climate change meeting in Dubai is expected to be an iterative meeting, rather than a revolutionary one, in part because ambitions seem to have shrunk this year and because those in charge are pushing for renewable energy deployment, rather than a decrease (and eventual phase-out) of fossil fuel use.

—Bloomberg

100

Age of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when he died on Wednesday.

Kissinger is—to put it mildly—a controversial figure, as he was responsible for a fair bit of peace-related diplomacy, especially during the height of the Cold War, but also allegedly responsible for a huge number of (also alleged) war crimes.

—Axios

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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

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

India plans to triple underground coal mining to meet energy demand

Summary: India’s coal ministry has announced plans to increase its underground mining efforts three-fold by 2028 as part of a larger effort to align local energy production with increasing demand.

Context: Coal is by far the most-polluting and one of the most-emitting modern energy sources, but many countries, like China and India, rely heavily on it to provide energy for their sprawling populations, which are also rapidly becoming richer, which tends to mean more energy demand per person and for the whole of the economy; ministry representatives claim their approach to increasing production will be less-emitting than the surface-level, opencast mines that account for 95% of its current production, but that’s a contentious claim, as although digging underground is moderately better for local environments compared to stripping the local landscape, it still results in a lot more coal being burned, which is in opposition to global coal phase-down efforts.

—Financial Times

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Biden invokes Cold War-era measure to boost medical supplies

Summary: President Biden has announced new efforts to boost investment in US-based medicine and medical supply manufacturing, tying this type of production to national defense efforts.

Context: The idea is that relying on other countries for medical supplies and medicines, as was the case at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaves the US vulnerable to all sorts of threats and the whims of other countries, which is not something any government likes; this measure is just one of 30 new measures that will use the Defense Production Act to shore-up US-based manufacturing across a variety of industries, increasing the government’s ability to keep tabs on supply chains while giving business entities in the relevant spaces resources meant to incentivize local infrastructural investment.

—Reuters

The newest airline climate solution is burying sawdust

Summary: American Airlines has announced a new deal with carbon removal startup Graphyte as part of the US airline industry’s larger plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Context: There are many different approaches to soaking-up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, some of which are expensive and energy-intensive, like using big fans and filters, but this startup’s approach is simpler and cheaper, basically compressing agricultural waste materials that absorb CO2 into bricks and then sealing them up and burying them, which should keep that CO2 tucked underground forever, with tracer substances in place to make sure there aren’t any leaks; like all such efforts at the moment, this one is still in its early days and there’s a chance it will have flaws we don’t notice till later, but if it proves effective over time, it could represent an inexpensive alternative to those other, pricier options, and a means through which emissions-heavy industries like airlines can more affordably pull some of their emissions back out of the air as they struggle to find and implement methods of reducing or preventing those emissions in the first place.

—The Wall Street Journal

The world’s wealthiest nations will be advised by the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization to temper their consumption of meat at the impending COP28 summit, as meat-consumption (especially beef) is incredibly polluting and emitting (and resource-intensive), and wealthy nations consume the lion’s share of meat, globally.

—Bloomberg

>2.9 million

Number of passengers the TSA screened at American airports last Sunday: a new record.

That means Sunday was the busiest flight-related travel day in US history (despite all sorts of storm-related weather alerts), almost certainly due to Thanksgiving holiday travel and pent-up demand for travel of any kind, following a pandemic-era dip in such journeys in recent years.

—Axios

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

Search algorithm reveals nearly 200 new kinds of CRISPR systems

Summary: Researchers at MIT, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, and the National Institutes of Health have identified 188 new CRISPR systems in bacterial genomes using a new search algorithm they developed for the purpose.

Context: This is a pretty big deal, as CRISPR systems allow researchers to manipulate genes, usually with a good deal of specificity and without damaging portions of the DNA or RNA they don’t want to touch, plucking things out, putting things in, and otherwise messing with this genetic code in useful ways; a few CRISPR-based therapies have already been put on the market for treating things like sickle-cell and a genetic condition that causes persistent high cholesterol levels, and having more search, trim, and copy-paste tools available that allow researchers to carefully and successfully perform these sorts of edits could prove to be vital in the coming years.

—MIT News

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Attackers seize an Israel-linked tanker off Yemen

Summary: An oil tanker linked to Israel was seized off the coast of Yemen on Sunday, the third such seizure in recent days.

Context: No group has officially claimed responsibility for this hijacking yet, but it’s assumed that it’s linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and thus may be connected to Yemen-based, Iran-supported Houthi rebels; 22 people were crewing the ship when it was captured, and as was the case with the other two ships, this one has folks aboard from a variety of different countries, and is connected to a bunch of other, non-Israeli nations, as well—which means it’s difficult to be certain why the ship was taken, despite those aforementioned suspicions, and that also makes these hijackings a very international concern.

Update: Before this went live, those who seized the ship were captured by the US Navy, and two missiles fired from a part of Yemen that’s under control of the Houthis landed near the US warship that did the capturing—though it’s now thought the hijackers in this case may have been Somali pirates.

—Politico

Ireland’s prime minister condemns anti-immigrant protesters who rampaged through central Dublin

Summary: Late last week, the Irish prime minister condemned protests that turned into violent and destructive riots across central Dublin, all of which seemed to arise in response to the stabbing of three young children, all of whom survived, one with serious injuries, and a slew of misinformation about the nature of that crime and the person who committed it.

Context: Dozens of people were arrested following these riots, most of those involved apparently members of far-right groups or those with compatible beliefs, and hundreds of these rioters looted shops, threw rocks at crowd control officers, and set fire to vehicles across the city; the protests were seemingly sparked by suggestions that the person responsible for the stabbings was a foreign national—something that has not been confirmed by police, and which seems to have been a rumor started by the extremist anti-immigration groups that organized the protests.

—The Associated Press

Amazon has surpassed UPS to deliver more packages to US homes in 2022, after surpassing FedEx’s delivery numbers in 2020, making it the biggest deliverer of packages in the country—aside from the US Postal Service which is still the largest by volume.

—The Wall Street Journal

60.5%

Portion of all the energy produced and used by Chile in the first ten months of 2023 that were renewables, according to new data from energy research group Ember.

That number could tick even higher by the end of the year, as November and December tend to enjoy upsurges in solar and wind energy output in Chile.

—The Progress Playbook

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

Hamas and Israel begin 3rd exchange of hostages for prisoners

Summary: Despite a series of delays and apparent technical and practical issues and misunderstandings, the swap of a third group of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel has begun.

Context: This is a fast-moving story as although the groups involved are spacing-out the exchange effort, there’s only a finite amount of time in which to make this happen, as there’s a four-day ceasefire agreement included in this deal that is allowing aid trucks to enter the devastated Gaza Strip, with food and water and medical supplies, while also making the swap of hostages and prisoners feasible; Hamas has the option of increasing the duration of the ceasefire by releasing more hostages, but it’s not clear at this point if they will choose to do so, and if so, for how long; Hamas has also said there are issues related to which prisoners are being released by Israel, and how, and the amount of aid trucks being allowed into Gaza, which they say are fewer in number than was originally agreed—all of which could indicate the ceasefire and exchange will be limited in scope, but these could also be negotiation-related complaints, meant to get more done in less time, or to get more from Israel than was originally agreed.

—The New York Times

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Spotify plans to leave Uruguay over change to copyright laws

Summary: Audio streaming service Spotify has issued a statement indicating they plan to exit the Uruguayan market beginning in January and completely by February, due to a bill that was recently passed by the country’s parliament that would require the company pay more money to artists whose work they distribute, possibly up to twice as much as they currently do.

Context: Part of Spotify’s complaint is that the bill isn’t very clear about how much additional money they would need to set aside for artists, and their press release on the matter suggests they already pay nearly 70% of every dollar they take in to the record labels and publishers, making a payout increase untenable; artists have long complained that they make incredibly little money from Spotify, but there’s a debate as to whether there’s another feasible option in the post-physical-music-medium age, in which the abundance of music being generated and streamed has spread out the profits being earned by the industry more widely than was the case in the age of the cassette tape and CD.

—Billboard

Meta disbanded its Responsible AI team

Summary: A new report indicates that Meta, the umbrella-company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has broken up its Responsible AI team, reallocating those on it to other AI-focused teams within the company.

Context: This is mostly notable because of the recent tumult within OpenAI, which seems to have reoriented the company toward a “move fast and break things” sort of approach to artificial intelligence, and to have massively reduced the influence of those who wanted to take a more careful approach to developing these tools, which some experts think might be dangerous if developed and deployed inappropriately; Meta’s team responsible for that type of caution is now defunct, basically, which suggests they, and possibly other tech behemoths, as well, might be recalibrating their internal setups to better compete with OpenAI and other entities that have seemingly pulled out all the stops, and may thus be evolving their offerings a lot faster than before, despite the potential negative consequences of doing so.

—The Verge

For the first time, Microsoft’s gaming efforts are expected to surpass those of Sony (monetarily) due to their closing of a $69 billion acquisition deal with Activision in October, which will give the Xbox-maker a huge new collection of revenue sources.

—Quartz

75

Number of Iranian-made Shahed drones Russian forces launched, all at once, at Kyiv over the weekend.

The Ukrainian military says it intercepted all but one of these drones, and that five people were slightly injured by the attack, which was the largest since last winter.

This is thought to be the first of a new wave of large attacks against Kyiv and Ukrainian infrastructure (especially energy infrastructure) now that winter is descending across the region and troop positions are largely stable across active combat zones—the Russian military has supposedly been stockpiling drones and missiles in recent months, and is expected to use them to make the winter difficult for Ukrainian forces and civilians.

—The Wall Street Journal

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

In a shock for Europe, anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders records a massive win in Dutch elections

Summary: The far-right, Dutch Party for Freedom party is forecast to win 37 of the 150 seats in the Netherlands’ lower house of parliament, giving party leader Geert Wilders, a controversial, populist politician, the first opportunity to form the country’s next governing coalition, and possibly to become its first far-right prime minister, as well.

Context: This outcome was a bit of a shock, as the Party for Freedom took two more seats than predicted by forecasts, and because the Dutch government has historically been quite tolerant and liberal, while Wilders and his party are the opposite; this is likely to represent a huge shift in local politics, but also in the operation of the EU, which has seen a surge in support for far-right candidates across the bloc over the past few years, and which will potentially be roiled by Wilders, who is not a fan of many EU policies and norms—though before any of that can happen, he has to successfully form a governing coalition, which is likely, but not guaranteed at this point.

—The Associated Press

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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao steps down and pleads guilty

Summary: The founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, Changpeng Zhao, more commonly known as CZ, has agreed to step down from his post, to admit wrongdoing, and to pay $4.3 billion in fines after pleading guilty to violating US anti-money-laundering laws.

Context: This plea-deal makes it more likely the company will be able to legally continue operating despite its violation of these regulations, and the issue is that Binance encouraged US users to obscure their location, which allowed the company to dodge anti-money-laundering laws, which is a big no no; that multi-billion-dollar fine will be paid by Binance, which is owned by CZ, while CZ himself will pay a criminal fine of $50 million—though that latter amount might be reduced based on civil penalties he’s also agreed to pay; notably, this settlement is happening shortly after the collapse of crypto-platform competitor FTX, and a court finding its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, guilty on seven counts with a potential total prison-term of up to 115 years.

—The Wall Street Journal

Taiwan ruling party powers ahead as chaos engulfs opposition campaign

Summary: In the lead-up to an election scheduled to be held on January 13 of next year, the front-runner candidate for the incumbent Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, has said that the opposition isn’t a serious, unified bloc, despite efforts to mount a joint challenge to the DPP.

Context: The current Taiwanese Vice President leads opinions polls, at the moment, to become the island nation’s next President, even though the two primary opposition parties have decided to team up against him; this is notable mostly because China’s government sees the DPP as a separatist entity—which they don’t like—and the opposition favors a comparable mellowing of relations with China; tensions remain high in the strait dividing China and Taiwan, the former of which considers the latter to be in rebellion, basically, because of these separatist entities, and this part of the world is generally considered to be a volatile, potential hot-spot for near-future (and potentially global) military confrontation.

—Reuters

Colombia’s President Petro promised an era of “total peace” when he took office last year, but so far—despite his accolades as a former guerrilla—that has not been the case, violence from armed groups surging, not dissipating.

—Financial Times

90 miles

Approximate distance new artillery shells being developed by Nammo and Boeing will be able to travel, due to their incorporated “ramjet” engines.

That’s about the distance between Philadelphia and New York, and represents a substantial improvement over the 30-ish miles current, high-end shells can manage.

This is meant to help militaries (like those in Ukraine) do more with less, eschewing far pricier missiles in favor of (still expensive, but a lot less so) launchable shells.

—The Wall Street Journal

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

Israel and Hamas agree to cease-fire in exchange for hostage release

Summary: Representatives from the Israeli government and Hamas have announced an agreement that will include the release of 50 Israeli hostages, from a total of around 240 they captured during a sneak-attack on Israel on October 7, the release of 150 Palestinian women and young people under the age of 19 held in Israeli jails, and a ceasefire that will last four days, allowing the exchange of those held by both sides to occur.

Context: Some of the legal details of this agreement are still being worked out by officials on either side, but in its current form it includes limits on fly-overs, opportunities for humanitarian aid to be brought into Gaza by outside organizations, and paths through which civilians should be able to safely evacuate northern Gaza to the south; all that said, there’s still a great deal of animus on both sides of this conflict, and while US and Qatari officials have been working hard (alongside representatives from other nations) to convince Israeli and Hamas officials to come to some kind of workable accord, there’s still a chance something will go wrong during its implementation, so everyone’s watching to see how this plays out with some sense of hope that it might lead to a more long-lasting ceasefire or even, eventually, a peace agreement, but also a fair bit of trepidation that it will end before it has the chance to really get going.

—The New York Times

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Northvolt in new sodium-ion battery breakthrough

Summary: Swedish battery company Northvolt has announced a breakthrough in its efforts to develop a better sodium-ion battery, reportedly creating one that doesn’t use any lithium, cobalt, or nickel, but which is still capable of lithium-ion-like performance.

Context: This is considered to be a pretty big deal because China controls the lion’s share of the planet’s lithium, cobalt, and nickel processing and, increasing, mining capacity as well, which gives them a huge advantage in developing electric vehicle-sized batteries, and utility-scale battery storage systems that are often built alongside solar and wind energy infrastructure; sodium-ion batteries have long been seen as a potential next-step technology, as they’re generally cheaper and safer than lithium-ions, but existing designs have lagged behind lithium-ions in terms of energy storage, making them impractical for most use-cases; this new design boasts an energy-density similar to that of lithium-ion batteries, though, which is why—even though Northvolt has said it won’t be able to reach full-scale production until the end of the decade, many entities (including China’s EV giant BYD) seem to be making 2030-era plans with this technology in mind.

—Financial Times

Sam Altman to return as OpenAI CEO after his tumultuous ouster

Summary: Following a pretty wild, drama- and speculation-filled weekend, during which he was fired by the company he co-founded and led, Sam Altman is reportedly returning to OpenAI as the CEO, with a new board of directors, after he was booted by the previous board.

Context: This was a big story in large part because OpenAI has been at the forefront of publicly accessible generative-AI technology since it released ChatGPT in late-2022, sparking an arms race within the tech sector as everyone has scrambled to get their own large language model-powered bots and tools out the door; the specifics of this ouster and return to power are arguably less important than the big picture implications of the struggle, namely that those who want to move as fast as possible may have won out over those who want to proceed more slowly and cautiously with these technologies, which could mean we’ll see more developments in this space even faster than before, though possibly with fewer failsafes in place.

—Reuters

NVIDIA’s stock price continues to surge on the strength of immense AI-optimized chip demand; it recently reported that it expects to earn about $16 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2023, which is about triple what it pulled in during the third quarter of 2022.

—Quartz

1.1 million

Possible number of gallons of oil (that’s the high-end estimate) that’ve leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana, from a pipeline owned by Main Pass Oil Company, according to the US Coast Guard.

The pipeline in question has been shut down as workers look for the source and cause of the leak—and for context, the infamous 2010 BP oil disaster involved 134 million gallons of oil, so this is a lot of oil, but far less than was spilled back then.

—Quartz

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

More than 230 convicted in Italy's maxi-trial against 'Ndrangheta mafia

Summary: On Monday, an Italian court convicted more than 230 of more than 330 suspected ‘Ndrangheta mafia members and their associates who were standing trial for charges ranging from drug trafficking to theft.

Context: Among this group were a pair of mob bosses who received 30-year sentences and a well-known lawyer and former politician who was sentenced to 11-years in prison; the ‘Ndrangheta is generally considered to be the most powerful mafia in Italy, and while this trial won’t severely hamper the group’s current efforts, the last mafia trial of this scale in 1986 marked a downward turning point in the Cosa Nostra’s influence, and prosecutors hope this case will do the same—though these rulings can be appealed twice before being fully locked in, so there’s a chance that some or all of them will be changed before they’re put into effect.

—Reuters

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Marketing leaders urge X CEO Linda Yaccarino to resign

Summary: Following a seemingly antisemitic on-platform response by X owner Elon Musk, and a report from liberal advocacy group Media Matters that showed ads from major corporations being displayed next to neo-Nazi and white nationalist content on the network, the company, which was formerly called Twitter, has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, and the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, has reportedly been encouraged by ad-world allies to resign to save her reputation.

Context: Yaccarino has reportedly told those allies that she would be sticking around, and the lawsuit against Media Matters has been called, by several outside analysts, frivolous and face-saving—an effort to make it look like X is the victim of some kind of ideologically motivated smear-campaign, essentially; all of which underlines a difficult moment for X, as some of the company’s largest advertisers, including IBM, Disney, and Comcast have put their ad-buys with the company on hold, potentially representing a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for a company that by some reports has already been hemorrhaging money.

—Axios

Malawi's President Chakwera bans himself and his cabinet from foreign travel

Summary: The President of Malawi, Lazarus Chakwera, has announced a suspension on foreign travel for himself and his government following a massive devaluation of the country’s currency.

Context: This ban on foreign travel by government officials is meant to help the country save money at a precarious economic moment, and it’s notable because this is an unusual type of austerity, mostly impacting the upper-echelons of the country’s power structure, rather than those lower-down; the IMF approved a $174 million line of credit for Malawi following the recent announcement of a 44% devaluation of its currency, the kwacha—a devaluation that may have been a requirement of securing that credit.

—BBC News

Argentina’s newly elected president Javier Milei has said he wants to do away with the peso and transition to the US dollar, but questions remain about whether the country has enough resources (valued in pesos) to buy a sufficient number of dollars for that transition, as inflation has made pesos fairly worthless for the purpose of purchasing foreign currencies.

—Axios

1.17 degrees C

Margin by which global average temperatures were above the 1991-2020 average last Friday, marking a new (and to many climate scientists, worrying) record.

That means those averages were 2.06 degrees C above the pre-industrial period we usually use for marking such things (the period from roughly 1850 to 1990), which is a milestone our climate efforts are meant to help us avoid (we’re still trying to avoid a 1.5 degrees C increase above those levels, but 2 degrees is increasingly being seen as a more realistic target, since we haven’t moved fast enough across a variety of emissions metrics).

This was just a quick upward blip and is probably not a new trend (fortunately), but the climate science community is marking it because it shows how even getting close to these temperature ceilings can leave us prone to periodically popping up above them, which can result in some pretty scary consequences.

—The Washington Post

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

Fiery right-wing populist Javier Milei wins Argentina’s presidency and promises ‘drastic’ changes

Summary: Far-right outsider candidate Javier Milei has won Argentina’s presidential runoff election in a landslide, defeating the more conventional, continuity candidate nearly 56% to just over 44%.

Context: That’s a staggering victory for someone who has promised to essentially gut the government, kill-off the peso in favor of adopting the US dollar, and who has been embroiled in controversy for years; the degree to which Milei will be able to do what he’s promised to do is still an open question, but this victory—and the size of that victory—is being seen as a pretty clear indication that the Argentine voting population is fed up with the existing political and economic status quo in the country, which has, among other things, led to persistent incredibly high levels of inflation, rising poverty levels, and ever-increasing levels of government debt.

(More on Milei and what was at stake in this election in this recent Let’s Know Things episode: Argentina Election)

—The Associated Press

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Liberian leader George Weah hailed for his sportsmanship after accepting defeat

Summary: The outgoing President of Liberia, George Weah, has conceded defeat to his rival, the now-incoming President Joseph Boakai, easing concerns that the country might face a power-struggle in the wake of a tight election.

Context: Liberia has a history of fairly brutal and recent politics-tied conflict, so there were concerns that this election, the first since 2018, could trigger violence; this peaceful transfer of power, though, is being lauded both for the clarity it grants everyone involved and for the trend it continues and example it sets in a region that has otherwise been partially defined, in recent years, by military coups and instability.

—BBC News

Mike Johnson to release 40,000 hours of January 6 footage

Summary: Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced last week that tens of thousands of hours of footage from the January 6, 2021 Capital Building incursion will be released to the public.

Context: Far-right House Representatives have been demanding this footage be released for a while, and this is being seen as a nod to them as the Speaker attempts to keep the different wings of his party in sufficient lockstep to move other priorities forward, following inter-party disagreements about his recent stopgap spending bill; some Representatives and security professionals have said this footage could present a security risk, calling its release an attempt to politicize the event in question, but others—those who favor its release—have said that the 5%-ish of the footage that’s considered to be a major security risk will be withheld, and that those who are being charged for breaking into the Capitol deserve to have access to footage that could help them defend themselves in court.

—Axios

Recent analysis from Oxfam and other research groups indicate that—mostly because they have things like yachts, private jets, and mansions (though also investments in highly emitting business endeavors)—twelve of the world’s wealthiest people produce more emissions than about 2.1 million average homes each year (which is about 17 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions).

—The Guardian

280 million

Approximate number of electric two- and three-wheeled vehicles on global roads in 2022 (bikes, mopeds, etc).

That far surpasses the just-over 20 million electric four-wheeled vehicles and around 1.3 million commercial EVs (buses, delivery vans, etc) that are in use, at the moment.

And because the majority of trips people take across much of the world (often using cars) are short, these smaller electric vehicles are estimated to be savings folks a bunch of money, but also reducing global oil demand by something like 1%, according to Bloomberg estimates.

—The Conversation

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