The Doomscroll News Report

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda reflect on the news story that most impacted Amanda in the year 2025: the on-going saga of U.S. "Secreatary of War" Pete Hegseth. They also briefly discuss events from the past week, including the Bondi Beach terror attack, Jimmy Lai's verdict, and the Vanity Fair whitehouse article.

Read along with us:

Weekly event recap: 1. What we know about the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting (Tom McArthur, Emily Atkinson, and Malu Cursino, BBC), 2. Former Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai convicted in landmark national security trial (Kanis Leung, AP News), 3. Vanity Fair Goes to the White House: Trump 2.0 Edition (Mark Guiducci, Vanity Fair)

Hegseth's appointment: 1. The New Yorker: Pete Hegseth forced out of veterans’ advocacy groups over misconduct allegations (Eric Bradner, CNN), 2. Pete Hegseth sworn in as US defence secretary after tie-breaking vote (Ana Faguy and Ben Hatton, BBC), 3. Hegseth confirmed as Trump’s defense secretary in tie-breaking vote despite turmoil over his conduct (Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri, AP News)

Hegseth and Signalgate: 1. Pentagon report finds Hegseth's Signal chat could have endangered U.S. service members, sources say (James LaPorta, CBS News/ Face the Nation), 2. Hegseth's Signal chat put U.S. personnel at risk, Pentagon watchdog finds (PBS NewsHour ), 3. Pentagon chief Hegseth shared sensitive Yemen war plans in second Signal chat, source says (Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart, Reuters)

Boats and Warcrimes: 1. Pentagon won’t release full video of Caribbean strike that killed two people, Hegseth says (Chris Stein, The Guardian), 2. US military carried out second strike killing survivors on a suspected drug boat that had already been attacked, sources say (Natasha Bertrand, CNN)

Firing top military lawyers: 1. In Pursuit of a ‘Warrior Ethos,’ Hegseth Targets Military’s Top Lawyers (Greg Jaffe, New York Times), 2. Hegseth says he fired the top military lawyers because they weren’t well suited for the jobs (Lolita C. Baldor, AP News)

The hosts reflect on the news story that most impacted Hanna in the year 2025: the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

This week, Amanda and Hanna are tackling: Trump raging against South American druglords while pardoning one, Google’s release of Nano Banana PRO and what it means for the future of visual journalism, and Oxford’s entry to the “word-of-the-year” arena.

Read along with us!

Trump pardons former Honduran President: 1. Trump formally pardons former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (Kaitlan Collins and Maria Santana, CNN), 2. What was Honduras ex-president convicted of and why has Trump pardoned him? (Nadine Yousif, BBC), 3. Hegeseth under fire as ‘war crimes’ allegations mount (ABC7)

Nano Banana Pro's release: 1. Google’s Nano Banana Pro is raising concerns over realistic AI image generation (NBC news), 2. Nano Banana Pro Is Here: All the Changes in Google's Popular AI Image Tool (Katelyn, CNET), 3. Hands On With Google’s Nano Banana Pro Image Generator (Reese Rogers , WIRED), 4. Google’s Nano Banana Bro makes ultrarealistic AI images. It scares the hell out of me. (Katelyn Chedraoui, CNET)

Oxford's "word of the year": 1. Don't get angry, but the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year is 'rage bait' (Ivy Buck, NPR), 2. 'Rage bait' named Oxford word of the year 2025 (Noor Nanji, BBC)

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda are going over the latest updates on the war in Ukraine, the seemingly never-ending escandalo surrounding former president of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and finally, a bit about "free birthing": a dangerous trend promoting pregnancy without any prenatal care and birth without any medical assistance.

Read along with us!

Ukraine and the proposed "peace plan": 1. Russia-Ukraine ‘peace plan’: What’s the latest version after US-Kyiv talks? (Al Jazeera Staff and AP, Al Jazeera), 2. Putin doubles down on demands for Ukrainian territory ahead of talks with US in Moscow (Laura Gozzi, BBC)

Bolsonaro's conviction: 1. Ex-President Bolsonaro starts serving 27-year sentence for Brazil coup plot (Ricardo Brito and Luciana Novaes Magalhaes, Reuters)

Free birthing: 1. Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world (Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne, The Guardian)

This week, Amanda and Hanna are tackling: the Cloudflare outage and what (if anything) it means, a New York Times opinion debate that blamed women for “ruining the workplace”, and finally what it says about 2025 that Cambridge's “word of the year” is PARASOCIAL.

Read along with us:

Cloudflare outage: 1. Cloudflare Outage Disrupts X, ChatGPT and Thousands of Sites (Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly, Observer), 2. Why It Feels Like Your Favorite Websites Keep Going Down (Lisa Eadicicco, CNN)

Did women ruin workplaces?: 1. Opinion | Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace? (Ross Douthat and Victoria Chamberlin, The New York Times) , 2. Women of Vanity Fair Consider Ross Douthat’s Question: Did Women Ruin the Workplace? (Vanity Fair)

Word of the year: 1. Parasocial - that one-sided feeling you really know a celebrity - is Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year (Sky News), 2. Cambridge Dictionary’s 2025 Word of the Year: ‘Parasocial’ - an ‘unhealthy’ modern phenomenon (David Mouriquand, EuroNews)

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda are talking about the AI bubble (whether such a bubble exists, and if it does, whether it'll burst?), the political and economic situation in Argentina right now, and finally, the future of mushrooms as the computer hardware of the future.

Read along with us:

Chekov's AI bubble:

Argentina's economic situation:

Mushroom computing:

This week, hosts Amanda and Hanna are discussing the lack of discussion on the Sudanese civil war and the upsetting satellite footage of the carnage, missing food assistance as the U.S. government shutdown becomes the longest in history, and one last bit of good news about plastics in the ocean.

Read along with us:

The Sudanese civil war: 1. A simple guide to what is happening in Sudan (Natasha Booty & Farouk Chothia, BBC), 2. Sudan civil war spiralling out of control, UN secretary general says (Patrick Wintour, The Guardian), 3. Blood spilled in Sudan can be seen from space. Nobody can feign ignorance about what’s going on (Nesrine Malik, The Guardian opinion column)

The U.S. Government Shutdown: 1.Why the U.S. government has shut down and what happens now (Anthony Zurcher and Natalie Sherman, BBC), 2. Government Shutdown Becomes Longest Ever, Breaks First Trump Term Record (Jenna Sundel, Newsweek), 3. Trump’s gold sign outside Oval Office prompts backlash (Dani Anguiano, The Guardian)

Plastic-eating bacteria in the seas: 1. A race to develop plastic-eating bacteria (Scott Carpenter, Forbes, March 2021), 2. Plastic-eating bacteria discovered in the ocean (Science Daily, compiled from KAUST research paper)

Hanna and Amanda finally get around to talking about all the drug boat operations the Trump administration has been carrying out since early September. Also on the docket is the world's failure to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre‑industrial levels, and what that means for the future.

This week, hosts Amanda and Hanna are looking at the many news stories that both dominated and seemed to fly under the radar in the last week, despite being... pretty big news? They'll discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan's latest ceasefire, what happened at the Louvre on the same day, and what Amazon Web Services are and why the blackout made Amanda so nervous. (No, it's not just about her Duolingo streak)

Read along with us!

Afghanistan-Pakistan ceasefire: 1. Pakistan and Afghanistan agree to immediate ceasefire after peace talks in Doha (Asif Shahzad, Mohammad Yunus Yawar and Mushtaq Ali, Reuters), 2. Pakistan and Afghanistan agree to new ceasefire after more than a week of deadly clashes (Lex Harvey and Masoud Popalzai, CNN)

The Louvre theft: 1. Stolen Louvre Jewelry Worth Over $100 Million, Paris Prosecutor Says (Ségolène Le Stradic, NYT), 2. The Louvre’s new must-see? The broken window smashed by thieves in €88m jewel heist (Jon Henley, The Guardian), 3. BBC Live coverage of Louvre director’s legislative interview (BBC team)

AWS blackout and consequences: 1. You thought Monday’s internet outage was bad? Just wait (Claire Duffy, CNN), 2. AWS outage: Are we relying too much on US big tech? (Liv McMahon, BBC), 3. What we know about Amazon's AWS outage and why it was such a big deal (Dannielle Maguire, ABC)

This week Hanna and Amanda discuss Japan, where Sanae Takaichi just won the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election and is on track to become their first female prime minister, as well as what’s been going on with EVA Airlines here in Taiwan.

Read along with us:

Japan’s new PM: 1. Sanae Takaichi set to become Japan's first female prime minister (Shaimaa Khalil, BBC), 2. Global Gender Gap Report 2024 (Kusum Kali Pal, Kim Piaget, Saadia Zahidi, and Silja Baller, World Economic Forum), 3. Takaichi’s ascent and Taiwan (Huynh Tam Sang and Truong Tuan Kiet, Taipei Times), 4. What Takaichi means for Taiwan (Rath Wang 王健智, Taipei Times)

EVA’s potential overwork case: 1. EVA investigating flight attendant’s death after sickness on board ( Hollie Younger, Taipei Times & CNA), 2. EVA investigating death of flight crew who fell ill on duty (Staff writer, Taipei Times and CNA), 3. Taiwan Labor Minister Hung vows tougher penalties after EVA Air crew death

(Filip Leskovsky, Rti English)