Life in Late Stage Capitalism
“It’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.”
– Slavoj Žižek
2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019
2024
- 52,529 guns once owned by U.S. police departments have been later used in crimes, new data finds:
Many of the police agencies that resold or traded in their weapons were the same ones who routinely hold gun buyback events they say are aimed at reducing the number of guns on the street.
The Philadelphia Police Department boasts on its website of having collected 825 guns in buybacks since 2021.
But records obtained in the CBS News investigation show the agency resold at least 886 of its officers’ former duty guns over the past two decades.
- Thousands of tonnes of waste have been left on Mount Everest over the years – and more keeps piling up, despite clean-up efforts:
It’s unclear just how much rubbish had been dumped on Nepal’s mountains, though those working in the sector estimate it to be in the thousands of tonnes. In 2019, the Nepal government and local non-profit organisations started the Clean Mountain Campaign, which has collected more than 10 tonnes – or 10,000 kg – of garbage from the Everest region.
- Heart patients forced to wait over a year for treatment in England. Waiting lists are at a record high, almost double since 2020, with heart disease being the largest cause of premature death in deprived areas.
- France imposes state of emergency, bans TikTok in riot-hit colony New Caledonia:
Additional powers under the state of emergency include the possibility of house detention for people deemed a threat to public order and the ability to conduct searches, seize weapons and restrict movements, with possible jail time for violators.
[…]
The state of emergency was announced hours after a French gendarme who was seriously injured during riots in New Caledonia died of his wounds, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, raising the death toll to four.
[…]
The unrest flared after French lawmakers approved a bill extending voting rights in provincial elections to residents arriving from mainland France – a change critics fear could marginalise Indigenous people and benefit pro-France politicians.
- France unable to provide safe drinking water to crisis-hit colony Mayotte:
The number of bottles affected was not revealed, but they are believed to have been distributed to several supermarkets.
An earlier batch of Cristaline bottles was deemed unfit for consumption last January.
Access to drinking water has been severely disrupted on Mayotte since September – with running tap water to homes cut off one day out of every three.
- 14 killed as storm topples huge billboard in India.
- Australian whistleblower who exposed alleged war crimes in Afghanistan sentenced to more than five years in prison for leaking documents:
McBride gave the material to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which in 2017 published a seven-part series called “The Afghan Files,” that detailed a string of alleged war crimes, including the killing of unarmed Afghans by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
- Richest Americans now pay less tax than working class in historical first:
In the 1960s, the 400 richest Americans paid more than half of their income in taxes, according to the Times. By 2018, America’s wealthiest individuals paid just 23 percent of their income in taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom half of income earners paid 24 percent of their income in taxes.
- At least 68 dead in Afghanistan after flash floods caused by unusually heavy seasonal rains.
- Food shortages and malnutrition reach record levels in west and central Africa:
One in 10 people will have difficulty accessing safe and nutritious food in west and central Africa, projections made by organisations including Unicef Oxfam have found.
A survey published this week looks at escalating food and nutrition insecurity in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria.
[…]
The report predicts 52 million people in the area will have difficulty feeding themselves during the upcoming lean season: the interval between harvests from June to August.
- San Francisco programme gives homeless people free booze.
- Flash floods have killed more than 300 people in Afghanistan.
- Rising food costs leave hungry Americans $33 billion behind, report says:
The shortfall is the highest in 20 years when adjusted for inflation and was driven in part by higher food prices, said the report, which analyzed the most recently available data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[…]
Seventeen million households struggled to get enough food in 2022, up from 13.5 million households in 2021, the USDA reported last year.
- Dow Jones closes above 40,000 for first time ever.
- Amazon, Inc. workers say they struggle to afford food and rent, study says:
Fifty-three percent of respondents reported that they’d experienced one or more forms of food insecurity in the prior three months, and 48% experienced one or more forms of housing insecurity. Workers who said they took unpaid time off after getting hurt on the job were more likely to report trouble paying their bills, the researchers found.
- Ukrainian women wanted in factories as men drafted into army:
At ArcelorMittal’s plant in Kryvih Rih, a city in southern Ukraine […], managers say hiring more female workers is a matter of survival for the business. Of its 18,000-strong workforce at the start of the war, some 3,500 men have been mobilised and more are likely to follow this year.
[…]
Military recruiters have deployed a two-pronged approach. They send conscription notices to ArcelorMittal’s head office, which the company is obliged to distribute. In a few cases when spotting managers walked up to them with call-up papers, some workers fled the plant and never returned, said Andrzej Wypych, head of the company’s human resources for Europe.
Recruiters have also begun standing at the entrance to the plant during shift changes, prompting some employees to turn back home and call in sick and potential new recruits to steer clear of the company, said Longobardo.
[…]
Some 151 of the plant’s workers have been killed since 2022 and 38 are missing. “We write at least one obituary every week,” said Tetiana Filiaeva, editor of the plant’s weekly newspaper Metalurg.
- In Ukraine’s west, draft dodgers run, and swim, to avoid the war:
The Romanian authorities say more than 6,000 men have turned up on their side of the Tysa River since Russia’s invasion. Not everyone makes it. The bodies of 22 men have washed up on both banks, said Lt. Lesya Fedorova, a spokeswoman for the Mukachevo border guard unit.
More have most likely drowned, officials say, though their bodies have never been found. The fatalities have earned the river a grim nickname, Death River, though it is hundreds of miles from the violence along the front.
[…]
Last year, the Mukachevo Border Guard Detachment broke up 56 criminal gangs helping Ukrainian men illegally leave the country during wartime, Lieutenant Fedorova said. Prices for help crossing the border, she said, have risen to as much as $10,000 today from $2,000 per person soon after the invasion. Smuggling a backpack of cigarettes, in contrast, pays as little as $200.
- Sharpest increase in U.K. absolute poverty in 30 years, new figures show:
The figure jumped to 12 million in 2022–2023, a rise of 600,000.
This means the rate of absolute poverty in the UK now stands at 18% – a rise of 0.78 percentage points.
- 224 injured after glitchy diabetes app drains insulin pump batteries.
- Tesla Autopilot linked to hundreds of collisions.
- U.S. Labor Board rules Apple, Inc. illegally interrogated staff and confiscated union flyers.
- The U.S. planned to install thousands of E.V. chargers. Only 7 have been built in $7.5 billion investment.
- More than 320,000 American children lost a parent to drug overdoses in a decade.
- New U.S. parents contend with an average of $3,000 of medical debt:
About 12% of the 100 million U.S. adults with health care debt attribute at least some of it to pregnancy or childbirth, according to a KFF poll.
- D.R. Congo accuses Apple, Inc. of using “blood minerals” from war-torn east.
- World’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5 °C above pre-industrial levels this century.
- The world has experienced the hottest April on record, with air and sea surface temperatures remaining more than 1.5 °C higher than the pre-industrial period.
- Egyptian authorities are deporting thousands of Sudanese refugees in secret scheme:
Thousands of Sudanese refugees who escaped to neighbouring Egypt have been detained by Egyptian authorities in a network of secret military bases, and then deported back to their war-torn country often without the chance to claim asylum, an investigation by The New Humanitarian and the Refugees Platform in Egypt has found.
The pushbacks uncovered by reporters contravene refugee conventions that Egypt has ratified, and are being carried out as the EU has pledged billions of dollars to Cairo in exchange for the government curtailing migration to Europe, a deal that critics say could make European countries complicit in the abuses taking place.
[…]
The military bases that reporters geolocated include places where Egyptian rights defenders and critics have died or been disappeared in the past by security agencies. Refugees described facilities with rodent infestations and overflowing sewage. One refugee said they were detained for 70 days in a base and allowed out just once.
- U.S. Federal Aviation Administration investigates Boeing for falsified records on some 787 Dreamliners:
A source familiar with the situation puts the potential number of aircraft involved as approximately 450, including around 60 aircraft still within Boeing’s production system.
- Boeing whistleblower dies following a brief illness, weeks after the suicide of another.
- Kenya and Tanzania face “humanitarian crisis” amid disastrous floods. More than 400 people have been killed and several hundred thousand uprooted from their homes in several countries as floods and mudslides swamp houses, roads and bridges.
- Brazil flooding kills more than 60, displaces 80,000.
- Russia to hold nuclear drills following “threats” from West.
- E.U. lawmakers collectively earn more than €8.6 million a year from outside jobs:
In some cases, they earn more from outside activities than they do from their MEP salary of €10,000 a month, and sit on boards of corporations intimately connected with their day jobs, the study found.
- Many U.S. judges fail to fully disclose free luxury trips:
Federal judges — occasionally with family members or even their dog in tow — traveled to luxury resorts in locations as far-flung as London; Palm Beach, Fla.; Bar Harbor, Maine; and the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park for weeklong seminars. The judges received free rooms, free meals and free money toward travel expenses, together worth a few thousand dollars.
- Rwandan opposition deplores U.K. deportation deal as “modern slavery”.
- U.K. sends first asylum seeker to Rwanda, plans to deport nearly 6,000 migrants this year.
- Global defence budget jumps to record high of $2440 billion.
- A woman from Eritrea was forced to give birth alone in the forested border area between Poland and Belarus:
The woman claimed she had made it into Poland and then been pushed back into Belarus by Polish guards twice in the preceding weeks, despite being heavily pregnant, according to activists who have spoken with her. They added that the fact she was eventually taken in was an exception to the rule.
- Global food insecurity surges as almost 300 million face “acute hunger”, report says.
- Florida inmates charged for prison cells long after incarceration:
It’s called “pay-to-stay”, charging inmates for their prison stay, like a hotel they were forced to book. Florida law says that cost, $50 a day, is based on the person’s sentence. Even if they are released early, paying for a cell they no longer occupy, and regardless of their ability to pay.
Not only can the state bill an inmate the $50 a day even after they are released, Florida can also impose a new bill on the next occupant of that bed, potentially allowing the state to double, triple, or quadruple charge for the same bed.
- Amazon, Inc. grows to over 750,000 robots as world’s second-largest private employer replaces over 100,000 humans.
- Bogota, Columbia, starts rationing water for 9 million people after reservoirs reached “historically low” levels.
- Desert city of Dubai floods as heaviest rainfall in 75 years hits United Arab Emirates.
- Southeast Asia hit by searing heat:
Home to more than 675 million people across 11 countries, the region has seen temperatures reach unprecedented levels – with little respite from merciless heat and humidity, climatologist Maximiliano Herrera told CNN.
Thailand has been worst hit, Herrera said, adding that heat forecasts there have been especially dire. Temperatures across the country had been “breaking non-stop records” for 13 months – and heat and humidity levels were relentless, he said.
- Russian city calls for a mass evacuation due to rising flood waters, at least 100,000 people evacuated.
- Peru’s dengue deaths triple as climate change swells mosquito population.
- Extreme drought in southern Africa triggers hunger crisis for millions:
Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe declared national disasters within weeks of each other after insufficient rains wiped out crops including the staple maize harvest.
[…]
The World Food Programme (WFP) said that some areas had suffered their driest February in 40 years.
As many as 50 million people are facing food insecurity.
- English hospital patients told to bring batteries to appointments for electrocardiograms and blood pressure machines.
- “Pacifist” Japan will soon have the third-largest defence budget in the world after the U.S. and China.
- Poland’s former nationalist government used spyware against nearly 600, official report says.
- World’s coal power capacity rises despite climate warnings:
A report by Global Energy Monitor found that coal power capacity grew by 2% last year, driven by an increase in new coal plants across China and a slowdown of plant closures in Europe and the US.
- World’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade.
- Ibiza locals living in cars as party island sees rents soar:
Rental prices across the Balearic Islands have increased by an average of 18% over the past year alone, compared with a 12% average increase nationwide.
However, Ibiza’s status as a tourism hub situated in a relatively small area has supercharged this phenomenon on the island, leading to much steeper increases, in some cases up to 40 or 50% over the last year alone.
- Half of U.S. homeowners and renters struggle to afford their housing payments, survey found. Roughly 1 in 5 people who struggle to afford housing have skipped meals and/or worked extra hours to help cover costs, while about 1 in 6 have delayed medical care.
- U.S. insurers are spying on homes from the sky:
Nearly every building in the country is being photographed, often without the owner’s knowledge. Companies are deploying drones, manned airplanes and high-altitude balloons to take images of properties. No place is shielded: The industry-funded Geospatial Insurance Consortium has an airplane imagery program it says covers 99% of the U.S. population.
The array of photos is being sorted by computer models to spy out underwriting no-nos, such as damaged roof shingles, yard debris, overhanging tree branches and undeclared swimming pools or trampolines. The red-flagged images are providing insurers with ammunition for nonrenewal notices nationwide.
- The wealth of the 1% just hit a record $44 trillion.
- All billionaires under 30 have inherited their wealth, research finds.
- India’s richest 1% has highest concentration of wealth in decades, study shows.
- Rough sleepers and migrants removed from Paris ahead of Olympics.
- S.W.A.T. team raids innocent family over stolen AirPods dropped on their street.
- A record 21.8% of children in Germany grow up in poverty.
- Most driver’s licence suspensions in Ohio are debt-related:
More than 60 percent of Ohio’s driver’s license suspensions do not stem from bad driving; instead, they arise because the driver owes an unpaid debt. Debt-related suspensions (DRS) could prevent people from getting to work where they could make the money needed to repay the debt.
- Two Nigerian students are killed and 23 injured in a stampede to get donated rice.
- Google ordered to identify who watched certain YouTube videos:
The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos.
- South Africa hit by water supply crisis:
Rand Water Services Ltd., Africa’s biggest bulk-water supplier, […] told three municipalities in the central Gauteng province — Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, which have a combined population of more than 13 million people — that its system was on the verge of collapse. The warning comes after a large swath of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, was left without water for as long as 11 days, with some areas still without supply after lightening struck a pump station.
- Nvidia wants to replace nurses with A.I. for $9 an hour.
- Rio de Janeiro’s heat index hitting 62.3 °C:
The heat index measures what a temperature feels like by taking into account humidity. The actual maximum temperature in the city was 42C on Monday, the Rio Alert weather system said.
- TSMC gets $11.6 billion in U.S. grants, loans for chip plants.
- Intel to receive $8.5 billion in U.S. grants to build chip plants:
In addition to the grants, the federal government is planning to award Intel up to $11 billion in loans on what the company characterized as generous terms. Intel is also expected to claim federal tax credits that could cover 25 percent of the expense of its U.S. expansion projects, which are expected to cost more than $100 billion over five years.
- Record amount of smartphones, televisions and other electrical devices were thrown away in 2022, U.N. warns:
Less than one quarter of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste produced in 2022 was recycled, resulting in heavy metals, plastics and toxic chemicals leaking from junked devices.
[…]
Roughly twice as much e-waste was produced in 2022 compared to 2010 – a weight equivalent to 107,000 of the world’s largest and heaviest passenger jets.
- Only 5% of countries meet W.H.O. recommendations for fine particles in air:
At the other extreme — with the worst air quality due to the presence of these small suspended particles — are Bangladesh, which exceeds the WHO recommendation by more than 15 times, Pakistan (14 times more) and India (10 times more). They are followed by Tajikistan, Burkina Faso, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates […].
- Schools should prepare students for war, German education minister says:
The minister also called for developing a “relaxed” relationship between school students and the armed forces. She suggested that military officers visit schools to explain what “the Bundeswehr does for our security.”
She stressed that she could not understand the resistance to such practice.
- U.S. approves $2.2 billion sale of battle tanks to Bahrain:
Bahrain came under criticism in 2011 when, backed by fellow Sunni kingdom Saudi Arabia, it crushed an uprising led by the Shiite community that demanded a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister.
- Riot police confront austerity protests in Argentina:
The demonstrations were called by representatives of trade unions and other social movements claiming that 40,000 soup kitchens were running out of food to feed struggling families after Milei’s government suspended supplies pending an audit.
[…]
With inflation at over 270% and an estimated 50% of the population in the once prosperous South American country living below the poverty line, Milei wants to reduce state benefits to a minimum and cut subsidies for electricity, gas, water and public transport.
- U.S. senator Lindsey Graham tells Ukraine to draft younger soldiers:
Ukraine’s new mobilization law, which has been under debate for months as Ukraine faces a severe shortage of battle-ready troops, proposes lowering the country’s draft age to 25. […]
“I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27,” he told reporters Monday. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”
- Crack and fentanyl abuse on the rise in Germany.
- U.N. says 5 million at risk of starvation in Sudan:
Noting that some 18 million Sudanese are already facing acute food insecurity – a record during harvest season – UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned in a letter to the Security Council that “almost 5 million people could slip into catastrophic food insecurity in some parts of the country in the coming months.”
He noted that nearly 730,000 Sudanese children – including more than 240,000 in Darfur – are thought to suffer from “severe” malnutrition.
- Haiti healthcare system on verge of collapse as gang warfare rages on:
In the past two weeks hospitals have been set ablaze, doctors murdered and the most basic medical supplies have now dried up. Only a single public hospital in Haiti’s capital now remains operational – and that too is expected to shut its doors soon.
[…]
About half of the Haitian population is going hungry, water and electricity are scarce, and civilians are struck by stray bullets on a daily basis.
At least 15,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the latest wave of gun battles, the UN estimates, bringing the total number of internally displaced people to more than 360,000.
- Food delivery robots are feeding camera footage to the L.A.P.D.
- Argentina’s child poverty rate on track to hit 70%, UNICEF warns.
- U.S. spends billions on roads rather than public transport. New analysis finds money from Biden’s $1.2tn infrastructure bill has overwhelmingly been spent on widening highways for cars.
- U.S. energy industry gas leaks are triple the official figures, study finds:
US oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and compressors are spewing three times the amount of the potent heat-trapping gas methane as the government has determined, causing $9.3bn in yearly climate damage, a new comprehensive study calculates.
- Haiti declares a state of emergency after a massive prison break in the capital.
- Thousands protest Tunisia’s falling living standards.
- U.S. fast-food chain Wendy’s plans to test surge pricing just like Uber.
- Elon Musk’s Vegas tunnel project has been racking up safety violations.
- “Safe” air-quality levels in U.S., U.K. and E.U. still harmful for health, study says.
- A.I. falsely fines Dutch man €380 for using phone while driving.
- Plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals.
- Despite record spending on California law enforcement agencies, crime-solving is at record lows, study finds.
- Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on research and development:
Focusing on drugs from the three companies represented at the hearing (J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb), the Senate report looked at how initial prices for new drugs entering the US market have skyrocketed over the past two decades. The analysis found that from 2004 to 2008, the median launch price of innovative prescription drugs sold by J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb was over $14,000. But, over the past five years, the median launch price was over $238,000.
[…]
In 2022, J&J made $17.9 billion in profits, and its CEO received $27.6 million in compensation. That year, the company spent $17.8 billion on stock buybacks, dividends, and executive compensation, while the company spent just $14.6 billion on R&D, the report states.
[…]
In 2022, Bristol Myers Squibb also spent $3.2 billion more on stock buybacks, dividends, and executive compensation than R&D—$12.7 billion on executives and stockholders compared with $9.5 billion on R&D. That year, the company made $6.3 billion in profits, and its former CEO made $41.4 million in compensation.
- Tumblr and WordPress to sell users’ data to train A.I. tools.
- Reddit signs content licencing deal with A.I. company ahead of I.P.O.
- German credit agency allegedly earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation:
The company appears to be making millions of euros by selling people in Germany their own data. With the help of manipulative designs, people are prevented from obtaining a free copy of their data in accordance with Article 15 GDPR – even though they would actually be legally entitled to it. The company’s primary aim appears to be to profit from people looking for accommodation.
- E.U. policies partly to blame for 3,000 deaths in Mediterranean last year, say rights groups.
- Argentina’s annual inflation soars above 250% in January.
- TotalEnergies posts biggest ever annual profit of almost €20 billion.
- Global temperatures breached critical 1.5 °C warming threshold for first time over 12 month period.
- French ski resorts warned fake snow will only worsen climate impacts:
Faced with warmer conditions, ski resorts rely heavily on artificial snow. Figures from the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion showed that 39 percent of French slopes were covered with manufactured snow during the 2022 season.
The snow’s production has its own carbon footprint, bringing associated energy costs as well as potential conflicts over water allocation. Making the snow itself will also become harder as temperatures continue to rise.
- Lyft shares surge 60% after accidentally added extra zero to a key profitability metric in earnings report.
- Inflation has sent German pay back to 2016 levels, study shows.
- U.K. energy prices are inflated by wind farms overestimating power output:
Dozens of British wind farms run by some of Europe’s largest energy companies have routinely overestimated how much power they’ll produce, adding millions of pounds a year to consumers’ electricity bills, according to market records and interviews with power traders.
- Democratic Republic of the Congo hit by worst floods in decades:
More than 300 people have died and 280,000 households in more than half the country have been forced to leave their homes since heavy rains started at the end of November. More than 1,500 schools, 267 health centres, 211 markets and 146 roads have been damaged.
- Prisoners in the U.S. are part of a hidden forced-labour workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands:
They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.
The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.
Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor.
[…]
Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane more than 150 years ago, with some present-day images looking eerily similar to the past.
[…]
[…] [T]he U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China.
[…]
In Alabama, where prisoners are leased out by companies, AP reporters followed inmate transport vans to poultry plants run by Tyson Foods, […] along with a company that supplies beef, chicken and fish to McDonald’s. The vans also stopped at a chicken processor that’s part of a joint-venture with Cargill, which is America’s largest private company. It brought in a record $177 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023 and supplies conglomerates like PepsiCo.
- Beauty chain Sephora hit $10 billion in revenue while workers get cookies to celebrate the milestone.
- German supermarket chain withdraws ad after customer backslash over slogan “For democracy. Against Nazis.”
- Germany’s former top neo-Nazi hunter now being monitored as right-wing extremist:
Hans-Georg Maassen, who until five years ago was responsible for protecting Germany against violent and extremist threats to its democracy, is himself now being monitored by the security agency he ran […].
[…]
[…] [T]he lawyer has become known for his increasingly radical commentary on the supposed threat immigration poses to Germany, becoming a hero to far-right activists including some in the circles surrounding Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, the aristocrat who led a foiled coup attempt in 2022.
[…]
Maassen’s post-BfV career as a far-right icon has been a growing embarrassment to Germany’s security services as they contend with a burgeoning far-right scene that is profiting from a lacklustre economy and stretched public services.
- Argentina police crack down on protests against sweeping economic, social and political reform package:
TV footage showed police firing rubber bullets and water cannons at hundreds of demonstrators opposed to the reform package.
- Spain’s northeast region of Catalonia declared drought emergency:
Reservoirs that serve 6 million people, including the population of Barcelona, are at less than 16 per cent of their capacity, a historic low.
- Berlusconi’s Sardinian estate on sale for €500 million.
- Brussels threatens to hit Hungary’s economy if Viktor Orbán vetoes Ukraine aid:
In a document drawn up by EU officials and seen by the Financial Times, Brussels has outlined a strategy to explicitly target Hungary’s economic weaknesses, imperil its currency and drive a collapse in investor confidence in a bid to hurt “jobs and growth” if Budapest refuses to lift its veto against the aid to Kyiv.
- Romanian far-right leader lays claim on Ukrainian regions, Moldova.
- Hungary far-right would lay claim to neighbouring region if Ukraine loses war.
- U.S. department store chain Macy’s faces lawsuit for using facial recognition to accuse man of robbery he did not commit:
A 61-year-old man has sued Macy’s department store and Sunglass Hut for using a facial recognition system to wrongfully accuse him of robbing their stores at gunpoint. The complainant, Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr., was arrested in October 2023 for the robbery in a Macy’s in the Houston area. While he was detained — until his alibi proved his innocence — Murphy was raped and beaten, according to his lawsuit. If confirmed, this would be the latest case in which facial recognition systems for public security have caused serious errors with sweeping consequences.
- Nearly 25,000 U.S. tech workers were laid off in the first weeks of 2024.
- Property giant China Evergrande ordered to liquidate with debts of $300 billion.
- Escaping poverty in U.K. has become much harder in past two decades, report says:
Publishing its UK poverty report for 2024, it said 6 million of the poorest people – those living in very deep poverty – would need on average to more than double their incomes to move out of hardship.
Its analysis showed the average person in poverty had an income 29% below the poverty line on the latest official figures for 2021-22, up from a gap of 23% in the mid-1990s. […]
For the poorest households – those living in very deep poverty – the average income was 59% below the poverty line, with this gap increasing by about two-thirds over the past 25 years.
- The world’s largest cruise ship sets sail on maiden voyage:
The 365m-long (1,197 ft) Icon of the Seas has 20 decks and can house a maximum of 7,600 passengers. It is owned by Royal Caribbean Group.
[…]
It cost $2bn (£1.6bn) to build and also has more than 40 restaurants, bars and lounges.
- Record number of Americans are homeless amid nationwide surge in rent, report finds:
According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country’s unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.
- Nearly half of Americans have $500 or less in their savings accounts, survey found.
- Nancy Pelosi made $500,000 from her Nvidia bet, doubling her annual government salary in just two months.
- Texas superintendent took out a full-page newspaper ad over school dress code decision:
One particular part of the ad that garnered outrage was when Poole asserted “being an American requires conformity.”
- U.S. National Security Agency buys Americans’ web browsing data without warrant.
- Bodies washed ashore in southern Turkey from a lost migrant ship sailing toward Cyprus from the Lebanese-Syrian coast.
- “Punishment beatings” used at E.U.-backed Greek refugee camps and detention centres, alleges N.G.O.:
[T]he Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) documented dozens of testimonies from individuals who experienced physical abuse in closed camps, police stations, prisons and pre-removal detention centres across the southern European country.
Interviewees reported being violently punished for “making eye contact” with officers, while others said they were beaten for talking while waiting in line to be counted, coughing, and not cleaning their rooms.
[…]
According to the BVMN, violence by staff was frequently concealed, with 45% of respondents saying they were attacked in “hidden spaces”.
- Algorithm denied food to thousands of poor in India’s Telangana:
Initially deployed by the state police to identify criminals, the system is now widely used by the state government to ascertain the eligibility of welfare claimants and to catch welfare fraud.
- More than 70 people killed in Mali gold mine collapse.
- China added more solar panels in 2023 than U.S. did in its entire history.
- Dutch police regularly force people to give up footage from doorbell cameras:
Inquiries by BNR at ten regional police forces, the National Police, and the Public Prosecution Service (OM) showed that requisitioning footage from owners of doorbell cameras is now standard practice. After a crime, police officers walk the neighborhood and check for cameras door to door. Refusing a demand for footage is a punishable offense that can lead to a fine or a prison sentence of up to three months.
- U.N. special rapporteur condemns U.K. crackdown on environmental protest:
A severe crackdown on environmental protest in Britain with “draconian” new laws, excessive restrictions on courtroom evidence and the use of civil injunctions is having a chilling impact on fundamental freedoms, the United Nations special rapporteur has said.
- Fascist salute legal at rallies unless it threatens public order, says Italy’s high court.
- S.U.V.s drive trend for new cars to grow 1 cm wider in U.K. and E.U. every two years, says report:
New cars have become so bloated that half of them are too wide to fit in parking spaces designed to the minimum on-street standards in many countries, the report found. The average width of a new car in the EU and UK passed 180cm in the first half of 2023, having grown an average of 0.5cm each year since 2001.
- Belarus adopts new military doctrine involving nuclear weapons.
- U.K. Army chief says society must prepare for war with Russia.
- Sweden calls population to prepare for war:
Swedish child protection group BRIS said its hotline had been saturated with calls from worried children after the blunt comments on war had spread online, prompting its secretary general Magnus Jagerskog to plead with media to take more care in how they relay news to children.
- U.S. medical centre warns it may deny care to patients making “offensive comments” about race, gender of staff.
- DPD A.I. chatbot swears, calls itself “useless” and criticises delivery firm.
- Medical debt lawsuits in U.S. clog courts as hospitals sue for unpaid medical bills.
- Fujitsu bugs that sent innocent people to prison were known “from the start”.
- Miami Police used Clearview A.I. facial recognition in arrest of homeless man:
Miami police used facial recognition technology to identify a homeless man who refused to give his name to an officer. That man was arrested, but prosecutors quickly dropped the case after determining the officer lacked probable cause for the arrest.
- San Francisco plans to introduce 400 licence plate cameras:
San Francisco’s police chief said the cameras won’t be deployed as part of a mass surveillance operation.
- French N.G.O. warns situation is getting worse for homeless people.
- Ukrainian military is experimenting with psychedelic drug Ibogaine to treat traumatic brain injury and promote battle readiness.
- Americans can no longer afford their cars:
That means that more than 60 percent of American households currently cannot afford to buy a new car, based on Census data. For individuals, the numbers are even worse, with 82 percent of people below the $100,000 line.
- U.K. faces a cost of dying crisis as funeral costs reach record high.
- Canada’s health care crunch has become “horrific and inhumane”, doctors warn:
Jain says Canadians are waiting in emergency departments with serious illnesses for 10 to up to 32 hours. The CMA also reported an approximate 20-hour wait time in some parts of the country. Two Canadian patients have even died this season waiting in an ER at a hospital on Montreal’s south shore.
- World’s richest five men double wealth:
The world’s five wealthiest men have more than doubled their wealth since 2020, while five billion people have been made poorer, according to a new report by British charity Oxfam.
[…]
The combined wealth of the top five richest people in the world – Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg – has increased by $464 billion (€423 billion), or 114%, to $869 billion last year.
It estimated that 148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profits, 52 percent up on 3-year average, allowing hefty pay-outs to shareholders even as millions of workers faced a cost of living crisis as inflation led to wage cuts in real terms.
- Around 30% of those born in Portugal aged between 15 and 39 decided to emigrate.
- Three migrants drown in Rio Grande after Texas blocks Border Patrol from rescue:
A woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass […] as they were attempting to cross the U.S. southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection told TPR that Border Patrol was prevented from deploying lifesaving efforts by agents with Operation Lone Star, the controversial Texas border security initiative.
- Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using “land bridge” for Oceania cargo.
- Greenland startup begins shipping glacier ice to cocktail bars in the United Arab Emirates.
- France to introduce school uniforms in bid to reduce bullying and inequality.
- eBay pays $3m fine for harassment of bloggers critical of the company:
The acts of intimidation included sending live insects, a foetal pig and a funeral wreath to the Steiners’ home in Natick, Massachusetts.
Baugh and his associates also installed a GPS tracking device on the couple’s car and created posts on the website Craigslist inviting sexual encounters at their home, according to the filings.
- Brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane forced to make an emergency landing after mid-flight cabin panel blowout.
- Boeing wants U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air.
- Citigroup plans 20,000 job cuts – about 10% of its global staff – over two years.
- Costa Rica’s murder rate hits record, up 38% from the previous year.
- Ecuador declares state of emergency amid prison chaos:
Ecuador’s prison agency said there were “incidents” […] at six of the country’s overcrowded prisons, where clashes between rival gangs are frequent and have left more than 400 prisoners dead since 2021.
- Norway to allow mining waste to be dumped in fjords.
- Argentina’s inflation hits 211% in 2023, fastest gain in three decades.
- Turkey inflation ends second year near 65%.
- U.S. debt rises above $34 trillion for first time:
The U.S. national debt has eclipsed $34 trillion for the first time, the Treasury Department said […], as persistently large annual deficits continue to add to the federal tab.
Roughly three months after the debt first hit $33 trillion, the new milestone comes as lawmakers brace for fiscal showdowns over spending levels in the new year.
“[E]mancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.”
– Mark Fisher