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Editor’s Note: Please remember this report stemming from Italy comes from N earlier time zone!
- European farmers have found themselves in an extremely unfriendly environment with canceled diesel fuel subsidies, an influx of cheap grain from Ukraine, and new regulations that have seriously limited their space for maneuver. Protesting French farmers are gradually ending their blockade around Paris and nationwide following the government’s announcement of over €400 million in measures to address their concerns about low earnings, strict regulations, and unfair competition from abroad, AP News reports. Tractor convoys started leaving the sites as the farmers dismantled tents and cleared barricades under police supervision.
- Tens of millions of dollars have been flowing from Epstein’s estate into this Virgin Islands account since his alleged suicide. To make matters even more suspicious, the account was nearly cleaned out by the beginning of 2020 with no clear explanation of where the money went. The news that somebody has been using Epstein’s bank account since his death has added credibility to rumors that the disgraced associate of multiple VIP elites is still alive. The account was opened by Epstein in the Virgin Islands in 2014 and was reportedly intended to be used for a “dynamic international banking firm” that he planned to develop. On his application, Epstein said that he wanted to pursue the “dynamic discipline of international banking.” Meanwhile, on that same application he glossed over his very serious criminal history and his status as a registered sex offender, saying that he dealt with a previous legal challenge but the case was discontinued. The New York Times reported that the bank had $693,157 in assets when Epstein died back in August but received roughly $12.9 million in the months afterwards. The account was cleared out and left with just under a half-million dollars around the first of the year. When questioned by Judge Carolyn Hermon-Purcell, the lawyers for Epstein’s estate said that the payments were made “in error,” but the judge was not satisfied with the explanation and demanded that the lawyers provide a full accounting of the payments made from the estate.
- A team of researchers at the University of Chicago released a research paper outlining “Nightshade,” a data poisoning technique aimed at disrupting the training process for AI models, reports MIT Technology Review and VentureBeat. The goal is to help visual artists and publishers protect their work from being used to train generative AI image synthesis models, such as Midjourney, DALL-E 3, and Stable Diffusion. The open source “poison pill” tool (as the University of Chicago’s press department calls it) alters images in ways invisible to the human eye that can corrupt an AI model’s training process. Many image synthesis models, with notable exceptions of those from Adobe and Getty Images, largely use data sets of images scraped from the web without artist permission, which includes copyrighted material. Some research institutions, like the University of California Berkeley Library, have argued for preserving data scraping as fair use in AI training for research and education purposes. While Glaze is oriented toward obfuscating the style of the artwork, Nightshade goes a step further by corrupting the training data. Essentially, it tricks AI models into misidentifying objects within the images.
- The Georgia prosecutor trying former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat acknowledged on Friday having a personal relationship with another lawyer on the criminal case but denied it tainted the prosecution. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in a court filing said claims that threatened to upend her office’s historic prosecution had “no merit.” Trump and two co-defendants dismiss the charges, alleging Willis benefited financially from an “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, a lawyer she hired to help lead the investigation. The former president wrote on his Truth Social network: ‘Fani Willis, the D.A. of Fulton County, just admitted to having a sexual relationship with the Prosecutor she, in consultation with the White House and DOJ, appointed to “GET PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.” ‘By going after the most high level person, and the Republican Nominee, she was able to get her “lover” much more money, almost a Million Dollars, than she would be able to get for the prosecution of any other person or individual. THAT MEANS THAT THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!’
- An army of marauding monkeys in a Thai town are forcing businesses to shut and tourists and shoppers to flee. The town of Lopburi, around 90 miles north of the capital Bangkok, is well-known for its monkey population which brings tourists from around the world. But the town which had a bustling local economy is now in danger of becoming a ghost town as 3,500 simian monkeys have taken over. The town’s monkeys are well loved – locals even hold an annual festival to honour them, but now companies and small businesses have shut their shops and tourists stay away.
- About halfway through this wildly enjoyable delve into Roman military history, you see an eerie object: a cuirass, a piece of torso-fitting armour that looks too big, as if it were created for a giant. It makes you think the legions that dominated so much of Europe, north Africa and the Middle East two millennia ago must have been full of truly invincible men. The Romans lived as if planning to be remembered. They did history consummately, building their empire, losing their republic, throwing up monsters of emperors, provoking rebels and messiahs, even producing some of the world’s greatest historians from the myth-making Livy to the bitterly truthful Tacitus to tell their story. So when you walk into this perfectly laid out, satisfyingly stuffed blockbuster in the British Museum’s epic exhibition space, part of the pleasure is the instant recognition. Whether your images of ancient Rome’s army come from Andrea Mantegna’s Renaissance masterpiece The Triumphs of Caesar or the battle in the woods at the beginning of Gladiator where Russell Crowe gives the order to “Unleash hell!”, you will find the Rome you’re thinking of here. ~ theguardian.com
- American journalist Tucker Carlson has spent several days in Russia and even took in a ballet performance at the iconic Bolshoi Theatre, Telegram channel Mash. Carlson allegedly touched down at Vnukovo airport on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul on Thursday after several hours’ delay, according to the channel. Since then he was also spotted taking in the ballet Spartacus at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. It was not known what business the conservative commentator had in Russia. However, rumors of his intention to interview President Vladimir Putin have been circulating since last year.
- Asylum seekers in Germany will cease receiving cash payments during the course of this year, and will be issued special debit cards instead, the governor of Hesse, Boris Rhein, has announced. The cards will reportedly have limited functionality, with features like free cash withdrawal and transfers to recipients inside and outside of Germany disabled. A number of municipalities across the country have introduced the new payment method ahead of nation-wide implementation. These include several communities in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Thuringia. Bild reported last month that at least 15 asylum seekers left their localities after Thuringian authorities imposed the new protocols.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has branded Ukrainian neo-Nazis as “scum,” recalling the crimes they committed against the local population of Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. The president made the remarks at the ‘Everything for Victory’ forum in Tula on Friday. During the event, Putin said that the actions of the Ukrainian military clearly show that Moscow is indeed fighting modern Nazis, merely used by their Western “masters” as a “tool to fight Russia.” Among other things, the president recalled the atrocities committed by Ukrainian forces against the local population after their offensive push in Kharkov Region and subsequent withdrawal in late 2022. “It pains me to talk about this now, but I’ll say it anyway. When our units left Kharkov Region, we knew what was going on there, what these scum were doing. Only neo-Nazis can do this. That’s what it’s all about, that’s what we’re dealing with,” the president stated.
- PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is among a handful of tech billionaires bankrolling the Enhanced Games, a privately-funded sporting contest that encourages doping and transhumanist-inspired upgrades, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the official account for the Games on Tuesday. Venture capitalist Christian Angermayer and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan were also named as contributors to the Games’ “investors’ circle.” The funding round yielded enough capital to pay for the first edition of the Games, founder and Australian venture capitalist Aron D’Souza told the New York Post on Thursday. However, D’Souza declined to reveal the absolute total raised, merely stating that it was in the “high single-digit millions.” Thiel reportedly plans to provide more details regarding his investment in April and will promote the Games during the ‘real’ Olympics in Paris in July. The Palantir CEO is himself an avid doper, taking human growth hormone and metformin for muscle-building and anti-aging purposes, respectively, and hopes to be cryogenically frozen before death.
- The decision by a Finnish museum to change the stated nationality of 19th-century Russian artist Ilya Repin to ‘Ukrainian’ “runs counter to common sense,” Moscow’s diplomatic mission in the Nordic country has said. Last week, local media reported that the Ateneum Art Museum had changed the description of the artist after being contacted by Ukrainian activists. In March 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York also started listing the renowned realist as Ukrainian. Around the same time, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands began describing one of the pioneers of the Suprematist art movement, Kazimir Malevich, as “born in Ukraine to parents of Polish origin” as opposed to “Russian.” In a statement released on Thursday, the Russian Embassy in Finland said it was surprised to learn about the Ateneum’s decision, which was simply based on the fact that Repin was born “on territory that Ukraine now considers its own.”
- Total gold demand hit the highest level on record last year of 4,899 tons amid global uncertainty and thanks to continued strong buying by central banks, according to the World Gold Council (WGC). The WGC report highlighted that global gold jewelry consumption was steady in 2023 – at 2,092 tons – due to a 17% post-Covid increase in demand in China and despite high gold prices. Meanwhile, purchases of gold bars and coins declined by 3% as European demand continued to tumble. The report also showed that global gold exchange traded funds (ETFs) saw a third consecutive annual outflow in 2023, shedding 244 tons. According to the WGC, annual mine production last year increased to 3,644 tons, but fell short of the 2018 record.
- Ukraine is going through a crisis in civil-military relations which will have a tremendous impact on how it goes forward regarding the ongoing conflict with Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly summoned the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valerie Zaluzhny, to a meeting on Monday, January 29, 2024, where he informed his military commander that he was being relived from his position. According to accounts that have appeared in western media, Zaluzhny refused to step down. As of Friday, February 2, 2024, the precise status of General Zaluzhny remains uncertain amid a swirl of rumors regarding his imminent dismissal. In the case of disputes between the civil and military leadership, civilian authority retains supreme authority.
- While New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has been complaining about “extremely painful” budget cuts, and warned that the flood of migrants thanks to the Biden administration’s open-border policies “will destroy New York City,” somehow – somehow, Adams’ administration has found it in the budget to allocate $53 million towards handing out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families living in Big Apple hotels, the NY Post reports. The cards can only be used at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores — and migrants must sign an affidavit swearing they will only spend the funds on food and baby supplies or they will be kicked out of the program. In response to New York City’s program to take care of illegal migrants before their own homeless population, rapper 50 cent took to Instagram to tell his 31 million followers he might vote for Trump…
- The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already proven itself adept at peering into the past by imaging objects at tremendous distances, but a new breakthrough may have seen the powerful instrument act almost like a scientific crystal ball, staring into the far future of the solar system. The JWST performed its prognostication when it made a possible rare direct direction of two extrasolar planets, or “exoplanets,” orbiting two different dead stars, or “white dwarfs.” Not only do the planets strongly resemble solar system gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, but the white dwarfs also serve as analogs to the sun’s destiny. When the sun transforms into a white dwarf itself, the change will likely destroy the inner solar system planets — all the way out to Jupiter.
- Astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole in Earth’s cosmic backyard as it blasts out jets of matter at near-light speeds. These outflows tell the tale of a battle for supremacy between magnetism and gravity. The discovery could help scientists better understand how black holes feed on matter and eject powerful jets that extend far beyond their host galaxies. The team of astronomers made the observations of the heart of the radio galaxy 3C 84, also known as Perseus A, a region powered by a feeding supermassive black hole, using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT, a global array of linked-up radio dishes, produced the first images of a black hole ever seen by humanity.
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