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- According to the EU exeuctive’s plan, “all sectors” need to now contribute to the effort – but the previously mandated 30% cut to agricultural production between by 2040 is gone. The revised draft has also excluded a mandate for citizens to make lifestyle changes – such as eating less meat, and a push to end fossil fuel subsidies, Politico reports.
- A submersible studying the underneath of the so-called “doomsday glacier” in Antarctica has gone missing during its latest expedition. The uncrewed underwater vehicle (AUV) named Ran uses sensors to investigate the surrounding water, during sometimes long explorations underneath ice. The submersible where underneath the 200–500 meter (650-1600 feet) thick ice. “This was the second time we took Ran to Thwaites Glacier to document the area under the ice,” Anna Wåhlin, Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, said in a statement.
- A volcanic eruption started on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland on Thursday, February 8, the third to hit the area since December, authorities said. Live video images showed glowing lava oozing out of a fissure illuminating a plume of smoke rising up under the night sky. “At 5:30 this morning an intense seismic activity started north-east of Mount Sylingarfell. Around 30 minutes later, a volcanic eruption started at the site,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said in a statement. IMO added that based on an initial assessment from a flyover by the Coast Guard, the fissure was about two miles long. It occurred in the same area as two previous eruptions – the first on December 18 and the second on January 14 – near the fishing village Grindavik.
- The American press corps will eventually come to terms with the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin granted an interview to independent media host Tucker Carlson, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. However, the initial reactions of some journalists may be attributed to “professional jealousy,” he added. Carlson published the two-hour interview with Putin on Thursday, becoming the first American to have a sit-down with the Russian leader since the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities in February 2022. During a press briefing on Friday, Peskov was asked to comment on what one reporter described as “hysterics” and “panic” in the US.
- Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lashed out at journalist Tucker Carlson for going to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. She warned that there is a “fifth column” in the US supposedly doing Moscow’s bidding. Carlson, a former Fox News host, is known for his contrarian position on the US standoff with Russia and the Ukraine conflict. He was the first American journalist to be granted an interview with Putin since the hostilities flared up in February 2022. ”He’s what’s called a useful idiot,” Clinton told MSNBC host Alex Wagner in an interview broadcast on Wednesday, referring to Carlson. She claimed that Russian media is making fun of him and comparing him to a puppy dog.
- An “elderly” President Joe Biden will not face charges for knowingly taking classified documents when he left the vice presidency in 2017, a prosecutor said on Thursday, opens new tab, drawing a swift rebuke from the president as he seeks reelection. Special Counsel Robert Hur said in a report that he opted against bringing criminal charges following a 15-month investigation because Biden cooperated and would be difficult to convict, describing him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
- Iranian state-backed hackers interrupted TV streaming services in the United Arab Emirates to broadcast a deepfake newsreader delivering a report on the war in Gaza, according to analysts at Microsoft. The tech company said a hacking operation run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, a key branch of the Iranian armed forces, had disrupted streaming platforms in the UAE with an AI-generated news broadcast branded “For Humanity”. According to the Khaleej Times, a UAE-based news service, Dubai residents using a HK1RBOXX set-top box were interrupted in December with a message stating: “We have no choice but to hack to deliver this message to you,” followed by the AI-generated anchor introducing “graphic” footage, as well as a ticker showing the number of people killed and wounded in Gaza so far.
- The names and addresses of thousands of EU drivers were unlawfully accessed by Italian police and shared with the company that collects Ulez penalties on behalf of Transport for London (TfL), investigators believe. The Italian data protection authority is investigating claims by Belgium’s government that an unnamed police department misused official powers to pass the personal details of Belgian drivers to Euro Parking Collections, which is employed by TfL to issue fines to enforce London’s low emission zone (Lez) and ultra-low emission zone. Authorities in the Netherlands and Germany have stated that their databases were also illegally accessed by an agent in Italy in what one Belgium MP has called “the biggest data and privacy breach in EU history”.
- La Cañada Real is a shantytown in the Madrid region of Spain, a linear succession of informal homes along a 14.4 kilometer stretch of the ranchers’ road connecting La Rioja and Ciudad Real. Several thousand residents live there in precarious conditions due to power outages. If we sometimes take a disconsolate look at the slums of countries like India or Brazil, our Old Continent is not exempt from these places defined by the UN as “an overpopulated area, with insufficient access to water, sanitation and where the housing structure is very weak’.
- Italian researchers say that joining the mafia is like entering a cult in which members must leave behind their own identity: “The self is suppressed.” Right from the recruitment process, Italian mafias impose a strict code of conduct on their followers. These strict rules govern their private and public behavior, implying total adherence to the group’s values. These legal and social aspects essentially distinguish organized crime (OC) from ordinary crime. It is not yet known whether these two categories of offenders also present distinctive cognitive traits. A team of researchers studied the frontal lobe cognitive functions of 50 OC mafia prisoners and 50 non-OC prisoners based on the performance of 50 non-prisoner checks. They found that OC members were more likely to exhibit a pathological risk propensity than non-OC prisoners.We interpret this data as the result of the internal dynamics of the mafia groups. Organized crime represents a global threat and identifying the cognitive traits underlying criminal behavior will help develop targeted prevention policies.
- What began as an apparent attempt by the Biden administration to punish Texas over the border dispute turns out to be part of a successful campaign by wealthy donors – including the Rockefeller family – to pressure the government into shifting away from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). As the Wall Street Journal reports, “The Rockefellers, along with other wealthy donors including the philanthropy of Michael Bloomberg, have provided millions of dollars in recent years to front-line environmental groups that are campaigning against fossil-fuel projects, including LNG terminals that have been proposed on the Gulf Coast,” according to anonymous people familiar with the effort, which they claim is four years in the making. ~ Tyler Durden
- After more than four months of a bombing campaign that has killed over 27,000 people in Gaza, Israel’s recent accusations that UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas’ October 7 insurgency led many Western nations to immediately cut critically needed funding. This means the most vulnerable Palestinians – over 2 million people in Gaza, starving and in desperate need of medical care and shelter – will go without support from the UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, when the current funding dries up. According to the UNRWA, this could be by the end of February, and, “not only in Gaza but also across the region.” The UNRWA also supports Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Not coincidentally, the Israeli claims against 13 of the UNRWA’s 13,000 Gaza employees came immediately after the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. While the ICJ did not demand a halt to Israel’s relentless bombing throughout Gaza and firing on Palestinians lining up for food aid, it did order Israel to prevent genocide (which many, myself included, would say Israel has already been committing).
- US billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk has called the US decision to weaponize the dollar a “dumb move”, commenting on social network X (formerly Twitter) on a clip from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson. The Russian president said in his interview with Carlson that one of the grossest strategic mistakes of the US political leadership is the use of the dollar as an instrument of foreign policy struggle. The president added that the dollar is the foundation of the pillars of US power.
- Drinking three cups of tea regularly seems can delay aging, a study published in The Lancet suggest. Researchers from China’s Sichuan University discovered that certain chemical compounds called polyphenols in tea contribute to the effect. The scientists examined data from around 8,000 people in China aged 30 to 79 and about 6,000 volunteers from Britain aged 37 to 73. They gathered details of the volunteers’ food consumption patterns, and told them to record the quantity of tea they consumed.
- One of Saturn’s moons, with a similar appearance to Star Wars Death Star due to its cratered exterior, harbors a subterranean ocean. Analyzing data from the Cassini spacecraft, which circled Saturn between 2004 and 2017, researchers noted minor variations in the orbit of Mimas. Their findings were published in the journal Nature. The patterns of its movement and rotation around Saturn indicate the presence of a nascent ocean within Mimas, one that is currently in a state of development. “If you look at the surface of Mimas, there’s nothing that betrays a subsurface ocean. It’s the most unlikely candidate by far,” said Valery Lainey, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris in France. Mimas is Saturn’s smallest moon, with a radius of less than 123 miles (198 km). The team was surprised to find evidence of water beneath its icy surface, but continued studies of its orbit indicated the possibility of an ocean about 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 km) deep.
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Rose Rambles... 