Tiktok Shop
TikTok Shop allows users to buy and sell products without leaving the app. The sales platform combines entertainment and retail, making it particularly popular among Gen Z buyers, and it continues to grow. It has over 500,000 sellers in the US, including brands like L’Oréal, PacSun and Scrub Daddy.TikTok Shop raked in $100 million in
UN talks on global drought
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification released a report earlier this week warning that if global warming trends continue, nearly five billion people — including in most of Europe, parts of the western U.S., Brazil, eastern Asia and central Africa — will be affected by the drying of Earth’s lands by the end of
Mystery drones flying over New Jersey
President-elect Donald J. Trump is urging that the government shoot down the mystery drones that have been flying over New Jersey unless they can say say who is operating the crafts.New Jersey has seen an alarming number of drones flying overhead since mid-November, including near Trump’ home at his golf club in Bedminster. There have
Russia Strike Ukraine Energy Infrastructure
Russia has repeatedly attempted to cripple Ukraine’s electricity system in an effort to break the will of civilians left in the dark with no running water or heating and to disrupt Ukrainian defense manufacturing. Around half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been destroyed during the war, and rolling electricity blackouts are common and widespread. Russia
Moldova Declares Energy Emergency
Moldova’s Parliament has voted to impose a state of emergency in the country’s energy sector, bracing for potential disruptions to its natural gas supplies from Russia this winter.The state of emergency grants the government the power to implement urgent measures to manage risks posed by a potential energy crisis, particularly if Moscow fails to provide
Blinken trip to Iraq
Blinken’s meeting with the Iraqi prime minister comes days after the top US military commander for the Middle East visited “for an assessment of the D-ISIS mission inside Iraq and Syria.” Two top State Department officials were also in Baghdad ahead of Blinken’s visit.Blinken met with Sudani for more than an hour in Baghdad the
Israel to stay on peak of Mount Hermon during winter
Israel’s defence minister has instructed troops to prepare to stay for winter on peak of Mount Hermon, which sits on the border between Syria, Lebanon border and a UN demilitarised buffer zone in the Golan Heights. The announcement comes after Israel seized control of the zone on 8 December after the fall of Syrian President
Black-box forgetting
The capabilities of large-scale pre-trained AI models have recently skyrocketed, as demonstrated by large-scale vision-language models like CLIP or ChatGPT. These typical generalist models can perform reasonably well in tasks covering a large variety of fields, which has paved the way for their widespread adoption by the public. Pretrained large-scale AI models need to ‘forget’
Chinese hackers Inside America Telecommunication Networks
Officials say a Chinese hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon compromised at least eight of America’s telecoms networks. The intruders stole the call-record metadata of a “large number” of Americans. They gained access to the wiretap requests of security agencies meaning they could work out if any Chinese spies or agents were under American surveillance. And
NATO to increase Military spending
NATO countries are committed to spending at least 2% of GDP on defense but several, including Italy and Spain, have fallen short. This year, Poland has led the alliance on defense, spending 4.12% of GDP followed by Estonia at 3.43%, and the US at 3.38%. NATO members may increase their defense spending to 3% of