Weekly News Bites #005 | China's spy balloon, gender clinic whistleblower, and Google makes a mistake
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Weekly News Bites #005 | China's spy balloon, gender clinic whistleblower, and Google makes a mistake
Nibbles of news while you nibble on your toast
Hi friend!
I have created a new section in the newsletter called Censorship bites. Considering that it is a big topic of discussion and the government and institutions show no signs of easing up, I thought it merited a section to bring attention to censorship news.
A reminder, if you want daily news and culture breakdowns, follow me on Instagram. I publish breaking news and live updates in my stories. And don’t forget to turn on notifications because Instagram loves to hide me.
Ok, that is enough. Time for some news bites!
Biden’s second State of the Union was contentious. Tuesday night, President Biden gave his second annual State of the Union speech in front of Congress – amid Americans’ economic struggle and division among the members of his own party.
In a recent poll, most Democrats say they don't want him running in the 2024 election, and his approval rating has been below 45% for over a year and a half.
Biden promised a unifying speech – it started friendly at first with some banter with Kevin McCarthy, but it quickly became more divisive.
Biden didn't shy away from bringing up the Capitol riots of January 6th, labeling it as one of the most destructive incidents for American democracy since the Civil War. He also blamed Republicans for holding the economy hostage due to their opposition to raising the debt ceiling. In addition, he categorized the attack on Paul Pelosi as an act of political violence, blaming Republican claims regarding the 2020 Presidential Election for the attack.
Biden said, “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans [...] want Social Security and Medicare to sunset.” Boos from the Republicans followed the comment, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene yelled, “Liar,” in response to Biden’s false remarks.
Former Twitter execs testify before the House Oversight Committee, admitting they made a mistake suppressing the NY Post Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Officials managing the social media platform built blacklists, prevented disfavored tweets from trending, and limited the visibility of entire accounts and trending topics without telling users. Lawmakers questioned former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker, and former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth about their decisions to censor information that may have impacted the outcome of the 2020 election.
They refute the GOP's claims that Twitter's decision was politically motivated. Democrats maintain that Twitter was heading to the FBI's security alerts, while Republicans insist Big Tech has partnered with the Left to suppress conservative voices.
The U.S. Senate held its first public hearing on the Chinese spy balloon Thursday. The hearing was part of a series of events Thursday morning in Congress, all related to the spy balloon. In the House, a resolution condemning “the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon” passed unanimously, 419-0. The vote took place shortly after House members were briefed on the balloon and the associated recovery efforts by defense and intelligence reps. Later in the day, the full Senate got its own classified briefing about it.
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China confirmed that it was the source of a balloon detected over Latin America. Beijing described the balloon as an unmanned research airship that had drifted off course due to bad weather. The same explanation was given for the balloon spotted over the U.S. Pentagon officials characterized it as part of an alleged Chinese surveillance fleet. Latin American governments were pretty indifferent when China shared the news - not surprising since they're already looking to strengthen their relationship with Beijing by increasing trade ties.
The Nord Stream pipeline was sabotaged on Sept. 30, 2022, and a short time later, the U.S. government speculated it that Russia was the culprit. Although it was the U.S. that stood most to benefit, and Biden had said seven months before that if Russia were to invade Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will put an end to it.
China balloon could collect intelligence signals. According to a US official, pictures taken from the U2 spy planes clearly showed that the Chinese balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries.
Another official said that some of the recovered equipment components had English writing or markings on them. Still, it wasn’t clear if they were American parts or from another English-speaking country.
Biden administration considers declaring abortion emergency. The Biden administration is considering using a public health emergency to make abortions more accessible for women. This move follows Biden's commitment last week to do what he can to stop pro-life states from limiting the sale of abortion pills.
Google rolls out AI feature to compete with Microsoft. Google unveiled Bard, its much-anticipated rival to ChatGPT, and began a marketing blitz to prepare the public for its full rollout in the coming weeks.
Bard is going up against OpenAI's ChatGPT and a revamped Bing search engine from Microsoft and Edge web browser with artificial intelligence, the company said on Tuesday, in one of its biggest efforts yet to lead a new wave of technology and reshape how people gather information. Working with the startup OpenAI, Microsoft is aiming to leapfrog its Silicon Valley rival and potentially claim vast returns from tools generally that speed up content creation, automating tasks, if not jobs themselves.
But the announcement went sideways for Google when an error was discovered, costing them $100bn off market value by providing an incorrect answer in an official advert.
Migrants bus out of NYC for Canada with taxpayer-funded bus tickets. NYC is taking new steps to deal with the surge in migrants by bussing them to other cities, including some in Canada. This plan could be helpful in alleviating the crisis. The National Guard is working with the Port Authority Bus Terminal to get aliens free tickets and get them on their way. Those tickets then take them to Plattsburgh, New York. There, the people them would get on a van ride to within steps of the border. They then cross the border and are picked up by Mounties for processing. Beforehand, they rip up the asylum papers that they had from the U.S.
James O’Keefe was on paid leave this week by Project Veritas board members. Timcast obtained a copy of the letter sent to the Project Veritas Board of Directors, Project Veritas Action, and the organization’s executive management. The 11-page document contained anonymous reports and stories about a specific behavior that seriously handicaps the staff's ability to accomplish their goal.
The group’s letter was ostensibly instigated after O’Keefe allegedly publicly berated Chief Strategy Officer Barry Hinckley and Chief Financial Officer Tom O’Hara on Jan. 31. Hinckley and O’Hara were terminated on Jan. 2.
Today, a law firm representing a large group of significant PV donors sent a cease and desist demand letter to the Board of Directors.
Project Veritas will reportedly decide at a meeting today if it will permanently remove its founder.
WHISTLEBLOWER DOCS: FBI rescinds memo citing Southern Poverty Law Center on ‘Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.’ On Thursday, The Daily Signal uncovered an FBI whistleblower's document, which showed that the FBI's Richmond office had cited the Southern Poverty Law Center in an intel bulletin, despite previously known guidelines on the SPLC's validity.
After the document was exposed, the FBI rescinded the report on “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.” Former FBI agents condemned the document for citing the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning organization infamous for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups” and comparing them to KKK groups.
State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media. In the wake of the government announcing a now-defunct “Disinformation Governance Board,” the federal government has taken a different strategy. The Department of State has funded a foreign-owned organization that's trying to keep tabs on "disinformation" and suppress conservative media. This could be costing these news outlets valuable ad revenue.
The group identified that the 10 "riskiest" news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
Meme creator facing a decade in prison over social media posts. Douglass Mackey, the creator of the Twitter account “Ricki Vaughn,” is accused of creating memes that disseminated false voting instructions to manipulate the election. He is facing charges that could result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years due to some posts the Department of Justice under Biden has labeled as affecting the 2016 election.
Bethany Hamilton says she won’t compete in surfing competitions against biological men. The announcement was in response to the World Surf League allowing trans people to compete. Hamilton, who lost her arm due to a shark attack, continues to receive backlash, including, I’m “root[ing] for the shark.”
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The battle over state trans laws heats up. Trans rights are a hot-button issue right now, and the debate has reached Oklahoma. This week, trans activists showed up to the capitol to protest the bills restricting medical treatments for minors.
Matt Walsh testified before a committee hearing in support of a bill banning child mutilation in Tennessee. A Democrat on the committee asked what qualifies me to speak on the subject. His response left the Democrats speechless.
U.S. companies pay a premium for migrant workers in a tight labor market. More and more migrants are finding work in the U.S. quicker than ever before, plus they're getting paid well and have better working conditions than ever before. It seems that migrant workers are being compensated just as much as other US workers. Despite a few industries slowly improving, businesses still have a tough time looking for people to do hourly wage jobs. Many small businesses struggle to find enough native-born and naturalized workers, so they now have to pay more to hire migrant workers.
Disney to cut 7,000 jobs, totaling $5.5 billion in costs. Newly reinstated CEO Robert Iger to give more power to the company’s content execs and emphasize sports media more. In his first earnings call since returning as CEO, Mr. Iger outlined plans to significantly change Disney’s slate of movies and TV shows, reinstate a dividend and possibly overhaul streaming-services pricing, among other things. For its latest quarter, Disney reported a narrower streaming loss but a decline in Disney+ subscribers.
U.S. trade deficit hit a record high in 2022. The trade gap skyrocketed 12.2% to $948.1 billion in 2022 as global demand weakened. American exports dropped to a 10-month low in Dec 2022 as the U.S. turned increasingly to foreign imports.
Pfizer R&D director Jordon Walker admits Covid vaccines affect women’s menstrual cycles, even though we were told: “it was in our heads." In a Project Veritas video, Walker also admits that Pfizer is developing mRNA for a "whole list of things."
The U.K.’s National Health Service is falling apart. In the government-run healthcare system, people suffering heart attacks or strokes wait well over an hour for an ambulance. Hospitals are so congested that they're even refusing to take in patients. Over 7 million people in England are waiting on NHS hospital treatments like hip replacements - that's more than 10% left waiting. Compounding the NHS’s problems, nurses and paramedics are now staging the biggest strike in its history to protest their pay.
The NHS situation is just a glimpse of the bigger picture in developed nations, and costs will continue to rise because people are living longer. The U.K. has already invested up to $17 billion to fix NHS and care services, but it'll take time, according to its CEO.
As of Friday, the death toll tops 21,000 in Turkey and Syria. The deadly 7.8-magnitude quake hit earlier this week in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border, followed by a 7.5-magnitude quake hours later and dozens of powerful aftershocks. Voices of survivors go quiet in the wreckage as search-and-rescue workers battle freezing temps, limited resources, and blocked roads.
China now has more intercontinental ballistic missiles than the U.S. Congress was informed by the U.S. military that China has significantly increased its ground-based ballistic missiles, posing a challenge to the U.S.'s nuclear power.
The UK considers sending fighting jets to Ukraine amid Zelenskyy’s England visit. The U.S. is cautious about sending fighter jets and more aggressive weapons since that can spark a full-on conflict with Russia.
J.K. Rowling critics and trans activists try to cancel 'Hogwarts Legacy' players. "Hogwarts Legacy," a video game based on the "Harry Potter" novels, has gotten immense criticism from J.K. Rowling's critics and the trans community.
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Activists are now attempting to cancel people who have bought and played the game. Including creating a website to track down streamers who have played the game.
Armie Hammer breaks his silence. Two years after the MeToo allegations, including a cannibalistic fetish that damaged his career, the actor is finally breaking his silence and sharing his version of the story. Airmail received a lot of backlash for “platforming” Hammer and has since responded with an article defending the decision.