CJReplay

“Making it” means making it in the specifically American climate of cut-throat, unprincipled competition, where good guys not only always end up last but deserve to, where the prize is money and power, and though the price is the loss of character and humanity, few hesitate to pay it. But money and power are the highest good possible for an American to achieve, and to achieve it no holds are barred, all foul means are fair. If you “win” no questions asked. There is only one caveat: don’t get caught.

Looking for the best, most in-depth, most conclusive, etc type of studies/research/data. Can be in any topic and can be from anyone

Short video in link

Judges at the International Court of Justice have ordered Isn'treal to take steps to limit killings and acts of genocide in Gaza and to allow in humanitarian aid, but the court did not insist on a ceasefire.

Microsoft will lay off 8% of the workers at its gaming unit

© Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images

Microsoft is cutting around 1,900 employees in its gaming unit Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer.

The layoffs, which will eliminate around 8% of Microsoft Gaming’s 22,000 staff, are part of a larger “execution plan” that will reduce “areas of overlap,” shortly after the US software giant closed on its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, its largest ever acquisition, the head of the company’s gaming division said.

“It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business,” Spencer wrote in a note.

Microsoft closed its deal for Activision Blizzard, the publisher and developer of several best-selling gaming franchises, in October 2023. The deal boosted the company’s weight in the video-gaming market with popular titles including Call of Duty and Diablo. Experts say the acquisition will help Microsoft compete with industry leader Sony.

Microsoft has recently overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable company with its market cap surpassing $3 trillion on Thursday.

Image link https://www.peoplesworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PBLA980.jpg Ken Bank/PW

The last few years have seen significant momentum towards the goal of making public, people-owned banks a reality in many parts of the country. This is especially true in California. In 2019 the governor of California signed a bill allowing counties and municipalities to establish publica banks.

Two years later, Gov. Newsom signed another bill that appropriates funds for a state commission to analyze the prospects and feasibility to establish a state bank that would also function as a commercial bank to provide personal financial services for residents of California.

Recently the Los Angeles City Council voted to allocate funding for a feasibility study to establish a city-managed public bank. This was a huge step forward to the creation of a public bank for Los Angeles. Though other cities and states have moved forward on proposals for a public bank, so far Los Angeles is the only public community to appropriate funds for that purpose.

The idea of a public bank for Los Angeles was under consideration for some time. In 2018 voters in Los Angeles rejected an amendment to the city charter enabling the creation of a public bank, which was heavily opposed by monopoly capitalists and predatory financiers who spent large sums of money to defeat the amendment. Despite this defeat, supporters of public banking would not give up.

This meant that Los Angeles would not have to rely on a referendum vote to establish a city-managed public bank. With support from grass roots community organizations, the Los Angeles City Council passed a law in 2021 to study the feasibility of setting up a public bank. To continue that effort, the City Council voted recently to appropriate $460,000 for funding additional means toward officially establishing a public bank. In doing so Los Angeles became the first city to actually appropriate funds to enable that effort for public finance to succeed.

The initiative to establish a public bank for Los Angeles was inspired by a report issued last May by the Jain Family Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to applied research for providing funds to public and community improvements. The report emphasizes how a public bank would facilitate providing funds for development and acquisition of affordable housing and public infrastructure.

Operate with municipal deposits

The bank would operate primarily by utilizing municipal deposits, public pension funds, and ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) investment funds to provide ready capital to acquire and support developing residential homes as affordable housing. This process would stimulate the availability of affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods, as well as prevent the commercial corporate banks, predatory developers and vulture capitalists, from buying property to build more expensive homes and community gentrification.

Los Angeles is not the only city in California moving forward to establish a public, municipal bank. The San Francisco City Council also voted unanimously for a law to create a process for setting up a city-owned bank that would be similar to Los Angeles.

The long-term plan would be to pass an ordinance that would facilitate the process for a city-managed corporation to receive public deposits and then invest that money for low-income borrowers and disadvantaged groups, small businesses and community organizations which otherwise would not have access to credit from for-profit commercial banks. Eventually, it is hoped that a municipal bank would be able to offer personal financial services to depositors whose funds would be insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The last few decades have seen an explosion of commercial investment banks which have become so big that only a few banks now control America’s investment capital. They became dominant by taking over smaller community and regional banks which historically were the main source of capital for middle and low income borrowers.

By “redlining” low income neighborhoods and minority communities, these large banks put their investment capital into high income projects that were much more profitable than lending to middle and low income borrowers. Thanks to these large, dominant financial institutions, the rich became even more rich, predatory and vulture capitalist investors became much more wealthy, while poor neighborhoods and communities were left to fend for themselves.

In response to the destructive forces unleashed by predatory, investment capitalism, enabled by the concentration of financial resources among a few large, multinational banks and international financial institutions, activists and progressive political leaders around the world have begun the movement to establish public financial institutions. They are a form of democratic finance, accountable to people and not to vulture investment capitalists seeking to maximize profits at the expense of the poor.

California is not the only state where public banking advocates have been successful. In New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has introduced legislation to establish a state banking option that would be available to local, municipal, county and other government entities to deposit their surplus cash. The funds would then be reinvested in their local communities to stimulate economic activity which would largely benefit the public as well as disadvantaged groups and individuals who were previously unable to access credit for their financial needs. So far, largely due to the effects of the COVID pandemic, progress has been limited mostly to public hearings on the subject.

Across the Delaware River from New Jersey, the City of Philadelphia is also moving forward to establish a public bank. Last year the Philadelphia City Council by a near-unanimous vote established the Philadelphia Public Financial Authority, which would receive deposits from the city’s treasury and reinvest those funds in disadvantaged neighborhoods which had little or no access to credit from private commercial banks.

The likely winner of the November election for Mayor of Philadelphia is Cherelle Parker, who is African-American and the first female to become Mayor. As a member of City Council, Parker voted to establish the PPFA, but so far as the presumed Mayor-elect she has not fully committed herself to provide appropriations which would fund the PPFA’s operation.

Though California leads the way forward to establish public banks, other local and state governments like Philadelphia, New Jersey and elsewhere are pursuing the process for providing public banking services that hopefully will lead to personal financial services to individual, small business, groups and non-profit depositors, and which would be eligible for FDIC deposit insurance.

Ironically, the State of North Dakota already has a public bank, the Bank of North Dakota, that has been in existence for more than a century providing loans and financial credit to farmers, small businesses and community organizations. There is already a successful model for public banking available there that other states and local governments could follow. All that is needed is the political will to do so.

Despite the mammal’s death with her unborn calf, the team believes that IVF methods can save endangered African northern white rhinos

FILE PHOTO. © TONY KARUMBA / AFP

Scientists with the BioRescue research consortium in Kenya have recorded the world’s first pregnancy in a rhino following a successful embryo transfer, potentially paving the way to save Africa’s northern white subspecies from extinction.

The embryo of a southern white rhino, created in vitro from egg cells and sperm, was transferred into a surrogate mother at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy last year, the team said in a statement on Wednesday.

”The BioRescue team confirmed a pregnancy of 70 days with a well-developed 6.4 cm long male embryo,” it announced. However, the mother rhino named Curra and her fetus have died from a bacterial infection.

”It is bitter that this milestone is confirmed under such tragic circumstances with the death of the surrogate Curra and her unborn calf, but I am certain that this proof of concept is a turn of the tide for the survival of the northern white rhino and the health of Central-African ecosystems,” BioRescue project chief Thomas Hildebrandt said.

Fatu and her mother, Najin, are the world’s two remaining northern white rhinos, living on Kenya’s 90,000-acre Ol Pejeta wildlife conservancy, under protection from poaching.

The northern white rhino was pronounced functionally extinct after the last male, Sudan, died in 2018.

Last year, BioRescue announced that five new embryos had been created to rescue the endangered African mammal under the project, funded mainly by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The consortium said 18 eggs had been collected from Fatu and fertilized with sperm from two different bulls to improve genetic diversity. The zygotes were then cryopreserved – a process that keeps them at low temperatures for later transfer to surrogate-identified wild southern white rhino females – as neither Fatu nor Najin are able to carry a pregnancy to full term.

According to the scientists, the next step in the project will be to select and prepare a new teaser bull, which will reveal when potential surrogate mothers can be implanted with embryos.

Chinese tourists pose for photos with the Merlion statue at Marina Bay in Singapore, May 3, 2023. (File photo: Reuters/Edgar Su)

Singapore (VNA) - Singapore and China have agreed to a 30-day mutual visa-free entry for their citizens, which will formally come into force on February 9 - the eve of the Lunar New Year.

As reported by the Channel News Asia, plans for the 30-day mutual visa exemption agreement were announced last December during the two countries’ highest-level annual bilateral forum, which was co-chaired by Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang.

Singaporeans holding ordinary passports can currently enter China without a visa for 15 days for purposes like sightseeing, visiting family and business. China resumed this arrangement in July last year, more than three years after it was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese citizens currently require a visa to enter Singapore.

Between January and November 2023, Singapore welcomed a total of 12.4 million tourists, of which the number of Chinese visitors was just over 1.2 million.

This past Monday heavy rains hit Southern California, triggering dangerous flash flooding and mudslides across the region. Hundreds of people were in need of emergency rescue due to the intensity of the flooding, with many people losing all their belongings.

Image link https://www.wsws.org/asset/012b0c2d-cc5a-483a-a600-88a1f1dacd74?rendition=image1280 Marlene Sanchez-Barriento salvages items behind her home damaged by flooding on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 in San Diego. [AP Photo/Denis Poroy]

Thousands of residents were unaware of the immense danger until the floodwaters entered their homes. Miraculously, no deaths have been reported as of this writing.

Due to the large storm originating in the Western Pacific, San Diego County experienced historic levels of flash flooding. An alarming one inch an hour or more of water was falling in many places across the county, including National City, Point Loma and San Diego.

The airport in San Diego recorded 2.73 inches of rain, breaking the record for the wettest January day in San Diego County ever recorded and the fourth wettest day ever recorded, according to the National Weather Service. The catastrophic flooding provoked multiple emergency declarations by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in San Diego and Ventura counties.

The San Diego River and the Tijuana River overflowed, flooding the nearby communities of Mountain View, Southcrest and Shelltown, as well as multiple highways, which were inundated with several feet of water. In Southcrest, hundreds of families were rescued after a creek overflowed threatening their lives. According to San Diego’s fire department, at least 24 people had been rescued from overrunning rivers, and hundreds more were rescued from flash floods across the county, as well as 30 animals. Even more San Diegans were displaced by the floods, while 1,000 residents were still without power into Tuesday.

Southern California boasts some of the highest rates of homelessness in the country. In San Diego alone, more than 10,000 homeless people are especially vulnerable to intense storms. Normally, the city experiences two inches of rain a month during the winter season.

However, in National City, the storm produced three inches of rain in the span of three hours. The water drainage system in the city failed due to the high volume of water over such a short period of time and inadequate maintenance of drainage systems. Images and videos on social media show cars floating away at the mercy of the floods and entire neighborhoods severely flooded.

Link to Twitter/Nitter video of flood https://nitter.net/i/status/1749548699146162320

According to San Diego County Sheriff’s Lt. Zee Sanchez, water flooded into homes in the Spring Valley and Casa de Oro neighborhoods, prompting rescue efforts. Other residents were forced to escape by walking through waist-high water carrying their children and pets to safety.

Insultingly, insurance corporations are refusing to cover or assist families who lost their homes to floods. In a region that historically has had very little rainfall, very few residents have flood insurance.

According to the mayor of San Diego, Todd Gloria (Democrat), early conservative estimates of damages from the floods and mudslides are $6 million, but that is likely to rise. The devastation by unpredictably heavy rainfall that coastal cities are prone to, particularly with the oceans warming due to climate change, coupled with the sheer scale of damage to infrastructure and homes, calls into question San Diego’s current building codes.

The devastating storm and floods came with little warning to residents, who had to flee for their lives completely unprepared. While doing a tour of the immense damage left by the storm Tuesday morning, Mayor Gloria attempted to block any political blame for the devastation, telling Fox 5, “We knew it was going to rain, but no one told us that we were going to get four inches of rain right here in Point Loma. … What that did was overwhelm our city’s stormwater drainage system to the point where we see an extraordinary amount of flooding all across the city, but particularly impacted our southeastern communities that today are now cleaning out and cleaning out for many days to come.”

While it may be true that unprecedented weather events, particularly in a coastal city, can be difficult to anticipate, this does not explain why there is not adequate infrastructure being built to deal with more intense storms as they are expected to increase in Southern California.

It is no secret that one of the trends of climate change is an increased intensity of storms in the Southwest of the United States. Last August, Hurricane Hilary swept through Southern California and devastated much of the state’s southeastern desert regions. Hurricane Hilary started as a tropical storm but quickly strengthened to a Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

As the latest catastrophe demonstrates, San Diego’s severely outdated water drainage system is in urgent need of repair and maintenance that have not been allocated by the city’s budget. While the city neglects infrastructure maintenance, over half a billion dollars was appropriated to the police department last year.

Other parts of California also suffered from the extreme weather. In the town of Guerneville, north of San Francisco, four inches of rain within 24 hours caused a creek to overflow, forcing the closure of schools Monday. In the mountains around Lake Tahoe in Northern California, the storm is expected to bring up to a foot of snow, as well as 60 mph winds, prompting an avalanche warning through Tuesday morning.

These events are part of an international trend of chaotic and dangerous weather patterns, which are increasing in frequency due to climate change. Last month, there was record-breaking torrential rain in northwestern Queensland, Australia which provoked mass flooding and landslides. Earlier this month, an arctic blast which affected almost every state in the US and exposed 231 million Americans to dangerously cold conditions, resulted in numerous deaths. The tragic consequences of these weather disasters expose the ruling class’s criminal failure to make and maintain safe public infrastructure.

Total household energy debt in the UK has reached nearly $3.8 billion and continues to grow, according to Citizens Advice

© Getty Images / coldsnowstorm

More than 1.4 million people in the UK have been disconnected from the energy grid since November as consumers struggle to pay their bills this winter, according to new research by state-funded Citizens Advice.

Published on Tuesday, the study shows that over 3 million people have been cut off from energy in the last year because they could not afford to top up their prepayment meter. The average energy debt had increased to £1,835 ($2,332) by the end of 2023, up from £1,579 a year earlier. As the total energy debt pile – currently at £2.9 billion – continues to rise, it is weighing down millions of consumers and risks becoming unsustainable for the sector, the researchers warned.

Data shows that over 5 million people live in homes with an energy debt, and are at greater risk as a result of actions to reduce costs, including turning off the heating or skipping meals.

“The rest of winter looks set to be even worse, with prices rising 5% this month and colder weather seeing typical household energy usage reach its highest point,” Citizens Advice wrote. “We estimate that over 2 million people will disconnect because they can’t afford to top up by the end of winter.”

The report comes as the energy price cap in Britain has risen this month. With the situation predicted to ease somewhat from April, bills will still be 40% higher than they were in 2021, Citizens Advice wrote. “We risk an annual winter crisis unless action is taken to help those struggling most,” the report warned.

Germany's rail network has been brought to a standstill after the country's leading train drivers union launched a six-day-strike as part of a long-running pay dispute.

The decision marks the longest strike in the history of state rail firm Deutsche Bahn and comes after months of shorter bouts of industrial action.

Passengers are being warned of major disruption, with thousands of services being cancelled across the country's high-speed, intercity, regional and metro networks. Affected ticket holders are being given the option to rebook with no penalty or a full refund.

The strike, which began at 2am local time on Wednesday morning is expected to last until Monday evening, follows intense negotiations between union leaders and Deutsche Bahn's management over salary increases for drivers.

With platforms largely empty at key rail hubs in Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich, passengers were left scrambling trying to find alternative means of transportation.

"I'm a little frustrated because trains which were announced as running this morning as part of the emergency schedule at the end never arrived. It's annoying but I have to live with it," said stranded passenger Torsten Ilgenstein.

"Six days is exaggerated, quite honestly. Especially in the current situation, we don't need a six-day train strike," said Andrea Kretschmer.

More pay, less hours

Drivers are asking for higher salaries to compensate for rising inflation, and to have their working hours reduced from 38 to 35 a week with no loss of wages.

Executives from Deutsche Bahn have criticised the demands.

"This six-day GdL strike is the longest in Deutsche Bahn's history. We tried to avert it up to the very last moment but the GdL refused and escalated the situation. There are currently massive restrictions to train services across the country," said company spokesperson Anja Broeker.

GdL union leader Claus Weselsky told German broadcaster ARD defended the disruption, saying the current offers put on the table by the rail company weren't adequate.

"We have to strike longer and harder because the railway management is resistant to advice," he said.

"Sand in the gears"

Freight train drivers have also joined the strike, with analysts warning disruption to the logistics sector could spell trouble for Europe's biggest economy.

"The strike itself will not trigger a recession, but it will throw sand in the gears of an engine that is not running smoothly anyway. And all of us know that we are currently facing a number of burdens. We really don't need this on top," said Michael Groemling, an economist with the Cologne Institute for Economic Research.

The management of Deutsche Bahn has also sharpened its rhetoric against the union about the impact its decisions are having on the economy.

"This six-day GdL strike has massive implications on the economy. If you will, the GdL is also on strike against the economy in Germany and Europe. Cancellations can already be felt in European freight traffic and as far as the economic impact is concerned, we must count on it being massive," said Broeker.

BEIJING, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- By the end of 2023, all pre-roll advertisements had been removed from China's cable TV and Internet Protocol TV services as the result of a targeted campaign, according to an inter-agency meeting on Tuesday.

The ongoing campaign aims to tackle unreasonable TV fees and streamline TV services for the benefit of audiences, said the meeting, which was held by authorities including the National Radio and Television Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the State Administration for Market Regulation.

In over four months, the initial phase of the campaign also led to an average reduction of more than 50 percent in various TV package fees, and audience-friendly upgrades to TV home screens, navigation, fee-charging services and applications, according to the meeting.