Author: KnowledgeHippo
Mark Zuckerberg kept the circle of people who knew his thinking small.Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, invited a handful of top policy and communications executives and others to discuss the company’s approach to online speech. He had decided to make sweeping changes after President-elect Donald J. Trump visited Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. Now he needed his officials to translate these changes into policy.In the following weeks, Mr. Zuckerberg and his select team discussed how to do this in Zoom meetings, conference calls and late-night group chats. Some subordinates stole away from family dinners and holidays to work, while Mr.…
In early 1988, British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick found himself drowning in letters from people who believed they had survived an encounter with death.”I floated slowly through a tunnel, not afraid in any way, but looking forward to something,” one man wrote to him. “When it came, I was perfectly at peace and going towards the most wonderful light. Trust me, it was great. No worries, problems or anything, just great.”In another letter, a woman described walking down a country lane and coming across golden gates.”Inside was the most beautiful garden, without lawn, path, or anything, but flowers of every kind,”…
Last August, over a calm Michigan lake, Karl Duesterhaus, 34, of Chicago, encountered an unusual phenomenon: the northern lights, appearing as blurry colors in a brighter-than-usual night sky. It was a cool experience, he said, but he was surprised when he looked at cellphone photos taken the night before.”The colors were much more defined,” he said.Mr. Duesterhaus is not alone in being struck by the difference between the subtle colors captured by the naked eye and the vivid hues that appear in digital photographs. Many travelers, some of whom were lured by these stunning images on social media, are also…
The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia remains open to a meeting between President Vladimir V. Putin and President-elect Donald J. Trump, but that any concrete steps to begin such talks could only be made when Mr. Trump in office on January 20th.Responding to the comments made on Thursday by Mr. Trump, who said Mr. Putin wants to meet him to discuss the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin spokesman confirmed Russia’s long-standing official position that Moscow is ready to talk.”We need mutual desire and political will to engage in dialogue,” Dmitry S. told reporters. Peskov, Kremlin spokesman. “We see that…
When the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates in September, inflation was easing and the labor market was showing some worrying signs of weakness.Three months and a full percentage point of rate cuts later, the opposite is true: the labor market appears to have stabilized, but progress on inflation has stalled.As a result, the central bank is widely expected to halt its campaign for rate cuts at its meeting this month, a message reinforced by Fed officials in a series of speeches this week.”While not my main outlook, I cannot rule out the risk that progress on inflation will continue…
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Friday on the fate of TikTok, the wildly popular video app that Congress says poses a looming threat to the nation’s security.Unless judges intervene before a January 19 deadline set by federal law, the app must be sold or shut down.The law, enacted in April with broad bipartisan support, said urgent action was needed because TikTok’s corporate parent, ByteDance, is effectively controlled by the Chinese government, which could use the app to collect sensitive information about Americans and spreading hidden disinformation.Saying the law violates both First Amendment rights and the rights of its 170…
Richard M. Cohen, an outspoken and award-winning television news producer whose career was ultimately derailed by the ravages of multiple sclerosis, which he wrote about in a best-selling memoir, died Dec. 24 in Sleepy Hollow, New York, a village in Westchester County. It was 76.His wife, former “Today” anchor Meredith Vieira, said he died at a hospital of acute respiratory failure.Mr. Cohen spent more than 20 years in the news industry, working with such luminaries as Ted Koppel at ABC and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather at CBS. But he tackled a different subject when he wrote a memoir —…
Ski patrollers at Park City Mountain in Utah made a triumphant return to the slopes Thursday, after ending a nearly two-week union strike over wages and benefits. The strike brought down the largest U.S. ski resort during a busy holiday season and sparked online outrage about widening economic inequality in rural mountain areas.Late Wednesday, the Park City Professional Ski Patrollers Association ratified a contract with Vail Resorts, which owns Park City and more than 40 other ski areas, that increases the starting pay of ski patrollers and other mountain safety workers $2 an hour, at $23. More experienced patrolmen will…
Venezuela’s popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was briefly arrested by rivals during an anti-government demonstration in Caracas on Thursday, a political aide in X said. But soon she was released. Ms. Machado was “violently intercepted as she was leaving the rally,” her party told X. “Regime troops shot at the motorcycles carrying her.”The country’s autocrat, Nicolas Maduro, is set to be sworn in for a third term as president on Friday.Ms Machado has been living in hiding in Venezuela amid threats of arrest by government officials and this was her first public appearance since August. He had called for…
A New York state appeals court on Thursday rejected a request by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation to dismiss part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit stemming from the spread of misinformation surrounding the 2020 presidential election.The suit, filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company, is on track to go to trial in state court in Manhattan, although the parties could settle the case out of court.Smartmatic sued Fox in February 2021, accusing the media conglomerate of defaming it by mentioning its name among false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election repeatedly aired on Fox News.Fox News agreed in…