The Super Bowl is not just the single biggest football game of the season. It is also one of the biggest cultural events in the United States and will have a significant portion of the country tuning in whether they are football fans or not.The halftime show, commercials and celebrities make it an event that even the most casual of viewers want to watch. When it comes to the latter point, it is hard to ignore the presence of pop icon Taylor Swift and what will surely be another appearance as she continues to support Kansas City Chiefs tight end…
Author: Team_Benjamin Franklin Institute
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it was laying off dozens of workers in its communications and sustainability departments, and earlier this month, the company let go of 200 employees from its North America stores team. It’s only the beginning.In September, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company would be eliminating excess layers of middle management by the end of March. Now, a leaked Amazon Web Services (AWS) sales team guidelines document, obtained by Business Insider on Thursday, sheds light on how those middle-manager cuts will happen.The document tells AWS sales managers to increase their number of direct reports, pause…
The urge to scratch an itch may have evolved for a reason, but we have struggled to pinpoint whyCavan Images/Alamy Forget what your parents told you, scratching an itch may be good for you, by boosting your body’s defence against bacteria. Scratching is a paradoxical phenomenon. It can feel nice to run your nails over an itchy bit of skin, which hints that there is an evolutionary reason we get pleasure from doing it, and yet it can also aggravate eczema and rashes or reopen a wound. To dig into this dichotomy, Dan Kaplan at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,…
Hamas released eight hostages, including three Israelis and five Thais, on Thursday as part of a hostage-for-prisoner exchange, more than a year after they were taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.Agam Berger, an Israeli army soldier, was released first in a highly choreographed ceremony in northern Gaza. A second hostage release in southern Gaza descended into chaos as crowds pushed forward to try to get a glimpse of them.The hostage release is part of a 42-day cease-fire deal that went into effect this month, pausing the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Hamas agreed…
Investors worried about how much money big technology companies are spending on artificial intelligence did not get much relief from Microsoft when it reported its latest financial results on Wednesday.In its most recent quarter, which ended on Dec. 31, Microsoft kept up its rapid drive to build data centers to power cloud computing and artificial intelligence. It spent $22.6 billion on capital expenses, almost twice as much as a year earlier.Microsoft has said it would spend around $80 billion in data centers this fiscal year, which ends in June. It is sprinting because it has said it does not have…
This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters hereGood morning. In today’s newsletter: OpenAI’s IP theft concernsA deadly stampede in IndiaThe threat of ‘a demographic suicide’OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property.The San Francisco-based ChatGPT maker told the FT it had seen some evidence of “distillation”, which…
Credit: Paul Brennan via Wikimedia Following months of speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding mysterious drone sightings up and down the East Coast, the White House confirms they flew with federal government authorization. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, addressed the sightings during a press briefing on Tuesday, confirming that drones flown around the eastern seaboard late last year, specifically New Jersey, had been “authorized to be flown by the FAA.” The press secretary quashed concerns that the sightings were attributed to foreign adversaries. “This was not the enemy,” she said. “After research and study, the drones that were flying…
The Rihanna Navy is calling out their beloved idol for her alleged decision to support her beau A$AP Rocky amid his legal drama.Displeased fans voiced their concerns on social media after reports claimed the “Breakin’ Dishes” hitmaker would attend her lover’s upcoming trial. The news did not sit right with many who saw the rapper as a stain on their goddess’ record.Although Rihanna and A$AP Rocky have been turning heads as a power couple in the entertainment industry, many still wish the Barbadian beauty would level up her lover. Critics’ concerns have since skyrocketed as they worry about how the…
BEIJING: China called on Washington and Moscow on Tuesday (Jan 28) to “further reduce” their nuclear arsenals as a precondition for its participation in potential disarmament talks called for by US President Donald Trump. Trump said in a video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week that “we’d like to see denuclearisation”, and reiterated his desire for three-way talks with Russia and China. The day after Trump’s Davos address, Russia said it wanted to resume bilateral nuclear disarmament talks “as soon as possible”, and that “the ball is in the Americans’ court”. The former Cold War rivals…
Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza, as well as severe restrictions it imposed on the flow of humanitarian aid and Israeli forces’ attacks on health facilities and targeting of healthcare workers, have led to “life-threatening danger” for pregnant women and babies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a new report. Despite the ongoing ceasefire, the precarious conditions under which women in Gaza are giving birth are unlikely to improve, the group noted in the report published on Tuesday, as Israeli legislation targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and taking effect this week is expected…