Gershkovich has lived in Moscow for the past six years as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal focusing his coverage on Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union. He is accredited as a journalist by Russia’s foreign ministry, the Wall Street Journal reported. His last article, published Tuesday, was about the possible forthcoming decline of Russia’s economy. Gershkovich’s arrest comes at a time the Kremlin is cracking down on dissent and criticism during its ongoing war in Ukraine, which the international community has condemned. In September 2022, Russian police arrested 1,300 people at anti-war protests after President Vladimir Putin announced…
Author: Team_Benjamin Franklin Institute
Brazilian authorities have halted the construction of a factory for Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD, saying workers lived in conditions comparable to “slavery”.More than 160 workers have been rescued in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, according to a statement from the Public Labour Prosecutor’s Office (MPT).They were allegedly put in a “degrading” environment and had their passports and salaries withheld by a building company.BYD said in a statement that it had cut ties with the firm involved and remained committed to a “full compliance with Brazilian legislation”.The factory was scheduled to be operational by March 2025, and was set…
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Turkey’s central bank lowered its main interest rate for the first time in almost two years, pointing to slower consumer demand and the currency’s strength for a larger-than-expected cut of 250 basis points.Policymakers lowered the benchmark rate to 47.5 per cent from 50 per cent in the first reduction since February 2023, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pushed for lower borrowing costs to spur economic growth during his re-election campaign. The cut was bigger than the median forecast of a reduction to…
Credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Congress and federal agencies wasted more than $1 trillion of taxpayer money in 2024, according to an analysis published by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, who has long called for fiscal responsibility and the end of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money. Wasting taxpayer money and uncontrolled spending has made the national debt worse, he argues, which this year surpassed $36 trillion. “Americans are paying $892 billion in fiscal year 2024 on Uncle Sam’s credit card,” he said, referring to the interest paid on the national debt. In Paul’s Festivus Report 2024, he says “members…
BAKU: A passenger on the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan told Reuters that there was at least one loud bang as it approached its original destination of Grozny in southern Russia. Flight J2-8243 crashed on Wednesday (Dec 25) in a ball of fire near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian drones. “I thought the plane was going to fall apart,” Subhonkul Rakhimov, one of the passengers, told Reuters from the hospital, adding that he had begun to recite prayers and…
One of those plans was for singer Bruno Mars to perform on their wedding day, but the former couple’s planner revealed that his performance fee would have been an issue.Lopez and Rodriguez eventually separated, paving the way for her to return to her old flame, Ben Affleck, whom she recently filed for divorce from.Article continues below advertisementJennifer Lopez Balked At Bruno Mars’ Performance FeeLopez and Rodriguez’s wedding planner, Marcy Blum, has spilled the tea about their wedding plans.Blum said per Page Six, “We were working with J.Lo and A-Rod before they broke up, and they were going through a list of…
Daniel Chapo says he will be ‘president of all’, calls for ‘non-violence’ after week of protests against vote-rigging.Mozambique’s president-elect has called for “non-violence” and “unity” after widespread rioting this week sparked by his governing party’s contested election win. Daniel Chapo, of the long-governing Frelimo party, said on Friday that he “regretted” the violence, and promised that after his inauguration in mid-January, he would be “the president of all” in the Southern African country, despite opposition claims of widespread vote-rigging. Chapo’s disputed win in October’s election – which was confirmed by Mozambique’s top court on Monday – prompted a week of…
Star forward Jimmy Butler remains in Miami and won’t rejoin the Heat until after they return from their current road trip, the team announced today (via Twitter).That means Butler, who is being listed as out due to return-to-competition reconditioning following an illness, will miss games in Atlanta on Saturday and in Houston on Sunday before rejoining the Heat ahead of Wednesday’s game vs. the Pelicans in Miami. This weekend’s contests will be the fourth and fifth in a row that Butler has missed. According to Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald, the original expectation had been that Butler would travel…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. What if the next wave of entrepreneurs didn’t come from Silicon Valley — but from places you’ve never heard of?AI is tearing down the barriers that once limited innovation, creating a world where anyone, anywhere, can be the next big entrepreneur. I’ve seen it happening already — in cities, villages, and unexpected corners of the globe — and it’s nothing short of extraordinary. This isn’t about billion-dollar venture capital funds or tech giants; it’s about the untapped potential of everyday people armed with powerful tools.We’ve talked about innovation being democratized for years,…
Oops! Try that againTetra Images/Alamy An error in a proof underlying a widely used branch of modern mathematics was accidentally discovered by mathematicians while translating old proofs to a computer language. The mistake was swiftly fixed, but mathematicians say that the episode highlights the importance of making maths computer-readable to catch other possible examples. Most modern mathematics resides in research papers and textbooks, and relies on mathematicians checking each other’s work to make sure it is correct. A proof is essentially a social construct – if enough mathematicians are satisfied that the logical steps of a proof are… Source link