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IMPORTANT
|  | Gassed Up | OPEC+ Cuts Production as Energy Market Braces Oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia, including Russia, announced their biggest production cut in two years. The organization will reduce output by 2 million barrels per day leading to shortage and inflation fears. U.S. President Joe Biden is unhappy with the development, worrying that it may impact efforts to curb oil revenue in Russia and lead to higher prices for Americans. “It’s clear that Opec+ is aligning with Russia with today’s announcement,” White House spokesperson Karin Jean-Pierre said. The announcement follows the president’s controversial visit to Jeddah in July in an effort to mend relations amid the energy crisis. (Sources: Reuters, The Guardian) |
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|  | Tragedy | More Than 30 Killed in Rare Massacre at Thai Preschool The gunman, identified as a former police officer, entered a child care center in northeastern Thailand’s Nong Bua Lamphu Province, opening fire and attacking with knives. Local authorities say at least 22 of the confirmed dead are children. Two teachers and a responding police officer were also killed in the attack, a regional public affairs spokesperson said. The suspect fled the scene and a manhunt was launched before he killed himself, his wife and their child, said the Central Investigation Bureau. Shootings of this scale are rare in Thailand, despite relatively high gun ownership and illegal weapons, compared to elsewhere in Southeast Asia. (Sources: Reuters, AP, CNA) |
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| | |  | Keep Dreaming | DACA Future Cloudy After Court Upholds Challenge The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — widely considered among the country’s most conservative courts — upheld a previous decision passed down from a lower court last year to end the program. The Obama-era program is designed to help young people who entered the U.S. as children find their way to citizenship. Nearly 600,000 “Dreamers” will be able to keep their current status, which enables them to hold jobs and a social security number, but new enrollments will be put on hold. Biden pointed to Republican state officials’ “continued efforts” to end the program and strip recipients of their protections. (Sources: Reuters, NYT) |
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|  | House of Shards | Truss Faces Battering at Conservative Party Conference U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss has failed to find respite from criticism over her economic plan even among her own at this week’s Conservative Party conference. “These are stormy days,” she told Tory cadres at the four-day meeting in Birmingham in an attempt to unite the fracturing party behind her in the name of economic growth. Bright Blue, an internal think tank, warned Truss of her “amateurism and amorality” shortly after her speech at the conference. “She really must listen to her parliamentary colleagues and the wider public,” Bright Blue CEO Ryan Shorthouse said, adding that supporting Britons is the No. 1 priority. (Sources: The Guardian, Independent) |
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|  | Briefly | Here are some things you should know about today: Raid. A 21-year-old Palestinian man was killed and two journalists shot during an Israeli military raid on the West Bank, Palestinian authorities said Wednesday. Israel alleges the dead man was shooting at Defense Forces personnel. (Source: CNN) Get out. The European Parliament’s dominant conservative wing is facing calls to ditch former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi if he supports far-right politician Giorgia Meloni in leading Italy. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party is currently backing Meloni. (Source: Politico) Deadly. The World Health Organization has issued a warning in Gambia after 66 children died, saying the deaths may be linked to an Indian-made cough syrup. (Source: QZ) |
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INTRIGUING
| | | Ch-ch-Changes | Feel Like a Different Person Since the Pandemic? You probably are — but it may be for the worse. That’s the finding from a new study headed up by Angelina Sutin at the Florida State University College of Medicine. The researchers compared surveys in the months before the pandemic, during the early lockdown days of 2020 and finally from this year and last. Results show that in the first year there was actually a decrease in neuroticism, a trait researchers connect to stress. Later in the pandemic that finding shifted dramatically: Researchers discovered a huge drop in social adaptability and trust as well as creativity, especially in younger people. Sound familiar? (Source: NPR) |
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| | | Walled In | Cracks in China’s Great Firewall Patched Ahead of Conference At least 100 users told GFW Report, a censorship-monitoring report hosted on GitHub, that their usual tricks for circumventing China’s infamous internet censorship have failed since the start of the week. It comes as the Chinese Communist Party prepares for its mammoth congress, held every five years, to set the future agenda and reshuffle leadership. Most users hoping to scale the firewall use retail VPN services, leaving them exposed to investigative authorities, while more tech-savvy users design their own ways to bypass. China leads the world in blocking VPN services, with 200 of the apps unavailable in Chinese stores. (Source: TechCrunch) |
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| | | | | Jinkees! | It’s Official: Scooby-Doo Smartie is Gay “OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY,” one enthusiastic fan tweeted. Velma, the bespectacled brains of the bunch, has long been read as a queer woman. Writer James Gunn revealed how he’d hoped to make Velma visibly queer but was knocked back for his two live-action films, while actress Hayley Kiyoko, who played Velma in 2009 and 2010, said she always wondered if producers knew she is queer when they cast her. Innuendo and subtext no more: In a clip of the new film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, Velma blushes and her iconic glasses fog up as she meets new character Coco Diablo. (Sources: Variety, ET) |
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| | | Letter of the Law | You’re In! You’re Out: 4,000 Mistakenly Admitted to Northeastern Law For LaKisha Papoutsakis, a single mother looking for a flexible study schedule, acceptance into Northeastern’s prestigious law program — and a merit scholarship — was a dream come true. “I was over the moon,” she said. But the website to pay her deposit was down and, five hours later, she received an email from the university admitting she’d been erroneously advised of her acceptance. Papoutsakis wasn’t the only one. Northeastern later revealed that the email was sent to 200 current applicants as well as almost 4,000 people who applied last year. “After such a detailed acceptance, ‘sorry’ isn’t going to cut it,” she said. (Source: Boston.com) |
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| | | Served Cold | Is Victory the Best Defense for Accused Chess Cheater? Hans Niemann, 19, is “not going to back down” from a cheating scandal that has engulfed the usually discreet world of competitive chess. World champion Magnus Carlsen accused the young American challenger of cheating during a tournament last month, a claim Niemann strenuously denies. Still, the furor raised suspicions about Niemann’s online games, prompting an investigation by Chess.com, which found it was “likely” he had cheated in at least 100 games. “This game is a message to everyone,” Niemann said after downing 15-year-old grandmaster Christopher Yoo at the U.S. Championships on Wednesday. “You can leave it to your own interpretation.” (Source: BBC) |
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