Eight school staff shot dead in northern Pakistan

There was an attack by an unknown gunman at a school in Pakistan's northern province that has left eight staff dead and two others injured. The attack took place at a local high school at around noon. An investigation is currently in progress, but district police officer, Muhammad Imran, says that he suspects a sectarian angle to the attack since all those attacked were members of the Shia branch of Islam.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/asia/school-shooting-pakistan-intl/index.html

By: Raegan Stinger

Australia to ban recreational vaping in major crackdown on e-cigarettes as teen use soars

 The Australian government will ban e-cigarettes to discourage vaping among teenagers. This is one of Australia's biggest smoking reforms in over a decade. According to the Australian Health Minister, Mark Butler, vaping has become one of the top behavioral problems within high schools and is currently rising at the elementary level. Non-prescription vapes will be banned from importation and will be required to have pharmaceutical packaging. The goal is to discourage younger users from wanting to purchase the product so brightly colored packaging and fun flavors will be restricted. 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/australia/australia-vaping-ban-intl-hnk/index.html

By: Raegan Stinger 

Pranksters posing as Ukraine's president tricked the Fed chair into a phone call -- Sydney Park

The Federal Reserve Chairperson, Jerome Powell, was tricked into a long phone call with Russian pranksters pretending to be Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky, and during this call, he discussed the economic impact of interest rate hikes. Videos of this call were posted on social media; in one video, Powell discusses how the Fed's fast rate hikes in the past year will slow the economy and potentially cause a recession; a Fed spokesperson says that the video appears to have been edited, and they cannot confirm that it is accurate. They also said that no sensitive or confidential information was discussed.

The call was reported to have been the works of two longtime Russian pranksters, Vladimir Kutznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov (Bloomberg News). They have tricked other world leaders into conversations under false pretenses. 

This phone call has been brought to light while the Fed is already under tremendous scrutiny because of its interest hikes, which are intended to cool the economy and slow inflation, but the Fed keeps rates too high for too long, which could result in a recession.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/28/1172681491/pranksters-tricked-fed-chairman-phone-call

--Sydney Park

Hundreds of Evacuees Arrive in Saudi Arabia from Sudan

Due to the battles raging between military factions in Sudan, including in the capital city Khartoum, more than 1800 people have evacuated the country. A commercial ship carried 20 Saudi citizens with the rest of the evacuees being from various European, African, and Asian countries. Although the two military leaders in Sudan have reached several truces, none of them have been followed. Citizens that remained in Sudan face scarce resources and have resorted to looting. 

Link to Article

Joseph Kaminski

Pope Francis Gives Women A Vote

     Since he became pope over a decade ago, Francis has taken a stance that equality should be on the minds of the church. Francis believes that women should have a voice in the Catholic Church and should not only be alter girls and presidents of charities. Although, Francis still doesn't believe women should be deacons or priests. On Wednesday, Francis approved changes to allow women to vote at a meeting of bishops. The meetings will take place starting in October and cover a wide variety of topics ranging from the role of women in the church to LGBTQ+ rights. Still, the amount of women voting will be less than 10%. While the Pope is advancing the rights of women in the church, it's still not allowing women to fully have a voice.

pope-women-vote-bishops-meeting.html

Emily Bartel

Trump zeroes in on a key target of his 'retribution' agenda: Government workers- Hailey Morsovillo

 Trump released proposals to take down a secret cabal of government workers who wield enormous power and work against the republicans. In the proposal it concerns civil servants and excites conservative activists. Another thing they would lose their employment protections, and it would be much easier for a president to fire them.

Sudanese seek refuge from country's fighting as foreigners are being airlifted out -- Sydney Park

In Khartoum, Sudan, foreign governments are airlifting hundreds of their diplomats and citizens from Sudan. Additionally, Sudanese, on Monday, were trying to find almost any way to escape all of the chaos with fears of the country's rival generals battling for power; many citizens who couldn't make a flight work, risked a long and dangerous drive to the northern border in Egypt (traveling 15 hours on land, at their own risk), but there are still many students and citizens stuck in Sudan.

There was even fighting (in Omdurman) through a three-day Muslim holiday (Eid al-Fitr), even though there was tremendous hope for a cease-fire. Over 420 people, including 264 civilians, have been killed, and more than 3,700 have been wounded within nine days of fighting between Sudanese forces and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF say the armed forces have released airstrikes on the neighborhood of Kafouri, and the army did not comment. The violence has affected the main international airport and has destroyed civilian planes and damaged at least one runway; other airports have been put out of operation.

Despite all of the affects on citizens, both sides eased fighting long enough for the international military aircraft to land in the Khartoum in helicopters to evacuate US Embassy personnel. France brought out about 400 people, including citizens from 28 countries, on four flights. Dutch air force flew out many nationalities, including some Dutch, early Monday morning. Germany has brought ore than 300 people out of Jordan. Italy, Spain, Jordan, and Greece have also brought out a total of several hundred people, including their own citizens of those of other countries.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/24/1171584958/sudanese-seek-refuge-from-fighting-sudan

Sydney Park

Australia unveils biggest defense overhaul in decades wih wary eye on China

 Australia has put more into their defense spending and is beginning to shift their focus on to long-range strike capabilities and building other munitions at home. The president says his strategy is to make Australia more self-reliant and prepared. This is coming at a time where China is increasingly rising in power and their assertion of sovereignty over the South China sea has concerned several surrounding nations like Australia. 

Julia Benes

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/23/australia/australia-defense-strategic-review-intl-hnk/index.html

CURRENCIES Calls to move away from the U.S. dollar are growing — but the greenback is still king- Livi Walko

 https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/economic-and-political-factors-behind-acceleration-of-de-dollarization.html

Since 1999, the US dollar has dropped from over 70% foreign exchange reserves to its current status at 58.38% (still the largest percentage).  Countries around the world, specifically those in Asia are calling for further diversification of currency holdings in exchange reserves despite the fact that this might disrupt their foriegn policy in relation to the US, who would suffer at the further decrease of foreign exchange reserves in their currencies, and is currently performing harsh sanctions against Russia along with the freezing of 300 billion dollars of Russia's foreign currency reserves as the Yen overtook the dollar as the most traded currency in Russia.  This signals an ominous future as the exchange reserves are decreasing for in the US dollar's future and those countries that will be impacted by or driving this phenomenon.

U.S. intel agencies may change how they monitor social media, chatrooms after missing leaked U.S. documents for weeks -- Sydney Park

The Biden administration is searching for ways to broaden their scope on how it monitors social media and chat rooms; this is because of how they failed to spot classified Pentagon documents that were circulating online for weeks. This plan of change is only a small instrument of change in a wide variety of options.

The documents were leaked in early March on Discord, but Biden and the Defense Secretary were only briefed about it last week. Some documents may have been leaked as early as January, though. 

The Biden administration is thinking about broadening the scope of websites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement people track.  Because the leaked documents appeared on a website that typically is used for gaming, it is understandable that some intelligence authorities didn't spot the leak. Even though the government has this plan, the intelligence community is trying to figure out how it can scrub platforms like Discord to avoid similar leaks in the future. The government is also questioning whether it should lower the number of people who have access to sensitive, classified information, and the administration has already tightened access to classified information. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/13/us-intel-agencies-may-change-how-they-monitor-social-media-chatrooms-after-missing-leaked-us-documents-for-weeks.html

- Sydney Park

SpaceX's Starship rocket lifts off for inaugural test flight but explodes midair

 The SpaceX starship, which is the most powerful rocket ever built, took off from South Texas, but exploded midair before stage separation. The explosion occurred four minutes after lift off. Although it didn't end in success, it still met multipole objectives set by Starship. 

Julia Benes 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/world/spacex-starship-launch-thursday-scn/index.html

 

India to have more people than China by mid-2023

 According to the United Nations, the population of India is expected to reach 1.4286 billion which would be 2.9 million more than China which is predicted to have a population of  1.4257 billion. This would make the nation of India the most populated country in the world. This shows that the Chinese birth rate is decreasing at an almost alarming rate as it would be decreasing for the first time since the final years of the great leap forward. Although the numbers in India are merely an estimate as the census has not been counted in India since 2011 but the census is looking to return to India in 2024.

- Ryan Lawrence 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65320690

Air Force unit in document leaks case loses intel mission- Hailey Morsovillo

 I read about the Air Force investigating documents that have been leaked. People were wondering why all this amount of data was leaked so easily. Why did no one know about this? How was someone getting into this information so easily? I think all this data being leaked obviously is not good. Especially since these documents are supposed to be very safe and private. And easy someone was able to access this information is a big sign there needs to be security on this data. There needs to be a big change in the security.

FBI Warning About Public Charging

 FBI warns the public about not using public charging no matter where you are. They say hackers are using public charging to take people information from their phones. Just by plugging the charger into your phone, a bunch of data is transferred over without your knowledge. It’s highly recommended to carry your own charger with you.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/12/tech/fbi-public-charging-port-warning/index.html 

2 Chinese Lawmakers Jailed for Speaking Against Chinese Government

Nectar Gan from CNN covers the story of 2 lawmakers being jailed for advocating against anti-humanitarian Chinese laws and policies (subversion). Xu Zhiyong, a Chinese civil rights lawyer states: "A democratic China must be realized in our time...". This statement was shared by his court lawyer briefly after he himself was sentenced to 14 years. Gan also includes Ding Jiaxi, who is a Chinese human rights lawyer. He was been jailed for 12 non-consecutive years for publicly speaking against the Chinese government and leading an activist movement seeking reform. 

Gan highlights the importance of these men to the movement as they're renowned lawyers with knowledge of the Chinese Constitution and know how to lead large groups of people to fight for people's rights. The Chinese government attempted to suppress activists for decades to sustain current authoritarian practices that undermine the human rights of Chinese citizens.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/china/china-lawyers-xu-zhiyong-ding-jiaxi-sentences-intl-hnk/index.html

-Juan Castro

Iran and Nicaragua Discussed Military Cooperation, Leaked Report Says - Arayan Khare

 According to a leaked report, Iran and Nicaragua have discussed the possibility of military cooperation. The report, which was allegedly written by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Defense, outlines a meeting between Iranian and Nicaraguan officials in which they discussed military training and the exchange of military equipment.

The report suggests that Iran is interested in helping Nicaragua develop its military capabilities, and that the two countries have already exchanged military personnel for training purposes. It also suggests that Iran has provided Nicaragua with weapons and equipment in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/world/middleeast/iran-nicaragua-military-cooperation.html

Europe's most powerful nuclear reactor kicks off in Finland

 The newest Power plant after 15 in Europe has finally been built. It was started in 2005 and was supposed to be finished within four years. However because of several technological problems and lawsuits they were unable to proceed.

The completion comes at an important time as power in Europe has been increasing in price due to the war and the sanctions on the Russian Federation.

Link

Robert Szabad

Discord admins describe 'hyperactive kid' who they say helped spread images of classified docs

 Images of documents related to national security  have been recently leaked on the online communication platform, Discord. Interviews from administrators of the Discord server that these documents were initially released on details an account of events in which a discord user different from the initial poster of the documents spread the documents to different Discord servers. From there, they spread to 4chan and Telegram, where the national security secrets were seen by a wider audience. As someone that has used discord servers related to YouTubers, it was very odd reading about the accounts of the dynamics of this discord server, which sounded similar to my own experience, almost suggested s homogenized experience on discord servers.

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/discord-admins-describe-hyperactive-kid-helped-spread-images/story?id=98571516

Rival Sudanese Armies Clashing in Khartoum

 War between two military groups in Sudan has erupted in Khartoum, Sudan's capital city. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of Sudan's military, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, are in a dispute over differing plans for military power and leadership in Sudan. The conflict has resulted in the death of at least 17 civilians and hundreds of injuries. Citizens of Sudan are wishing for peace and stability over a transition in the government, facing a risk for full-scale civil war. 

Link to Article

Joseph Kaminski

Why China's Leader Hasn't Called President of Ukraine - Carter Vance

 For the past thirty years, Ukraine and China have had strong diplomatic ties and enjoyed a beneficial trade relationship. China has been a significant trade partner in barley, corn and arms.  A year ago January, it was noted that they were still on friendly terms and actively engaged.  However, fast forward one year and the president's haven't spoken with the continuing war between Ukraine and Russia.  They do not hold the same value as trade partners as it well known that China and Russia are each others strongest allies.  It is worth noting that China and Ukraine were not just trade partners but good friends as China has a statue in a major park of a Ukrainian poet and have many students studying abroad.  Ukraine is trying to regain China's support knowing they are a key country that can potentially Russia. Article Link

Carter Vance