RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/August 2024

August 2024[edit]

64

WSJ: "The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis."

-64

1 in 10 minors say their friends use A.I. to generate nudes of other kids, survey finds.

72

X-formerly-Twitter ordered to be blocked in Brazil.

52

Israel's intelligence agencies have been targeting and blackmailing, often by posing as potential partners, queer Palestinians into becoming informants by threatening to expose their sexualities to their friends and families. One man describes being arrested and beaten by Israeli soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint for having Grindr on his phone.

32

LGB Alliance has reported a halving in donations this year from last year, leaving them with a deficit of more than £100 000.

30

Ahead of the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, supermarket chain Edeka [roughly equivalent to Kroger or Tesco] has posted an anti-AfD advert saying, "Why blue is not an option at Edeka”.

17

Israel alleges they found documents showing Hamas falsified survey data to make themselves and the Oct. 7 attack appear significantly more popular with Gazans than they really were. The pollster who oversaw the surveys in question denies this, but says he "will investigate all claims".

25

Kroger executive tells Federal Trade Commission the company gouged prices above general inflation, on some items, with specific examples being milk and eggs.

30

Some US police departments now using AI (specifically, a version of OpenAI's GPT-4 model) to generate police reports. According to "legal and civil rights experts" and also just the basic common sense of anyone who knows the flaws in these tools, it might just be a horrible idea.

35

Texas megachurch pastor fired for unspecified "moral issue". In June, the church's founder (Trump's former "faith adviser") resigned after admitting to child molestation. However, the church says there's no connection between the two cases, whatever it is.

-1

Children as young as 13 are being arrested and beaten as dictator Nicolás Maduro continues crackdown after vote fraud.

-23

The pro-Russian governing Georgian Dream has proposed making the dominate Georgian Orthodox Church the official state church of Georgia.

-18

Latvia’s defence minister Andris Sprūds wants to expand the draft to women by 2028.

19

The British government is looking at extending the ban on smoking in public places to include outside areas of pubs and restaurants.

28

Trump and his team probably violated federal law by using Arlington National Cemetery for campaign purposes. Also, a US Army spokesperson has confirmed that Trump's aides "pushed aside" one of their employees who tried to inform Trump of this fact.

4

Macron rejected the left alliance's preferred prime minister Lucie Castets, so France still doesn't have a definitive government. This comes after Macron's centrist coalition lost to a leftist alliance, which secured the most seats in parliament but just fell short of a majority.

27

More woes for Musk, as the Brazilian Supreme Court threatens to block Xitter in Brazil unless the platform appoints a local representative, as X closed its office in the country. This is because of an ongoing investigation into fake news and criminal activity on the platform.

20

Meta (Facebook) hired former Ron DeSantis adviser and Project 2025 employee Dustin Carmack.

28

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has reindicted Donald Trump on four felony charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

27

Zuckerberg says Biden's administration was wrong to pressure Meta née Facebook into removing COVID misinformation, and vows the social media giant will push back if it faces such requests again.

24

Contemporary historian Anthony Seldon has revealed in his new book that Liz Truss was planning as far as stopping all NHS cancer treatments to plug the funding gap in her Treasury black hole. He also revealed that Jacob Rees-Mogg was wooed to be the chancellor (finance minister) with abolishment of inheritance tax and having a flat tax, but Truss stopped that.

20

An outlawed separatist movement called Balochistan Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks in southwestern Pakistan that killed more than 40 civilians and warned that the second phase of the attacks would be “even more intense and widespread.”

35

Israel has bombed 40 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in retaliation for rocket attacks.

32

New type of painkiller developed by a US company, that is not an opioid and thus doesn't bring the same risk of addiction to users. That is Suzetrigine, likely to be useful to people with certain chronic pain conditions, or severe allergic reactions to opioid drugs.

25

The Mormon Church has placed new restrictions on transgender members, "grouping them with churchgoers who have committed incest, sexual predatory behavior, sexual violence against children and embezzlement of church funds."

6

The US and ten Latin American countries “categorically reject” the Venezuelan supreme court's decision to confirm the victory of dictator Nicolás Maduro in a sham election.

33

Echoing the Islamophobic atmosphere of the post-9/11 era, a Palestinian-American professor of sociology and activist expressed excitement for the protests at the DNC, and rabid K-Hive members called the feds on her for an innocuous tweet.

31

Yet another diplomat, this time a Brit, resigns to protest Western complicity in the Gazan genocide.

-31

The founder and CEO of the social media app Telegram, the Russian-born, UAE-resident Pavel Durov has been arrested in Paris, France.

43

In the land of freedom, a Surprise, AZ activist is given a surprise arrest at a public meeting for violating a city rule that prohibits criticism of city employees during public meetings. Can someone say "violation of First Amendment rights?" We knew you could.

10

Federal judge rules that Breonna Taylor's boyfriend was responsible for her death and drops charges against the police officers who killed her

56

Palestinian voices are ignored at the DNC as no Palestinian-American speakers were given time slots at the convention.

32

The transphobic lesbian dating app Giggle has lost a case in the Australian Federal Court for breaking the country's Sex Discrimination Act, for refusing a trans woman to use the service.

14

The Fred Phelps of Ireland, queerphobe Enoch Burke, has continued to defy a High Court contempt of court injunction by refusing to stay away from his old school in County Westmeath, in which he insulted the principal and students at the school over a trans student.

34

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has resigned after a jury found him guilty on 16 counts of bribery.

43

More woes for Andrew Tate as a specialist police unit raided his homes in Bucharest, on allegations that he and his brother had sex with and trafficked minors.

27

Canada's railway network looming to grind to a halt due to labor disagreements between workers represented by the Teamsters Union, and the network's two biggest operators.

44