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RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/December 2022
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December 2022[edit]
   | 40 |  The exiled chief rabbi of Russia's Jewish community has said that Jewish people in Russia should leave as soon as they can, in case they are scapegoats for Russia's woes. |
| 35 |  Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95. |
| 102 |    Manosphere grifter Andrew Tate who earlier teased environmental activist Greta Thunberg with his 33 cars, has been arrested in Romania by a specialist organised crime police unit for human trafficking and rape. |
| 34 | Due to an inaccessible healthcare system, the coronavirus pandemic, and other factors, the average life expectancy in the United States has decreased for a second consecutive year. |
| 25 | Putin gives eight golden ‘rings of power’ to CIS leaders, keeping another for himself — sealing their fate along with Sauron |
| -11 |  The Polish government has presented a bill to the lower house which would encourage more rural and older voters to be able to vote, by opening more polling stations in remote villages and offering free transport for pensioners. Sounds good, but these are the most likely people to vote for the governing conservative PiS party. |
| 34 |  The Orthodox Church of Ukraine has offered parishioners the chance to move Christmas from the Russian-aligned Julian calendar date of the 7th January, to the Western-aligned Revised Julian calendar date of the 25th December in a move away from the Russian World .
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| 58 | MSG Entertainment defends using facial recognition scan that flagged girl scout mom as security risk at a music hall. The kicker? She works for a law company suing MSG Entertainment. MSG took facial scans of the lawyers suing them and put it into their systems. People who say "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear" should pay attention to this. This woman had nothing to hide and she still was targeted. |
| 30 | Bytedance has admitted that it has spied on two journalists from Forbes magazine using the TikTok app that is on their phones. |
| 13 |  After intensifying strikes from labor movements working in various economic sectors, the British government has deployed over 1,200 military personnel to engage in strike-breaking activities. |
| 34 |  
The lower chamber of Spain’s parliament has narrowly voted 188 to 150, to allow trans people to self-identify themselves on their ID cards. |
| 22 | 
Holyrood has voted 86 to 39 to allow trans people to self-identify themselves without medical intervention. However, there are reports that Westminster may try to prevent the bill from becoming law. |
| 6 |  Netanyahu secures a coalition agreement, ensuring he will return as Prime Minister atop a collection of far-right parties. Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the radical Jewish Power party, will have extensive authority over the West Bank and the Israeli Defense Forces as the national security minister. Also in government is Avi Maoz of the anti-LGBT Noam party, who wants to ban gay pride events. |
| -26 |  The Taliban has banned all Afghan women from any education past the sixth grade, dispatching security forces to schools and universities to enforce the new law. |
| 38 |  Texas attorney general office sought information on transgender residents of Texas. When authoritarians are asking for lists of marginalized people, it's time to start paying attention. |
| 6 | Thurrock Council in Essex has issued itself a §114 notice, declaring itself bankrupt on the grounds that it cannot balance its books. This is due to a £469 million black hole in its finances. Woking Borough Council in Surrey has also said it is in a similar position with a £2.5 billion black hole. |
| 38 | 1/6 committee refers Trump for "criminal prosecution on four counts." Let's see if they manage to make it stick. |
| 37 |
Media regulator and ombudsman Ofcom has indirectly revealed in a letter, that the transphobic group LGB Alliance has office space at 55 Tufton Street. This is the same address many Brexit and far-right "think tanks" such as Taxpayers' Alliance have their headquarters. Earlier this year, this group of think tanks was blamed for crashing the British economy during the premiership of Liz Truss. |
| 22 |  Keystone Pipeline spilled an estimated 600,000 gallons of tar sands oil in Washington County, Kansas. Tar sands oil, or diluted bitumen, is especially toxic and difficult to clean from the environment. A similar spill in Michigan in 2010 cost over $1 billion. |
| 30 |  Peru's government has declared a national emergency to suspend certain rights and expand police powers in response to poor and rural regions violently protesting the removal of former President Castillo. Meanwhile, a judge has ordered Castillo to be held in custody for 18 months, and prosecutors are seeking at least 10 years in prison. |
| 37 |  After calling out about the blocking of the ElonJet tweetbot, several notable American journalists, including CNN’s Donie O'Sullivan and Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, have found out that they have been blocked on Twitter themselves. Already this has led to rebuke by the European Commission’s Věra Jourová warning Elon Musk that he may break the EU’s own Media Freedom Act. After pointing out ElonJet is on Twitter's open-source rival Mastodon, Mastodon's own Twitter account has been blocked. Also, Twitter users have reported they cannot share Mastodon accounts on the platform. |
| 32 |  A parliamentary select committee has proposed that references in the Irish constitution to the “women in the home” should be removed, in favour of “the care of families”. The idea is that the Bunreacht na hÉireann would recognise the equal responsibility of parents in families, and not women. |
| 32 | States with more abortion restrictions have higher maternal and infant mortality, report finds. |
| -21 | Elon Musk is trolling for QAnon followers' support |
| 49 | President Biden has signed the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying same-sex and interracial marriages into federal law. |
| 27 | A bipartisan investigation by the US Senate has uncovered numerous instances of sexual abuse of women inside at least two-thirds of the federal facilities that housed women over the past decade, which had gone without punishment or had even been covered up. According to Sen. Ossoff (D-GA), "several officers who admitted under oath to sexually abusing prisoners were nonetheless able to retire with benefits." |
| 16 | Twitter hasn't paid rent for any of its global offices, nor its San Francisco headquarters, for weeks. Elon Musk is also considering cutting severance packages for former employees. Non-paywall version. |
| 29 |  Anyone born after 2008 will never be able, at least legally, to purchase cigarettes or tobacco products, as New Zealand hopes to eventually eliminate smoking. |
| 47 |  Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is arrested in the Bahamas on charges including wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering |
| 26 | EU democracy 'under attack' as parliament rocked by Qatar bribe claims |
| 25 |  Iran cuts off funds for militant Palestinian groups such as Hamas or the PIJ. |
| -20 | Putting her money where her prejudice is; JK Rowling to fund a sexual abuse clinic in Scotland. Naturally, this largesse only extends to biological women. |
| 36 |  You might have thought Effective Altruism always smelt like an obvious scam - but spending the charity money on buying a literal frickin' castle is clearly the most effective maximiser for the happiness of 10^54 hypothetical human emulations.update: Of course the EAs didn't spend the charity dollars on a castle! No, they spent the charity dollars on two castles. (Original story in Czech) |
| 19 | About 967,400 adult immigrants became US citizens in 2022, the third-highest year on record, after 2008 and 1996. |
| 20 |  Former president Otto Pérez Molina sentenced to 16 years for corruption in Guatemala |
| 15 |  No-longer-DINO Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Democratic Party and becomes an independent. She said she wouldn't caucus with Republicans, but hasn't made it clear whether she will caucus with Democrats. |
| 26 |  The European Parliament has confirmed that three current and former MEPs, including a vice-president, have been brought for questioning by Belgian police over corruption links with a Gulf country. Journalists have said that the country in question is Qatar. |
| 31 |  The falling share price of Tesla, due to reputation issues with its owner, has meant that Musk is no longer the richest man in the world. It now belongs to Frenchman Bernard Arnault, who manages the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, at $185 billion. |
| -15 |  China's operating over 100 police stations across the world with the help of some host nations, report claims. Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and, in some cases, repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile, using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally, a new report shared exclusively with CNN alleges. |
| 45 | 
The House of Representatives have voted 258-169 to pass the Respect the Marriage Act, which would codify same-sex and interracial marriage. Now all it needs is the president's signature to become federal law. |
| 28 | Peru's Congress has impeached and removed President Pedro Castillo from office following his attempt to dissolve Congress as political crisis explodes. Update: Castillo has been arrested for "rebellion" and conspiracy to overturn the constitutional order, and Peru now has its first female president. |
| 31 |  Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year". |
| 46 |  Police arrest 25 far-right extremists subscribing to the Reichsbürger movement and QAnon conspiracies for allegedly plotting to storm the Reichstag and overthrow the government |
| 26 |  An Argentinean court has sentenced former President and current Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to 6 years in prison and barred her from public office for political corruption. However, there will be a lengthy appeals process. |
| 57 |  Trump Organisation found guilty of tax crimes. |
| 28 | Self-proclaimed "Liver King" Brian Johnson, who promoted eating a raw organ meat diet, was exposed as a fraud who has a steroid addiction ($11,000/month for HGH). |
| 29 | International sanctions on Russia don't seem very effective right now, but long-term economic damage will likely accumulate. |
| 27 | Federal enforcement of the REAL ID Act will be postponed again to 2025. Federal agencies will still accept noncompliant IDs until then. |
| -17 |  Indonesia passes criminal code banning sex outside marriage, blasphemy, and "immorality". The code applies to visiting foreigners as well. |
| 37 | Elon Musk’s medical device company Neuralink is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations |
| 28 |  "Intentional" attack on electrical substation leaves thousands without power in Moore County, North Carolina. Perhaps not so coincidentally, a drag show was being held in Moore County the same day the attack occurred. |
| 41 | Iran has reportedly abolished the morality police, though activists and state media have disputed such reports. Mandatory hijab is also under review. |
| -29 | Elon Musk welcomed thousands of banned accounts back to Twitter, including Nazi Andrew Anglin. |
| 50 | We're all weeping; Alex Jones files for personal bankruptcy after trying to hide his assets among relatives and friends. |
| 9 | Edward Snowden is now officially Edvard Lonniovich Snoudyen (Эдвард Лонниович Сноуден) as he has sworn in as a citizen of the Russian Federation and receives a Russian passport. |