Israel announced last week that 27 Gazan detainees rounded up after the 7 October Hamas attack have died in its custody—sparking new criticism about its treatment of Palestinians.
ECONOMIC UPDATE – MARKET OVERVIEW
Since last week, the only real news on the market front is what the Fed will say tomorrow about the future path of interest rates. Indeed, cheap money is The Street’s main concern. The cheaper the money, the easier it is to borrow and gamble.
MARKETS: THE NEXT PHASE. (AND A GREAT FALL.)
Here again, We the People of the U.S. have been sold yet another complete falsehood. That somehow, the Fed, by incrementally raising the Federal Funds Rate would cause inflation to magically disappear.
TOP TREND 2023: OFFICE BUILDING BUST
Nationwide, office properties have lost about 20 percent in value since the COVID War made remote work the new normal. However, in some key markets, the plunge has been far more severe.
GHOST GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION: THE CAPACITY ISN’T THERE
The move from fossil fuel technologies to supposedly more earth friendly electric energy alternatives is again showing signs of being more promises than delivery.
AS FORECAST: AS UKRAINE LOSES WAR IT WILL ESCALATE ATTACKS INSIDE RUSSIA
One of Russia's largest oil refineries suffered significant damage in a Ukrainian attack on the country's energy infrastructure that involved more than two dozen drones and spanned at least seven regions, according to reports.
ISRAELI GOVERNMENT’S PLAN FOR GAZA: REMOVE PALESTINIANS, STEAL THEIR LAND
With each passing day, it is becoming clearer that Israel’s goal in Gaza is to reoccupy the territory, and deport the 2.1 million Palestinians in the enclave, according to a report last week in The Los Angeles Times.
Global Economy
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
Merger and Acquisition took a break when the Federal Reserve and EU began aggressively raising interest rates from their zero and negative levels back in March and July 2022 respectively.
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA’S ECONOMIC STRUGGLE
Several key economic indicators were positive in China during the first two months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on 11 March.
PRIVATE EQUITY FIRMS UNABLE TO SELL 28,000 COMPANIES
Private equity firms buy businesses, wait for them to appreciate, then cash out and distribute the profits among their investors.
The Israel War
SULLIVAN: MAJOR GROUND OPERATION IN RAFAH WOULD BE A ‘MISTAKE’
Jake Sullivan, the White House national security advisor, told reporters on Monday that Israel will be making a mistake if it goes through with its plan to invade Rafah, which would “lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis.”
GENOCIDE 2.0: ISRAEL KILLS 20 INSIDE GAZA HOSPITAL; ‘SETTLERS’ VANDALISE UNRWA’S JERUSALEM HEADQUARTERS
Israel continued its collective punishment of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank on Monday carrying out a deadly raid inside a Gaza hospital while “settlers” vandalized a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) headquarters in Jerusalem.
U.S. PRODUCES NO EVIDENCE LINKING TIKTOK TO CHINESE GOVERNMENT, REPORT SAYS
The United States government produced no evidence to support its claim that TikTok is working to coordinate with the Chinese Communist Party, raising new suspicions as to why Washington is so determined to either ban the popular social media site or sell it off to a U.S. entity.
AI
AI SUPERINTELLIGENCE COULD BE THREE YEARS AWAY, EXPERT SAYS
Developers could evolve an artificial intelligence roughly as capable as humans before 2028, computer scientist Ben Goertzel told the Beneficial AGI Summit on 1 March.
HOW AI RECYCLES YOUR TRASH
AI is reshaping an industry less glamorous than inventing drugs or deepfaking politicians. It’s making the recycling business more efficient and, therefore, cheaper.
CHAT-GPT FACES MORE CHALLENGERS CLAIMING TO BEAT ITS PERFORMANCE
Earlier this month, it was China (“China’s New AI Outperforms GPT-4, Developers Claim” 12 Mar 2024). Now rising star Anthropic is claiming its new brood of Claude AIs can best OpenAI’s benchmark GPT system.
Hi-Tech Science
NEW OPTICAL DISC HOLDS MORE INFORMATION THAN 5,000 DVDs
Scientists have made an optical disc from a new material called "dye-doped photoresist with aggregation-induced emission luminogens" (AIE-DDPR) that can store a “petabit” of data, equivalent to the capacity of more than 5,000 DVDs.
U.K. SHOWS OFF NEW “DRAGONFIRE” LASER WEAPON
The wars around the world are getting expensive. Using a million-dollar missile to shoot down a million-dollar drone a few dozen times a day in Israel, Ukraine, or the Red Sea begins to add up.
RESEARCHERS TAKE ANOTHER STEP TOWARD ARTIFICIAL LIFE FORMS
Everything that lives is made of DNA. DNA is made up of the sugar deoxyribose that forms its helical backbone and just four nucleotides—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.