Author: Steven Sahiounie

The ures taking effect Friday will include reductions on water for the irrigation of crops and industry The measures taking effect Friday will include reductions on water for the irrigation of crops and industry BARCELONA, Spain — Barcelona and large swathes of Spain’s northeast are going under water restrictions as a months-long drought that has devastated crops starts to put the pinch on human activities in the Mediterranean country. The measures will affect 6.7 million people, 80% of the population in the Catalonia region, Patrícia Plaja, spokeswoman for the Catalan administration, said Tuesday. Plaja said, for now, it will not…

Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process.“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.In other tweets fired off on Monday morning, he called Apple’s App Store fees a “secret 30% tax,” and ran a poll asking if “Apple should publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.” He also claimed that Apple has pulled most of its advertising from Twitter.Apple’s App…

Twitter searches for the widespread Covid-19-related protests in China are returning a flood of spam, pornography and gibberish that some disinformation researchers say at first glance appear to be a deliberate attempt by the Chinese government or its allies to drown out images of the demonstrations.Beginning late last week and into Monday, searches in Chinese for major protest hotspots, including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, produced a nonstop stream of solicitations, images of scantily clad women in suggestive poses and seemingly random word- and sentence fragments. Many of the tweets reviewed by CNN on Monday came from accounts that had…

Meta has been fined roughly $275 million by Ireland’s data privacy regulator for failing to prevent hackers from siphoning off personal information from more than 500 million Facebook users in a 2019 data leak. Monday’s announcement marked the fourth time in about a year that Facebook (FB)’s parent company has been penalized by the Irish Data Protection Commission, the chief privacy regulator overseeing Meta’s operations in Europe. The decision to impose the fine was made last Friday, the commission said. Since the fall of 2021, Ireland’s DPC has slapped Meta with 912 million euros in fines, going after the social media titan and…

CNN — Sunday officially marks one month since the world’s richest man took the helm at Twitter.In that time, Elon Musk initiated mass layoffs and gave remaining staffers a cryptic ultimatum, reinstated the accounts of controversial figures including former President Donald Trump, and launched – then punted – a plan to charge for Twitter’s iconic blue checkmarks.After spending months embroiled in an unsuccessful legal battle to get out of his initial proposal to buy Twitter, Musk made his first splashy entrance into the company’s offices on Oct. 26, carrying a sink. (In a video of the incident shared on Twitter,…

China will launch the Shenzhou-15 crewed spaceship on Tuesday evening, sending another batch of three taikonauts to the orbiting China Space Station (CSS), the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said at a press conference on Monday. A Long March-2F Y15 rocket carrying the spaceship is scheduled to blast off at 11:08 p.m. Beijing Time from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, said Ji Qiming, spokesperson for the CMSA. Taikonauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu have been selected to carry out the Shenzhou-15 space mission, with Fei serving as the mission commander. They will live and work in the…

Chinese astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu will carry out the Shenzhou-15 spaceflight mission, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced at a press conference on Monday. Fei, who participated in the Shenzhou-6 manned flight mission 17 years ago, will serve as the commander on Shenzhou-15. Accompanying him will be two first-timers Deng and Zhang, according to Ji Qiming, spokesperson for the CMSA. With the average age of 53, it seems that the Shenzhou-15 crew members are old. However, Fei said that “our flying skills remain young” as the three spent the past decade preparing for the space mission. …

“COVID-19 illnesses persistently reduce labor supply. We estimate that workers with week-long work absences are seven percent less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work for health reasons,” say the study’s authors, Gopi Shah Goda of Stanford University and Evan Soltas of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Economics Department. “Many who fall ill but survive COVID-19 suffer from enduring health problems … approximately 500,000 adults are neither working nor actively looking for work due to the persistent effects of COVID-19 illnesses,” the study adds. Another study…

Germany are still alive. For 90 minutes, during which the four-time world champions were recurrently outclassed, outmaneuvered and almost overwhelmed by Spain, Hansi Flick’s side clung to their belief in World Cup survival. Even when losing by 1-0 with only a few minutes left to play, when the pressure might have been too great, there was a firm strand of faith that ran through Germany and defied all the odds – they are here to stay. German fans had prepared themselves for the worst. Their uncharacteristically lackluster team were staring down the barrel of a second successive group stage exit…

Japan’s manufacturing activity contracted at the fastest pace in two years in November as demand worsened due to strong inflationary pressures, a business survey showed on Thursday. The contraction in factory activity also marked the first monthly decline in 22 months and raised a question mark over Japan’s economic outlook as the country relies heavily on trade with China and other nations for its growth. The au Jibun Bank Flash Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) slipped to a seasonally adjusted 49.4 in November from a final reading of 50.7 in the previous month. That meant activity recorded the sharpest…