Important Takeaways:
- Hungary Vows to Block EU Sanctions Against Tucker Carlson over Putin Interview
- …former Belgian prime minister and current member of the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt called for an EU travel ban to be imposed on the American journalist and for the bloc to begin the process to levy sanctions…
- However, the body does not have unilateral authority to sanction individuals but rather can merely present evidence to the European Council…
- Therefore, socially conservative Hungary has the ability to block the EU from sanctioning Carlson and on Tuesday confirmed that it would do so if the measure was put before the Council.
- The instant shutdown from Budapest will likely further rile Verhofstadt, who has been at the forefront of calling for the elimination of veto power for EU member states over Hungary’s opposition to funding for the war in Ukraine.
- The principle of unanimity and the enforcement mechanism of national veto powers, in a similar fashion to the allocation of senators or electoral college votes in the United States, was an essential component of the formation of the European Union as it guaranteed that smaller member states could not be entirely overpowered by larger nations such as France or Germany.
- Verhofstadt is not alone in favoring the abolition of national veto power, with the bloc’s top diplomat, Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell, arguing in December that in light of the threat Russia poses to European democracy, it may be necessary to end unanimity for foreign policy decisions
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Important Takeaways:
- Category 6 hurricanes would describe storms with wind speeds of at least 192 mph.
- Such a storm would be a “major disaster” if it made landfall over a populated area.
- The researchers recommend adding a Category 6 to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which currently ranks powerful tropical storms based on wind speed starting at Category 1 (74 to 95 mph) up to Category 5 (157 mph or higher).
- The “or higher” for Category 5 storms is where scientists take issue.
- To remedy this, authors Michael Wehner and James Kossin, propose adding another category. Category 6 would refer to hurricanes with sustained wind speeds of at least 192 mph — about the speed that NASCAR drivers go.
- A strong hurricane with 192 mph winds — which would qualify as a Category 6 — isn’t unheard of. In fact, since 2013, five storms have reached or surpassed that, including Hurricane Patricia, Typhoon Haiyan, and Typhoon Meranti, the researchers reported.
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Important Takeaways:
- AI and ML will transform the scientific method.
- With AI and machine learning (ML), we can expect to see orders of magnitude of improvement in what can be accomplished.
- AI enables an unprecedented ability to analyze enormous data sets and computationally discover complex relationships and patterns. AI, augmenting human intelligence, is primed to transform the scientific research process, unleashing a new golden age of scientific discovery in the coming years.
- AI will become a pillar of foreign policy.
- We are likely to see serious government investment in AI. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has publicly embraced the importance of partnering with innovative AI technology companies to maintain and strengthen global U.S. competitiveness.
- AI will enable next-gen consumer experiences.
- Next-generation consumer experiences like the metaverse and cryptocurrencies have garnered much buzz. These experiences and others like them will be critically enabled by AI
- Addressing the climate crisis will require AI.
- Many promising emerging ideas require AI to be feasible. One potential new approach involves prediction markets powered by AI that can tie policy to impact, taking a holistic view of environmental information and interdependence. This would likely be powered by digital “twin Earth” simulations that would require staggering amounts of real-time data and computation to detect nuanced trends imperceptible to human senses. Other new technologies such as carbon dioxide sequestration cannot succeed without AI-powered risk modeling, downstream effect prediction and the ability to anticipate unintended consequences.
- AI will enable truly personalized medicine
- One compelling emerging application of AI involves synthesizing individualized therapies for patients. Moreover, AI has the potential to one day synthesize and predict personalized treatment modalities in near real-time—no clinical trials required.
- Simply put, AI is uniquely suited to construct and analyze “digital twin” rubrics of individual biology and is able to do so in the context of the communities an individual lives in.
- AI solutions have the potential not only to improve the state of the art in healthcare, but also to play a major role in reducing persistent health inequities.
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Important Takeaways:
- The worst of the storm occurred on Monday, but rainfall is still forecast for major cities across California
- A firehose of rain has parked over Southern California, worsening the risk of flooding. At least two people have died as a result of falling trees and more than 16 million people are under a rare high risk of excessive rainfall, with downtown Los Angeles receiving 75% of its annual rainfall in only the second month of 2024.
- The storm is impacting travel and power in the Golden State. The Pacific Coast Highway, a major north-south thoroughfare, closed in two locations on Monday, as thousands of flights in or out of the state were canceled or delayed. More than 200,000 California power customers are facing outages.
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Important Takeaways:
- Americans are increasingly turning to their credit cards to cover everyday expenses, with debt hitting a new record high at the end of December, according to a New York Federal Reserve report published Tuesday.
- In the three-month period from October to December, total credit card debt surged to $1.13 trillion, an increase of $50 billion, or 4.6% from the previous quarter, according to the report. It marks the highest level on record in Fed data dating back to 2003 and the ninth consecutive annual increase.
- There was also an uptick in borrowers who are struggling with credit card, student and auto loan payments
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Important Takeaways:
- First Picture of B61-12 Nuclear Bomb Trainer On An F-16 In Europe Surfaces
- A picture has emerged showing an F-16 Viper fighter that appears to be sitting at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands with an inert training version, or “shape,” of the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb under its wing. This offers a rare glimpse into the ongoing work to field America’s latest nuclear bomb in Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing agreements.
- Volkel is one of several bases in Europe where the U.S. military keeps B61s, which could be released to select NATO members for use on their aircraft
- It is not surprising that preparations to deploy these weapons in Europe have already been going on for years now and other evidence of this has previously emerged.
- Polish authorities have been particularly open about their interest in at least hosting U.S. nuclear weapons in the future. Poland shares a border with Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, the latter of which at least has facilities to support the deployment of nuclear weapons, if they aren’t actually in place there now.
- The picture of the F-16 with the B61-12 shape under its wing, likely taken at Volkel Air Base, only further underscores that NATO very much remains a nuclear alliance and that its members are actively working toward being able to employ new capabilities in this regard.
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Important Takeaways:
- Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, has once again bluntly told the people of the West that Russia WILL use nuclear weapons in a war with NATO because “We have no choice.”
- In a public posting on social media last night, Medvedev outlined the basic facts:
- Sunak, Scholz, Macron, Norwegen, Finnish, Polish, and other NATO bosses are harping on, “We must be ready for war against Russia.” Even though Russia has many times underscored that conflict with NATO and EU member states was not in the plans, the dangerous babbling is still going on.
- The reasons are obvious. It is necessary to distract voters to justify multibillion spending on the bothersome bandera Ukraine. Indeed, gigantic sums of money are being spent not on solving social tasks, but on war in a dying country alien to taxpayers, with the population that is scattered across Europe and is now terrorizing its people.
- This is why the heads of these states are emphasizing it on a daily basis: it is imperative to get ready for war against Russia and keep providing aid to Ukraine, which is why it is necessary to produce more tanks, missiles, drones and other weapons.
- But not all the European bosses are cynically lying to their citizens. If – God forbid! – such a war breaks out, it won’t go according to the Special Military Operation scenario. It won’t be fought in trenches using artillery, armored vehicles, drones and EW.
- NATO is a huge military bloc, the total population of the Alliance member states is about 1 billion people, and their combined military budget can get as high as $1.5 trillion.
- So, because our military capabilities are thus incomparable, we will simply be left with no choice. The response will be asymmetrical. To defend our country’s territorial integrity, ballistic and cruise missiles carrying special warheads will be put to use.
- It is based on our military doctrine documents and is well known to all. And this is exactly that very Apocalypse. The end to everything.
- This is why Western politicians must be telling the bitter truth to their voters, and stop taking them for brainless morons; to explain to them, what will really happen, and not to play the false mantra of getting ready for war against Russia over and over again.
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Important Takeaways:
- Floods linked to San Andreas quakes
- Historical record underscores connections between reservoirs and seismic activity.
- Geophysicists have linked historical earthquakes on the southern section of California’s famed San Andreas fault to ancient floods from the nearby Colorado River.
- The work has broad implications for understanding how floods or reservoirs relate to quakes — a topic that gained new relevance in 2008, after a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed more than 80,000 people. Some geologists have proposed that impounding water behind a newly built dam there helped hasten the quake.
- Now, new work in southern California suggests that at least three times in the past 2,000 years, the weight of river water spreading across floodplains seems to have helped trigger earthquakes in the region.
- The team subsequently analyzed data from 20-metre-deep cores pulled from the lake bed in 2003 during earlier work for the US Bureau of Reclamation. The cores showed layers of coarse sandy material laid down during floods — at the same time that seismic activity was known to have occurred.
- “We found quakes happened about every 100 to 200 years and were correlated with floods,” says Brothers. “The Colorado River spills, loads the crust and then there is a rupture.” He says the team is “very confident” in its evidence for the existence of three flood-derived quakes, of roughly magnitude 6, which happened about 600 years ago, 1,100 years ago and 1,200–1,900 years ago. “Sediments don’t lie,” he says.
- A quake of about magnitude 7 struck the southern San Andreas fault about 300 years ago; the next is a century overdue. One possible reason is the Hoover Dam: since its completion in 1936, the lower Colorado no longer floods.
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Important Takeaways:
- Pastor Jack Hibbs lists 5 things Christians will go to war over in 2024
- In part one of the series, preached last month, Hibbs explained that his message was centered on “the war of 2024,” emphasizing that Christians “are on a mission and we are in a war.”
- “I’m not talking about bombs, guns and missiles,” he clarified. “I’m talking about an all-out war on everything, from the spiritual realm, which is invisible, but certainly to the physical world, in which things manifest.”
- “And this year of 2024 will be unlike any other year previously lived in your lifetime.”
- Hibbs believes that, first of all, the war “will be against the truth,”… “When you tell somebody the actual truth, they don’t believe it,” he said. “It’s not that they’re being mean about it; it’s that ‘why should I believe that because I’ve just heard 10 other things.’”
- The second thing that the war of 2024 will be centered on, according to Hibbs, will be a war “against the facts,” with the pastor defining facts as “the reporting of what is observed.”
- “you are going to see deception fly like you’ve never seen it fly before. It’s going to be supersonic.”
- The third thing that the war of 2024 will include is a war “against the faith,”… against the Christian faith specifically.
- The fourth aspect of the war of 2024, according to Hibbs, is the war “against the Church,” noting that “the war has always been against the Church” and that “God loves His Church, we love each other, but the world is against us.”
- The fifth and final aspect of the war of 2024 that Hibbs spoke about was that it would be “a war against marriage,”… the cheapening of marriage in modern society
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Approaching Hoofbeats’: The Signs We Saw Decades Ago Pale In Comparison To What We See Today
- I purchased Billy Graham’s book, Approaching Hoofbeats, not long after its publication in 1983.
- As I recently skimmed its chapters, the stark differences between then and now leaped off the pages. Some of the signs that four decades ago seemed so indicative of the nearing Rapture pale by comparison to all that we see today.
- The Antichrist Rides
- By 1983, I had heard of a group called the “trilateralists” who were pushing for a one-world government at the time. Today, however, the emerging framework for the type of world domination that we read about in the book of Revelation is front and center for everyone to see, yet so few are paying attention to the nearness of the time when the white horse will ride across the earth.
- The Threat of Nuclear War
- In Approaching Hoofbeats, Evangelist Billy Graham wrote about the threat of a devastating nuclear war, which was a major concern at the time. Today, however, this danger has reached the point where most analysts believe it’s likely to occur in the next few years.
- Below is a quote from their latest press release under a section titled “The Many Dimensions of Nuclear Threat”:
- A durable end to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems distant, and the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in that conflict remains a serious possibility. In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to “suspend” the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In March, he announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. In June, Sergei Karaganov, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged Moscow to consider launching limited nuclear strikes on Western Europe as a way to bring the war in Ukraine to a favorable conclusion.
- Economic Peril
- In 1983, the debt reached $1.377 trillion.
- In January of this year, the national debt level of the United States reached $34 trillion, and by the end of the month, it stood at an astounding 34.1 trillion. With the announcement came the prediction that by March, this number would exceed $35 trillion.
- The current debt level in America will surely bring economic catastrophe.
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