WORLD

As the Texas power grid was battered by a days-long snow and ice storm this week – prompting the state’s utilities manager, ERCOT, to impose rolling blackouts – a major shortage of electricity drove up wholesale costs to astronomical levels. While around 4 million Texans were left in the dark, …

Messi’s future in Spain has once again been thrown into doubt after the Catalan side’s latest Champions League humbling, this time at the hands of oil-rich Paris Saint-Germain who savaged the five-time champions 4-1 at the Camp Nou earlier this week, once again stoking rumors that Messi could be moving towards the …

Organizational psychologist Karlyn Borysenko, an activist against so-called critical race theory indoctrination, said on Friday that she obtained copies of the training materials from a whistleblower at Coca-Cola who received an email from management announcing the course. The class is administered online, through the Linkedin Learning platform, and is entitled …

Margaret Mitchell, who led Google’s Ethical AI unit, announced her termination in a brief tweet on Friday, saying only “I’m fired” without offering further detail. Google’s own statement on the matter was left somewhat vague, confirming Mitchell was let go over “multiple violations of our code of conduct,” while adding …

Full disclosure: I have known Alex Salmond for well over 30 years. I sat in the British parliament with him for decades, liked and admired him. I fundamentally disagree with the essentially shared project of both him and Nicola Sturgeon to partition the small island of Britain along an imaginary …

Officials in numerous parts of the country fear a combination of pleasant spring weather and the break-up of some schools for holidays could encourage people to gather in groups, thus risking the increased spread of the virus. Police chiefs in the capital will launch a “large-scale” operation involving 4,000 officers …

“We must demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people,” Biden said Friday via video link at the the conference. The Rev. Steven Kinyk, a Baptist minister, agreed, saying, “Biden is bringing America back to world dependency instead of making America strong again.” Biden’s democracy-over-autocracy message also might be …

As of Wednesday, Australian Facebook users found themselves unable to share links to local and international news sites, a change that Facebook implemented as retaliation against the Australian government for legislation that would require Facebook and other companies to pay news creators for their content. Globally, all users are forbidden …

The emergency bill passed in a 45-13 vote on Friday evening, according to local media, upholding the nightly curfew in the face of an ongoing legal challenge to the restrictions, intended to stem the spread of Covid-19. While a lower court ruled in favor of Dutch activist group Viruswaarheid (Virus …

The former Labour Party leader on Friday published his own “roadmap” out of the UK’s Covid-19 lockdown, complete with a “traffic light system” dictating data-based parameters for opening and closing decisions. Mainstream media outlets jumped on the report as big news, with some portraying it as influential in setting the …