Massive Earthquake Hits Japan - The Big Picture

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A tech billionaire who bought a series of spaceflights from Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to lead NASA. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Jared Isaacman, 41, CEO and founder of a credit card-processing company, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight with SpaceX.

Kate Dineen was about 33 weeks pregnant with her second child when an ultrasound revealed that her baby had suffered a catastrophic stroke in utero and would likely either die before birth or have a short and painful life. “This was a deeply wanted pregnancy. Everything had been progressing smoothly,” Dineen, now 41, says.

PARIS — France’s far-right and left-wing lawmakers joined together Wednesday in a historic no-confidence vote prompted by budget disputes that forces Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his Cabinet members to resign, a first since 1962. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The National Assembly approved the motion by 331 votes. A minimum of 288 were needed. President Emmanuel Macron insisted he will serve the rest of his term until 2027.

WASHINGTON — Former White House adviser Peter Navarro, who served prison time related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U. S. Capitol, will return to serve in Donald Trump’s second administration, the president-elect announced Wednesday. Navarro, a trade adviser during Trump’s first term, will be a senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, Trump said on Truth Social.

This has been a difficult year. You may have been buffeted by anger you didn’t want to feel, and didn’t know how to productively process. Breeding grounds for misinformation—and its even more treacherous sibling, disinformation—have proliferated. AI is coming, supposedly to make our lives easier, but in reality it may just be taking our jobs.

A new report tracking the health of civic freedoms around the world identifies a notable trend: Crackdowns on Palestinian solidarity protests in every kind of society, from the most open to the least. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Both the conflict itself and its impact on civic space … is one of the main takeaways of the year for us,” says Tara Petrović, an author of the report by CIVICUS Monitor, a global alliance of civil society groups, headquartered in Johannesburg.