📌 Anxious Migrants, Tension In The Baltic, More

Hundreds of migrants waited in long lines outside an immigration office in southern Mexico on Monday.

Many immigrants hope to secure safe passage north and enter the US legally before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

Trump plans to end President Joe Biden's humanitarian programs, including one that allows migrants in parts of Mexico to make an appointment on a US government app, known as CBP One, to approach a port of entry and enter the US legally.

The Mexican government runs a program of busing migrants with confirmed CBP One appointments from southern Mexico to the northern border, seeking to protect them from gangs and organized crime groups that extort and kidnap migrants traveling across the country.

"We will arrive before President Donald Trump takes office, regardless of the actions he may take," said Venezuelan migrant Johandry Paz. "We already have confirmed appointments, and we want to reach our destination: the United States of America.”

Salvadoran migrant Jose Escobar said: “Yesterday my appointment was confirmed for Jan. 4, so I'm in a rush” to reach the border. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have been able to enter the US legally, and access work permits as a result of CBP One and other Biden humanitarian programs.

Russia’s connection to an undersea cable between Finland and Estonia rupturing is raising fears over critical power line sabotage.

The new incidents come as tensions between the West and Russia and China have risen over the war in Ukraine and as the world braces for a shift in US leadership as President-elect Trump prepares to take office.

The Estlink-2 power cable between Finland and Estonia was allegedly cut on Christmas by a Cook Island-flagged ship called Eagle S. Western officials claim the ship is part of a vast Russian shadow fleet working to circumvent Western sanctions.

Dozens of cables are ruptured each year, usually accidentally, and it’s unclear if the latest events were intentional. Still, European leaders are sounding the alarm.

Finland is investigating the Estlink-2 incident, which caused minimal disruption, but it said this week that an anchor suspected to be from the Eagle S was dragged up to 62 miles under the water. The Eagle S was seized by Finnish police last week.

European officials are now calling for NATO to bolster undersea infrastructure protections. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last week the alliance “will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea.”

The ‘femosphere' is an emerging online space where women and girls are drawn into conservative, anti-gender equality ideologies.

Dr. Jilly Kay at Loughborough University has researched this trend, noting these spaces often label themselves as feminist but promote conservative values. Key figures include ‘emcels’ and ‘dark feminine’ influencers who advocate for women to seek financial support from men and adopt traditional gender roles.

In the femosphere, as in the manosphere, there’s an overarching belief that life is about survival of the fittest, that man will always hurt women, and that will never change, so strategies are needed to conquer the opposite gender.

Kay saw beliefs discussed in online forums and via social media influencers, “like men are the gatekeepers of relationships and women are the gatekeepers of sex. So women’s currency in the sexual marketplace resides in her withholding sex from men, and you diminish your value if you have casual sex.”

Another discussed the idea that to counter women’s lesser earning power, rather than fighting for pay equality, a man should provide for a woman financially, and women must “embrace feminine energy” to secure a husband.

Kay said that “liberal feminism has been rejected for good reason — it has failed to deliver gender equality, so it makes sense that you’d want to find an alternative. But just because something is the enemy of liberal feminism does not necessarily mean it’s good for women.”

US Treasury notified lawmakers on Monday that a China state-sponsored actor infiltrated Treasury workstations.

A Treasury official said it was informed by a third-party software service provider on December 8 that a threat actor used a stolen key to remotely access certain Treasury workstations and unclassified documents.

The compromised service has been taken offline, and officials are working with law enforcement and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “There is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury systems or information,” the Treasury spokesperson said.

According to the letter to Senate Banking Committee leadership, the third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, said hackers gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service that Treasury uses for technical support.

It’s not clear exactly how many workstations were infiltrated or the extent of the damage. Based on Treasury policy, intrusions attributed to advanced persistent threat actors are considered a “major cybersecurity incident.” Treasury officials are required to provide an update in a 30-day supplemental report.

Autonomous spacecraft and advancements in AI raise questions about human astronauts in space exploration.

Some scientists argue that robots are becoming more capable and cost-effective than humans for space exploration. "Robots are developing fast, and the case for sending humans is getting weaker all the time," said Lord Martin Rees, the UK's Astronomer Royal.

"Prestige will always be a reason that we have humans in space," said Dr. Kelly Weinersmith, a biologist at Rice University, Texas and co-author of A City on Mars. "It seems to have been agreed upon as a great way to show that your political system is effective and your people are brilliant.”

Practicality may play out as the winning hand. AI can “automate tedious tasks," said Dr. Kiri Wagstaff, a computer and planetary scientist who worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "On the surface of a planet, humans get tired and lose focus, but machines won’t."

Some robots are already working on other planets without humans, sometimes even making decisions on their own. NASA's Curiosity rover, for example, is exploring a region called Gale Crater on Mars and autonomously performs some of its science without human input.

NASA plans to return humans to the Moon with the Artemis program, and SpaceX aims to establish a human colony on Mars. Future exploration may involve merging human and robotic capabilities, potentially leading to cyborg-like adaptations for extreme environments.

A Tunisian man held at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002 has been repatriated.

Ridah Bin Saleh al-Yazidi was one of the first to be held at the facility, which at one point housed hundreds of detainees following the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terror attacks.

Yazidi was never charged with a crime and was cleared for transfer from Guantanamo in 2009, but there was no agreement in place for him to be sent to Tunisia or another country.

The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress in January 2024 that officials had "completed the requirements for responsible transfer" in consultation with Tunisia. The repatriation leaves 26 detainees at Guantanamo, of whom 14 have been cleared for transfer.

Yazidi was captured by Pakistani authorities in late 2001. He was among a group of about 30 fighters who had crossed the border from Afghanistan's Tora Bora region, according to Pentagon files. The Pentagon said most of the group were identified as al-Qaida operatives or bodyguards of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

A stroke has left a British woman with an Italian accent and an ability to speak the language despite never having been to Italy.

Althia Bryden’s husband found her unresponsive and unable to talk and immediately called an ambulance. The 58-year-old stayed in the hospital for nine days after doctors discovered she had suffered a stroke caused by a carotid web, which can interrupt the blood flow to the brain.

After surgery and three months unable to talk, “a nurse came to my hospital bed to do a routine check, and completely out of the blue, I just started speaking. I remember thinking, ‘Who is that talking?’ The nurse looked as shocked as I did.”

Doctors began gathering around Althia’s bedside to hear her talk. “The more I spoke, the more confused we all became.“It was clear that I had a strong Italian accent and no control over the sound I was making when talking.”

Doctors diagnosed Althia with ‘Foreign Accent Syndrome,’ a rare medical condition that causes a person’s speech to sound like they have a foreign accent, even though they haven’t acquired it.

“I wake up most mornings hoping my old voice will be back. I can even hear the accent in my head when I’m thinking. I don’t feel like me.” She hopes she will one day be able to say ‘Arrivederci’ to her new accent and start speaking like her old self again.