What is the Insurrection Act? Why is the US Fed chair criminal probe causing alarm? The United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has overwhelmingly voted to advance a bill that would give Congress more power over artificial intelligence chip exports despite pushback from White House AI tsar David Sacks and a social media campaign against the legislation. Representative Brian Mast of Florida, a Republican and the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the "AI Overwatch Act" in December after US President Donald Trump greenlit shipments of Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips to China. The bill claims that those "countries of concern" also include countries beyond China, such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

What We Know About the Winter Storm About to Hit the US--and What We Don't A huge portion of the United States is going to be hit with snow or freezing rain this weekend. Exactly where, what, and how much remains uncertain. Over the past weekend, when weather models first started forecasting a winter storm that would sweep over large parts of the country, Sean Sublette, a meteorologist living in Virginia, started telling people in his area to prepare for snow . At the time, Sublette says, "a lot of the data started to point to a substantial snow storm for the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with significant ice farther southward into Carolina's Tennessee Valley." Then, Sublette woke up Wednesday morning.

A new EPIC report says data brokers, ad-tech surveillance, and ICE enforcement are among the factors leading to a "health privacy crisis" that is eroding trust and deterring people from seeking care. When immigration agents enter hospitals and private companies are allowed to buy and sell data that reveals who seeks medical care, patients retreat, treatment is delayed, and health outcomes worsen, according to a new report that describes a growing "health privacy crisis" in the United States driven by surveillance and weak law enforcement limits. The report, published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), attributes the problem to outdated privacy laws and rapidly expanding digital systems that allow health-related information to be tracked, analyzed, breached, and accessed by both private companies and government agencies. EPIC, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on privacy and civil liberties, based its findings on a review of federal and state laws, court rulings, agency policies, technical research, and documented case studies examining how health data is collected, shared, and used across government and commercial systems. "Unregulated digital technologies, mass surveillance, and weak privacy laws have created a health privacy crisis," the report says.

Let's nitpick about the physics of Stranger Things, not its ending Feedback has seen all the fuss about the finale of Stranger Things, but would like to point out that if we're going to dissect the plot, we have bigger things to worry about In common, it seems, with a substantial fraction of the human species, Feedback spent part of our holiday watching the final episodes of Stranger Things . We laughed, we cried, we wondered if it would have even more endings than The Return of the King (it did). As is almost inevitable these days, a group of fans vocally disliked the finale, and went so far as to create a conspiracy theory about it. According to "Conformity Gate" (don't blame us, we didn't name it), the finale wasn't the real finale - despite lasting more than 2 hours, costing an enormous amount of money and being shown in cinemas. No, a super-secret final episode was going to air in January, which would reveal the true ending.

How much is US support for Israel costing Trump? What is a Palestinian without olives? Why are Gaza's homes collapsing in winter? 'The end of the world as we know it': Is the rules-based order finished? Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the quiet part out loud at the World Economic Forum: what many call the global rules-based order was either collapsing or had collapsed already.

The US military has launched a mission to transfer up to 7,000 Islamic State (IS) group fighters from prisons in north-eastern Syria to Iraq, as Syrian government forces take control of areas long controlled by Kurdish-led forces. US Central Command said it had already moved 150 IS fighters from Hassakeh province to a secure location in Iraq. The move aimed to prevent a breakout that would pose a direct threat to the United States and regional security, it added. On Tuesday night, Syria's government announced a new ceasefire with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), after the militia alliance withdrew from al-Hol camp, which holds thousands of relatives of IS fighters. Separately on Wednesday, Syria's defence ministry said seven soldiers were killed in a drone attack by Kurdish forces in the Kurdish-dominated province of Hasakah.

Activists are demanding a way to hold the memory-chip maker accountable to its promises to protect the environment and embrace communities of color in central New York. Days after Micron broke ground on a $100 billion chip factory in New York state, a coalition of environmentalists, labor unions, and civil rights groups are urging the US tech giant to sign a deal that would make a series of promises to be a good neighbor legally enforceable. Micron's megafab to make memory chips is on track to become the biggest commercial development in state history and the largest chipmaking complex in the country . Officials held a groundbreaking ceremony in the city of Clay, near Syracuse, last Friday. The first chips could arrive in five years, though the entire site won't be finished for 20 years.

MAGA's'Manifest Destiny' Coalition Has Arrived Warring factions of right-wing influencers and MAGA pundits can finally agree on something: American imperialism. For the past few months, some of the most influential figures in MAGA politics have been locked in bitter infighting . But with a new year comes new priorities, and the warring factions are reuniting around a new cause: a new era of American "manifest destiny." Major players, from influencers to politicians, have been arguing over the Trump administration's plans on issues like H-1B visas, Jeffrey Epstein document dumps, AI regulation, Israel's war with Hamas, and even white nationalist Nick Fuentes. But in recent weeks, these feuds have faded into background noise as the US raided Venezuela, arresting president Nicolás Maduro, and, more recently, as President Donald Trump publicly toys with invading Greenland and destroying NATO as we know it.

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Envoys for United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, amid reports that the signing of a $800bn "prosperity plan" was postponed due to tensions over Greenland . Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said Moscow would not comment on talks in Davos, but stressed the importance for Russia of receiving information on discussions between the US, European leaders and Ukraine.

AI's growing thirst for water is becoming a public health risk "Bubble" is probably the word most associated with "AI" right now, though we are slowly understanding that it is not just an economic time bomb; it also carries significant public health risks. Beyond the release of pollutants, the massive need for clean water by AI data centres can reduce sanitation and exacerbate gastrointestinal illness in nearby communities, placing additional strain on local health infrastructure. AI's energy consumption is massive and increasingly water-dependent Generative AI is artificial intelligence that is able to generate new text, photos, code and more, and it has already infiltrated the lives of most people around the globe. ChatGPT alone is reported to receive around one billion queries in a single day, pointing to huge demand at the individual level. This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.