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A powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the North Pacific Ocean near Japan on Friday morning, with its relatively shallow epicenter at 40 kilometers prompting immediate assessment from authorities. Despite the strong tremor, Japan's robust infrastructure and advanced early warning systems are expected to mitigate widespread damage, similar to recent comparable seismic events in the tectonically active region.
December 2025 is poised to be an exceptionally busy month for global sports, highlighted by the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, a significantly scaled-back Premier League Boxing Day, and the traditional NBA and NFL Christmas Day showcases. However, the AFCON faces controversy with player protests and its new holiday timing, while the Premier League's reduced Boxing Day fixture list reflects growing calendar congestion.
Australia's public hospitals are facing a severe crisis due to critical funding shortfalls, leading to escalating ambulance queues, overflowing waiting rooms, and thousands of elderly patients stuck in hospital beds awaiting aged care placement. A tense standoff between state and federal governments over an "insufficient" funding proposal threatens to further compromise patient care, with a crucial deadline looming for a new National Health Reform Agreement.
India's Union Cabinet has approved a substantial ₹11,718 crore budget for the upcoming Census 2027, marking it as the nation's first fully digital census with data collection via mobile applications and real-time monitoring. This monumental undertaking, delayed from its original 2021 schedule, will also historically include caste enumeration for the first time since 1931, providing crucial demographic insights for national planning.
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The European Commission has proposed exempting data centers, AI gigafactories, and affordable housing projects from mandatory environmental impact assessments, aiming to streamline development, reduce administrative burdens, and solidify the EU's leadership in AI and labor mobility. This initiative, part of a broader "Environmental Omnibus" package announced on December 10, 2025, faces strong criticism from environmental organizations who warn of severe indirect costs to human health and natural ecosystems.
In a landmark bipartisan effort, the U.S. Congress is poised to pass a comprehensive military bill that significantly limits President Trump's authority to initiate military operations, a move spurred by recent controversial missile strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. This legislation, which has already cleared the House and is expected to pass the Senate, aims to reassert congressional war powers while also including provisions for a military pay raise and aid for Ukraine.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is fast-tracking a new gender eligibility policy for female sports, aiming for an early 2026 finalization that could potentially exclude transgender athletes from the Olympic Games. This significant move, driven by IOC President Kirsty Coventry, seeks to safeguard the integrity of the female category while navigating the complex balance between fairness and universal access in elite competition.
Scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking discovery within Earth's inner core, identifying a new superionic state of matter where carbon atoms move freely through a solid iron lattice, explaining its surprising softness and long-standing seismic anomalies. This revelation fundamentally alters our understanding of the planet's deepest layer and suggests a crucial role for this dynamic hybrid in generating Earth's magnetic field.
OpenAI has launched GPT-5.2, its most advanced ChatGPT model to date, significantly enhancing its capabilities as a work partner by improving speed, complex task handling, and even surpassing human performance in professional simulations. This strategic release underscores OpenAI's focus on workplace automation amid fierce AI competition, with the model offering superior general intelligence and agentic tool-calling, alongside plans for an "Adult Mode" in early 2026.
Media giant Paramount has launched a hostile, all-cash takeover bid of $108.4 billion for Warner Bros. Discovery, directly challenging Netflix's recent $82.7 billion agreement for WBD's streaming and studio assets. This aggressive offer of $30 per share, significantly higher than Netflix's $27.75, aims to create a formidable media powerhouse, with WBD's board currently reviewing the unsolicited proposal.