Facebook: A Hub for Illegal Wildlife Trade

With just the click of a button or a swipe on a phone, it’s possible to buy almost anything online, including rare or endangered animals. 

From quirky shark trophies to exotic live birds, contraband rhino horns or ivory, buyers can flock to e-commerce platforms and find them all. Traffickers hide behind their screens while profiting from online sales of protected species as these animals dwindle in the wild. 

“It’s the largest wildlife market”, said wildlife trade researcher Chris Shepherd from the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s easy, it’s convenient; you can operate anonymously from the comfort of your home. You don’t have the expenses of setting up a shop”. 

Online commerce in illicit wildlife products continues to grow, involving more species and wider geographies. It’s an illicit industry run by kingpins with well-connected networks, and it’s hard to prosecute. Catching online criminals is extremely challenging. 

“Wildlife markets have moved from physical locations into online locations, and that’s mirroring broader trends in the global economy”, said Simone Haysom, director of environmental crime programs at the Swiss-based organization Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

In a recent report, Haysom and her colleague Russell Gray analyzed online wildlife trade data from April 2024 to March 2026. They focused on 10 countries across three continents, places where environmental crime and internet use are high, making them fertile grounds for online wildlife trafficking. They found some 266,535 wildlife products posted on 61 online marketplaces, worth about $66 million. 

About 75% of the nearly 22,000 ads they saw were on Facebook, a platform that’s been notorious in selling live wildlife, as a recent Mongabay investigation revealed.

The large majority of the species offered online – about 84% – are banned from any kind of international commercial trade under CITES, a global wildlife trade treaty. More than half of all Facebook ads offered endangered or critically endangered animals including pangolins, gibbons, hornbills, sea turtles, cobras and clouded leopards. 

“There’s just anything and everything on Facebook”, said Gray, citing examples of pangolin boots, chimpanzee leather and ivory trinkets carved from walrus tusks. “The world is really significantly underprepared for cyber trade in wildlife”. 

Facebook is especially useful because users can create accounts and private groups with little meaningful verification. 

Inside those groups, buyers and sellers can shift conversations into private messages, making deals much harder to track. Facebook's algorithms intensify the problem by recommending similar groups, pages, and contacts to users in the sphere. It's taken a niche market and given it a mainstream hub that's great for business. 

"Facebook groups really replaced a lot of different types of sites on the Internet by providing this free infrastructure that was very good at marketing", said Simone Haysom, a co-author of the study. 

The report also criticized Meta's moderation efforts, which focus on English posts that comprise just 12% of the listings. Although Facebook formally bans the sale of endangered animals and animal parts, researchers said illegal listings were easy to find. 

There's minimal oversight, networks can easily form, and participants in the trade are able to dodge consequences. 

"We need regulation with teeth", Haysom told Mongabay. "Self-regulation has not worked... and is unlikely to be fully successful".

Bombs, Missiles and Drones Cause Widespread Death and Destruction

Israel may have pulled the trigger first – but I blame US President Donald Trump! He, himself suggested on Tuesday that he may have “forced Israel’s hand” into a war with Iranian "lunatics" (The Times of Israel, March 03, 2026). 

It sure has been a very busy week so far for all parties involved. Yesterday, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth touted as evidence of America's global reach in its war on Iran when he confirmed a US fast attack submarine had sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean – the Pentagon released footage of the strike. FYI, the IRIS Dena, had participated in a naval exercise in India just weeks ago. And according to Sri Lankan authorities, 32 sailors have been rescued, 61 are still missing and 87 bodies have so far been found. 

Iran's navy are already almost decimated, if you believe the Americans. Trump declared Monday that the US sank 10 Iranian battleships. But, on the same day, CENTCOM had stated that in two days, the Iranian regime had 11 ships in the Gulf of Oman and now they have none left. 

Whether 10 or 11, that hadn't stopped Trump from gloating: “They’re at the bottom of the sea”. 

Oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has plunged by 90 percent since the outbreak of the Middle East war, energy market intelligence firm Kpler said on X. Iranian forces, meanwhile, claimed "complete control" of the strait, a vital route for world oil and gas supplies, after Trump said Tuesday the US Navy were ready to escort oil tankers through the channel. 

The British are joining in. Their F-35s shot down Iranian drones over Jordan, marking the first time that one of the Royal Air Force's stealth fighter jets had destroyed a target in combat, the UK defense ministry shouted out on Tuesday.

The Israel Defense Forces said they dropped more than 4,000 bombs on Iranian targets in just four days and on Tuesday, even hit “Minzadehei”, a secret underground site on the outskirts of Tehran where Iran transferred much of its nuclear program after the 12-day war with Israel in June. 

The commander of CENTCOM – the forward headquarters of United States Central Command in Qatar – Admiral Brad Cooper claimed the US has struck more than 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions and severely degraded Iran's air defences.

It's not all one-sided though. Three US fighter jets were downed over Kuwait. The Americans explained on Monday that the F-15s were "mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences" and all six crew ejected safely. If you ask me, I don't believe this excuse of a "friendly fire incident".

A day earlier, Iran pounded a base housing US troops in Kuwait on Sunday, killing three service members. Since then, the death toll has risen to six, CENTCOM confirmed on Monday, an uptick that was forecasted by Trump and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine. 

Still, Iran maintained that more than 650 US military personnel were killed and wounded in the first two days of Operation True Promise 4, while its military say they fired over 700 drones and hundreds of ballistic missiles in 48 hours exceeding the total firepower of the June 2025 war. 

Also, on Monday, Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery at Ras Tanura halted operations after a drone strike in the area. Iran accused Israel of carrying out the attack, describing it as a “false flag” operation.

And on the same day too, a Shahed-type unmanned aerial vehicle struck a runway at a UK military base in Akrotiri, Cyprus. Consequently, Greece is sending two frigates and a pair of F-16 fighter jets to Aphrodite's Isle.

Amazon Web Services reported Monday that two data centers in the United Arab Emirates were “directly struck” and another facility in Bahrain was also damaged after a drone landed nearby. 

On Tuesday, two ballistic missiles were aimed at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base. Air defenses intercepted one, while the second struck the base southwest of Doha without causing casualties. Al Udeid is the backbone of US military airpower in the Middle East, housing the Combined Air Operations Center that direct American and coalition missions across the region. The strike marks a direct hit on one of Washington’s most critical strategic assets there. 

There's been so many claims made by all sides; it's been difficult to establish the veracity of every claim. What is certain is the trail of death and destruction left behind! 

And then there's this widely-circulated story which according to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, Trump through Italy had sought an immediate ceasefire upon seeing that the Iranian government did not collapse after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior figures in the country’s leadership – but Iran rejected it outright.

They should fear Khamenei as a martyr, more than Khamenei alive!

This ambitious American-Israeli project targeting Iran envisioned a massive bombing campaign to last only 4-5 days and expecting Iran to surrender thereafter. 

Today is Day 6! 

IRAN HAS NOT SURRENDERED! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

And on Tuesday, parents in Minab, Iran held a mass funeral for the 165 students – most of them girls aged between 7 and 12 – as well as staff killed in the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh all girls' school by the evil Israel-US axis. 

The IRNA news agency had cited a local prosecutor as saying that 96 people had been wounded in Saturday’s strike. 

Ali Farhadi, spokesperson for Iran’s Education Ministry, said Sunday that three attacks struck the school, which he said had 264 students. 

Some social media accounts linked to Israel claimed the site was “part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base”. However, an analysis by Al Jazeera’s digital investigations unit of satellite imagery compiled over more than a decade, as well as recent video clips, published news reports and statements from official Iranian sources, tells a very different story. 

The findings reveal that the school had been clearly separate from an adjacent military site for at least 10 years. The investigation also shows that the strike pattern raises fundamental questions about the accuracy of intelligence information on which the bombing was based.

The Minab massacre is a war crime.

Iran's official IRNA news agency said Wednesday Israel and US had killed 1,045 military personnel and civilians since the start of the war. Elsewhere, Al Jazeera reported at least 11 dead in Israel as well as six US soldiers and eight civilians killed in the Gulf states. And the death toll from Israeli military action in Lebanon has risen to 72, with 437 injured since this front of the war ignited on Monday.

Big Tech's High-stakes AI Gamble

Skyrocketing AI infrastructure outlays have raised investor concerns over future returns and the potential for a bubble. 

Already, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta announced plans to spend a combined $660 billion on artificial intelligence in 2026. 

Certainly, the spending is humongous, even as tech companies are racing to get a lucrative piece of the proverbial pie. 

But there are concerns with overhyped valuations and uncertain profitability. A case in point is OpenAI having secured computing agreements with Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle worth over $1 trillion. And Nvidia alone completed more than 100 AI-related venture deals in 2024. 

Analysts warn that much of the investment flows within a small group of closely linked companies, are creating what they describe as circular financing that inflates market values beyond the industry’s actual profits. 

According to a recent PwC survey, most CEOs say their companies have not yet seen financial returns from AI, with only 12% reporting both higher revenue and lower costs. 

Still, this won't discourage Big Tech from spending big (except it is said, Apple, which so far, are keeping AI infrastructure spending low). 

At the same time, in the back of their minds, they are painfully aware that they'll get punished when investors begin worrying they might not see returns that justify hundreds of billions in spending. 

A Big Tech’s high-stakes gamble on a fickle future.

Manchester City scored twice at Anfield to earn a 2-1 Premier League victory over Liverpool on Sunday.

It was Dominik Szoboszlai who sent Reds into the lead in the 73rd minute with a glorious free-kick goal which clipped the woodwork before nestling in the back of the net. 

But Citizens levelled ten minutes afterward and then scored again from the spot (90+3) to wrap up the game. 

Thus, Man City keep their title race alive as they close the gap on leaders Arsenal to six points. And Liverpool remain sixth, five points off the top four.

Amazon Announce Mass Layoffs Amid AI Push

Amazon, on Tuesday, announced job cuts – 14,000 corporate jobs, representing a 4% reduction in their office workforce – and adding that they are not done with the layoffs! Reuters had claimed the day before that this number could ultimately reach 30,000. 

Staff in the US, Canada, and Europe have been informed of the layoffs, according to internal Slack posts viewed by Business Insider. 

The layoffs are the company's biggest since 2023, when 27,000 jobs were slashed globally. 

This decision comes amid a wider trend where corporate giants eliminate tens of thousands of positions as they intensify automation. Meaning, AI is “enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before”. Data from tracker Layoffs.fyi indicates that nearly 113,000 tech employees were let go among 218 tech firms globally this year. 

Already, since 2024, Amazon have committed about $40 billion to four data center projects in the US, as it builds up its infrastructure to try to compete with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others. 

I get this impression that technology is being leveraged primarily to increase corporate profits and concentrate wealth. 

Celtic narrowed the gap at the top of the Scottish Premiership to six points as interim manager Martin O'Neill delivered an emphatic 4-0 victory over Falkirk in his first game in charge in 20 years. 

Johnny Kenny's first-half double (30, 40), followed by Benjamin Nygren (58) and Sebastian Tounekti (73) strikes, earned a comfortable win for a side who had suffered successive league defeats. 

There's a long way to go for Celtic to be fully back on track but this was a really positive step that lifted the mood ahead of Sunday's League Cup semi-final against Rangers.

Bomb the Shit Out of Moscow and Beijing

Donald Trump told a private gathering of donors at New York’s Pierre Hotel on May 14, 2024 that he once sought to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine and to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping from attacking Taiwan by threatening to “bomb the shit” out of Moscow and Beijing in retaliation, according to a leaked audio obtained by CNN and detailed in a new book published on Tuesday. 

The said book, "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America" chronicles how US President Trump secured his victory in the November 2024 election, and how former President Joe Biden's team dismissed concerns about his age in the US campaign cycle. 

It is authored by Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of the New York Times and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post. And it is based on over 300 interviews conducted over 18 months.

Nvidia beat Apple and Microsoft to the $4 trillion mark. 

Apple entered this year as the world’s most valuable company at just about $3.9 trillion before tumbling in recent months amid Trump’s tariff turmoil. 

Nvidia and Microsoft traded places as the world’s most valuable company in recent months, before the former surged ahead to reach the $4 trillion mark first. The US chipmaker have had a remarkable march to record highs and have soared around 21% this year, thanks to their leading role powering the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia’s chips power the data centers that companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google need to fuel their AI models and cloud services – and AI investments are only expected to grow. 

Global spending on AI infrastructure is expected to surpass $200 billion by 2028, according to market research firm The International Data Corporation.

700 Engineers Pretend To Be AI

London-based Builder.ai, one of UK’s best-funded technology start-ups and once valued at $1.5 billion, backed by major investors including Microsoft, the Qatar Investment Authority, SoftBank’s DeepCore, and IFC, have declared bankruptcy and announced on LinkedIn that they would be "entering into insolvency proceedings". 

They were exposed in May this year for falsely marketing their app-building services as an AI-powered no-code platform that promises to make software creation "as easy as ordering pizza".  

Investigations revealed that the company’s much-touted AI assistant, “Natasha”, was largely a façade – most of the work was done manually by 700 engineers based in India. 

Additionally, Builder.ai, founded in 2016 by Sachin Dev Duggal (right), and previously known as Engineer.ai, engaged in financial misconduct through “round-tripping” with Indian social media firm, VerSe Innovation to inflate their revenue figures – a tactic that helped attract investment. 

Between 2021 and 2024, both companies had billed each other large amounts, even though no real services were provided. In fact, Builder.ai even claimed $220 million in 2024 sales, but their actual income was closer to $50 million. An independent audit exposed the discrepancy, prompting lender Viola Credit to seize $37 million from Builder.ai’s accounts. 

Left with only $5 million in restricted funds, the company’s operations across five countries – including India, the UK, and the US – came to a standstill. With regulatory issues freezing fresh capital, Builder.ai failed to pay staff, leading to nearly 1,000 layoffs. 

Also, the company reportedly owe $85 million to Amazon and $30 million to Microsoft in unpaid cloud services. A US federal probe is underway, with investigators seeking access to their financial and client data. 

Builder.ai’s downfall has reignited concerns around “AI washing” – branding basic tech services as AI to capitalise on investor excitement. Phil Brunkard of Info-Tech Research Group noted that many start-ups “scaled fast without robust technology or governance”, riding a wave of unchecked hype. 

With regulators now probing how AI firms market their products, the Builder.ai episode has become a cautionary tale. What was sold as an AI revolution turned out to be a conventional outsourcing firm cloaked in buzzwords. The result: employees out of work, millions in investor losses, and renewed demands for transparency and accountability in the AI start-up ecosystem.

Donald Trump to Walmart: Eat The Tariffs

US President Donald Trump on Saturday ripped into Walmart, saying on social media that the retail giant should eat the additional costs created by his tariffs. 

As Trump has jacked up import taxes, he has tried to assure a skeptical public that foreign producers would pay for those taxes and that retailers and automakers would absorb the additional expenses. Most economic analyses are deeply skeptical of those claims and have warned that the trade penalties would worsen inflation. 

Walmart already warned on Thursday that everything from bananas to children's car seats could increase in price. 

Trump, in his Truth Social post, lashed out at the retailer, which employ 1.6 million people in the United States. He said the company, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, should sacrifice their profits for the sake of his economic agenda that he says will eventually lead to more domestic jobs in manufacturing. 

“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain”, Trump posted. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS”, and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” 

The posting by Trump reflected the increasingly awkward series of choices that many major American companies face as a result of his tariffs, from deteriorating sales to the possibility of incurring his wrath. He has similarly warned domestic automakers to not raise their prices, even though outside analyses say his tariffs would raise production costs. 

So far, those tariffs have darkened the mood of an otherwise resilient US economy. The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment on Friday slipped to its second lowest measure on record, with roughly 75% of respondents “spontaneously” mentioning tariffs as they largely expected inflation to accelerate. 

In April, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon (right) was among the retail executives who met with Trump at the White House to discuss tariffs. But the Trump administration went forward despite warnings and has attacked other companies such as Amazon and Apple that are struggling with the disruptions to their supply chains. 

Walmart chief financial officer John David Rainey said he thinks $350 car seats made in China will soon cost an additional $100, a 29% price increase. 

“We’re wired to keep prices low, but there’s a limit to what we can bear, or any retailer for that matter”, he told The Associated Press on Thursday after the company reported strong first-quarter sales. 

MAGA's Make America Wealthy Again

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced plans for sweeping new import taxes on all goods entering the US, in a watershed moment for global trade. 

Declaring a national emergency, the US president said the US had for more than five decades been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike". 

The plan sets a baseline tariff on all imports of at least 10%, with Trump claiming that this will create a hard reset on the country’s industry, eventually leading to a stronger economy and lower prices for US consumers. Items from countries that the White House described as the "worst offenders", including the European Union and China would face higher rates for what Trump said was payback for unfair trade policies. 

Trump's move breaks with decades of American policy embracing free trade, and analysts said it was likely to lead to higher prices in the US and slower growth in the US and around the world. 

The 10% tariffs start on April 05, with the higher duties beginning April 09. 

The White House affirmed the latest changes would not change anything for Mexico and Canada, two of America's closest trading partners. Other allies will also face tariffs, including 10% for the UK and 20% for the European Union. And tariffs on goods from China will jump a further 34%, adding to an existing 20% levy, while it will be 24% for Japan, and 26% on India. [Note: Malaysia's tariff rate is 24%].

Some of the highest rates will be levied on smaller countries, with goods from the southern African nation of Lesotho facing 50%, while Vietnam and Cambodia will be hit with 46% and 49% respectively. The latter two have both seen a rush of investment in recent years, as firms shifted supply chains away from China following Trump's first term. 

The baseline tariffs will apply to more than 100 countries, according to a White House fact sheet, of which some 60 will face a higher "reciprocal" rate. 

Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government and public policy at Cornell University, called it a "dramatic transformation" of the international trade order, which the US had helped to create after World War Two. "We're seeing that system unravelling", he said. 

The stock market was closed for trading when Trump made his announcement. But in after-market trading shares in major American companies sank sharply. Apple, which rely heavily on China and on Taiwan, which is facing tariffs of 32%, sank more than 7%. Amazon was down more than 6%, while shares in Walmart dropped more than 4%.

P.S. It's worth pointing out that Trump's tariffs used a simplistic formula to calculate the rate for each of them. The formula’s central value is the trade deficit, the difference between imports and exports between each country and the United States, for the year 2024. Trump has said these tariffs will reduce trade imbalances and level the international playing field. But his one-size-fits-all formula is blunt: It applies the exact same (arbitrary) math to countries whether they have hefty trade barriers or wide-open markets. It considers only the size of a trade deficit, not why the deficit exists. Moreover, the Trump administration calculated the trade deficit using only goods − physical items that can be shipped − and not services, such as technology, media, banking and tourism. (E.g., A DVD counts; a Netflix subscription doesn’t).

The US Economy Is Suddenly Looking A Bit Shaky

It didn't take long for doom and gloom to slowly but surely manifest itself under US President Donald Trump's presidency. And many people will be cheering.

I just saw a news report that the Nasdaq Composite plunged more than 10% from its record high set in late 2024. The S&P 500 is also down nearly 9% from its February peak. And Monday saw the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 posted its worst day since September 2022, wiping out more than $1 trillion in value. Investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones lost almost 900 points, slipping below its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 01, 2023.

The market selloff comes as Trump’s back-and-forth tariff announcements have unnerved investors and stoked fears that the US economy could be headed for a major slowdown, or even a recession. 

The spreading fear is that Trump's tariffs – which are taxes on goods applied as they enter the country – will lead to higher prices and dent growth in the world's largest economy.

Even Trump in an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday acknowledged that the economy was in a "period of transition", when asked about suggestions of a potential recession. 

Kevin Hassett, an economic adviser to Trump, pushed back against those projecting a bleak outlook for the country. In an interview with CNBC, Hassett said Americans can be optimistic about the US economy and that that tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico and China were already bringing manufacturing and jobs to the United States. 

"There are a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish about the economy going forward", he pronounced. Still, he admitted there were some "blips in the data" for this quarter, which he pinned on the timing of Trump's tariffs and the "Biden inheritance".

The above aside, a Harris poll from February 13 to 15, among a nationally representative sample of 2,131 US adults found that 51% of Americans now believe that the US economy is worsening, while just 20% said it was improving and 29% said it was the same.

The Dealmaker is Rolling in Money

US President Donald Trump is a businessperson. He once boasted, “deals are my art form”. 

Well, the dealmaker is back in the White House, and corporations and their billionaire owners and executives are doling out millions. So far companies have paid about $80 million to the Trump family and the Trump presidential library that he hopes to build, according to the Wall Street Journal. That only represents settlements and business ventures, not the millions donated for his inauguration or crypto pursuits. And some deals were made before the president even stepped in the Oval Office, back when he stayed at Mar-a-Lago. 

Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer in Trump’s first administration, told WSJ: “Everything he does is either to be vengeful or to accumulate wealth, power and adulation”. Trump knows “all these people want a piece of him”, Cobb said. 

Here's a sample of 4 cases about some of the money the Trump family has coming in since the president made his political comeback:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez had dinner with Trump and his wife Melania at Mar-a-Lago in December. He was the president-elect then. Two weeks later Amazon agreed to pay $40 million to license a documentary about Melania; it is the most Amazon has ever spent on a documentary, and a lot more than the $14 million Disney offered, according to WSJ. People familiar affirmed that the first lady’s cut is more than 70%. 

Four years ago, Trump sued Meta for locking his Facebook account after the January 06 attack on the Capitol. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago in November, and at that dinner, according to WSJ which cited a person familiar with the conversation, Trump told Zuckerberg the lawsuit needed to be settled if he wanted peace. Meta settled a couple months later and agreed to pay Trump $25 million: $22 million would go to a fund for his presidential library and the rest to legal fees.

Last week, Elon Musk’s X reportedly agreed to pay about $10 million to settle a lawsuit against the social media site and their prior chief executive after Trump sued what was then Twitter for de-platforming him after the January 06 riot, people familiar told WSJ. And it has been claimed that the money is expected to go directly to him rather than his presidential library, per sources familiar with the matter.

In December, Disney reached a settlement with Trump in his defamation case against ABC News and their anchor George Stephanopoulos after he said that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape – but really, Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse. The company agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum and an additional $1 million for his legal fees.

Trump is rolling in money! Aiseh, I envy him!

Meta and Amazon Axe DEI Initiatives, Joining US Corporate Rollback

Now, even Meta and Amazon are axing DEI initiatives and joining the US corporate rollback.

 

Walmart, McDonalds, Ford, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock are among the other companies to have made similar DEI abandonment decisions, a sign of the acceleration of a retreat that started two years ago, as Republicans ramped up attacks and accusing them of "woke" progressive activism and threatening political punishment. More so, since Donald Trump won re-election.

 

Many of the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were put in place after the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in 2020 following George Floyd's murder at the hands of police. 

 

However, recent court decisions have bolstered critics of the programs, who said that they were discriminatory. The Supreme Court in 2023 struck down the right for private universities to consider race in admissions decisions. Another court of appeals ruling invalidated a Nasdaq policy that would have required companies listed on that stock exchange to have at least one woman, racial minority or LGBTQ person on their board or explain why not.

 

Celtic overcame sub-zero temperatures in the Highlands and a Ross County team in good form to secure a 4-1 victory and move 18 points clear in the Scottish Premiership yesterday. 

 

Kyogo Furuhashi put the table toppers in front when he poked in a lovely cross from right-back Alistair Johnston in the fortieth minute. But the Dingwall side leveled just twenty minutes later.

 

Celtic restored their advantage when Arne Engels crossed from the left and Furuhashi headed into the top corner in the 81st minute despite the Staggies keeper getting his hands to the effort.

 

As if that was not enough, the Celts scored two more in stoppage time. Within 6 minutes, a spot-kick for a challenge on Reo Hatate with Engels converting at the second attempt. And then, Luke McCowan completed the scoring when he slotted home in the 98th minute after managing three touches in the box.

 

 

Donald Trump "Buys" Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal on Amazon

Eric Trump shared a post on social media platform X featuring his father, President-elect Donald Trump, humorously describing himself as "buying" Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal – through the Amazon app. 

 

[For background info, kindly refer to my posts "American Puppets" and "Greenland Again Tells Donald Trump It Is Not For Sale", published December 12 and 24, 2024 respectively].

 

The image below shows Trump searching on his phone, adding the three territories to his "cart", Telegrafi reports:

 

😂😂😂

 

Yesterday, Celtic won an emphatic 4-0 victory over Motherwell at Parkhead.

 

The league leaders won a penalty just before the break when the Well goalkeeper was adjudged to have impeded Hyun-Jun Yang following the forward’s dramatised fall in the 18-yard-box. And the spot-kick was confidently converted by Arne Engels. 

 

Then, Engels turned provider, teeing up Liam Scales, who diverted his header to the feet of Daizen Maeda, who coolly slotted his finish into the back of the net in the 57th minute. 

 

Second-half substitute Nicolas Kuhn struck home in the 74th minute after his low-drilled strike deflected off of an onrushing Motherwell player and directed into the far corner. 

 

And Reo Hatate wrapped up the three-points finding the opposing corner in the 81st minute, with a similar low strike on-goal.

 

After struggling to break through, Celtic’s quality took them to a triumph that was ultimately comfortable. They remain clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership table on 47 points.

 

 

Metaphors Can Help Simplify Today's Complex Issues

I came across a July 16, 2024 article in Inc. by Carmine Gallo, Harvard instructor, keynote speaker, author of "Talk Like TED" and "The Bezos Blueprint" – and in the said piece, he had touted the singular point that metaphors can help simplify today's complex issues. 

 

He defines a metaphor as a figure of speech that implicitly compares two unrelated things, typically by stating that one thing is another (e.g., “that chef is a magician”). 

 

And, in business, he says you can use metaphors to bring your presentation to life, align teams, and explain complex ideas. And he picks Jeff Bezos (right) to illustrate the point.

 

For example, why did Bezos name his start-up Amazon? 

 

Bezos wanted to find a metaphor for Earth's biggest selection of books – so he named the company after the world's biggest river. And he didn't stop there.

 

In addition to the company's name itself, Bezos went on to create: 

 

Two-pizza teams – Bezos introduced the concept of "two-pizza teams" to emphasize the importance of keeping teams small and agile within an organization. The idea is that a team should be small enough to be fed with just two large pizzas. Any larger, and teams become bureaucratic and inefficient. 

 

Single-threaded leaders – This, too, was a concept Bezos and other leaders promoted at Amazon. It refers to the practice of assigning a single, dedicated leader to a specific project or initiative. 

 

The single-threaded leader is the person who dedicates their entire focus to one area without being distracted by other responsibilities. 

 

Flywheels – The "flywheel" is considered Jeff Bezos's most strategic and powerful metaphor, fueling Amazon's astonishing growth. Once set in motion, a mechanical flywheel continues to spin and gains momentum with minimal effort. 

 

Bezos adapted the concept of a "flywheel" to describe how Amazon's business model drives growth. For example, if Amazon keeps prices low, it attracts more customers. More customers attract third-party sellers to the platform who offer a broader selection. More selection attracts more customers, and so on. The momentum becomes unstoppable. 

 

While Bezos didn't invent the idea of a flywheel for business – the idea came from Jim Collins in "Good to Great" – Bezos knew a good metaphor when he saw one. 

 

Gallo asserts that metaphors are fundamental elements in your communication toolkit. Therefore, reach for them when you need to simplify complex ideas.

 

I don't disagree – but I would add "analogies" and "similes" to the mix because they're all very much interrelated. In Gallo's article, some of the examples are metaphors and others are more precisely, analogies. [Gallo, an analogy explains an idea].

 

Just so we know, a metaphor is a figure of speech that uses one thing to mean another and makes a comparison between the two. A simile compares two different things in order to create a new meaning. An analogy is comparable to metaphor and simile in that it shows how two different things are similar, but it's a bit more complex because it makes an explanation (or clarification).

 

To illustrate. Metaphor: Time is a thief. Simile: Time is like a thief. Analogy: Time is like a thief in that thieves steal physical objects and time steals moments of our lives.

 

I know that Ahmad Fakhri (right) – co-author of the best-selling "The Diamond in Your Speech" – often uses metaphors, similes and analogies in his Persuasive Communication workshops. 

 

One excellent example is this anecdote he shares of his time in Shell Malaysia, where he employs a rhetorical device – in this case, an analogy – to give an explanation to a non-technical audience:

 

"During my time as a project engineer at the Port Dickson refinery, I was asked to explain the workings of the refinery to the local villagers. Knowing they weren't familiar with the technical details of a chemical plant, I used an analogy to make the complex processes easier to understand. Instead of diving into the technicalities of crude oil distillation, I compared the process to something more familiar – cooking rice. 

 

I asked the audience how they cook rice, and they quickly responded that it requires a pot and high heat to boil the water. I then explained that the different layers of rice, from the hard black crust to the softer grains, represented various petroleum products like tar, fuel oil, gasoline, and diesel. Just as special ingredients can make rice dishes unique, adding specific additives to oil creates high-performance fuels like those used in race cars. Finally, I likened the steam from the rice to the gas that gets captured and distributed for household or business use. 

 

By using this analogy, I was able to help the villagers easily grasp the complex concepts of refinery operations".

 

The lesson here is clear. In communication, nothing matters to people unless they can understand it.

 

Google an Illegal Monopoly over Internet Search, US Judge Rules

A US judge has ruled Google acted illegally to smash its competition and maintain a monopoly on online search and related advertising. 

 

The landmark decision on Monday is a major blow to Alphabet, Google's parent company, and could reshape how technology giants do business. Google was sued by the US Department of Justice in 2020 over its control of 90% of the online search market.

 

This case has at times been described as posing an existential threat to Google and its owner given its dominance of the search and online advertising business. It is unclear yet what penalties Google and Alphabet will face as a result of the decision. The fines or other remedies will be decided in a future hearing. 

 

The government have asked for "structural relief" – which could, in theory at least, mean the break-up of the company.

 

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly”, Judge Amil Mehta wrote in his 277-page opinion. 

 

Alphabet said they plan to appeal against the ruling. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available", the statement from the company said. 

 

Federal antitrust regulators have filed other pending lawsuits against Big Tech companies – including Meta Platforms, which own Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple Inc – accusing them of operating unlawful monopolies. 

 

Monday's ruling comes after a 10-week trial in Washington DC, in which prosecutors accused Google of spending billions of dollars annually to Apple, Samsung, Mozilla and others to be pre-installed as the default search engine across platforms. The US said Google typically pays more than $10 billion a year for that privilege, securing its access to a steady stream of user data that helped maintain its hold on the market. Doing so, prosecutors said, meant other companies have not had the opportunity or resources to meaningfully compete.

 

In his ruling, Judge Mehta concluded that being the default search engine is "extremely valuable real estate" for Google. Very true!

Apple Replaced as the World’s Second-most Valuable Company

Nvidia have overtaken Apple to become the world’s second-most valuable company, with furious demand for the artificial intelligence chipmaker’s shares taking their valuation to over $3 trillion. 

 

Shares of Nvidia gained 5.2 percent on Wednesday to close at $1,224.40, lifting the company’s market capitalisation to $3.012 trillion.

 

Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, rose 1.91 percent, while Apple gained 0.78 percent. 

 

Nvidia’s rally continues an extraordinary streak of gains for the California, US-based firm, whose graphics processing units have fueled a boom in artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s revenues have soared more than 260 percent over the past year as tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon race to roll out AI.

 

Americans love to believe they are righteous and morally upstanding, even if that is a big lie.

 

👇This is the original United States of America, where over 20 million Native Americans dispersed across over 1,000 distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups populated the territory:

 

But when the Europeans arrived on American shores, the lands, before long, bled uninterrupted as Native Americans were soon slaughtered.

 

In fact, it has been claimed that over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids had been waged on the "Indians", the most of any country in the world against its Indigenous people. 

 

By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained, according to www.history.com. 

 

They have been almost wiped out! The description "slaughter" doesn't begin to detail the mass killings that visited the Indians; it was pure genocide! 

 

And according to www.history.com, the reasons for this racial genocide were multi-layered. Settlers, most of whom had been barred from inheriting property in Europe, arrived on American shores hungry for Indian land – and the abundant natural resources that came with it. Indians’ collusion with the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 exacerbated American hostility and suspicion toward them. 

 

Even more fundamentally, the Native Americans were just too different: Their skin was dark. Their languages were foreign. And their world views and spiritual beliefs were beyond most white men’s comprehension. And so, the Indians were painted as pagan savages who must be eliminated in the name of civilization and Christianity.

 

The Indians became a broken, vanishing race. Ironically, just over 100 years later, the resilient American Indian population survived into the 21st century and swelled to more than 5 million people.

 

Fast forward to today. According to the US Census Bureau (2022, October 11), people who are American Indian (or Alaska Native), often considered an “invisible minority”, make up just 2.9% (9.7 million, alone or in combination*) of the total US population of 329.5 million in 2021.

 

[*Race, like all other US Census data, is self-reported. Since 2000, the US Census allowed people to indicate more than one race. 

 

Those who marked “American Indian or Alaska Native” along with one or more additional races are classified as “American Indian or Alaska Native in combination”. Those who marked only “American Indian or Alaska Native” are categorized as “American Indian or Alaska Native alone”]. 

 

The white Americans have yet to properly face up to the genocide. And to think, these Americans remain stubbornly convinced that they are superior to everybody else. This explains why they are so determined to maintain US hegemony over the rest of the world.

 

As for the American Indians, sad to say, they are a defeated people and having to submit themselves to their colonisers.