Daily Archives: December 8, 2021

California Plans to Be Abortion Sanctuary if Roe Overturned 

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With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a safe place for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states.  The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the …

What Caused Amazon’s Outage?

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Robotic vacuum cleaners halted in their tracks. Doorbell cameras stopped watching for package thieves, though some of those deliveries were canceled anyway. Netflix and Disney movies were interrupted, and The Associated Press had trouble publishing the news. A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for hours, raising questions about the vulnerability of the internet and its concentration in the hands of a few firms.  How did it happen?  Amazon has said nothing about exactly what went wrong. The …

Google Releases 2021’s ‘Most Searched’ Items

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While the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on, one might not know it by looking at 2021’s most searched items on Google.  According to the list released by Google Wednesday, “NBA” was the most searched term in the U.S., but it’s unclear why.  Other most searched topics were rapper DMX, who died; Gabby Petito, an apparent murder victim who died during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who was also on the most searched list. Laundrie was declared a person of interest in Petito’s death, but he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot …

Australia Announces Diplomatic Boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics 

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Australia will stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, mirroring a  similar move by the United States.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the boycott Wednesday in Canberra, citing a range of issues including accusations of human rights abuses against China and Beijing’s refusal to hold bilateral talks to resolve lingering trade and diplomatic disputes.  A diplomatic boycott means that no Australian officials will attend any Beijing Olympics events, but its athletes will still be allowed to participate.    Relations between Australia and China have turned sour in recent …

Japanese Tycoon Takes Off for International Space Station

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A Japanese billionaire and his producer rocketed to space Wednesday as the first self-paying space tourists in more than a decade.  Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and producer Yozo Hirano, who plans to film his mission, blasted off for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.  The trio lifted off as scheduled at 12:38 p.m. (0738 GMT) aboard Soyuz MS-20 from the Russia-leaded Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.  Maezawa and Hirano are scheduled to spend 12 days in space. The two will be the first self-paying tourists to visit the space station …

UN Chief Isolating After COVID-19 Exposure

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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was exposed to the coronavirus Tuesday by a U.N. official who already had COVID-19 and is isolating for the next few days, diplomatic sources said.  Guterres, 72, has canceled his upcoming in-person engagements, sources told AFP.  The U.N. chief was to be the guest of honor of the U.N. Correspondents Association at its annual gala in New York City on Wednesday. On Thursday, he was to participate in a U.N. Security Council meeting on the challenges of terrorism and climate change, led by Niger President …

Amazon Cloud Outage Hits Major Websites, Streaming Apps

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A major outage disrupted Amazon’s cloud services on Tuesday, temporarily knocking out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, a wide range of apps, and Amazon.com Inc.’s e-commerce website as consumers shopped ahead of Christmas.  “Many services have already recovered; however, we are working towards full recovery across services,” Amazon said on its status dashboard.  Amazon’s Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, which use Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported issues, according to their social media pages.  Trading app Robinhood and Walt Disney’s streaming service …