"The Pentagon's latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena," reports the Associated Press, "but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

"The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York." Federal efforts to study and identify UAPs have focused on potential threats to national security or air safety and not their science fiction aspects. Officials at the Pentagon office created in 2022 to track UAPs, known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, have said there's no indication any of the cases they looked into have unearthly origins. "It is important to underscore that, to date, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology," the authors of the report wrote... Reporting witnesses included commercial and military pilots as well as ground-based observers. Investigators found explanations for nearly 300 of the incidents. In many cases, the unknown objects were found to be balloons, birds, aircraft, drones or satellites. According to the report, Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system is one increasingly common source as people mistake chains of satellites for UFOs. Hundreds of other cases remain unexplained, though the report's authors stressed that is often because there isn't enough information to draw firm conclusions.

No injuries or crashes were reported in any of the incidents, though a commercial flight crew reported one near miss with a "cylindrical object" while flying over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York. That incident remains under investigation. In three other cases, military air crews reported being followed or shadowed by unidentified aircraft, though investigators could find no evidence to link the activity to a foreign power.
The article points out that the report's publication comes "a day after House lawmakers called for greater government transparency during a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena." And it concludes with this quote from Republican Represenative Andy Ogles of Tennessee. "There is something out there. The question is: Is it ours, is it someone else's, or is it otherworldly?"

Remember those 43 monkeys that escaped from a U.S. research lab? They've caught 35 of them — but haven't yet caught the other eight.

But even worse... The Independent reports that now another animal escape has led to "reports of two large emus running riot..." The birds' owner, Sam Morace, took to social media to plead with locals for their patience, saying: "For everyone that keeps seeing an emu, yes it is mine. There are 2 of them out." Morace said their two flightless birds broke loose three months ago.... "They are feral and not trained like the ones we have at the house."
This provoked some discussion on Facebook. ("Does nobody learn to lasso anymore?") But Morace responded that you "can't lasso a bird you have to grab them by their feet. Their necks are super long and fragile." In another post Morace detailed efforts to capture their birds. "Local law enforcement has already been at my house, we are trying to get a tranquilizer approved so we can bring them home.

"Thank you for all the concerns and questions. But if the emus were that easy to catch they would be home already.

If you're wondering how the escaped monkeys are doing out in the wild, someone who photographed them earlier this week said they appeared "playful, curious and jumping from tree to tree." The Guardian reports local officials have now "requested that the public avoid using drones near the facility. Earlier in the week, they reported that a drone incident 'spooked' the monkeys, increasing their stress levels and complicating efforts to recapture them."

Their article also notes reports that the facility houses 7,000 monkeys. And this isn't the first time some have escaped... In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped from the same facility, according to the Post and Courier newspaper, but were returned after six hours. Earlier, in 2014, 26 macaques reportedly escaped and were captured within two days. Documents from federal regulators from previous years revealed other incidents at the facility, as reported by the New York Times. One involved a primate escaping while being transported to the medical clinic and subsequently disappearing into the woods. Another involved two monkeys breaking out of their outdoor chain-link enclosure, which reportedly resulted in one monkey being lured back inside and the other dying shortly after being recaptured. In 2017, the Department of Agriculture fined the company more than $12,000 partly due to failures to contain the animals, according to the New York Times.
The Guardian also links to a related read from February: "Plan for US 'mini-city' of 30,000 monkeys for medical research faces backlash." Over the next 20 years, the facility will assemble a mega-troop of about 30,000 long-tailed macaques, a species native to south-east Asia, in vast barn-like structures in Bainbridge, Georgia, which has a human population of just 14,000... But the plan faces fierce opposition, with some Bainbridge residents calling on local authorities to block the construction of the proposed primate manse. "They're an invasive species and 30,000 of them, we'd just be overrun with monkeys," claimed Ted Lee, a local man. "I don't think anybody would want 30,000 monkeys next door," added David Barber, who would live just 400ft from the new facility.

British telecom Virgin Media O2 has deployed an AI tool to combat phone scammers by wasting their time with fake conversations, the company said. The AI system, named Daisy, uses voice synthesis to mimic an elderly woman and engages fraudsters in lengthy discussions about fictitious family members or provides false bank details, keeping them occupied for up to 40 minutes per call.

Virgin Media O2 embedded phone numbers connected to Daisy within scammer call lists targeting vulnerable individuals. The system, developed with help from anti-scam YouTuber Jim Browning, automatically transcribes incoming calls and generates responses without human intervention.

Further reading: Google Rolls Out Call Screening AI To Thwart Phone Fraudsters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Australian government plans to enact laws requiring big tech firms to protect its citizens online, the latest move by the center-left Labor administration to crack down on social media including through age limits and curbs on misinformation. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland announced the government's plan for a legislated Digital Duty of Care in Australia on Wednesday night, saying it aligned with similar laws in the UK and European Union. "It is now time for industry to show leadership, and for social media to recognize it has a social responsibility," Rowland said in a speech in Sydney announcing the measures. It would "keep users safe and help prevent online harms."

In response to the laws, Facebook and Instagram operator Meta Platforms Inc. called for the restrictions to be handled by app stores, such as those run by Google and Apple Inc., rather than the platforms themselves. The government has ignored those requests, but has yet to announce what fines companies would face or what age verification information will need to be provided. At the same time, Albanese has moved forward controversial laws to target misinformation and disinformation online, which opponents have labeled an attack on freedom of speech. Earlier this month, Albanese said the government would legislate for a ban on social media for children under 16, a policy the government says is world-leading. "Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference.

An anonymous reader shares a report: After dragging its feet for years, Microsoft has finally released the first official Windows 11 ISOs for PCs with an Arm64 processor. This means users can now clean install Windows 11 using official offline media on an Arm64-based PC, including the latest Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs.

The ISOs contain version 24H2 can be downloaded from the official Microsoft website, and are around 5GB in size depending on the language you select. According to the company, the ISOs are primarily designed for running Windows 11 in a virtual machine on Arm64 PCs. However, it also mentions that you can use them to clean install Windows 11 directly onto Arm64 hardware too.Unfortunately, depending on the Arm64 PC you have, you may need to do some additional work to get the ISO bootable.

The FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's Manhattan apartment, seizing his phone and electronic devices. A source close to the matter told The New York Post it was politically motivated due to Polymarket's successful prediction of Trump's election win. It's "grand political theater at its worst," the source said. "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons."

Although no charges were filed, the raid has sparked controversy, with speculation of political retribution and concerns over potential market manipulation, as Polymarket faces scrutiny both in the U.S. and from French regulators. The New York Post reports: Coplan was not arrested and has not been charged, a Polymarket spokesperson told The Post on Wednesday evening. "Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections," the rep said. "We charge no fees, take no trading positions, and allow observers from around the world to analyze all market data as a public good."

Coplan posted on X after his run-in with the feds: "New phone, who dis?" Polymarket does not allow trading in the US, though bettors can bypass the ban by accessing the site through VPN. The FBI's investigation comes a week after Coplan said Polymarket is planning to return to the US. [...] In 2022, the online gambling platform was forced to pause its trading in the US and pay a $1.4 million penalty to settle charges with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it had failed to register with the agency. [In France, regulators are investigating Polymarket's compliance with national gambling laws, with concerns about unauthorized gambling activities within the country.] A Fortune report published a week before the election found widespread evidence of wash-trading on Polymarket. "Polymarket's Terms of Use expressly prohibit market manipulation," a Polymarket spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.

Bluesky has reached 15 million users, driven by a recent surge in U.S. signups following the presidential election. It's currently the top free app on iOS. The Verge reports: The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the "majority" of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. Meta's Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its "Discover" and "Popular With Friends" ones.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk. Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp.

GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol. "We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products," writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales and marketing at GOG. "If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (we've been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years)."

What kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I'm glad to see the Jagged Alliance games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and the Wing Commander series (particularly, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date. [...] [I]f you see the shiny foil-ish GOG badge on a game, it's an assurance that GOG has done all it can to bring forward a classic title. It's important work, too. "Preserving" games doesn't just mean locking a stable media in a vault, but keeping games accessible, and playable.

Italy has emerged as a major global spyware hub alongside Israel and India, with at least six major vendors operating in the country with limited oversight, The Record reported this week, citing researchers and Italian experts. Companies like RCS Labs, which has operated since 1992, sell surveillance tools to both domestic law enforcement and foreign governments including Kazakhstan, Syria, and several Asian nations.

Italian authorities can rent spyware for $160 per day without large acquisition costs, leading to thousands of domestic surveillance operations in recent years. While new regulations taking effect in February 2024 will require judges to evaluate specific reasons for spyware use, critics cited in the story say the reform package won't address core issues like the lack of centralized oversight. The country's competitive marketplace and relatively lax export controls have also enabled Italian vendors to expand their overseas sales.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Officials inside the Secret Service clashed over whether they needed a warrant to use location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on smartphones, with some arguing that citizens have agreed to be tracked with such data by accepting app terms of service, despite those apps often not saying their data may end up with the authorities, according to hundreds of pages of internal Secret Service emails obtained by 404 Media.

The emails provide deeper insight into the agency's use of Locate X, a powerful surveillance capability that allows law enforcement officials to follow a phone, and person's, precise movements over time at the click of a mouse. In 2023, a government oversight body found that the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement all used their access to such location data illegally. The Secret Service told 404 Media in an email last week it is no longer using the tool. "If USSS [U.S. Secret Service] is using Locate X, that is most concerning to us," one of the internal emails said. 404 Media obtained them and other documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Secret Service.

OpenAI's latest large language model, known internally as Orion, has fallen short of performance targets, marking a broader slowdown in AI advancement across the industry's leading companies, according to Bloomberg, corroborating similar media stories in recent days. The model, which completed initial training in September, showed particular weakness in novel coding tasks and failed to demonstrate the same magnitude of improvement over its predecessor as GPT-4 achieved over GPT-3.5, the publication reported Wednesday.

Google's upcoming Gemini software and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Opus are facing similar challenges. Google's project is not meeting internal benchmarks, while Anthropic has delayed its model's release, Bloomberg said. Industry insiders cited by the publication pointed to growing scarcity of high-quality training data and mounting operational costs as key obstacles. OpenAI's Orion specifically struggled due to insufficient coding data for training, the report said. OpenAI has moved Orion into post-training refinement but is unlikely to release the system before early 2024. The report adds: [...] AI companies continue to pursue a more-is-better playbook. In their quest to build products that approach the level of human intelligence, tech firms are increasing the amount of computing power, data and time they use to train new models -- and driving up costs in the process. Amodei has said companies will spend $100 million to train a bleeding-edge model this year and that amount will hit $100 billion in the coming years.

As costs rise, so do the stakes and expectations for each new model under development. Noah Giansiracusa, an associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, said AI models will keep improving, but the rate at which that will happen is questionable. "We got very excited for a brief period of very fast progress," he said. "That just wasn't sustainable." Further reading: OpenAI and Others Seek New Path To Smarter AI as Current Methods Hit Limitations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years for stealing classified information from the Pentagon and sharing it online, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts announced. Teixeira received the sentence before Judge Indira Talwani in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In March, the national guardsman pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.

According to court documents, Teixeira transcribed classified documents that he then shared on Discord, a social media platform mostly used by online gamers. He began sharing the documents in or around 2022. A document he was accused of leaking included information about providing equipment to Ukraine, while another included discussions about a foreign adversary's plot to target American forces abroad, prosecutors said. [...] While the documents were discovered online in March 2023, Teixeira had been sharing them online since January of that year, according to prosecutors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible. [...] Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country.

"It went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around," [said Alabama resident and developer Will Freeman]. "I wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, 'Can I make a database of these license plate readers?'" And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock (PDF) to the posts holding up Huntsville's ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world. [...]

When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world. He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping parts of Flock's website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, has 677 cameras.

People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them. For example, all of the cameras in downtown Huntsville are pointing away from the downtown core, meaning they are primarily focused on detecting cars that are entering downtown Huntsville from other areas.

Apple was notified by the European Union that its geo-blocking practices are potentially in breach of consumer protection rules, adding to the iPhone maker's regulatory issues in the bloc. From a report: Apple's App Store, iTunes Store and other media services unlawfully discriminate against European customers based on their place of residence, according to a European Commission statement on Tuesday.

The notification comes as Apple is facing the first-ever fine under the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, for failing to allow app developers to steer users to cheaper deals, Bloomberg News reported last week. That penalty is set to come months after the Cupertino, California-based company was hit with a $1.9 billion fine for similar abuses under the bloc's traditional competition rules.

The geo-locating investigation was conducted together with a network of national consumer authorities and found Apple media services only allow users to use payment cards issued in the countries they registered their Apple accounts, according to the statement. The App Store also blocks users from downloading apps offered in other countries, the investigation found.

China's air force showcased a suite of new armaments this week, including a new stealth fighter and an attack drone, demonstrating its advancing ability to challenge the U.S. military presence in the Asia Pacific. From a report: The public debut of the J-35A stealth fighter and other weapons systems at China's premier airshow, which started Tuesday, represent the centerpiece in the Chinese air force's celebrations of its 75th anniversary -- a milestone in Chinese leader Xi Jinping's sweeping campaign to modernize the People's Liberation Army.

A single J-35A soared over crowds of spectators in a brief flypast on the opening day of Airshow China in the southern city of Zhuhai, making a steep climb with afterburners before rolling away and streaking out of view, state television footage showed. Other new weapons -- including the "Jiu Tian" reconnaissance and attack drone and the HQ-19 anti-ballistic-missile system -- were also prominent in ground displays at the biennial airshow, as examples of the PLA's growing prowess in aerial warfare and air defense. Much remains unclear about these systems and their capabilities. Even so, Chinese officials and state media say the new armaments reflect the significant advances that Beijing has made in developing its air power and enhancing its ability to defend China's strategic interests.

Android Authority's Rita El Khoury argues that the decline in punctuation use and capitalization in social media writing, especially among younger generations, can largely be attributed to the iPhone keyboard. "By hiding the comma and period behind a symbol switch, the iPhone keyboard encourages the biggest grammar fiends to be lazy and skip punctuation," writes El Khoury. She continues: Pundits will say that it's just an extra tap to add a period (double-tap the space bar) or a comma (switch to the characters layout and tap comma), but it's one extra tap too many. When you're firing off replies and messages at a rapid rate, the jarring pause while the keyboard switches to symbols and then switches back to letters is just too annoying, especially if you're doing it multiple times in one message. I hate pausing mid-sentence so much that I will sacrifice a comma at the altar of speed. [...]

The real problem, at the end of the day, is that iPhones -- not Android phones -- are popular among Gen Z buyers, especially in the US -- a market with a huge online presence and influence. Add that most smartphone users tend to stick to default apps on their phones, so most of them end up with the default iPhone keyboard instead of looking at better (albeit often even slower) alternatives. And it's that same keyboard that's encouraging them to be lazy instead of making it easier to add punctuation.

So yes, I blame the iPhone for killing the period and slaughtering the comma, and I think both of those are great offenders in the death of the capital letter. But trends are cyclical, and if the cassette player can make a comeback, so can the comma. Who knows, maybe in a year or two, writing like a five-year-old will be passe, too, and it'll be trendy to use proper grammar again.

"Now and Then" by the Beatles has been nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards -- marking the first time a song created with the assistance of AI has earned a Grammy nomination. From a report: When "Now and Then" first came out in late 2023, the disclosure that it was finalized utilizing AI caused an uproar. At the time, many fans assumed that the remaining Fab Four members -- Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr -- must have used generative AI to deepfake the late John Lennon. That was not actually the case. Instead, the Beatles used a form of AI known as "stem separation" to help them clean up a 60-year-old, low-fidelity demo recorded by Lennon during his lifetime and to make it useable in a finished master recording.

With stem separation, the Beatles could isolate Lennon's vocal and get rid of excess noise. Proponents of this form of technology say it has major benefits for remastering and cleaning up older catalogs. Recently, AudioShake, a leading company in this space, struck a partnership with Disney Music Group to help the media giant clean up its older catalog to "unlock new listening and fan engagement experiences" like lyric videos, film/TV licensing opportunities, re-mastering and more.

The FTX estate has filed a lawsuit against Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking to recover $1.76 billion, alleging a "fraudulent" 2021 share deal that involved funding from FTX's insolvent Alameda Research. The suit also accuses Zhao of misleading social media posts that allegedly spurred customer withdrawals and contributed to FTX's collapse. CNBC reports: In a Sunday filing with a Delaware court, FTX cites a 2021 transaction in which Binance, Zhao and others exited their investment in FTX, selling a 20% stake in the platform and a 18.4% stake in its U.S.-based entity West Realm Shires back to the company. The FTX estate alleges that the share repurchase was funded by FTX's Alameda Research division through a combination of the company's and Binance's exchange tokens, as well as Binance's dollar-pegged stablecoin.

"Alameda was insolvent at the time of the share repurchase and could not afford to fund the transaction," the suit claims, labeling the deal agreed with FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried -- who's now serving a 25-year sentence over fraud linked to the downfall of his exchange -- a "constructive fraudulent transfer." Binance denies the allegations, saying in an emailed statement, "The claims are meritless, and we will vigorously defend ourselves."

A new article at Reason.com argues that U.S. courts "are coming for digital libraries." In September, a federal appeals court dealt a major blow to the Internet Archive — one of the largest online repositories of free books, media, and software — in a copyright case with significant implications for publishers, libraries, and readers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Internet Archive's huge, digitized lending library of copyrighted books was not covered by the "fair use" doctrine and infringed on the rights of publishers. Agreeing with the Archive's interpretation of fair use "would significantly narrow — if not entirely eviscerate — copyright owners' exclusive right to prepare derivative works," the 2nd Circuit ruled. "Were we to approve [Internet Archive's] use of the works, there would be little reason for consumers or libraries to pay publishers for content they could access for free."
Others disagree, according to some links shared in a recent email from the Internet Archive. Public Knowledge CEO Chris Lewis argues the court's logic renders the fair use doctrine "almost unusuable". And that's just the beginning... This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities' reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach.
But lawyer/librarian Kyle K. Courtney writes that the case "is specific only to the parties, and does not impact the other existing versions of controlled digital lending." Additionally, this decision is limited to the 2nd Circuit and is not binding anywhere else — in other words, it does not apply to the 47 states outside the 2nd Circuit's jurisdiction. In talking with colleagues in the U.S. this week and last, many are continuing their programs because they believe their digital loaning programs fall outside the scope of this ruling... Moreover, the court's opinion focuses on digital books that the court said "are commercially available for sale or license in any electronic text format." Therefore, there remains a significant number of materials in library collections that have not made the jump to digital, nor are likely to, meaning that there is no ebook market to harm — nor is one likely to emerge for certain works, such as those that are no longer commercially viable...

This case represents just one instance in an ongoing conversation about library lending in the digital age, and the possibility of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court means the final outcome is far from settled.
Some more quotes from links shared by Internet Archive:

• "It was clear that the only reason all the big publishers sued the Internet Archive was to put another nail in the coffin of libraries and push to keep this ebook licensing scheme grift going. Now the courts have helped." — TechDirt

• "The case against the Internet Archive is not just a story about the ruination of an online library, but a grander narrative of our times: how money facilitates the transference of knowledge away from the public, back towards the few." — blogger Hannah Williams

Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

Wednesday Cuba was hit by a major hurricane which took down its entire power grid again, this time for about 24 hours, according to CNN: Videos of the aftermath showed power infrastructure turned into a mangled mess and power poles down on streets. Hundreds of technicians were mobilized Thursday to reestablish power connections, according to state media... Operations at two electrical plants were partially restored and parts of eastern and central Cuba had electricity back up by Thursday afternoon, state media reported... The country's power grid has collapsed multiple times, including when Hurricane Oscar hit in October and killed at least 7 people.
In the capital of Havana, where 2 million people live, power had been restored to less than 20% of the city by late Friday afternoon, . "Authorities had not yet given an estimate for when power would be fully restored..."

Then tonight, CNN reported: A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of eastern Cuba on Sunday, causing material damage in several regions as the island continues to recover from widespread blackouts and the impact of two hurricanes over the past few weeks. The earthquake was reported about 39 km (24 miles) south of Bartolomé Masó before noon local time, about an hour after a 5.9 magnitude quake rocked the area, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.

"There have been landslides, damage to homes and power lines," Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said, adding that authorities are evaluating the situation to start recovery efforts.