“The global smartphone market is projected to contract sharply in 2026, with shipments expected to fall 12.9% year-on-year to 1.1 billion units, according to the latest forecast from research firm IDC. If realized, the decline would mark the steepest annual drop on record and push worldwide smartphone shipments to their lowest level in more than a decade. IDC said the revised outlook represents a significant downgrade from its November forecast as a worsening memory-component shortage ripples across the consumer electronics supply chain.” (03/01/26)
“The Federal Communications Commission has given the go ahead for two of the US’ biggest cable providers, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, to merge. Charter announced its intention to acquire Cox for $34.5 billion in May 2025, with specific plans to inherit Cox’s managed IT, commercial fiber and cloud businesses, while folding the company’s residential cable service into a subsidiary.” (02/27/26)
“Japan will not reappoint businessman Joichi Ito to a government committee on an entrepreneurship project when his term ends this month, over ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the Sankei newspaper said on Monday. The decision comes after the release of millions of new Epstein documents by the U.S. Justice Department that revived scrutiny of Ito’s ties with Epstein and his current roles in Japanese government and academic circles.” (03/02/26)
“Mexican authorities returned the body of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as ‘El Mencho,’ to his family after he was killed by the Mexican army last week, officials said on Saturday. In a brief note on X, the Attorney General’s Office said that it handed over the body of El Mencho after completing all the necessary procedural protocols. … The killing of the country’s most powerful drug lord was met with a wave of retaliatory violence in some 20 states. More than 70 people were killed. The violence has fueled fears that the bloodshed could hurt tourism ahead of the FIFA World Cup later this year.” (02/28/26)
“Bettors on the prediction platform Polymarket made a killing with suspiciously timed wagers that the United States would attack Iran by February 28, the day President Donald Trump announced a bombing campaign against the Middle East nation. Bloomberg reported that six accounts on Polymarket, all newly created this month, ‘made around $1 million in profit’ by betting on the timing of the US attack on Iran. The accounts, according to Bloomberg, ‘had only ever placed bets on when US strikes might occur’, and ‘some of their shares were purchased, in some cases at roughly a dime apiece, hours before the first explosions were reported in Tehran.’ One account with the name Magamyman raked in over $515,000 by betting roughly $87,000 that ‘the US strikes Iran by February 28, 2026.'” (03/01/26)
“A federal judge on Friday extended an order protecting refugees in Minnesota who are lawfully in the U.S. from being arrested and deported, saying a Trump administration policy turns the ‘American Dream into a dystopian nightmare.’ U.S. District Judge John Tunheim granted a motion by advocates for refugees to convert a temporary restraining order that he issued in January into a more permanent preliminary injunction while the case develops further. The order applies only in Minnesota. But the implications of a new national policy on refugees that the Department of Homeland Security announced Feb. 18 were a major part of the discussion at a hearing held by the judge the next day.” (02/28/26)
“A candidate for the United Kingdom’s left-wing Green Party has comfortably won a closely-watched election for a vacant parliamentary seat, delivering an embarrassing defeat for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in one of its former strongholds. Results announced Friday showed the Greens’ Hannah Spencer, a 34-year-old councillor and plumber, had won 40.7 percent of the vote in the by-election in Gorton and Denton, a constituency in Greater Manchester that has been considered a secure Labour seat for almost a century. In an outcome that analysts said pointed to the fracturing of the UK’s traditional two-party politics, the hard-right candidate for the populist, anti-immigration Reform finished in second place.” (02/27/26)
“OPEC+ has agreed in principle to a modest oil output increase on Sunday, five OPEC+ sources said, after the U.S.-Israeli war on OPEC+ member Iran and Tehran’s retaliation led to shipment disruptions in the Middle East. OPEC+ has a history of raising oil output to cushion disruptions but analysts said the group currently has little spare capacity to add to supply, except for its leader Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who will also struggle to export oil until navigation in the Gulf returns to normal.” (03/01/26)
“Violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi and in the country’s north left at least 22 people dead and more than 120 others injured as demonstrators supportive of the Iranian government attempted to storm a U.S. Consulate on Sunday, authorities said. In the north of the country, demonstrators attacked U.N. and government offices. The violence came after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Police and officials at a hospital in Karachi said that at least 50 people were also wounded in the clashes and some of them were in critical condition.” (03/01/26)
“OpenAI announced it secured a deal to provide artificial intelligence services to the Defense Department hours after the Trump administration directed all federal agencies to stop using those provided by Anthropic. OpenAI is the San Francisco-based tech research company founded by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others behind applications including ChatGPT and DALL-E. … Contract negotiations [sic] between the tech company and the Defense Department soured after the Trump administration demanded it be allowed to use the AI system for ‘all lawful purposes.'” [editor’s note: Demanding that an already in force contract be nullified to let you do anything you want is not “negotiation.” It’s just breaking the contract – TLK] (02/28/26)
