World News: 20 January 2023

Outrage in Serbia over Russian mercenary Wagner Group hiring locals for Ukrainian war
The public outburst from Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Tuesday is considered rare, given that Serbia is known to be a close ally of Russia.
He slammed Russian websites and social media groups for posting hiring advertisements in the Serbian language, in which the Wagner Group calls on volunteers to join its ranks, according to local reports.

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Cyber-crime gangs' earnings slide as victims refuse to pay
Companies, governments, schools and even hospitals around the world are regularly falling victim to ransomware hackers, who lock staff out of their IT systems until a ransom is paid, usually in Bitcoin.
The hackers often threaten to publish or sell stolen data too.
Recent high-profile victims include The Guardian newspaper, the Royal Mail delivery company and Sick Kids Canadian children's hospital.

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Lebanese parliament fails to elect president for the 11th time
A caretaker government took over when former president Michel Aoun stepped down at the end of October, 2022, stalling a host of economic reforms aimed at stopping wasteful spending and combatting rampant corruption. Lebanese authorities in April, 2022, reached a tentative agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a recovery plan conditional on a host of economic reforms and anti-corruption measures.

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Hundreds evacuated from South Korea slum fire
The village was formed in the 1980s as a settlement for people who were evicted from their original neighborhoods under the city’s massive house clearings and redevelopment projects. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from their homes in slums and low-income settlements during those years, a process the country’s then-military leaders saw as crucial in beautifying the city for foreign visitors ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

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Google parent to lay off 12,000 workers as AI focus intensifies
Alphabet now faces a challenge from Microsoft Corp in a branch of tech that can, for instance, create virtually any content a user can think up and type in a text box.
Microsoft this week said recession worries were forcing it to shed 10,000 jobs, less than 5% of its workforce, and would focus on imbuing its products with more AI going forward, a point Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai echoed in a staff memo.

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Light pollution: Huge fall in stars that can be seen with naked eye
The cause is "Skyglow" from artificial lighting - the brightness of that glow has increased every year since 2011.
Dr Christopher Kyba, a scientist from the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, told the BBC: "Our view of the stars is disappearing".
He and his colleagues published this discovery in the journal Science.

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