World News: 08 February 2023

LeBron James surpasses Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for NBA career scoring record
James now joins a lineage of record holders started by Joe Fulks and George Mikan, extended by Dolph Schayes, Bob Pettit and Wilt Chamberlain, and seemingly put completely out of reach by Abdul-Jabbar.
Or so we thought.

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Turkey, Syria quake deaths pass 9,000; deadliest in 10 years
More than 30,000 people have been injured, and authorities expect the death toll to continue to climb as rescue workers race to pull survivors from the rubble in cities and towns across a wide area.
In 2011, a magnitude 9.0 quake off the northeast coast of Japan triggered a tsunami, killing nearly 20,000 people. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal in 2015 killed more than 8,800 people.

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Climate extremes are having an impact on mental health, research warns
The study looked at the effect of heat, humidity and flooding on rates of depression and anxiety in Bangladesh - the seventh most vulnerable country in the world to climate change.
An estimated 4.4 per cent of people around the world are thought to have depression. In Bangladesh, this figure was considerably higher at 16.3 per cent.

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EU to deploy fake news experts in its offices globally
The production and fabrication of image and video-based content were the two most recurrent techniques used by Russia and China to disseminate their disinformation, according to the EEAS report.
These are then shared by a wide array of actors, including, increasingly, formal diplomatic channels.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has, for instance, made multiple trips to Africa since the beginning of the war and blamed western sanctions for preventing Russia from exporting agricultural products including fertilisers, thus exacerbating the food crisis.
China meanwhile, has widened its tactics in recent years by repeatedly spreading conspiracies via its diplomats, officials and state-controlled media, according to the report.

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Myanmar, Russia sign pact on developing nuclear power
The development is likely to ignite concerns that Myanmar's military would like to develop a nuclear weapons capability. There were suspicions a decade ago that North Korea was supplying nuclear arms technology to Myanmar, but there was no definitive evidence.
Russia maintains friendly relations with Myanmar, which is treated as a pariah state by many Western nations after its army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 and violently suppressed opposition, killing thousands of civilians and leading to what some U.N. experts describe as civil war.

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Microsoft unveils new Bing with ChatGPT powers
The overhaul deploys Open AI's Chat GPT technology, which has taken the world by storm since its launch last year.
The move is by far the biggest threat Google has seen to its dominance in web search - and marks the beginning of an AI arms race between the companies.
"The race starts today," Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said.

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