0: Portugal's government has proposed a novel plan to stem the flow of talented young people exiting the country for brighter job prospects in other countries. Beginning in 2025, young people earning up to €28,000 ($30,600) a year would pay zero income tax for their first year of work. They’d then get a 75% tax exemption from the second to the fifth year, 50% between the sixth and ninth years, and 25% in the 10th year.
12: More than 2 million Floridians still have no power as a result of Hurricane Milton, and the storm has been linked to at least 12 deaths, mostly on the eastern side of the Sunshine State.
7: On Wednesday,Saudi Arabia came up short in its bid to win a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, a setback for the kingdom’s bid to remake its image. The Asia-Pacific group of candidates, which included Saudi Arabia, had six candidates vying for five seats. The Saudis won 117 votes, seven fewer than the fifth-place Marshall Islands.
121: Novelist Han Kang is the 121st winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature — and the first South Korean author to win the award. Kang was lauded for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
105: The Japanese anti-nuclear weapons organization Nihon Hidankyo, a group of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, has been awarded the 105th Nobel Peace Prize. The group received the honor early Friday “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again," said the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which has been issuing the prize since 1901.
58.8: A United Nations tribunal has ordered a former high-ranking official to repay the UN $58.8 million of the organization’s money which he steered towards a British businessman in crooked deals. Vitaly Vanshelboim, a 20-year veteran of the UN who is from Ukraine, is accused of receiving interest-free loans and a Mercedes, among other gifts.
2.4: US inflation fell to 2.4% in September. That’s an improvement from 2.5% in August but fell short of the 2.3% analysts expected. The drop in inflation may not be enough to justify a 50 basis point rate cut when the Federal Reserve meets in November.When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called snap elections last month, it was a big gamble. Holding a winter election just four months into her tenure with no real policy record to run on?
Tune in on Saturday, February 14th at 12pm ET/6pm CET for the live premiere of our Global Stage from the 2026 Munich Security Conference, where our panel of experts takes aim at the latest global security challenges.
Microsoft unveiled a new set of commitments guiding its community‑first approach to AI infrastructure development. The strategy focuses on energy affordability, water efficiency, job creation, local investment, and AI‑driven skilling. As demand for digital infrastructure accelerates, the company is pushing a new model for responsible datacenter growth — one built on sustainability, economic mobility, and long‑term partnership with the communities that host it. The move signals how AI infrastructure is reshaping local economies and what people expect from the tech shaping their future. Read the full blog here.
The Israeli government unilaterally passed measures that allow Jewish settlers to purchase land in the West Bank, overriding past laws that effectively banned the sale of property there to anyone other than Palestinian residents.