Core inflation in Japan’s capital slows in December but no bar for further BOJ hikes
Oscar De La Hoya declares 28-year-old world champion as the “greatest he has ever witnessed”
Oscar De La Hoya has named a current world champion, known for his silky skills and remarkable judgement of distance, as the ‘greatest fighter’ he’s ever seen.
Of all the pound-for-pound stars parading this sport today, Oleksandr Usyk and Naoya Inoue have undoubtedly cemented themselves as two of the very best.
But Usyk, in particular, is now widely regarded as the world’s leading boxer, especially after the recent announcement of Terence Crawford’s retirement.
Having become a three-time undisputed champion across two weight divisions, the Ukrainian has left himself with very little to prove, but is seemingly still eager to enhance his glittering legacy.
With two victories over Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois, respectively, Usyk has also shown that an ambitious move to heavyweight was never beyond his capabilities.
As for Inoue, the two-division undisputed king is, like Usyk, a masterful technician, but also possesses enough power to knock out any fighter in the lower weight classes.
And yet, while these two are rightfully considered the flagship competitors of the sport, De La Hoya seems to believe that Shakur Stevenson, the WBC lightweight champion, is ultimately the very best.
The three-weight world champion has hardly even lost a round as a pro, triumphing over the likes of Oscar Valdez, Jamel Herring and William Zepeda in mostly one-sided fights.
And now, with him gearing up to face WBO world super-lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez on January 31, Stevenson has been presented with an opportunity to claim his most notable win.
But it was over a year ago, in fact, that De La Hoya, while speaking with Club Shay Shay, praised the American for his ‘beautiful style’ and ‘great technique’.
“[Stevenson is] the greatest fighter I’ve ever seen. Beautiful style, great technique, has the punching power, has the chin… but he needs the confidence to fight.
“he has to believe in himself to put on a good show and sell [tickets]. That’s the problem he’s having – he’s not selling seats.”
Three people dead in California due to heavy rain storms by Christmas night
Heavy rain storms across large parts of California triggered floods and mudslides and left three dead as of Christmas night, according to local officials.
The storms – which were expected to continue through Friday – brought 11 inches (27 cms) of rainfall to some parts of Los Angeles County, prompted evacuations and shut down major roads.
Emergency responders have had to perform several rescues, including people stuck in vehicles as flood waters rise. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday in Los Angeles and other southern California counties.
About 100,000 people in the state were without power as of Thursday evening.
The US Weather Prediction Center said on Thursday that “Numerous flash flooding events are possible”.
“In addition, many streams may flood, potentially affecting larger rivers.”
A 64-year-old man from San Diego, California, was killed on Wedesday morning by a fallen tree, the police department told US media.
Another person, a 74-year-old, died from flood waters over the weekend as police tried to rescue him from inside a vehicle in Redding, California, the town’s mayor told local news.
And on Monday, a woman in her 70s died after she “was knocked off a rock by a large wave and swept into the ocean” at MacKerricher State Park in Mendocino County, California, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Evacuation warnings were in effect for some residents of San Bernardino County in southern California, and flash food warnings were issued for those in the San Francisco Bay area on Thursday morning.
Wind speeds in the Bay Area topped 100 mph (161kmh) at one observatory near San Jose, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
In Altadena, near Los Angeles, residents experienced a mudslide from flooding in a burn scar area that was less able to absorb water due to the wildfires that scorched the neighbourhood in January of this year, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has also declared an emergency from the storms and warned residents to be cautious on roads during a time of busy holiday travel.
“I am urging all Angelenos to stay safe and be extremely careful on the roads if you absolutely must travel,” she said in a statement on Wednesday. “Please do not take this storm lightly.”
Alpha Wave Smart Helmet Ensures Optimum Cycling Safety
A couple of months back we reported on an e-mobility spin-off from Rivian that launched a modular ebike that rides without a chain or belt. Pre-orders for the T-MB are now open, but Also is already looking to protect your noggin with a light-packing smart helmet.
The TM-B rolls with a chain-by-wire setup where the rider pedals straight into a generator, this powers the in-house motor directly or – if excess electrical energy is created – helps top up the onboard battery. As you roll down a hill and apply the brakes, the motor also recovers energy as you slow down and feeds it into the battery.
Also
The system makes a massive 180 Nm (132 lb.ft) of torque available for pedal-assist to 28 mph (45 km/h) or throttle only to 20 mph. The battery is reckoned good for up to 100 miles (162 km) per charge if you take it easy. And various modules allow the purpose of the ebike to change according to needs – morphing from a single-seater to a cargo hauler with relative ease. It’s as odd-looking as it is impressive.
Should you opt to tap into Also’s new e-mobility universe from next year, you won’t be wanting just any old helmet to shield your brain box in the event of trouble. And the company has predicted your desire for something a little special with the addition of the Alpha Wave smart helmet to its product line.
The new safety accessory features the recently launched Release Layer System, a new MIPS (Multi-Directional Impact Protection System) alternative. Instead of internal liners, it features panels on the outer shell with a layer of tiny polycarbonate bearings underneath.
ALSO/Transcendent Mobility
Upon impact, specially tuned adhesive releases its grip where the force is concentrated and the panel is free to roll on the bearings in any direction before fully detaching to significantly dissipate rotational energy. “It’s a design that can uniquely redirect concussive forces away from the brain.”
Elsewhere, the Alpha Wave comes packing the HighBar strap system – which replaces the familiar Y-strap configuration with a pair of rigid plastic anchors connected to more pliable slotted plastic straps that meet under the chin at an adjustment dial. This wheel effectively does away with complicated fit tweaks, allowing for single-handed precision tightening and loosening – even while wearing gloves.
There a two LED lights to the front, one serving as a 200-lumen headlight to complement the front light of your ride and the other is a 75-lumen task light, which could come in handy as you fumble through backpack in the dark. The beamer at the rear of the helmet wirelessly synchronizes with the on-bike lighting system of the upcoming TM-B.
ALSO/Transcendent Mobility
The IPX6-rated skull protector also rocks built-in audio that shapes up as four wind-shielded speakers and two downfiring, noise-canceling microphones for making calls or reacting to navigations prompts. Onboard electronics are powered by battery, which is topped up over USB-C.
As you might expect for an ebike lid that’s stocked to the gills with next-gen tech, the ticket price doesn’t sit at the budget end of the marketplace but comes in at US$250. That’s a lot of saved-up pennies, particularly as it looks like you’ll have to completely replace the helmet if that RLS setup ever needs to deploy. But can you put a price on the promise of top-notch safety and smart utility to boot?
The Also Alpha Wave helmet will go up for pre-order shortly, ahead of shipping from early next year.
Product page: Alpha Wave
The Biggest Misconception: Gen Z Founder on AI Anxiety and Avoiding Generation Stereotypes
For Kiara Nirghin, the 24-year-old co-founder and chief technology officer of the applied AI lab Chima, the narrative that her generation uses artificial intelligence as a cheat code is not just wrong—it ignores a fundamental shift in human cognition.
The Stanford computer science alum and Peter Thiel fellow argued that while older generations view AI as a tool to be adopted, Gen Z views it as a native language. However, this fluency comes with a unique burden: the “AI anxiety” of keeping pace with technology that is currently the “worst” it will ever be.
Speaking at Fortune Brainstorm AI in San Francisco, Nirghin addressed the tension between the perception of Gen Z and their reality as builders. “The truth is the younger generation isn’t adopting AI,” she said. “We’re growing up fluent in AI.” This distinction is critical in the workplace. While a manager might see an employee using an AI agent as cutting corners, Nirghin said she sees a shift in the architecture of work itself.
“We aren’t thinking about coding from scratch,” she explained. “We’re thinking about coding with a coding agent side by side.” Far from being generation shortcut, Gen Z are trailblazers, she argued.
“That fundamentally changes how you write, how you take tests, how you apply to jobs or different applications, because it’s not from the ground up,” Nirghin said about working side by side with an agent. “I think what that really means is that this broad level of use cases and applications we’re seeing is really being pioneered by the younger generation.”
The ‘lazy’ myth vs. deep thinking
One of the most pervasive criticisms of the digital native generation is that reliance on large language models (LLMs) erodes critical thinking skills. Nirghin firmly rejects this. “I think that the biggest misconception is that young people are using AI to not think things through,” she said, that they’re using it “as a shortcut.”
Instead, Nirghin said that intelligent users are leveraging these tools to offload cognitive labor so they can probe complex subjects with greater intensity. She said it’s not as simple as handing off the “cognitive load” to an AI model, it’s about thinking “differently … even “deeper” on a specific subject, because the agent is taking hours of menial work off your hands.
As an example, she pointed to running deep research reports on financial markets that might take hours to generate manually. By automating that work, she said the user is free to analyze the implications rather than just gathering the data. “What does that unlock for you?” she asked the audience, urging them to consider just how much more they can do with these tools at their “fingertips.”
The anxiety of infinite improvement
Nirghin said her generation does face a daunting reality that people don’t appreciate: the relentless speed of obsolescence, and their own awareness of that fact. She said fears over AI have some similarities to “climate anxiety.” Noting that some of her earliest research was about climate change, she explained climate anxiety as the idea that “there’s this movement of climate change coming up and we don’t really know what to do but we know it’s coming and nobody is moving as fast to solve the problem.”
It’s tied to the realization that current technology, as impressive as it seems, is primitive compared to what is coming next. “The models right now are as dumb as they are ever going to be,” Nirghin warned. “It is only going to get faster, more advanced and more intelligent, each and every model from from here on out.”
For Gen Z workers, she said, this creates a pressure environment where staying ahead is a daily requirement. Nirghin noted that recent model releases have “engulfed the benchmarks in such an enormous way” that previous capabilities can now be “10xed” overnight—imagine coming to work tomorrow, able to produce 10 times as much since yesterday. If a worker isn’t consistently on top of these updates, “you’re kind of left behind.” The fear isn’t about taking too many shortcuts, but not figuring out every pathway and every update to hit that 10x.
Taste as the new IQ
If intelligence is being commoditized by models that improve exponentially, what becomes the new metric for human value? According to Nirghin, it is “taste.”
Nirghin, whose background includes work at Stanford’s Human-Centered AI labs, argued that benchmarks around accuracy no longer capture what makes a product successful. She cited the example of coding agents that, without human guidance, might uncontrollably add “sparkle emojis” to a front-end UI because they “love” certain design tropes.
“You know something is vibe coded if you’ve ever sort of worked with a coding agent,” she joked. The differentiator for the future workforce will not be the ability to generate code or text, but the human-centered judgment to determine what users actually want to see. “As models and use cases and efficiencies change,” Nirghin said, “the key differentiator is taste.”
Nirghin’s advice extends beyond her peers to the older generations currently managing them. She stressed that “AI fluency is just as important for people that are already in the workforce,” urging them to arm themselves with tools like ChatGPT or Gemini as daily “co-pilots.”
Ultimately, Nirghin said she views the rapid evolution of AI not as a threat to employment, but as a challenge to adaptation. Whether automating back-office processes or launching “deep research agents,” the economic “unlock” provided by these models is already incredible, even if they never improved again. But the anxiety of keeping up is the new price of admission for the future of work.
Senior Sudan official declares: “RSF says no negotiation, no truce” in Sudan war news
Comments come days after PM Kamil Idris presented a plan to end the country’s nearly three-year war.
Published On 25 Dec 2025
A senior official in Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) has ruled out any negotiations with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as fighting continues to devastate the country.
“There is no truce and no negotiation with an occupier, and that the just peace that Sudan desires will be achieved through the roadmap and vision of its people and government,” Malik Agar Ayyir, deputy chairman of TSC, said in a statement on Thursday posted by the Ministry of Culture, Media and Tourism.
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Speaking to ministers and state officials in Port Sudan, the eastern city where the government is based, he dismissed the narrative that the war is aimed at achieving “democracy”. Instead, he described the war as a “conflict over resources and a desire to change Sudan’s demographics” and emphasised an opportunity to strengthen national unity.
This comes days after Sudan’s Prime Minister Kamil Idris presented a plan to end the country’s nearly three-year war before the United Nations Security Council.
Consistent with the Sudanese army and the government’s position, the plan stipulates that RSF fighters must withdraw from vast areas of land that they have taken by force in the western and central parts of Sudan.
They would then have to be placed in camps and disarmed, before those who are not implicated in war crimes can be reintegrated into society.
The RSF has repeatedly rejected the idea of giving up territory, with Al-Basha Tibiq, a top adviser to commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, describing it as “closer to fantasy than to politics”.
RSF reports gains
The war, which has forcibly displaced about 14 million people, shows no signs of stopping as the RSF consolidates its hold over captured territory and expands attacks.
RSF fighters have continued to commit mass killings, systematic sexual violence, and the burying and burning of bodies in Darfur to cover up the evidence of war crimes over the past several months, according to international aid agencies working on the ground.
The humanitarian situation on the ground has only turned more disastrous after the capture of el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, in October.
The RSF announced on Thursday that its forces established control over the Abu Qumra region in North Darfur.
They “have continued their successful advancement to the Um Buru area, where they have completely liberated these areas”, the group claimed in a statement.
Despite the mounting evidence of widespread atrocities committed in western Sudan, the RSF claimed that the primary duty of its fighters is to “protect civilians and end the presence of remnants of armed pockets and mercenary movements”.
The group also released footage of its armed fighters, who claimed they were making advances towards el-Obeid, a strategic city in North Kordofan state.
Client Challenge: Overcoming Obstacles for Success
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Legislator files lawsuit to eliminate Trump’s name from Kennedy Center
Democratic US Representative Joyce Beatty has filed a lawsuit seeking to remove President Donald Trump’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Last week, the board of the Kennedy Center – which Trump filled with allies – voted to rename the performing arts centre the Trump-Kennedy Center.
Beatty is one of several Democratic lawmakers designated as members of the board by US law. She claimed in her lawsuit that the renaming was illegal because changing the name requires “an act of Congress”.
The suit says Beatty had called into the meeting about the name change but was muted when she tried to voice her opposition.
Beatty argues that Congress intended for the centre to be a “living memorial” to former President Kennedy.
“[I]n scenes more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic – the sitting President and his handpicked loyalists renamed this storied center after President Trump,” the lawsuit states.
In a statement provided to the BBC, the White House said Trump had “stepped up” and saved the Kennedy Center “by strengthening its finances, modernizing the building, and ending divisive woke programming”.
“As a result, the Board of the Kennedy Center voted unanimously to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center — a historic move that marks a new era of success, prestige, and restored grandeur for one of America’s most iconic cultural institutions,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said.
On Friday, the president’s name was added to the exterior of the building, and the centre’s website logo now reads “The Trump Kennedy Center”.
The name change has been met with harsh criticism, particularly in Washington DC where the centre has been an iconic landmark since it was built and named for Kennedy.
Musician Chuck Redd cancelled his annual Christmas Eve jazz concert at the centre, a tradition spanning nearly two decades, in response to the renaming.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Redd has been hosting the annual Christmas Eve “Jazz Jams”at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts.
The Kennedy Center’s website lists the show as cancelled.
Construction began on a performing arts centre in the 1950s and after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Congress decided to name it after him.
Shortly after taking office, Trump fired a slew of the centre’s board members and replaced them with allies, who then voted to make him chairman of the board. His close adviser Richard Grenell became board president.
The centre’s board of trustees currently has 34 members appointed by Trump and 23 others designated as members by US law, according to the centre’s website.
Trump also secured about $257m (£190m) in congressional funding to pay for major renovations and other costs at the venue, saying it was in “bad shape”.
Several members of the Kennedy family took to social media to criticise the name change.
Joe Kennedy III, a former House member and grandnephew of the late president, said that “the Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law”.
“It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says,” he added.
Zelenskiy reports Ukraine and US negotiators are working together to move closer to peace
Ukraine, US negotiators discussed how to bring peace closer, Zelenskiy says
Former Brazilian President Bolsonaro Successfully Undergoes Surgery in Jail
Bolsonaro’s operation addressed a painful double hernia; doctors anticipate five to seven days of hospitalisation.
Published On 25 Dec 2025
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a prison sentence for an attempted coup, underwent a “successful” surgery for an inguinal hernia, his wife has said.
The 70-year-old former leader left prison on Wednesday for the first time since late November to undergo the procedure on Thursday at the DF Star Hospital in Brasilia.
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“Successful surgery completed, without complications. Now we wait for him to wake up from anaesthesia,” his wife Michelle announced in an Instagram post.
Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since November for an attempted coup. He was granted court permission to leave prison after federal police doctors confirmed that he needed the procedure.
Doctors say Bolsonaro’s double hernia causes him pain. The former leader, who was in power between 2019 and 2022, has gone through several other surgeries since he was stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign rally in 2018. He was also diagnosed with skin cancer recently.
Doctors for the far-right president from 2019 to 2022 anticipated that his hospitalisation would last between five and seven more days.
The surgery was to repair an inguinal hernia – a protrusion in the groin area due to a tear in the abdominal muscles.
“It is a complex surgery,” Dr Claudio Birolini said on Wednesday. “But it is a standardised … scheduled surgery, so we expect the procedure to be carried out without major complications.”
After the operation, doctors are to assess whether Bolsonaro can undergo an additional procedure: blockage of the phrenic nerve, which controls the diaphragm, for recurrent hiccups, Birolini said.
Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced Bolsonaro to prison in September after he was found guilty of having led a scheme to prevent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office and to retain power.
Bolsonaro has maintained his innocence, declaring he was a victim of political persecution.
He has been confined to a small room with a minibar, air conditioning and a television at the federal police headquarters in Brasilia.
Succession
Early on Thursday, his eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, told reporters before the surgery that his father had written a letter confirming he had appointed him as the Liberal Party’s presidential candidate in next year’s election. Flavio announced on December 5 that he would challenge Lula, who is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term, as the party’s candidate.
The senator read the letter to journalists, and his office released a reproduction of it to the media.
“He represents the continuation of the path of prosperity that I began well before becoming president, as I believe we must restore the responsibility of leading Brazil with justice, resolve and loyalty to the aspirations of the Brazilian people,” Bolsonaro said in the handwritten letter, dated Thursday.
According to Flavio, the letter sought to clarify any “doubt” about his father’s support for his presidential bid.
“Many people say they had not heard it from his own mouth or had not seen a letter signed by him. I believe this clears up any shadow of doubt,” he said after reading the letter.
The former president and several of his allies were convicted by a panel of Supreme Court justices for attempting to overthrow Brazil’s democratic system following his 2022 election defeat.