How Long is the 2026 World Cup Going to Be? Take the March 17 News Quiz!

Aukus is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK, and the US, announced in September 2021. Under the pact, the US and the UK will assist Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. The pact also includes advanced cyber, artificial intelligence, and quantum-related technologies. The alliance is a reaction to China’s growing influence and assertiveness in the region.

Are the submarines heading down under?

On March 13, 2023, the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the US president, Joe Biden, announced the Aukus submarine deal details in San Diego. The deal involves Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK over several decades and US and UK submarines visiting Australian ports more frequently. China isn’t happy, and several reports suggest it may propose an anti-Aukus military alliance with Russia and Iran.

Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress at the 95th Academy Awards for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” She dedicated her award to her father, who passed away last year. Yuh-Jung Youn won Best Supporting Actress in 2021 for her performance in “Minari.”

FIFA changed the format for the 2026 World Cup to have 12 groups of four teams each instead of 16 groups of three teams each. This means that there will be 48 teams playing in the tournament (up from 32), which the US, Mexico, and Canada will co-host. The change was approved by FIFA’s Council on March 14, 2023, and will increase the total number of games to 104 from 64 in the previous edition in Qatar.

One of the main features of GPT-4 is that it can process and generate different types of media, such as images and videos. This allows users to input a picture or video and ask for a summary, description, or transformation. This feature was not present in GPT-3.5, which could only deal with text. OpenAI has not officially verified reports that GPT-4 was trained with 100 trillion parameters. GPT-3, on the other hand, was trained with “only” 175 billion parameters. GPT-4 is available for ChatGPT Plus users starting March 15, 2023.

Washington Mutual, or WaMu, was a savings and loan association that collapsed in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis. It had $307 billion in assets and was sold to JPMorgan Chase for a bargain price of $1.9 billion. The bank’s failure was the largest in US history, surpassing the previous record by Continental Illinois in 1984.

What happened to Silicon Valley Bank?

Silicon Valley Bank was the second-largest failure in US history, with $209 billion in assets. Its collapse was triggered by a bank run and a downgrade in its credit rating. The bank’s customers, mostly tech companies and wealthy individuals, withdrew $42 billion in one day on March 10, 2023, leaving the bank with a negative cash balance. Starting March 13, 2023, SVB’s depositors were able to access their funds as The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve stepped in. Assuming SVB’s liabilities, HSBC agreed to take over and buy the UK arm of the bank for one pound. Signature Bank, a New York-based regional bank, shuttered suddenly on March 12, marking the third-biggest bank failure in US history.

Ordinals are the latest type of NFTs that are based on Bitcoin and stored directly on the blockchain. They were introduced in January 2023 after an upgrade enabled more data storage capacity for each satoshi (the smallest unit of bitcoin). Unlike other NFTs that rely on external platforms, Ordinals cannot be altered or deleted once created. In just a few months, Ordinals have become a lucrative market, with TwelveFold, a set of 300 images of 3D objects rendered in a square grid created by Yuga Labs, selling for $16.5 million on March 14, 2023.

This AI-generated persona is being used on YouTube to spread malware. The videos are supposed to trick people into downloading Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or various video games from malicious links in the description section. Since November 2022, there have been 200-300% more such video frauds. This is according to CloudSEK, an artificial intelligence company predicting cyber threats, in a report published on March 13, 2023.

What’s the Danger?

Info stealers use those links to steal passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, browser data, crypto wallet details, and system info from personal computers.

How do they make those videos?

To make their videos look more professional and trustworthy, hackers create realistic-looking personas with Synthesia and D-ID. Additionally, they hijack existing YouTube accounts with huge subscriber bases and use various tricks to avoid detection.

Mitch McConnell surpassed Mike Mansfield’s record of 16 years as Senate leader on Jan. 4, 2023. The Republican from Kentucky has been in the Senate since 1985 and is currently the minority leader after losing the majority to the Democrats in 2021. McConnell fell at a Washington, DC, hotel on Mar. 8, 2023. He suffered a concussion and a minor rib fracture. On Mar. 13, he was released to recover in an inpatient rehabilitation facility. McConnell is 81 years old and has a history of polio, a shoulder fracture, and difficulty climbing stairs.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said approximately 2.3 to 2.5 tonnes of natural uranium have gone missing from a site in Libya. The missing uranium was stored at a former nuclear facility near Sabha in southern Libya. The IAEA has been monitoring the site since 2004 when Libya agreed to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Who stole it?

The IAEA suspects that armed groups or smugglers looted the uranium amid the security chaos that has plagued Libya since Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow and killing in 2011. The missing uranium could power dirty bombs or fuel nuclear reactors. On March 16, 2023, the IAEA urged Libya’s authorities and neighboring countries to cooperate in recovering the material and preventing its misuse.

Lindsay Lohan announced that she was expecting her first child with her husband, Bader Shammas, by posting a photo of a baby onesie that reads “coming soon” on Instagram on Mar. 14, 2023. Lohan expressed her happiness in the caption, “We are blessed and excited!” along with emojis of praying hands, a heart, a baby face, and a baby bottle. No other details about the pregnancy were revealed. The actress and financier married in July 2022 after dating for three years.

Stevie Nicks and Billy Joel teamed up for a co-headlining tour that kicked off at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium on March 10, 2023. They surprised fans by singing a duet during each other’s set: Joel sang “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Nicks, and Nicks sang “And So It Goes” with Joel. Nicks also paid tribute to her late Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie with “Landslide.”

The Oscars laid a champagne-colored carpet instead of the usual red one, presumably to add some sparkle to the ceremony. However, the choice also led to some last-minute scrambling after a rainy weekend. This left organizers cutting up sections of the carpet ruined by bad weather and dirty shoe soles.