News Juice!

We extract the best stories, so you don’t have to.

Tokyo Trials 4-Day Work Week: Amidst falling birth rates and RTO mandates, Tokyo Metropolitan government is introducing the 4-day work week from April next year for its employees to ‘ensure that women do not have to sacrifice their careers due to life events such as childbirth or child-rearing.’
Influencers Fail to Fact Check: One in five Americans get their news from social media. And 43 per cent of news consumers in the UK admit to using non-traditional news sources, including influencers. However, it seems that influencers are less scrupulous about fact-checking their ‘facts,’ according to a Unseco survey. Two-thirds of digital content creators fail to do basic fact-checking before sharing information, 73 per cent have neither past nor present connections with news organisations, and only 23 per cent have ever worked in the news industry.
Is Trump Extending an Olive Branch to China? President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to his inauguration on January 20. Should Xi accept the invite, it would be a historic first for a leader of a foreign country to attend a presidential inauguration in the U.S.
Sleep Like the Undead with a Nosferatu Bed: Yes, really. Fans of Count Dracula, Nosferatu and Bill Skarsgård can recreate that entombed feeling with a ‘Nosferatu’ Sarcophagus bed on sale and available for pre-order at $20,000.
Should We Consider AI Welfare? Computer scientists and philosophers are urging AI companies to start assessing their systems for signs of consciousness and autonomy. Should this become a reality, special policies must be available they say to protect AIs from being harmed. Consciousness researchers like Anil Seth argue: ‘The problem wasn’t that Frankenstein’s creature came to life; it was that it was conscious and could feel.’
Is Canada Slackening its Euthanasia Law? Assisted dying or voluntary euthanasia accounted for 1 in 20 deaths in Canada in 2023. Euthanasia was legalised in Canada in 2016. Since then, the scope of permitted reasons to end one’s life has been expanding beyond terminal illness to include mental illness and even disability, as long as such conditions are proven to be ‘chronic’ and ‘debilitating.’
What’s Behind England’s Vaccination Slump? Findings reveal a widening gap in vaccine uptakes for five key vaccines amongst children. Children living in more deprived areas show lower vaccination rates between 2019 to 2023. London, the Midlands and the North West have the lowest levels of vaccine uptakes. England is also below the WHO’s recommended 95 per cent vaccine uptake, but the reasons remain complicated.