January 23 2025

1. Screen Time Surges in US Schools Despite Limited Evidence of Benefits
2. Trump Orders 10,000 Troops to Border, Plans Asylum Restrictions
3. LA Wildfires Force Evacuations as Two New Blazes Spread
4. Companies Race to Claim Moon's Radio Spectrum
5. Saudi Arabia Plans $600bn US Investment Under Trump
January 23, 2020: China locks down the city of Wuhan 

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1. Screen Time Surges in US Schools Despite Limited Evidence of Benefits

Kindergartners now watch math lessons on YouTube, counting aloud with the videos. Middle-schoolers complete writing drills on Chromebooks while sneaking in play of an online game. High-schoolers mark up Google Docs to finish group projects.  The rapid tech transformation amounts to a grand experiment playing out in American schools. Accelerated by pandemic-era online learning, the move has happened with little debate, conflicting research and high stakes for the nation’s children.  “Covid really shifted things toward, ‘Oh, we can do this,’” said Stephanie Galvani, a middle-school English teacher in suburban Boston. “But we didn’t ask: ‘Should we do this?’” Students in grades one through 12 now spend an average of 98 minutes on school-issued devices during the school day—more than 20% of the average instructional time—according to data that educational software company Lightspeed Systems analyzed at the request of The Wall Street Journal.  The adoption of school technology sped up when the pandemic forced students to learn online. Federal Covid aid helped schools buy students across the country their own laptops or tablets. A multibillion-dollar education-technology industry promised its products could revolutionize teaching and catch students up after the pandemic.  IXL Learning, the company behind popular digital education platform IXL, touts that schools using the product score as much as 15 to 17 percentile points higher on state exams. The most rigorous published evaluation of the product—which is used by 15 million U.S. students—was less impressive. A Johns Hopkins University research center report, commissioned by the company, found that IXL had no clear effect on state math scores during the spring of 2023 in a Michigan school district. On a different test, IXL boosted math scores by about five percentile points, the researchers found.   

Editors note: as previously reported, US math scores are plummeting  

Article Source: WSJ

2. Trump Orders 10,000 Troops to Border, Plans Asylum Restrictions

President Donald Trump is preparing to send around 10,000 troops to the southern border, where they will support Border Patrol agents under new orders to shut off access to asylum, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection briefing document obtained by The Washington Post.  The order directs border agents to block entry to migrants on the grounds that they have passed through countries where communicable diseases are present, without citing any specific health threat.  The Defense Department will send at least 1,500 additional active-duty ground troops to the southern border in what could be the first of several waves of deployments, said acting defense secretary Robert Salesses. Those forces will bolster about 2,500 who already were there. Other active-duty troops will pilot military planes to assist the Department of Homeland Security in deporting migrants who already are in detention, with DHS providing law enforcement on those flights, Salesses said.

Article Source: WaPo

3. LA Wildfires Force Evacuations as Two New Blazes Spread

Tens of thousands of people are under evacuation orders in Los Angeles after the Hughes Fire spread to more than 10,000 acres and a brush fire broke out along Interstate 405, a major freeway near densely populated neighborhoods, early Thursday morning. The Sepulveda Fire began in the Bel-Air neighborhood just after 12:30 a.m. local time, burning along the eastern side of the 405, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The fire grew to 20 acres within an hour, prompting officials to issue evacuation warnings to parts of Bel-Air and Brentwood. As of Thursday morning, it was zero percent contained. North of the Sepulveda Fire, the Hughes Fire continued to rage after an explosive growth Wednesday and was 14 percent contained as of Thursday morning. About 31,000 people were issued evacuation orders, with an additional 23,000 under evacuation warnings, L.A. County officials said, as firefighters battled the explosive brush fire near the Castaic Lake area.

Article Source: WaPo

4. Companies Race to Claim Moon's Radio Spectrum

Private companies are staking claims to radio spectrum on the Moon with the aim of exploiting an emerging lunar economy, Financial Times research has found. More than 50 applications have been filed with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010 to use spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enable all wireless technology, on or from the Moon.

Article Source: FT

5. Saudi Arabia Plans $600bn US Investment Under Trump

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Saudi Arabia aimed to invest at least $600bn in the US over the next four years, as the kingdom sought to deepen ties with its most important western ally after the return of Donald Trump to the White House. The prince said in a Thursday phone call to congratulate Trump on his inauguration that the new US administration’s proposed reforms would “create unprecedented economic prosperity and opportunity”, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

Article Source: FT

January 23, 2020: China locks down the city of Wuhan and its 9 million people, in a belated effort to control the city's COVID-19 epidemic

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Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/schools-phone-screens-technology-research-c268bda5?st=iDEySN&reflink=article_copyURL_share

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/01/22/trump-asylum-border-troops-immigration/

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/23/hughes-fire-evacuations-containment-la-california/

4. https://on.ft.com/3WcDvuR

5. https://on.ft.com/4g7m7i1