It’s been clear for awhile that the January 6th Committee’s endgame moves would be devastating for Donald Trump and would leave him howling. Sure enough, the committee didn’t disappoint. It referred Trump for prosecution on multiple major felony charges. It exposed the crimes of numerous of his co-conspirators. And it backed everything up with overwhelming documentation and proof.

The DOJ is already deep into the lengthy and complex grand jury process of criminally indicting Donald Trump; the committee’s referral and report will only bolster that process. Moreover, Trump seems to know just how bad this is all getting for him.

On Friday, Trump released an all caps statement that was as frantic as it was incoherent. Trump demanded that “brave” judges and prosecutors somehow reinstate him as President, or something along those lines; it’s getting difficult to figure out what he’s even talking about these days. And for some reason, even though the entire rest of his meltdown was written in all caps, for some reason Trump failed to put “Presidential election” in all caps. What’s this guy even doing?

In any case, it’s fairly obvious that Donald Trump sees what the rest of us are seeing. He’s having a miserable Christmas season – and it’ll get even worse when he’s indicted.

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Renewed clashes broke out in Paris on Saturday between police and members of the Kurdish community angry at the killing on Friday of three members of their community.

Several cars were overturned and small fires set alight near Republic Square, the traditional venue for demonstrations in the city where Kurds earlier held a peaceful protest.

Clashes broke out as some demonstrators left the square, throwing projectiles at police who responded with tear gas.

A gunman carried out the killings at a Kurdish cultural centre and nearby cafe on Friday in a busy part of Paris’ 10th district, stunning a community preparing to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the unresolved murder of three activists.

Police arrested a 69-year-old man who the authorities said had recently been freed from detention while awaiting trial for a sabre attack on a migrant camp in Paris a year ago.

Following questioning of the suspect, investigators had added a suspected racist motive to initial accusations of murder and violence with weapons, the prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.

After an angry crowd clashed with police on Friday afternoon, the Kurdish democratic council in France (CDK-F) organised a gathering on Saturday at Republic Square.

Hundreds of Kurdish protesters, joined by politicians including the mayor of the central 10th district, waved flags and listened to tributes to the victims.

“We know that we are under threat, Kurds in general, Kurdish activists and militants. France owes us protection,” Berivan Firat, a spokesperson for the CDK-F told BFM TV.

Friday’s murders came ahead of the anniversary of the killings of three Kurdish women in Paris in January 2013.

An investigation was dropped after the main suspect died shortly before coming to trial, before being re-opened in 2019.

“The Kurdish community is afraid. It was already traumatized by the triple murder (in 2013). It needs answers, support and consideration,” David Andic, a lawyer representing the CDK-F told reporters on Friday.

Kurdish representatives, who met with Paris’ police chief on Saturday morning, reiterated their call for Friday’s shooting to be considered as a terror attack.

The questioning of the suspect was continuing, the prosecutor’s office added.

Related Galleries:

Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell testifies during a House Committee on Financial Services hearing, Wednesday, July 18, 2018, Capitol Hill in Washington.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

• The Fed blew it on inflation stocks are going to have to suffer as a result. 
• The central bank has no choice now but to keep hiking until inflation is down, experts have said.  
• Here are five top voices in markets warning investors not to pin their hopes on a Fed put to save stocks. 

High inflation and a hawkish Federal Reserve have sparked turmoil in markets this year, and while some are confident stocks will rise again once the Fed pulls back on its rate hikes, many experts have warned that investors should not be waiting for the central bank to ride to the rescue. 

That’s because the Fed is trying to pull off a difficult balancing act between lowering inflation and preventing a recession, raising interest rates  a whopping 425 basis-points this year alone. Higher rates can lower inflation, but hiking too far risks overtightening the economy into a recession – and hiking too little risks stagflation, a scenario where inflation becomes entrenched alongside anemic economic growth. 

Rates are now at their highest level since the 2008, and the Fed isn’t done hiking. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has reiterated his committement to bringing inflation down with tighter monetary policy. 

With stagflation too big a risk, the central bank may have no choice but to press forward – and it won’t backtrack to buoy a sinking market in 2023, according to these top voices in the market. 

Mohamed El Erian, Allianz chief economic advisor

Mohamed El-Erian

Mohamed El-Erian

The Fed has no choice but to keep its monetary policy restrictive, as out-of-control inflation poses the greater danger, according to Mohamed El-Erian.

El-Erian has been a loud critic of the Fed’s response to inflation this year, slamming central bankers for saying inflation was “transitory” in 2021. This year, prices climbed to a 41-year-high, prompting the Fed to issue a stream of aggressive, 75-basis-point rate hikes that now makes a recession “uncomfortably possible,” El-Erian said.

That’s the cost of the Fed being late to the game, and the central bank can’t back away from its monetary tightening now, El-Erian warned. That would risk a rebound in inflation and lead to inflation expectations getting entrenched in the economy — a “stagflation morass that would be much worse in every respect.”

Nouriel Roubini, Stern School of Business economics professor

REUTERS/Fred Prouser

Roubini, who earned the nickname “Dr. Doom” for his grim economic predictions, warned that stocks could fall 25% next year in a severe recession — and the Fed could be powerless to prevent it.

“The mother of all stagflationary debt crises can be postponed, not avoided,” Roubini said in an op-ed for Project Syndicate this month, sounding off on the dangers of a stagflationary debt crisis — a financial collapse that combines 1970s-style stagflation and the 2008 debt crisis.

He noted the Fed was still struggling to rein in inflation, and the past decade of ultra-low interest rates have fueled insane amounts of borrowing from “zombie” households and banks. That could mean debt and inflation troubles as interest rates continue to rise.

“With central banks forced to increase interest rates in an effort to restore price stability, zombies are experiencing sharp increases in their debt-servicing costs … Simply bailing out private and public agents with loose macro policies would pour more gasoline on the inflationary fire,” Roubini said, predicting the Fed wouldn’t have the policy tools to prevent a financial disaster from striking.

“Once the inflation genie gets out of the bottle — which is what will happen when central banks abandon the fight in the face of the looming economic and financial crash — nominal and real borrowing costs will surge,” he added.

BlackRock

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Strategists at the world’s largest money manager warned of a recession unlike any other, and central banks aren’t going to loosen monetary policy just to keep stocks afloat.

“Central bankers won’t ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. They are deliberately causing recessions by overtightening policy to try to rein in inflation. That makes recession foretold,” strategists said in recent report.

“We don’t think equities are fully priced for recession,” the BlackRock strategists wrote. “Corporate earnings expectations have yet to fully reflect even a modest recession.”

Savita Subramanian, Bank of America chief stock strategist

Bloomberg TV

While investors are hoping for the Fed to pivot to more dovish monetary policy, it’s unlikely given the persistent nature of inflation, according to Bank of America’s chief stock strategist Savita Subramanian. 

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think we’re going to fail to see the Fed bail us out, the market reacts badly, and then we get a normal recovery, which is what I think we need,” Subramanian said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

Other market commentators have warned that stock rallies riding on the hopes of a Fed pivot have proven to be fleeting this year, and are preventing the market from fully capitulating. Bank of America predicted a recession would ravage stocks in early 2023, causing the market to plunge 24%.

“I would get ready for a very volatile January. I think that the higher the market goes in December, the worse it’s going to be in January,” Subramanian added, urging investors to dip out of equities in the short-term.

Morgan Stanley 

Reuters

The Fed won’t pull out of its inflation fight to boost stocks until 2024, even when a recession spawns mid-next year, according to Morgan Stanley.

“The Fed’s concerns about inflation stickiness trump concerns about slowing growth and weakening labor markets, and the Fed waits for evidence of a sustained inflation decline,” strategists at the bank said in a recent note.

That wouldn’t be unprecedented, as the Fed has refused to bail out stocks before. Former-Fed Chair Paul Volcker, whom Powell is often compared to, refused to cut interest rates in the early 1980s despite a harsh recession in order to see a slowdown in core inflation.

In the interim, there could be major headwinds ahead for the market. Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s top stock strategist, warned an earnings recession would hit the market early next year, causing the S&P 500 to drop 20%.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

• Nishad Singh was FTX’s Director of Engineering and had a 7.8% stake in the crypto exchange.
• The 27-year-old has been out of the public eye even as other top execs make headlines for their role in FTX’s collapse. 
• Singh received a $543 million loan from Alameda Research, per bankruptcy filings.

Since FTX’s downfall last month, one of the firm’s key executives, Nishad Singh, has remained out of the public eye even as other top figures have ended up in the crosshairs of investigations into the exchange.

Singh was FTX’s director of engineering, and had a 7.8% stake in the company.

FTX filed for bankruptcy protection last month, and investigations and charges against top executives at the firm are related to the misuse of customer funds by the firm’s affiliate trading arm, Alameda Research. 

“FTX Group’s collapse appears to stem from the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals,” John Ray, FTX’s new chief executive officer said during bankruptcy proceedings. 

While most of the attention in the media has been paid to Bankman-Fried, there were other executive involved in what prosecutors have called “one of the biggest financial frauds in American History,” including Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang. Both have pleaded guilty to charges they defrauded investors and are cooperating with prosecutors. 

Singh was reportedly one of few people who had knew that FTX was misusing customer funds, along with Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Wang. 

Singh’s nearly 8% stake, which also included FTX subsidiary FTX.US, was worth about $572 million in March of this year. He previously received a $543 million loan from Alameda as well, according to bankruptcy filings.

“Gary is scared, Nishad is ashamed and guilty,” Bankman-Fried told a Vox reporter after the firm filed for bankruptcy. “It hit [Nishad] hard.”

Singh was a high school friend of Bankman-Fried’s brother, Gabe. The former executive worked for a time as an engineer at Facebook (now Meta) before Bankman-Fried recruited him for Alameda, according to Singh’s LinkedIn page, which has been taken down. 

“In addition to building out much of our technological infrastructure and managing most of our dev team, his treatment of employees has earned him sole membership in our Slack group ‘Kings of Kindness,'” Bankman-Fried previously wrote in a blog post.

Singh was likely one of the five coworkers that Bankman-Fried referenced as a billionaire, Bloomberg reported, citing an interview with the disgraced founder from earlier this year. In 2012, Singh also set the world record for fastest 100-mile run by a 16 year old, according local newspaper The Mercury News.

A year after Singh became FTX’s director of engineering, he became a steady donor for the Democratic Party. He gave $8 million to federal campaigns of Democratic candidates in the 2022 election cycle, according to nonprofit OpenSecrets. 

“Currently, I’m sort of lucky that I can get fulfilled in many ways at this job – one of which is doing something that’s probably pretty good from an effective altruist perspective,” Singh previously said in a podcast.

Singh could not be reached for comment.

On Thursday, Bankman-Fried was released on $250 million bail and was sent to live in his parents’ California home as he awaits trial.

Elon Musk and a Twitter logo are seen in this illustration photo in Warsaw, Poland on 30 November, 2022.

STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Elon Musk’s chaotic reign at Twitter proved a huge boost to smaller rivals.
• Usage of several Twitter alternatives has surged in recent months.
• With tricky user interfaces, security issues, and uneven beta launches, success could be fleeting.

Never before have there been so many possible alternatives to Twitter, even if none seem to be anywhere close to a real replacement for the platform.

Long before Elon Musk came along, Twitter users bemoaned the service yet remained addicted to it. A potent mix of news, opinion, comedy, cringe and unpredictable drama has kept it a fixture for a decade-plus. And it is easy to use, the hallmark of American-born social media companies. Whatever the benefits of a decentralized network like Mastodon, easy to use it is not.

“There is a usability hurdle,” said David Carr, senior insights manager at SimilarWeb, who has been tracking Mastodon’s trajectory. “You have to choose a server and really, people don’t like to make decisions. It’s more like, ‘Just tell me what to do.'”

Still, Mastodon and other new potential Twitter rivals have grown, particularly since Musk officially took control of Twitter at the end of October, data gathered by Insider shows. Daily usage of Mastodon, Hive Social, and Counter Social are all up dramatically over the last two months. Meanwhile, at least half a dozen other Twitter-like platforms have recently been launched in beta or are set to be early next year, including Post.News, Spoutible, Mozilla.Social and Bluesky, founded by none other than Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.

If ever there was a time for a text-based platform to threaten the hold Twitter has over its user base, it’s now. Investors are looking to back new social media companies, as not only Twitter, but Instagram and Facebook, have lost some of their edge. These emerging services probably won’t be acquired, with antitrust authorities limiting Big Tech M&A, so they have a chance to grow on their own.

Most importantly, people seem ready and willing to try something new. With refinement and good features, any of these platforms could feasibly be the next Twitter. Or they could fizzle out, and instead be the next Clubhouse. There are already signs of trouble for several of these new offerings: Downloads have plunged recently, suggesting interest may already be waning. 

See below for a complete look at some of the new platforms so far available for use and their performance since Musk took over Twitter.

Mastodon

Mastodon’s emphasis on decentralization only appeals to the most tech-savvy.

Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Mastodon was founded in 2016 in Germany by Eugen Rochko, so the only truly new part of the platform is the attention it’s getting as a Twitter alternative. It is a text-based social platform, or “microblogging” site, home to independent servers, or “instances.” New users have to find a server to join and be admitted to, along with a few other steps before being able to post and use the platform. 

In early November, the hashtag TwitterMigration was trending on Mastodon for several days as Twitter users set up accounts amid Musk’s chaotic takeover. After the billionaire enacted his first round of Mass layoffs, former Twitter employees even set up their own server on Mastodon, Macaw.Social.

For just the month of November, Mastodon’s web traffic jumped 1,000% year-over-year on just 200 of its more popular servers, according to SimilarWeb data. The platform has about 1,000 servers set up, but some host only one user. Downloads of its iOS app are up more than 4,000% since Oct. 24, with daily active users up 6,000% to more than 1 million, according to Apptopia data. However, downloads have started to drop off over the last month, falling by 52%. Daily users have held steady though, at 1.4 million, a major increase from its usage prior to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which typically hovered around 20,000 daily users.   

Hive Social

Hive Social

Hive was first launched in 2019 by Raluca Pop, now 24 years old. Unlike Mastodon, Hive is a centralized platform and its user interface is more straightforward and similar to the set-up process of Twitter or Instagram, in that all it takes to get an account and start posting is some basic information. The app is easiest to describe as a cross between Twitter and Instagram, with a focus on images and text and similar features like re-posting, comments and likes, with the addition of easy to add music and color themes.

Like Mastodon, the service has seen huge growth since Musk took over Twitter. Downloads of the iOS app have grown 290,000% to 1.5 million since Oct. 24, with daily users up 660,000% to 321,000, according to Apptopia data. A major user security issue revealed at the end of November is at least partly to blame for Hive’s 88% drop in downloads over the last month. Yet, it has maintained more than 500,000 daily users.

Counter Social

A look at a homepage of Counter Social, a new Twitter alternative

Counter Social

Counter Social launched in 2020, started by the pseudonymous self-identified “hacktivist” The Jester. The platform is not trying to be all things to all people – it blocks entire countries from access, like Russia, China and Iran. It has a more unique interface that defaults to a dashboard showing a few columns of posts similar in look to TweetDeck. It refreshes constantly, offering a more kinetic feel than other social platforms, and there is a $4.99 per month upgrade available that unlocks a number of features, including live streams of network news, emergency radio traffic, and ephemeral file sharing and voice calls and various additional privacy features. 

The platform has received less public and media attention than Mastodon or Hive, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t also grown in the wake of Musk’s Twitter takeover. It’s reached 110,000 downloads of its iOS app, an increase of 4,500% since the end of October, with daily users up 2,500% to about 18,000, according to Apptopia. Monthly usage is still up by 44%, although, like Mastodon and Hive, downloads have dropped off in the last month, falling by 83%. 

Post.News (beta)

Post launched only in November, earlier than planned because as founder and former Waze CEO Noam Bardin wanted to capitalize on the moment created by Musk of people actively looking for alternatives to Twitter. It may have worked. Still in Beta, Post now has more than 300,000 active users and more than 600,000 people on a waitlist to join, according to Bardin. It has also received an undisclosed amount of funding from VC fund Andreessen Horowitz and Scott Galloway, the NYU professor and media personality. 

Bluesky (expected to launch in 2023)

Born in 2019 as a research project at Twitter still under Jack Dorsey, Bluesky is now being built wholly independent of the platform he founded. Dorsey has shared little detail about Bluesky, beyond it being designed as a decentralized social network protocol. In October, not long before Musk took control of Twitter, Bluesky began to allow signups for a waitlist, saying its beta will “launch soon.”   

Spoutible (expected to launch in 2023)

Spoutible comes out of Bot Sentinel, a tool created by Christopher Bouzy, that identifies, tracks and flags Twitter bots or accounts that are engaging in targeted or coordinated online attacks and disinformation campaigns. Announced at the start of December, Spoutible is being described as a new social platform that will allow users to “spout off” while avoiding harassment and other such issues. A beta version of the platform is expected in late January.

Mozilla.Social (expected to launch in 2023)

The latest Twitter alternative to be announced comes from Mozilla, the organization that runs the Firefox browser. Mozilla said just this week it is planning to launch its own publicly accessible instance in the “Fediverse.” A portmanteau of federation and universe, the Fediverse is essentially a group of independent but interconnected servers that interact and offer their own software packages. Mastodon is also part of the Fediverse, for example. “An open, decentralized, and global social service that puts the needs of people first is not only possible, but it’s absolutely necessary,” Mozilla said. Mozilla.Social is expected in early 2023.

Do you work for a social media company or are you someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.

Но в Украину российская армия вошла на старой технике, с бумажными картами и за несколько месяцев исчерпала запасы высокоточных ракет, была вынуждена раздавать необученным солдатам орудия времен Великой отечественной войны.

– The Moscow Times moscowtimes.ru/2022/12/23/put…