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Happy Friday lovely people,

Before we obliterate our livers celebrating the end of Dry January, let's keep you informed via memes.

Not that any of us actually did Dry January. But that won’t stop us celebrating the fact it’s over.

Onto the good stuff.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

France is ditching Microsoft Teams and Zoom for its own homegrown video conferencing platform called Visio, which will be rolled out across all government departments by 2027.

The move is part of a broader push to reduce reliance on American tech companies and take back control of critical digital infrastructure.

They’re keeping the Palantir contracts though.

Visio has been testing for a year with around 40,000 users and is hosted on French cloud infrastructure owned by Dassault Systèmes.

France claims the switch could save up to €1 million annually per 100,000 users in licensing costs.

Nice. That €100 million means there’s only €3,399,900,000,000 left to square up.

Putting French public finances to one side, Visio may have a more immediate problem on their hands when they look at what happens when you actually try to install it.

Donald Trump has threatened tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba, potentially ending a 66-year communist government through energy starvation rather than invasion.

Considering how much of a fuck up their previous invasion attempt was, you can’t really blame them for changing strategy.

Analysts estimate the island has roughly three weeks of fuel left before everything stops.

The crisis stems from America's seizure of Venezuela following the January commando operation that removed Maduro. Venezuela previously supplied a third of Cuba's oil through shadow tanker fleets that Washington has now blocked or confiscated.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents left Cuba before the revolution, told senators "he would love to be installed as the new dictator to see the regime change."

The EU and India have finalised a free trade agreement after nearly 67,000 years of failed negotiations, creating a trade zone of two billion people.

Ursula von der Leyen called it "the mother of all deals" after landing in Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

We extracted the key points for you:

Talks collapsed in 2007 over agricultural disputes but resumed in 2022 and accelerated dramatically once the Orange Maniac started threatening both sides with tariffs.

The agreement still needs approval from EU member states, the European Parliament and India's cabinet before taking effect, likely early next year.

Considering that the deal was originally “definitely” going to be signed by April 2013, we wouldn’t put our money on it being over the line just yet.

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Over 700,000 university graduates in Britain are unemployed and claiming benefits, a 46% increase since 2019.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found 400,000 graduates on Universal Credit, while 240,000 cite health reasons for not working, more than double the pre-pandemic figure.

The numbers challenge the traditional university-equals-success narrative that was pushed in the Noughties by Tonibler, who insisted everyone and their granny should go to university, even a shit one.

About 110,000 graduates under 30 now claim benefits without working. This is despite 88% of working-age graduates being employed compared to 68% of non-graduates.

The CSJ also notes that level four apprentices earn £5,000 more than university graduates five years after qualification.

To be fair to the government, they are trying to do something about it through their expansion of apprenticeships and job training, but the results could take a while to show.

At a press conference this week, New York City's new Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a screen reading "Adams Budget Crisis" in all caps, referencing former Mayor Eric Adams, who he accused of handing over a poisoned chalice by deliberately under-budgeting.

To be fair to Eric, he had to put some money aside to hire his buddies from back in his Brooklyn 99 days.

Mr Cardamom claimed Adams allocated $860 million for cash assistance when the real figure is closer to $1.6 billion. The deficit would be the city's largest since the 2008 fiscal crisis.

He also took a shot at former Governor and Italian pervert Andrew Cuomo for shortchanging the city in state funds.

A spokesman for Cuomo called the press conference the "single dumbest thing I've ever seen".

Which is a good moment to remind you of one of the actual dumbest things ever seen:

Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrapped up his Opium war apology tour trip to C h i n a on Wednesday by announcing a string of agreements with President Xi Jinping.

The headline announcement is the relaxation of travel visa rules for UK visitors, mainly because the CCP already have access to our personal data anyway.

Currently, Brits need to pay at least £130 for a visa and visit application centers in person for fingerprinting and photos.

The UK also secured a halving of import taxes on whisky from 10% to 5%, worth an estimated £250 million over five years to exporters.

Starmer called the relationship with China "good and strong" and said the agreements would help British businesses grow in one of the world's economic powerhouses.

He was however a bit confused when Xi revealed to him that despite being a Manchester United fan, he ‘had an interest’ in Arsenal, Manchester City and Crystal Palace.

A Florida Minnesota man has been charged after he allegedly tried to break Luigi Mangione out of prison by impersonating an FBI agent.

Mark Anderson, 36, appeared on Wednesday at the New York prison holding Mangione and claimed he had an order “signed by a judge” to free the prisoner.

When prison officials asked for his credentials, Anderson showed his Minnesota driving licence and said he had weapons in his bag, as you do when asked to identify yourself.

The 'weapons’ in question were a giant pizza cutter and a barbeque-style fork, which would get you onto a terrorist watchlist in Europe.

In the US it’s just standard attire for a pizza-party.

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