 An Arizona-based nonprofit provides data on more than 150 million money transfers in the U.S. and 20+ other countries to U.S. law enforcement without court oversight. The database is housed at the Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC), a little-known non-profit set up by the Arizona state attorney general's office in 2014. More: - Information about TRAC was revealed by an investigation initiated by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
- TRAC was established following a settlement between the Arizona attorney general's office and Western Union to combat cross-border drug and human tracking originating in Mexico.
- The group has since expanded its oversight to track the flow of funds through money services in the U.S. and around the world, providing data to officials at more than 600 federal, state, and local law enforcement entities across the U.S.
- TRAC data includes the transaction amount, as well as the full names of senders and recipients. This data is accessible to authorized law enforcement without a warrant.
- TRAC director Rich Lebel said that the company's data has generated hundreds of leads for law enforcement and directly resulted in successful investigations of drug cartels and other criminal actors laundering money.
- Sen. Wyden criticized the program, describing it as "an all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans’ personal financial data [that] bypass[es] the normal protections for Americans’ privacy."
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 U.S. retail sales fell by 1.1% from November to December, the largest monthly decline in a year. Annual retail sales rose 6% in December from a year prior, the Commerce Department said. More: - December was the second-consecutive month of declining retail sales.
- Dining in bars and restaurants fell by 0.9% from November to December.
- Furniture and car sales, which are sensitive to higher interest rates and borrowing costs, both fell in December as well.
- A separate report published by the Federal Reserve said that manufacturing output fell by 1.3% from November to December, and that production output in November was lower than had previously been estimated.
Zoom Out: - U.S. spending was robust in the first 10 months of 2022 despite high inflation but the latest figures suggest that consumers may be refraining from spending due to high prices, increasing borrowing costs, and fears of a recession.
- However, some economists are optimistic about the health of the U.S. economy and there are signs that inflation is slowing.
- The U.S. consumer-price index (CPI) declined by 0.1% from November to December.
- The CPI was up 6.5% annually in December, down from its peak of 9.1% in June 2022.
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 Pictured, L to R: Israeli politicians Aryeh Deri and Benjamin Netanyahu Israel's Supreme Court rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appointment of a political ally convicted of tax fraud as a senior government minister. The decision comes as the new right-wing Israeli government attempts to limit the power of the Israeli judiciary to block laws approved by the Knesset. More: - A majority of the Court's judges agreed that the appointment of Aryeh Deri as vice prime minister and health minister should be struck down because Deri is serving a suspended prison sentence.
- Deri is the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas party, which is part of the right-wing coalition government formed by Netanyahu and his Likud party in December.
- The government has proposed major reforms that would undermine the Israeli judicial system and shift that power to the executive branch.
- The chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court said that the proposed reforms would curtail judicial independence and harm Israel's liberal democratic institutions.
Zoom Out: - The Israeli parliament passed an amendment shortly after November's election that would allow Deri to circumvent an existing ethics law barring recent convicts from taking ministerial appointments.
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 GOOD NEWS: 2022 was the first year since 1977 in which no rhinos were poached in the Indian state of Assam. State officials said that a special task force consisting of 22 police officers and forest wardens helped protect rhinos from poachers last year. More: - Rhino horns are harvested by illegal poachers, who sell them to people who believe they have medicinal value.
- As many as 191 rhinos were poached in Assam between 2000-2021.
- The rate of poaching has declined in recent years.
- 27 rhinos were reported to have been poached in 2013 and 2014, compared to just two in 2020 and 2021.
- The task force surveilled criminals who had been involved in previous poaching incidents and used CCTV and drones to monitor the areas in which rhinos live.
- Last year, 58 people were arrested for rhino poaching, and four people were killed in a firefight with police.
- The Assam state government has tried to address local superstitions around the supposed medicinal properties of rhino horns to suppress demand.
Zoom Out:
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Ukraine's interior minister and several other Ukrainian officials were killed when the helicopter carrying them crashed near Kyiv. At least 14 people were killed in total, including five Interior Ministry officials. More: - Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw Ukrainian police and emergency services, is the most senior Ukrainian official killed during the Russo-Ukrainian war that began last year.
- It is unclear whether the crash, which took place near a kindergarten, was accidental but there is been no recent fighting in the area.
- At least one child was killed and 25 people were injured, including 11 children.
Zoom Out: - Russian forces shelled 14 Ukrainian cities and villages in the partially-occupied Donetsk region over the last day.
- The southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, which was retaken by Ukrainian forces in November after falling to Russia early in the war, was also targeted by Russian shells on Wednesday.
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 Lucile Randon, the oldest-known person on Earth, died at 118 in Toulon, France. Rando, who became a Catholic nun in 1944, lived through two world wars, two global pandemics, and 27 French heads of state. More: - Randon was born in the south of France in 1904. She once told reporters that one of her fondest memories was when her brothers safely returned from fighting in World War One.
- She was born a Protestant but converted to Catholicism at the age of 26 and became a nun in her early 40s, assuming the name of Sister André.
- She worked in hospitals and cared for other elderly people later in her life.
- Last year she told the AFP news agency that "work kept [her] alive" and that she worked until she was 108 years old.
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- Reuters reported that Mexican state oil company Pemex illegally burnt off more than $342M worth of fuel at two of its biggest oil fields during the three years leading up to August 2022.
- Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the president of the Philippines, declared an official "state of calamity" in the Misamis Occidental province in response to devastating rain, floods, and landslides that began earlier this month. At least 28 people have been killed by the extreme weather and more than 200,000 people have been displaced.
- Four generations of a single family were killed in what law enforcement described as a "cartel-like execution" at a private home in Goshen, California.
- U.S. law enforcement arrested Anatoly Legkodymov, the Russian founder of Hong-Kong based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato, in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco described Bitzlato as a "high-tech financial hub that catered to known crooks" who sought to launder dirty money.
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 ART OF THE DAY Today's Art of the Day is an A.I.-generated art piece produced by Midjourney and Jordan Schneider. Schneider said that he input a Pablo Picasso painting and asked Midjourney to generate a piece based on "semiconductor supply chain."
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UPCOMING EVENTS - January 12 - AMA with Gun.io - Building and managing software development teams w/ Deividi Silva (Watch On Demand)
- January 13 - AMA with LinearB - Improving workflow for developers w/ Ori Keren (Watch On Demand)
- January 18 - Inside Interview with Lacework - 4 Common Attack Paths in Cloud Security (Register Here)
- January 25 - Amanda Natividad speaks on zero-click content, how to measure it, and other trends to keep tabs on in 2023. (Register Here) *
- January 26 - Growth Experimentation Workshop: From Strategy to Process by GrowthHackers.com (Register Here)
- February 23 - Startups Book Club, February 2023 (Join The Club)
- April 18 - Human Resources Summit'23 (Register Here)
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 |  | Daniel Smith is an Inside Analyst who currently resides in Miami, Florida. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Daniel spent the last four years as a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He is fascinated by tech, business, politics, venture capital, and everything in between. When he’s not writing for Inside he can be found kicking a ball on the nearest rugby pitch. Follow him on Twitter @DanSmithInside. |  | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is the author of "Things You Can Do," an illustrated book about climate action. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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