Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Proposal would add a "Category 6" as hurricanes get stronger

Summary: A new research paper suggests that hurricane intensity is increasing so dramatically that it may be prudent to add a Category 6 designation to the commonly used Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale, which currently tops-out at Category 5.

Context: The paper argues that because more hurricane systems are far surpassing the typical range of Category 5 storms, and because the strength of storms increases dramatically as sustained wind speeds reach those heightened levels, calling a hurricane with winds of 157 mph and another that weighs in at 192 mph the same category makes little sense, and underplays the danger associated with the latter; the paper thus proposes designating storms that surpass 192 mph as Category 6, placing a ceiling on the currently uncapped Category 5 label.

—Axios

One Sentence News is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Kenyan doomsday cult leader charged with murder of 191 children

Summary: Cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 29 of his associates have been charged with the murder of 191 children whose bodies were recently discovered in a mass grave filled with more than 400 bodies, the rest adults.

Context: Mackenzie and his codefendants all deny the charges, but prosecutors have said that he told his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could ascend to heaven before the end of the world; Mackenzie’s church, the Good News International Church, was based in a grouping of isolated settlements, and he was previously charged and sentenced to a year in jail for producing and distributing films without a license.

—Reuters

ESPN, Fox and Warner team up to create sports streaming platform

Summary: A new, not-yet-named sports-centric online streaming platform co-created by ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery will be launched sometime this fall, according to representatives from these companies.

Context: The involved media behemoths will each own a third of the new platform, and it will include content from all major sports leagues, according to the companies; this is a pretty big deal in the sports and media world, as the online streaming landscape is in the midst of a grand reshuffle, Netflix the only brand making a profit from such efforts, and the rest all trying to cut costs and merge assets in order to staunch the economic bleeding from investments they’ve made over the past few years; a big shift away from cable TV has made sports programming a huge and profitable opportunity, though, and this seems to reflect a desire by these entities to claim a sizable portion of that pie before their competitors, many of which are scooping up their own sports assets, often at high costs, can do the same.

—The Wall Street Journal

Japan’s population is aging rapidly, and that’s already having all sorts of disruptive consequences for its culture, society, and economy (disruptions the rest of the wealthy world is beginning to experience, too—this isn’t a Japan-specific issue, they’re just a little bit ahead of everyone else in terms of low-and-dropping birthrates).

—Chartr

$3 billion

Approximate sum spent by Chinese online retailer Temu in 2023 on advertising in the United States as part of a larger effort to steal market share from Amazon.

About $1.2 billion of that total was spent on Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) alone, according to Goldman Sachs, and analysts have questioned the validity of this approach, as while Temu is undoubtedly gaining in popularity, there’s some indicated that it has still only captured about 1% of the US ecommerce market—far shy of Amazon’s ~40%.

—Financial Times

Trust Click

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit onesentencenews.substack.com