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

Antifungals are going the way of antibiotics—overused, hitting resistance

Summary: The US CDC is asking doctors to confirm their patients have fungal infections before prescribing antifungal treatments due to new reports that some skin funguses are developing a resistance to commonly prescribed medications.

Context: This is similar to what we’ve seen with antibiotics, the most popular and commonly prescribed ones losing their effectiveness, in some cases almost entirely, against some infections, and the concern is that because many doctors are giving patients these drugs without first confirming that their patients need them (and some of these infections are difficult to accurately identify just by looking at them) more fungal infections will develop resistance and even immunity to the drugs we have available, which at some point could leave us without any means of fighting or curing them.

—Ars Technica

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Somalia turns back Ethiopian plane headed for Somaliland

Summary: Somalian officials have turned away a plane carrying Ethiopian officials headed toward Somaliland, significantly escalating the (currently) diplomatic conflict between the two countries.

Context: Ethiopia recently made a deal with the self-declared separatist republic, Somaliland, to become the first government to officially recognize their independence in exchange for the use of a chunk of coastal land, which is something Ethiopia is very keen to have; Somalia, which considers Somaliland to be part of its territory is very upset about this deal and what it implies, and has threatened military intervention, if necessary, to prevent it from happening; this new row would seem to make that sort of conflict more likely, as it’s the first concrete effort on the part of Somalia to keep the deal from being made manifest in a tangible manner.

—BBC News

Pakistan retaliates with strikes inside Iran as tensions spill over

Summary: Following a missile strike by Iran against a terrorist organization operating in Pakistan on Wednesday, Pakistan struck what it said was a terrorist organization operating in Iran.

Context: This is being seen as a tit-for-tat strike, the Pakistani government not wanting to be seen as weak in the face of its neighbor lobbing missiles into its territory but also not wanting to escalate tensions with another regional power; Iran has been launching these sorts of strikes across several borders in recent days, ostensibly to hit regional governments’ common enemies, but also, allegedly, to shore-up its perceptual dominance in the Middle East at a moment in which a lot of variables have been thrown into disarray, and in which the specter of potential conflict is hovering over essentially every government and non-government militant organization in the region.

—The New York Times

Bird populations around the world are on the decline, and recent figures from the US suggest that nearly 30% of the total population of some species have disappeared in just the past handful of decades (there are some good maps for specific species if you click-through on the image to the full article).

—The Washington Post

20%

Approximate percentage of American adults who report having used tobacco products in 2022—close to the global average, and way down from earlier numbers (33% in 2000, for instance) but still higher than international health organizations had hoped it would be at this point.

That said, they expect that number to drop to around 18% in 2030, and numbers in some countries are higher (about 27% in parts of Southeast Asia) but dropping more rapidly, which has been heartening for these organizations.

—NPR News

Trust Click

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