By Colin Wright
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The podcast currently has 636 episodes available.
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Note: As I mentioned in yesterday’s OSN, this will be the last edition of the email and podcast for the foreseeable future, as I’ll be reinvesting the (substantial amount of) time and effort required to produce it each day in other things (including a new, news-related project called “Some Thoughts About”).
If you’re a paying OSN subscriber, the balance of your payment will be refunded, and the OSN archive will be opened up, all paywalls removed.
Thank you so much for supporting this project, and for caring enough to spend some of your time, each day, learning about what’s happening in the world around you.
(And if you want to fill the news-shaped hole in your heart with another pod and/or email, I run a news analysis podcast called Let’s Know Things, and a weekly email of curated links to news-related things called Notes On the News.)
Gay sex ban in Namibia ruled unconstitutional
Summary: A Namibian court has ruled that same-sex acts between consenting men are no longer illegal in the country, and that laws which declared them to be illegal are themselves unconstitutional.
Context: These laws only ever declared same-sex acts between men illegal, not women, and it’s still illegal to marry someone of the same sex in the country, but this is considered to be a big deal because these laws made gay relationships taboo and fueled a lot of discrimination toward anyone who was, or seemed to be, gay—a social stance that also made it more difficult to provide health services, like HIV vaccines and treatments, to folks in a region in which infection rates are very high.
—BBC News
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On day of fatal BP refinery blast, 3,712 safety alarms and one unsent email
Summary: An explosion at a BP oil refinery in Ohio in 2022 was preceded by thousands of safety alarms and a breakdown in communication between daytime and evening shift workers, according to a new report from federal investigators who spent two years looking into the blast, which killed two refinery workers.
Context: Among other things, the report indicates that BP neglected to shut down production at the refinery when warning signs indicated they should, and they didn’t fix obvious issues with equipment, despite having been told over and over about these issues by employees, and these issues eventually culminated with a series of malfunctions, 3,712 alarms in a 12-hour period, and an explosion that led to even more warnings, confusion, and delayed responses; the refinery has since been sold to a Canadian company, which says it restarted production at the facility last year, and that it’s working with regulators to make improvements and upgrade safety measures.
—The Wall Street Journal
Indonesia is trying to block LGBTQIA content from the internet
Summary: A new Indonesian bill, which is based on an earlier proposed bill that was shelved following widespread public backlash, would restrict content in the country that portrays “LGBTQIA behavior,” and anything that shows lifestyles or actions that might be imitated by the public, allowing the government to shut down or censor social platforms, TV networks, and other broadcast mediums, alongside the people using them to share content, using fines and license cancellations; the bill also places limits on investigative journalism in the country.
Context: That earlier, shelved bill would have forced LGBTQIA Indonesian people into conversion therapy programs, and this new one approaches the same topic from a different angle, its terms vague enough that it would apparently—according to criticisms from legal experts and opponents in the country—allow the government to shut down and silence any publication, journalist, influencer, or network it doesn’t like, which would extend its existing censorship powers, which it justifies by claiming it needs to tackle so-called fake news; international human rights groups have noted a significant rightward-shift in Indonesia’s government in recent years, and this new proposed bill is likely to be passed before the current president leaves office later this year.
—Rest of World
Part of what’s informing the rate of electrification (and the deployment of renewable energy sources) in various countries is the cost of electricity versus competitive fuel types (like gas); in China, electricity is cheaper than gas, which makes deploying more clean sources of electricity an easier bet, though they’re also at that point, in part, because of previous investments in the same (at a time in which other sources were more competitive).
—Sustainability By Numbers
1011
Number of drones the US has approved for sale to Taiwan for about $360 million.
That figure includes 720 Switchblade missiles (and its accompanying fire-control systems), and up to 291 Altius 600M loitering munitions (and supporting components).
Despite never having controlled it, China claims Taiwan as its own, and has threatened to take the island nation by force, if necessary; this sale was approved in the midst of a more-intense-than-usual pressure campaign from China to keep Taiwan isolated from outside influences, and pull it into its sphere of influence.
—CNN
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Note: This is a difficult note to write, because I love OSN and I know there are a lot of people who read and listen to it, and who rely on it to help them maintain a situational awareness about the world.
But I recently made the decision to put OSN on pause, indefinitely, so I can reallocate the (significant) time and energy required to produce it each day to other things, for the foreseeable future. I’m truly sorry to those who will be disappointed by this decision, but thank you very much for your support, attention, and for caring about what happens in the world.
So! Tomorrow’s (Friday) edition of the email will be the last one, for now.
If you’re a paying OSN subscriber, you’ll be refunded whatever balance is left on your subscription—I’ll leave the OSN archive online, but I’m removing the option to pay for it, as while I may come back to it at some point, I don’t know when that might be and I don’t want to tie up your money for the duration.
(I’m still running my news analysis podcast, Let’s Know Things, and I curate a weekly selection of news-related links in my Notes On the News email, if you’re interested.)
Thanks again, and I’ll see you one more time, tomorrow :)
Kenyan protesters promise more rallies after at least 23 die in clashes
Summary: Protestors in Kenya, demonstrating against new tax hikes in the country, fought with police outside parliament earlier this week, eventually breaking into the parliamentary compound just minutes after the body voted in favor of these hikes; 23 people were killed during these protests across the country, and protest leaders are encouraging people to keep hitting the streets, and to occupy the State House, the president’s office and residence, and the local offices for the World Bank and IMF later this week; President Ruto now says he won’t sign the bill into law in response to these protests.
Context: This is being seen as the most serious crisis Ruto has faced since he stepped into office two years ago, and the government has deployed the army to help keep the peace during what it’s calling a “security emergency”; lawmakers have said the tax hikes are necessary to avoid a budget gap, though they removed a few of the more contentious ones in the final version of the bill in order to avoid creating any more turmoil; protestors are now demanding, online, in addition to the whole of the bill being voided, that Ruto resign from office.
—Reuters
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Biden pardons thousands of US veterans convicted under law banning gay sex
Summary: US President Biden has announced that he will pardon thousands of veterans who were convicted, over the past six decades, under a law that banned gay sex in the military, which in many cases resulted in dishonorable discharges, and a consequent loss of benefits, alongside all the other social and legal consequences of being discharged in that way.
Context: The US government has a long history of witch-hunts, including a big one in the 1950s that became known as the “lavender scare,” which aimed to weed out anyone who would today be considered LGBTQ+ from government employment, including in the military; a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” under former President Bill Clinton allowed such people to serve in the military as long as they weren’t open about their sexuality, and that was repealed in 2010, but throughout that period, service-members were still persecuted for their sexuality if they were at all public about it.
—The Guardian
Israeli military must draft ultra-Orthodox Jews, Supreme Court rules
Summary: Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the country’s military must draft ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who are religious students, despite a long-time exemption this group has enjoyed.
Context: Netanyahu’s far-right allies in government, those that are keeping him in office, are themselves made up of and supported by ultra-Orthodox organizations, and that’s part of why they’ve been able to avoid the draft for this long, despite the military being spread somewhat thin during its invasion of the Gaza Strip, and new rumblings that it might also enter a more formal conflict with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, as well; this decision could make life more difficult for Netanyahu, who will likely be pressured by his allies to do something about this ruling, though it could temper some of the protests that have been erupting on a regular basis across the country, some of which have been focused on this—in the minds of many, unfair—draft exclusion.
—The New York Times
After a long period in which few NATO members met the recommended military spending threshold of 2% of their GDP, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nudged that number up, with only 7 countries hitting that goal in 2022, but (an estimated) 23 managing it in 2024.
—Sherwood
$50.7 trillion
Anticipated size of the US national debt by 2034, according to a new projection from the Congressional Budget Office.
That’s up from the Office’s previous projection just four months ago, which came in at $48.3 trillion.
—The Washington Post
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty in deal with US and be freed from prison
Summary: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who published a trove of classified US military documents in 2010 and has been on the run from the US Justice Department ever since—initially spending years living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, before being locked up in a UK prison—has reportedly made a deal that will see him plead guilty to one of the 18 charges on which he was indicted in 2019, which will allow him to return to his home country of Australia with a time-served sentence.
Context: Assange was at the center of several major scandals in the early 20-teens, most of them linked to allegations of hacking, divulging state secrets, and embarrassing the US military, because many of the classified documents that were leaked by WikiLeaks were related to US activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and diplomatic cables from around that same time, and several of them showed human rights violations or contained transcriptions of US officials insulting their international peers; Assange has long struggled against extradition to the US, fearing he would face the death penalty if sent there, and this agreement, if it’s approved by a judge, would seem to end his long-time exile, allowing him to return home to his family without any additional prison time.
—The Associated Press
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Music industry giants allege mass copyright violation by AI firms
Summary: A group of music industry entities, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records, have sued Udio and Suno—a pair of AI-oriented music-generation companies—for allegedly ripping off songs owned by these labels to train their AI systems.
Context: These companies are just two of many that have popped up over the past year or two, and which allow their customers to generate ostensibly original music just by describing what they want to make, and that’s possible because the AI systems they use are trained on gobs of existing music, much of which is allegedly owned by these record labels, and which, according to these lawsuits, were incorporated into the training data illegally; this is similar to other lawsuits that are working their way through global court systems right now, related to books, photos, films, journalism and other sorts of human-made work that are being collected and aggregated by AI companies to train their models, and there’s little in the way of existing legal precedent on this sort of thing, so it’s difficult to say, at this point, how these sorts of cases will pan out in different legal jurisdictions.
—Ars Technica
China becomes first country to retrieve rocks from the Moon’s far side
Summary: The Chinese space program successfully returned lunar soil samples from the far side of the Moon, yesterday, marking yet another accomplishment for the burgeoning program, and a new first-ever achievement for humanity.
Context: The Chang’e-6 mission was a follow-up to previous Chinese missions that demonstrated the country’s growing capacity in space, initially allowing them to photograph and map the Moon’s surface, then land on and deploy a rover on the side facing Earth, then deploying a rover on the far side of the Moon—a first for any space agency—in 2019; the agency’s previous Moon mission brought about four pounds of Earth-side Moon regolith home (something that’s only been previously accomplished by the US and Soviet Union), and this most recent achievement is thus far unique to China, which means it’s a big deal in terms of their in-space credibility, but also for human knowledge, as those far-side lunar materials could teach us a lot about how that half differs from the side we continuously see, and about the Moon’s origins.
—The New York Times
Used EVs have become less expensive in the US, on average, than their gas-consuming competition according to a recent report from iSeeCars; this price difference is being attributed to a perceptual value-drop in EVs, due to infrastructural limitations (especially a dearth of charging stations in some regions).
—Business Insider
$10.75 billion
Sum Amazon will invest on cloud and logistics infrastructure in Germany, most of it by 2026, according to a recent announcement by the company.
That’s in addition to a previously announced investment by Amazon in Germany, which (including the new sum) adds up to a total of just over $19 billion, this fresh investment alone creating something like 4,000 jobs in the country.
—Reuters
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Somalia asks peacekeepers to slow withdrawal, fears Islamist resurgence
Summary: Somalia’s government has asked the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, which is a peacekeeping force of about 4,000 troops, to slow their withdrawal from the country, which is currently expected to be completed on December 31 of this year; around half that force is scheduled to be withdrawn by June, and the government is asking them to wait until September.
Context: The ATMIS is an African Union force, is largely funded by the EU and US, and is in Somalia to help the government fend-off extremist militants in the region, especially those aligned with al Shabaab; the government is concerned their own forces won’t be ready to fill in the gaps left by the ATMIS when they pull out, basically, and that could leave a power vacuum al Shabaab or another group could rush to fill; the head of the ATMIS has said there’s no definitive timeline for concluding negotiations regarding the withdrawal, and that everyone involved has committed to achieving sustainable peace and security in the area.
—Reuters
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Greece introduces the six-day work week
Summary: A new law that comes into effect in Greece on July 1 will allow business owners in some sectors to assign their employees hours up to six days a week, if they deem it necessary, adding a 40% supplement to the employee’s daily wage if they are called in for a sixth day of labor.
Context: This is a contentious piece of legislation, as while it could help boost the wages of some hospitality, agricultural, and retail workers in particular, it’s generally not meant to increase the number of hours they work, but rather than number of total hours businesses are producing goods and services, and Greek workers already work more hours than those in any other European country, tallying an average of 41 hours per week (the pay they receive per hour is low by European standards, however); collective agreements have been frozen in the country for years, as the government has had to ask for three economic rescue packages, and has suffered through 15 years of recession and austerity measures, so this is generally being seen as another effort to shore things up at a moment of relative calm in that regard, making up for a lack of skilled workers by putting those who are available to work a little more, each week.
—Deutsche Welle
Gunmen kill 15 police officers and several civilians in Russia’s southern Dagestan region
Summary: Attacks by gunmen on two Orthodox churches, a synagogue, and a police post in two cities in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan on Sunday have left more than 15 people dead, according to local officials.
Context: These attacks occurred near-simultaneously, and the country’s Anti-Terrorist Committee has said the five confirmed gunmen have been killed, while the governor of the republic said six “bandits” were “liquidated”; no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though there was a report that a local official was detained because of his son’s possible involvement; another recent attack on a concert hall in Moscow, during which 139 people were killed, was initially (and without evidence) blamed on Ukraine, before the government admitted it was an Islamic State-linked group, and some reports suggest officials may try to link this new attack to Ukraine, as well, though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that’s the case.
—The Associated Press
The 2024 US election is looking to feature the most “double-hater” voters on record, with around 25% of surveyed Americans saying they don’t particularly like either major candidate.
—Axios
$91.4 billion
Sum spent by the nine nuclear-armed countries on nuclear weapons in 2023, according to a new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
That’s about $3,000 per second, and is around $10.7 billion more than was spent in 2022.
—VOA News
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Chad joins other countries in eliminating sleeping sickness
Summary: Chad has become the 51st country to officially eliminate sleeping sickness from within their borders, marking the halfway point to a goal set by the World Health Organization in 2021 to eliminate it in 100 countries by 2030.
Context: Sleeping sickness is a parasitic infection caused by the tsetse fly, and it’s only found in Subsaharan Africa, mostly in poorer regions; this infection initially manifests with flu-like symptoms, but eventually also leads to behavior changes, difficulty sleeping, and confusion, and can ultimately result in a coma or death; early detection and treatment of sleeping sickness has helped substantially improve health outcomes in those afflicted, and most of the countries that have eliminated it, thus far, have invested in reducing infection reservoirs, which in this case often means applying insecticide to, and treating afflicted cattle to keep tsetse flies from acquiring the disease from animals, in the first place.
—Africanews
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Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win
Summary: The Internet Archive, which lost a court case brought against it by book publishers in March of last year, recently pulled around half-a-million books from its online open library.
Context: This is the result of a years-long struggle between publishers and the Internet Archive, but in essence, the IA is a nonprofit that aims to preserve and make available all sorts of digitized materials, including things like websites, games, and apps, but also print materials that have been scanned, and which are difficult or impossible to find anywhere else; during the height of the pandemic, the IA made all of its books available to anyone who wants them, removing its typical one-person-at-a-time approach that mimicked more conventional libraries, as a sort of emergency, everyone is being forced to stay at home gesture, and that sparked additional legal efforts on the part of book publishers, who were already opposed to the IA’s actions, saying they amounted to piracy; this takedown of hundreds of thousands of books published by the lawsuit-bringing publishers is being appealed, and on one side of this debate are book-readers and open information activists who say this could portend bad things for the future of libraries of all kinds, and on the other are publishers and some authors who say, basically, if these folks make our work available for free, online, how will we be able to keep publishing books?
—Ars Technica
Gilead says its HIV prevention shot was 100% effective in a clinical trial
Summary: Drug-maker Gilead has announced that its twice-yearly injectable HIV drug, lenacapavir has demonstrated 100% efficacy in a late-stage clinical trial.
Context: This double-blind, phase 3 trial involved 5,300 women in South Africa and Uganda, and none of the women in the group that got the drug were infected with HIV during the trial period, while 39 women in the group that didn’t receive it did develop HIV; these results were considered to be so good by an independent data monitoring group that the trial was ended early so all of the women could be offered the drug; results for a second trial that involved men who have sex with men, instead of women, are set to be announced in late-2024 or early-2025, and Gilead’s stock price rose more than 9% following this announcement.
—Quartz
A recent survey from YouGov found that younger Americans like wearing suits more than older Americans, but that a sizable chunk of the population—despite owning a suit—never wear it; a big change from the previous professional paradigm, and a number that’s possibly being influenced by the pandemic-era shift to remote work.
—YouGov
20%
Increase in the number of passengers riding Amtrak trains the first seven months of the company’s most recent budget year (which began in October of 2023), according to Amtrak’s CEO.
He also said the company is on track to exceed its all-time record high number of passengers served in a single year (32.3 million), which was set in 2019.
Amtrak has seen a recent surge in new government funding to help it refurbish popular routes and stations, and introduce new ones to serve currently unserved areas, and this increase was tallied despite the company currently suffering from several diminished routes and issues with some of its tracks.
—Reuters
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Thailand passes landmark bill legalizing same-sex marriage
Summary: The Thai Senate has voted, 130 to 4, to allow any two people, whatever their gender, to get engaged or legally married, putting the country on track to become the first in Southeast Asia to allow same-sex marriages.
Context: This bill was approved by the country’s House of Representatives in March, and still has to be approved by the Thai King, but that final step is considered to be a formality, and the law will go into effect 120 days after that sign-off; same-sex couplings have been generally socially accepted in Thailand for a long time, with around 60% of the adult population supporting it, but the law hasn’t traditionally backed that social approval; three-dozen countries have thus far legalized same-sex marriage, and Taiwan was the first to do so in Asia, back in 2019.
—The Washington Post
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Fisker is out of cash, not making cars, and filing for bankruptcy
Summary: Electric vehicle-maker Fisker, which was started by well-known BMW and Aston Martin car designer Henrik Fisker, has filed for bankruptcy following months of safety probes, cash shortages, and pauses in manufacturing.
Context: In 2023, Fisker—which at one point was considered to be EV-maker Tesla’s main US rival—reported $273 million in sales, but $1 billion in debt, and its stock was dropped by the New York Stock Exchange in March of that year; in some ways Fisker’s situation reflects the EV market in general, which has knocked out many previously high-flying, promising companies, because a lot of cash has to be burned in the run-up to profitability, very few companies making it through that initial gauntlet to relative stability on the other side; the global EV market is also being upended by inexpensive, high-quality offerings from China and Vietnam, which is making life difficult for Western competitors that took longer to spin-up their manufacturing capacity and R&D, and which typically haven’t benefitted from as much government backing.
—Ars Technica
Boeing hid questionable parts from regulators that may have been installed in 737 Max planes, new whistleblower alleges
Summary: An employee at Boeing has publicly alleged that the company attempted to conceal broken and out-of-specification plane parts from regulators, those parts possibly making their way into the company’s much-maligned 737 Max.
Context: The past several years have been difficult for Boeing, which seems to have refocused on upping its stock market valuation over investing in the quality of its products a few decades ago, which in turn led to the firing of many of its most knowledgable employees, and the subsequent, very public failure of several of its planes, and even more recently, helium leaks in its Starliner space vehicle, which seems to have stranded a pair of astronauts at the International Space Station; the company, which has close, military-manufacturing ties with the US government, in addition to making something like half the passenger aircraft in use, globally, has been targeted by a US Senate subcommittee investigation into why it seems to be fumbling so much and so badly, of late, and this new whistleblower revelation came out as part of that investigation; the company’s CEO was questioned about all these issues, and the corporate culture that seems to have caused them, by Congress on Tuesday.
—CNN
Chip-maker Nvidia became the most valuable publicly traded US company earlier this week, its market value surpassing previous holders-of-that-title, Microsoft and Apple on the strength of demand for its powerful AI-optimized chips.
—Axios
~2,000
Number of children who die each day, globally, from air pollution, according to a new study from the Health Effects Institute.
Air pollution has become the second biggest killer of people of all ages (surpassing tobacco use), following only high blood pressure as a risk factor for all-causes death amongst the general population, and it’s second only to malnutrition as the greatest mortality risk for children under 5.
—The Guardian
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Nvidia eclipses Microsoft as world's most valuable company
Summary: Just a few days after passing Apple, chip-maker Nvidia also surpassed Microsoft’s market valuation, attaining a value of more than $3.3 trillion and becoming the most valuable publicly traded US company.
Context: Microsoft recently passed Apple as the most valuable publicly traded US company on the strength of its partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and it’s deployment of all sorts of AI-oriented tools across its product portfolio, but Nvidia has been on a tear this past year, surging in value from just over $1 trillion in July of 2023 to its current most-valuable status; Nvidia makes chips that were previously oriented toward gamers and other consumers that needed to do high-end graphics work, then by crypto-companies that wanted to mine Bitcoin and other such assets, but the same products turned out to be ideal for training AI systems, as well, hence this staggering valuation explosion as pretty much every tech company scrambles to get their own AI models trained and deployed.
—Reuters
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Putin and Kim sign pact pledging mutual support against ‘aggression’
Summary: Russian President Putin has visited North Korea for the first time in decades, meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and solidifying the two countries’ relationship at a moment in which both nations are heavily sanctioned, globally.
Context: This visit served as an opportunity for the two countries to formalize a defense pledge, basically saying if the West, led by Europe and the US, messes with either of us, we’ll come to each others’ aid in various ways, while also demonstrating that they’ll continue to support each other in a general sense, North Korea providing ammunition, missiles, and other wartime necessities to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and Russia providing staples like food and medical supplies, which are often in short supply in North Korea; many Western governments are concerned that Russia is helping the North develop their weapons systems, including their nuclear and orbital capabilities, as part of this arrangement, though the true nature of this agreement is unknown, as the details haven’t been publicly divulged, and even the aforementioned swap of ammo and food and such is based on external intelligence reports, not announcements from those directly involved—so lots of unknowns remain.
—The New York Times
White House cancels meeting and scolds Netanyahu in protest over video
Summary: Following the release of a video by the Israeli government in which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu criticizes the US for withholding military aid, the US government has cancelled a high-level meeting with Israel related to Iran.
Context: The only military aid on its way to Israel from the US that has been withheld, as far as is publicly known, at least, has been a shipment of a type of bomb that would be devastating to civilians if used in Rafah, so this criticism, shared publicly in this way, is being seen as a slap in the face by a US administration that has continued to give Israel everything it has asked for, and then some, despite very public and potentially damaging criticisms from other world leaders, and its own constituents, at home; some White House officials have expressed bafflement about the withholding comment, saying they don’t know what Netanyahu is talking about, and while some have said the Iran meeting was cancelled to express anger at the comment, others have said the meeting was postponed due to a scheduling conflict; so there’s some fog of war related to this exchange, at the moment, but it does seem like the tension between Netanyahu and US President Biden is continuing to grow.
—Axios
Most Americans get the majority of their news from social media, these days, and the lion’s share of “news” content they’re shown by the algorithms on these platforms are commentary and funny posts related to current events, not actual journalism.
—Pew Research
1.8 million
Number of people living in El Fasher, the capital city of the Darfur region in Sudan.
This city is under threat from a paramilitary forces called the Rapid Support Forces, which has been fighting a civil war with the country’s military, each side of the conflict controlled by generals who toppled the previous government in a coup, then turned on each other in the aftermath.
El Fasher is encircled by the RSF, and international human rights organizations are warning that a massacre of the city’s residents could be impending.
—The New York Times
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions that are too hard to cancel
Summary: Software company Adobe, which sells digital tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, has been sued by the US Justice Department for allegedly harming consumers by engaging in manipulative practices, like making it difficult and costly to end subscriptions, and enrolling customers in more expensive plans than they wanted.
Context: One of Adobe’s more overtly anti-consumer practices, according to the FTC, is a hefty cancellation fee that makes the company’s purported “monthly” plan anything but, charging folks for cancelling their memberships before a year has passed, but they’re also being accused of making the cancellation process unnecessarily arduous, and engaging in other sorts of manipulative behaviors meant to keep people paying, and paying more than anticipated; this is just one of many such lawsuits by US agencies against companies doing these sorts of things to consumers right now, and this one targets a pair of Adobe executives, as well—all of which is meant to serve as a warning to other companies doing similar things, alongside Adobe itself.
—The Verge
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Russia overtook US as gas supplier to Europe in May
Summary: For the first time in nearly two years, Europe imported more gas from Russia than the US in May, partly due to temporary issues with a major US liquid natural gas (LNG) export facility, and a big surge in Russian gas exports through Turkey, leading up to a maintenance period this month.
Context: Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, it began to cut off gas flows to Europe, where many countries Russia hoped to convince not to get involved were heavily reliant on the fuel, and the US scrambled to build export capacity for its liquified gas product, which it could send via ship, but which would then need to be processed on the other end to make it usable across Europe’s grid; the upside of all this is that the US is now typically the biggest supplier of gas to Europe, Russia still provides gas to the bloc, but a lot less than before, and via a more circuitous route, and a five-year transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine, which makes the majority of those remaining shipments to Europe possible, via pipes running through Ukraine, ends this year, which—though Ukraine earns some money by allowing that gas to pass through its territory—seems unlikely to be re-upped, at this point.
—Financial Times
Three of Vietnam's five undersea internet cables are down
Summary: Late last week, three of the five undersea cables that serve internet connectivity to Vietnam failed, and they remain down as of mid-this-week; local internet service providers have not announced estimates as to when they think these cables will be back online.
Context: This is notable in part because, while sabotage is being seen as unlikely in this case, there have been a slew of what look to be seabed cable-cuttings in recent years, and it’s been speculated that China and Russia, separately, have been experimenting with these sorts of cuts using non-military vessels—though, again, that’s quite speculative right now, and there haven’t been any formal allegations on the matter; these cables, though increasingly vital to global communication, are also just really vulnerable to all sorts of degradation and damage from the passage of ships (especially their anchors), though, and some nations, due to the nature of their governance, the businesses tasked with managing the cables, and their local weather conditions, seabed setups, and so on, are also just a lot more likely to experience damaged cables, and notably, all five of Vietnam’s undersea internet cables went down last year, though the country remained connected to the internet via land-based connections, and it’s in the process of attempting to add 2-4 new undersea cables by 2025, which would almost double the country’s current maritime bandwidth.
—Reuters
The TSA reported the highest-ever number of passengers passing through US airport security on the Friday before Memorial Day this year (2.95 million) and Airlines for America have forecast that 271 million passengers will do the same this summer, between June 1 and August 31 (which would be an increase of 6% over the summer of 2023).
—Sherwood News
<5%
Percentage of air defense capabilities that have been determined necessary to defend Europe against a full-scale attack from Russia that NATO can currently muster.
Most of these defenses would be positioned in Central and Eastern Europe, and these sorts of defenses are considered to be increasingly vital in an era of warfare defined by heavy missile, rocket, and drone use.
—Financial Times
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Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Netanyahu disbands his inner war cabinet
Summary: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has disbanded his multi-party war cabinet, following the departure of two of its six members last week.
Context: This cabinet advised Netanyahu on the invasion of the Gaza Strip, and was meant to serve as a symbol of solidarity in the country following Hamas’ sneak-attack on Israel—an attack that sparked the aforementioned invasion; Netanyahu has come under fire from enemies and allies both within and beyond Israel’s borders for his seeming desire to keep the invasion going, no matter what, and this has strained his relationships with long-time allies, but also raised questions about his political future, as opposition parties have called for new elections and large protests criticizing his actions have become the norm across the country.
—Reuters
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Fire used as 'weapon of war' in Sudan as entire towns and villages burned to the ground
Summary: More than 50 settlements across war-torn Sudan have been repeatedly burned, and more than 235 seemingly intentionally set fires in towns and villages have been tracked since April 2023, when the war began, supporting suspicions that arson is being used as a weapon of war in order to displace civilians, long-term.
Context: A flurry of new data and satellite images has allowed reporters to confirm previous reporting on this aspect of the conflict in Sudan, and while the majority of the violence and settlement destruction has been occurring in the country’s westernmost Darfur region, the capital of its North Darfur region is also under threat, along with the 1.5 million people who live there; this conflict is between Sudan’s military and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, which are led by the military’s commander and the de facto ruler of the country, and his former deputy, respectively—in 2021 they agreed to rule the country together after launching a successful coup, but that alliance crumbled due to disagreements about how to rule, and who should control what.
—NBC News
At least 14 Hajj pilgrims die in intense heat
Summary: At least 14 people have been confirmed killed, and another 17 people have been reported missing while making their pilgrimage to the Hajj in Saudi Arabia from their home country of Jordan.
Context: Jordan’s foreign ministry has said that the 14 people who died suffered sun stroke due to an extreme heat wave afflicting the region, which has brought temperatures exceeding 46 degrees C, which is about 114.8 degrees F—which has made the outdoor, on-foot portion of the rituals performed at the Muslim holy site dangerous, especially for older people, and those suffering from other conditions; last year at least 240 people died from similar ailments at the Hajj.
—BBC News
Intense and dangerous heat is forecast across the US this week, with many high-temperature records at risk and local officials scrambling to remind locals about the dangers of heat stroke and related ailments.
—The New York Times
175,000
Number of marijuana convictions Maryland Governor Wes Moore has said he will pardon.
Those convictions (all of which are low-level possession charges) apply to around 100,000 people in the state, and this marks one of the largest mass-pardons related to this drug in the US so far, though other states have recently seen similar, broad-scale efforts.
—The Washington Post
Trust Click
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Panel says lawmakers colluded with foreign powers but won’t name names
Summary: A new report about foreign interference in Canada’s government, which was recently made public by a committee of Canadian lawmakers, claims that several unnamed Canadian politicians “knowingly or through willful blindness” took money from foreign entities in exchange for interfering with government processes in such a way that said foreign entities would benefit.
Context: In other words, some currently unnamed Canadian politicians accepted bribes to put their thumbs on the scale in favor of the governments that bribed them, and some of them allegedly shared private government information with those foreign entities, as well; this is considered to be a pretty big deal, and follows other recent allegations about Canadian politicians spying for and sharing information with China, and this document indicates India, Pakistan, and Iran, among other nations, have likewise been meddling in Canadian governance; some Canadian politicians have said they want their intelligence community to name names, and it’s likely these revelations, though not entirely surprising, as rumors of such behaviors have been swirling around the ether for years, will impact the country’s next election, which is likely to take place in 2025.
—The Washington Post
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Huge telehealth fraud indictment may wreak havoc for Adderall users, CDC warns
Summary: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned, late last week, that a recent federal indictment of a telehealth company that has allegedly been illegally distributing Adderall and other stimulants, online, could result in disruptions in the availability of these drugs.
Context: Adderall and other commonly prescribed ADHD medications are controlled substances, and a bunch of online-only companies have popped up over the past handful of years, focused on getting their customers prescriptions for these drugs, and the drugs themselves—a business model that has made illegal distribution a lot more common; one of the big names in that space, Done Global, has been taken down by the US Justice Department, two people connected to it arrested by federal agents, and the concern is that folks with legitimate prescriptions will have trouble filling those prescriptions because other companies will be more hesitant to issue scripts and fulfill orders; there’s also a separate, ongoing shortage of these sorts of drugs in the US, and folks who use such stimulants regularly, even for doctor-advised purposes, can have a lot of trouble if that supply is suddenly cut off, hence the CDC’s concern.
—Ars Technica
UK polls point to 'electoral extinction' for Prime Minister Sunak's Conservatives
Summary: A trio of recent opinion polls in the lead-up to the UK’s July 4th election suggest the currently governing Conservative party might not just lose its majority, but experience a truly brutal loss.
Context: One of the polls found that chief rival Labour’s lead has risen 2% since the last poll, five days earlier, to 46%, while support for Conservatives dropped by 4 points to 21%, and another suggested that Conservatives could see their representation in the 650-seat House of Commons drops to just 72 seats, with Labour scooping up 456; this is partly the consequence of what’s generally considered to be a series of blunders and bad policies by the Conservatives, leading to a larger-than-usual desire for a changing of the guard by voters, but the Reform UK party, which is politically further-right than the Conservatives, seems to have also grabbed about 12% of support in one of these polls, suggesting that while some voters who would have supported the Conservatives may sit this one out, many have instead decided to throw in their lot with the chief supporter of Brexit, Nigel Farage, who is leading Reform UK.
—Reuters
The US economy continues to flash mixed signals, many of them broadly indicating a resilient set of economy variables, but some pointing at future tumult, reinforcing a sense that the Fed will probably lower interest rates soon (a move that typically stokes economic activity), but not so much that the amount or pace of interest rate drops is currently predictable.
—USA Today
>80%
Portion of pregnancy-related deaths in the US that are preventable.
About 22 maternal deaths (the mother dying) were tracked for every 100,000 live births in the US in 2022, but that number was as high as 49.5% maternal deaths per 100,000 live births for Black people—pointing at a huge disparity in outcomes between different groups of people, but also further emphasizing that gap between “available, lifesaving treatments” and “treatments that are being applied in different areas for different people.”
—The Washington Post
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