One Sentence News

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

Netanyahu says "we are at war" after Hamas launches surprise invasion

Summary: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared war on Hamas, following a large and complex military incursion by the latter into Israeli territory, the invading forces killing hundreds of Israelis, grabbing dozens as hostages, and raising questions about Israel’s vaunted intelligence services which apparently either didn’t see this coming, or failed to act on whatever foreknowledge they had.

Context: This is a rapidly developing story, but what we seem to know now is that Hamas, which is a Palestinian Islamist militant group based in the Gaza Strip, has bypassed military barriers separating Gaza from the rest of Israel and, using surprise to its advantage, killed hundreds, wounded thousands, kidnapped dozens, and triggered a massive military response from the Israeli government, which has temporarily unified—despite their many ideological differences, and the Prime Minister’s many corruption charges and related issues—in order to boot Hamas from their land, rescue hostages, treat the wounded, and figure out how Hamas managed to pull this off without being noticed by the expansive Israeli surveillance and spy network; we will learn a lot more in the coming days, but at the moment this is being seen as a truly shocking move, triggered—Hamas claims—by Israel’s many and fairly brutal crackdowns on Palestinian citizens, and as one that might upend efforts to bring more peace and diplomacy to the region, including between the Israeli and Saudi governments, which are reportedly close to normalizing relations.

—Axios

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Surprisingly strong hiring sends bond yields higher

Summary: US employers added about twice as many jobs as forecasters predicted in September, defying expectations and raising the possibility that the Fed will further hike interest rates before the end of the year.

Context: Job growth numbers, like all economic figures, are an imperfect stand-in for the health of an economy, but this is being seen as an indication that the US economy can handle more pressure, and it’s anticipated the Fed may choose to further hike interest rates in order to be extra certain that inflation rates continue to drop, rather than risking a rebound that would then be more difficult to handle; employers added about 336,000 jobs last month, and the stock market grew skittish following the announcement, due to the possibility of higher interest rates and their economy cooling impacts.

—The Wall Street Journal

Entire villages razed as death toll soars from quakes in Afghanistan

Summary: Local officials have announced that 813 people are confirmed dead following a pair of powerful earthquakes in northwestern Afghanistan.

Context: That death toll is expected to rise as the rubble is cleared and bodies are identified, and these quakes—which were both about 6.3 in magnitude—caused the mostly mud-brick homes in the area to collapse, destroying entire villages and making the deployment of aid and rescue workers difficult; in June of 2022, a huge earthquake hit southeastern Afghanistan and killed more than 1,000 people, and recent quakes in Turkey and Morocco killed tens of thousands of people, combined.

—The New York Times

A map of the area relevant to the aforementioned Israel war story; the involved forces (and civilian areas) are all pretty entangle with each other, which is part of why there’s been so much conflict in this region in recent memory.

—The New York Times

$60 billion

Estimated value of a potential takeover of shale drilling company Pioneer Natural Resources by fossil fuel giant Exxon Mobil.

This deal may not happen, or it could be sealed sometime this week; it’s all up in the air at this point.

If a deal is made and goes through (approved by regulators and such), this would reshape the US energy industry and represent Exxon’s biggest acquisition since it merged with Mobil in 1999.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Note: I’ll be on the road, delivering my girlfriend to her next artist residency (in Wausau, Wisconsin) through the end of the week, so there won’t be OSN emails or pods Thursday or Friday. Sorry about that! But we’ll be back to the usual schedule on Monday.

US government issues first-ever space debris penalty to Dish Network

Summary: Satellite television company Dish Network has been issued the first-ever fine for failing to de-orbit an aging satellite, the EchoStar-7, which has been lingering in orbit after its useful lifespan rather than being nudged onto a trajectory that would allow it to safely burn up in the atmosphere.

Context: This is an issue because the orbit into which it was guided puts it squarely in a orbital debris risk zone—it was too low on propellant to make it all the way to the safe burn-up target orbit, so now it’s in a highly populated region, equivalent to being stuck in the middle of a high-traffic highway, rather than having been delivered to the dump; in 2022 the FCC adopted a new rule that said satellite operators would need to dispose of their own aging satellite infrastructure within five years of a satellite completing its mission, and this was implemented because of the ever-increasing risk of collisions between all the satellites that are now hurling around the planet, faster than bullets, and the possibility that one collision could create so much debris that it sparks a cascade of collisions, destroying a bunch of in-orbit assets, and also, potentially, leading to what’s called Kessler Syndrome, wherein the planet is surrounded by so much fast-moving debris that it becomes nearly impossible to launch anything new, or to safely maintain functional satellites.

—The Guardian

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Hundreds seek compensation over J-pop agency founder's abuse

Summary: More than 300 people have accused Japan’s top music talent agent, Johnny Kitagawa, of sexual abuse, and are now seeking compensation from the company that manages his assets, following his death in 2019.

Context: An independent inquiry concluded in September that Kitagawa had abused hundreds of young men and boys over the course of his career, during which he launched the careers of some of the country’s most successful and well-known J-pop boy bands (this widespread abuse was an open secret in the industry); about 150 of the 325 people who are seeking compensation as victims were former talents that he managed, and the tycoon’s former agency has since converted itself into an entity that will solely exist to identify and compensate victims, while a new company will be established to manage their docket of talent; Kitagawa’s niece stepped down from her role leading the agency following the aforementioned investigation, and she’s been replaced by a television star and singer named Noriyuki Higashiyama, though he has also been accused of sexual misconduct, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how long he’ll maintain that position.

—BBC News

Biden administration offers fewest offshore oil and gas leases in history

Summary: The US government announced late last week that it would lease territory in only three new portions of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling between 2024 and 2029, representing the smallest-ever number of lease offerings since the federal drilling program began several decades ago.

Context: This is a notable decision in part because it seems almost perfectly calibrated to upset everyone, as environmentalist groups are still irked that the Biden administration has backtracked on its election-era promise to issue no new drilling leases on federal land, while the oil companies and their supporters are pissed that the administration isn’t giving them wider access; it’s also notable because a new law requires that the US government issue drilling leases if it wants to make new territory available for wind farms, and the Biden administration is keen to see more offshore wind farms get the go-ahead, so this would seem to forward that ambition, while also limiting the country’s capacity to do a lot more drilling in the next five years, which suggests the government is nudging things toward renewables, even if not as rapidly and ambitiously as most environmental groups would prefer.

—The New York Times

The speed at which solar energy infrastructure is being deployed, globally, cannot be overstated—it surpasses even the most optimistic estimates every single year, and 2023 is looking to be no different; the pace is increasing even faster in the US, right now, as businesses with a lot of real estate (like self-storage companies) are beginning to slather their holdings with solar panels, as are timber companies and the owners of outlet malls.

—The Wall Street Journal

$150 million

Average annual value—for football/soccer governing body Fifa—of its partnership with video game-maker EA to produce the Fifa video game series, which was recently rebranded as EA Sports FC.

That rebrand is the consequence of EA’s decision to cut ties with Fifa, sacrificing name-recognition and accumulated brand-value in the hopes of pocketing some of that $150 million-ish a year that would otherwise go to Fifa.

EA has said interest is high in this year’s entry in the series, which bears the new title and has seen a 25% increase in pre-sale signups (though it also has a longer early access window than previous offerings).

This is being seen as one of the most important decisions in EA’s history, and it represents a significant loss of revenue for Fifa, as this licensing deal was their second-largest commercial effort, outside the World Cup.

—Financial Times

Trust Click

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

Indonesia is set to launch Southeast Asia’s first high-speed railway, largely funded by China

Summary: A high-speed railway project in Indonesia—which has been hobbled by all sorts of delays and ballooning costs, and which is called “Whoosh”—began operations yesterday, cutting travel times between the country’s capital and another major city from about three hours down to around 40 minutes.

Context: This is one of the premier projects funded by China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and though there are all sorts of well-founded concerns about it ever making a profit, the bullet train can reach speeds of up to 350 kph, which is about 217 mph, and may help residents and commuters reduce their reliance on cars—an effort that could pay off substantially, as the country’s economy currently loses an estimated $6.5 billion a year to traffic congestion in its major cities; the project originally broke ground in 2016, and nearly doubled in price after being approved, but the government is still planning an expansion that would eventually link all four provinces on its main island with high-speed rail.

—The Associated Press

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Slovakia's poll winner defies European consensus on Ukraine

Summary: A pro-Russian Slovak candidate has won the country’s most recent election, and is now in talks to form a coalition government that would allow his party to run the country.

Context: Robert Fico has said he wants to stop providing non-humanitarian support for Ukraine, that Ukrainian extremists are to blame for Russian President Putin’s decision to invade the country, and he has taken a generally anti-liberalization stance mirroring that of Hungary’s current government; Fico has a history of doing what needs to be done to maintain his hold on the reins of power, so there’s a chance he steps back from some of his more fringe election promises if and when he’s able to form a governing coalition, but there’s some concern that this could further soften the EU’s stance on supporting Ukraine, though other analysts have suggested that Slovakia has already provided what military support they’re capable of providing, and the main concern is that Fico would disallow the transport of military hardware from other EU nations through Slovak territory on its way to Ukraine.

—Reuters

EMILY's List head Laphonza Butler picked to fill Feinstein's Senate seat

Summary: Following the death of long-serving US Senator Feinstein less than a week ago, California Governor Newsom has appointed the president of pro-choice organization EMILY’s List, Laphonza Butler, to fill her seat until the next election.

Context: This appointment was initially fraught, as Newsom’s decision to appoint someone who would more or less be a placeholder until the next election—and thus someone who wasn’t planning to run, as he didn’t want to put his thumb on the scale of that election—was controversial within the Democratic party, but this choice seems to be popular with most of his constituents; there’s a chance Butler could decide to run in 2024, as well, but in the interim, as a lesbian she already represents the first openly LGBTQ+ senator from California, and will be the only black woman currently serving in the Senate.

—Axios

We may be hitting the peak of employee-leverage when it comes to negotiating pay and other benefits (which is part of why so many unions are currently scrambling to negotiate, while the getting is good), but the gains locked-in by employees on the lower-end of earnings in the US have already been substantial, and have fundamentally changed expectations in terms of what American workers expect to earn per hour.

—Chartr

$33,000

Sum that electric vehicle-maker Rivian lost on every vehicle it sold in the second quarter of 2023.

That’s a fairly astonishing figure, especially considering that their vehicles sell for more than $80,000 on average.

But this level of cash-burn isn’t unknown in the EV space, as scaling-up (and making more efficient) their production is one of the biggest hurdles any would-be Tesla competitor faces.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Congress averts government shutdown with last-minute scramble

Summary: With just 32 minutes to spare, US lawmakers prevented a government shutdown (of their own making) by passing a stopgap measure that will fund the government for the next 45 days.

Context: The legislation that was ultimately passed was bipartisan and generally acceptable to everyone except the far-right Republican House Representatives who were attempting to get their policy priorities signed into law, and failing that, were happy to push the government into a shutdown; instead, House Republicans were able to get House Democrats, and the Democrat-controlled Senate on board with one of their proposals by removing a small amount of funding for Ukraine, which the Dems didn’t like, but including everything else the Dems wanted; this is generally being seen as a victory for Democrats, will probably put a target on House Speaker McCarthy’s back, as those far-right members of his party have said they would try to oust him if he worked with the Democrats in this matter, and it’s likely we’ll have to deal with this same issue in another month-and-a-half, so while a shutdown has been averted for now, it’s anyone’s guess as to how things will play out the next time we have to go through all this.

—The Washington Post

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Saltwater in the Mississippi threatens water supply in New Orleans

Summary: As water levels in the Mississippi River have fallen due to drought-like conditions throughout the US Midwest, the river has had insufficient heft to push back against the weight of the Gulf of Mexico, which has resulted in a slow, steady creep of salty ocean water up into the mouth of the river.

Context: Louisiana officials and the US Army Corps of Engineers are now struggling to figure out how to provide drinking water to the New Orleans area, which relies on the Mississippi River as a freshwater source, if this so-called “wedge” of saltwater reaches the city’s water treatment plants, as these plants can’t handle high-salinity water and can actually start to corrode and break down if such water reaches its inflows; all of which is necessitating the construction of new infrastructure meant to impede the northward flow of saltwater into the river, but those in charge have said this will only delay the inevitable, and it’s likely the only way out, lacking some major new construction or refurbishment of freshwater systems in the region, is significant rainfall somewhere upstream that helps the river push back against this seawater wedge.

—The New York Times

Death toll from Pakistan blast rises to 59 as minister blames India

Summary: A large explosion at a mosque in a southern province in Pakistan has killed at least 59 people and sparked fresh accusations by the Pakistani government against the Indian government.

Context: The bomber detonated his explosives outside a mosque where people were gathered to celebrate the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, which is part of why the death toll is so high; this attack was followed by a second one in the northern part of the country, which killed at least five people, and no group has thus far come forward to claim responsibility, though there are quite a few extremist groups in the region that do this sort of thing semi-regularly, including the Pakistani Taliban—though they’ve outright denied being involved with these attacks; the Pakistani government has long accused the Research and Analysis Wing, which is India’s intelligence agency, of sponsoring terrorist groups within their borders, though India denies this and there doesn’t seem to be any publicly available evidence to support this allegation.

—Reuters

As mentioned above, the issue of salt water creeping up the Mississippi River is becoming a real concern for New Orleans, which relies upon the river for its drinking water supply, and that concern could escalate later this month.

—Axios

5%

New royalty fee McDonald’s charges its franchisers for new locations.

That’s up from 4%: a fee structure that has remained stable for almost 30 years.

While not a massive increase (and again, the first such increase in a long time) McDonald’s corporate has had a tumultuous relationship with its franchisees, of late, so this could lead to some kind of pushback.

—CNBC

Trust Click

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

NASA astronaut back on Earth after record-breaking spaceflight

Summary: Astronaut Frank Rubio has been returned safely to Earth after spending 371 continuous days in orbit at the International Space Station.

Context: He touched down in Kazakhstan with two Cosmonauts on Wednesday, and though his time in space (which was originally intended to be much shorter, but a coolant leak on an earlier return craft extended his mission substantially) beat-out the previous American record of 355 days, it still falls a fair bit short of the overall record, which is held by Russian Cosmonaut Valeria Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days in orbit in the late Mir space station back in the mid-1990s.

—Axios

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Prescriptions surge for Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and similar drugs

Summary: Diabetes medications that have been repurposed as obesity drugs have seen a huge surge in demand in the US over the past year, the volume of prescriptions increasing 300% from the start of 2020 through the end of 2022.

Context: Demand for this class of medications, which are generally referred to as GLP-1 weight loss drugs, is booming, despite their high cost of more than $900 per month, and despite most insurance plans not covering them; it’s thought that overall healthcare costs in the country could be brought down if this drug category were to be more widely used, as many of the highest costs for these plans, currently, are related to complications associated with obesity, and though there are some side effects associated with this class of medications, new research has also shown they substantially reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular events, which are a leading cause of debilitating ailment and death in the United States—so there’s a chance that at some point insurance companies will do the math, and it will make sense for them to start covering these drugs, at which point, it’s a fair bet, that demand will surge still further.

—Financial Times

Indonesia bans e-commerce sales on social media platforms like TikTok

Summary: The Indonesian government has banned the sale of goods on social media platforms in the country, saying that it hopes to protect small, local businesses from the impact of low-cost, overseas competitors.

Context: This is notable in part because social video platform TikTok has been pushing its new, Amazon-like TikTok Shop platform in Indonesia especially hard, as Indonesia is an important market for the company—it was the first market in which TikTok deployed its e-commerce offering, and it’s the second-largest global market for the company, after the United States—and for Chinese manufacturers more broadly; the government has said that companies failing to honor this ban could have their license to do business in Indonesia revoked, and that some foreign-made goods, sold by Indonesian companies on e-commerce platforms, would have their minimum price set at $100 in order to limit what the government considers to be unfair competition from below-market sellers based in other countries.

—The Guardian

After a substantial pandemic-era drop, cruise companies are seeing an uptick in bookings, once more, purportedly the consequence of “revenge travel” ambitions by people who were unable to go anywhere or do much of anything (safely, at least) for years, alongside a string of news about cruise passengers catching COVID, being stranded, etc.

—Chartr

September 2021

Previous cutoff month for OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot; it had information up till this month, but not after it, because of training-data constraints.

Those constraints were both practical and intentional: this kept the bot from speculating on evolving information, up-to-the-minute, which was meant to limit the impact it would have on things like news consumption (a real issue, as these sorts of generative AI tools are prone to making things up), but it was also just a limitation imposed by how the bot was trained, initially (using a chunk of data, rather than a stream of ever-changing data).

Earlier this week, though, the company announced that this bot will now have information about the world as it exists, today, and can thus hold conversations, aggregate information, and speculate about things that happened mere moments before.

—Reuters

Trust Click

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

Amazon sued by FTC and 17 states over allegations it inflates online prices and overcharges sellers

Summary: E-commerce giant Amazon has been sued by the US Federal Trade Commission and 17 states on allegations of monopolistic abuse of power.

Context: This lawsuit is the result of a years-long investigation, and is considered to be a substantial threat to the company; the primary complaint is that Amazon has used its centrality to the online sales world to incentivize sellers to not offer lower prices on their goods elsewhere, to bury less-expensive options on their own listings, to charge sellers increasingly high fees, to force merchants to raise their prices over time—on and off Amazon—and to compete with folks selling on Amazon in anti-competitive ways; there are also allegations of replacing search results with ads, positioning their own brands over often better versions of the same from other companies, and overall just utilizing its position of power to kill off competition; Amazon controls something like 40% of the US e-commerce market, and Amazon has said this is an overstep by the FTC, and that it has done nothing illegal.

—The Associated Press

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Spotify is going to clone podcasters’ voices and translate them to other languages

Summary: Audio-streaming company Spotify has announced a new partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI that will allow them to clone the voices of podcasters, with those podcasters’ permission, and then use those voices to create dubs of their shows in different languages.

Context: The announcement included example, translated episodes from well-known podcasters like Lex Fridman, Bill Simmons, and Monica Padman, and though this isn’t a completely novel generative AI utility—other, smaller companies are offering similar services, many using the same OpenAI Whisper tool that Spotify’s using—Spotify is a behemoth in this space, and even if these dubs are imperfect (and they absolutely are) this could open up a whole lot of currently English-language content to folks who speak other languages, and it could, if made widely available and cheap or free, make audio content in any language available to folks who speak every other language, expanding the reach of all such content, and the ideas and personalities and information it carries.

—The Verge

Donald Trump found liable for fraud in New York civil case

Summary: A New York State Supreme Court judge has found former US President Trump liable for fraud for consistently overstating the value of his assets in financial statements, allowing him to fraudulently attain favorable terms on loans and other financial tools over the years.

Context: Trump allegedly overstated the value of his wealth by as much as $2.2 billion a year, and the New York attorney general is seeking a fine of $250 million; Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and has indicated that he may appeal the ruling, though the judge has basically ruled that there doesn’t need to be a trial—the documents show that Trump has been doing what he’s been accused of doing—and subsequent proceedings will focus on the size of the fine; if this ruling stands, it could result in Trump losing the ability to do business in New York, and it’s probably important to note that this is a civil trial, not a criminal one, so this doesn’t represent another indictment—it’s separate from the four indictments he currently faces in other courts.

—Reuters

The exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh—a region long-governed by a separatist government, but recently retaken by the Azerbaijani military—continues, with tens of thousands of people flooding across the border into Armenia, fearing ethnic cleansing, and a gas station explosion (crowded by people filling up their tanks as they flee) that has killed dozens of people and injuring scores more adding to the chaos.

—The Conversation

1,500

Approximate number of troops the French government will pull from Niger following the country’s military coup in July.

The new Nigerian government demanded France withdraw these troops soon after it took control, believing them to be a possible threat (they’re in the area to help fight extremist militant groups in the area, having worked with the previous Nigerian government toward this end) but the French government slow-walked a response until now.

Niger is now one of a trio of military dictatorship-led governments in western Africa, and the removal of French troops is being seen as a potential opening for other outside influences, like Russia, which might step in to take their place.

—Reuters

Trust Click

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

Lego ditches oil-free brick in sustainability setback

Summary: The largest toy company in the world, Lego, has announced that it will be abandoning a previously touted effort to remove all oil-based plastics from its product line by 2030, citing years of research that indicates transitioning to recycled plastic would actually produce more carbon emissions than if they changed nothing.

Context: This is being seen as one more example of how complex and circuitous the process of decarbonizing can be, as while replacing their oil-based bricks with plastic made from recycled bottles would dramatically reduce the amount of emissions on the company’s ledger, replacing all their existing equipment to perform this changeover would have produced more total emissions, overall, not less, so taking the totality of the consequences of this shift into account has resulted in a counterintuitive finding, and that, in turn, means the company will instead focus on attempting to reduce the carbon footprint of the plastic it currently uses, while also expanding efforts it began in 2018 to swap-in plant-based plastics for some products, and to remove single-use plastic from all of its packaging by 2025.

—Financial Times

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SAG-AFTRA members vote in favor of video game strike authorization

Summary: The SAG-AFTRA actor’s union has voted to authorize a strike against 10 major video game companies, with 98.32% of the union’s voting members casting ballots in favor of the authorization.

Context: This authorization was announced the day after it was announced that the WGA writer’s guild has reached a tentative deal with Hollywood studios, though most film- and TV-making activity won’t be able to continue at its usual clip until those same studios reach a deal with the actors (and recent reports indicate they haven’t even met up with each other, recently); this new strike authorization is focused on similar concerns held by actors in the film and TV space, specifically that actors in the video game industry aren’t getting their fair share of profits, that higher-ups are doing a lot of firing, which results in more profits for industry higher-ups, but less power and more work for the workers, and that AI may be used exploitatively against said workers, further reinforcing this power and compensation imbalance; the video game industry has expanded by leaps and bounds over the past decade, and is now substantially larger than the film and music industries, combined.

—Variety

Libya’s top prosecutor orders eight officials arrested after flood disaster

Summary: The chief prosecutor of Libya has ordered the arrest and detention of eight officials who have been deemed potentially responsible for the recent flood that killed thousands of people in the eastern portion of the country.

Context: The core of this disaster is attributable to the collapse of two dams outside the city of Derna, and though the rainfall was torrential, the resulting inland tsunami from those dams collapsing is what washed several neighborhoods full of people out to sea; the latest official death toll is at 3,800 people, with 10,000 or more still missing, and seven current and former officials from the agencies responsible for managing these dams, and the city’s mayor, have been apprehended and are being questioned by Libyan law enforcement.

—Al Jazeera

In the US, women (at every age) pay more out-of-pocket than men, even when they have the same health insurance—and that’s true even when you exclude maternity-related expenses from the numbers; this is thought to be the consequence of women requiring relatively more expensive treatments and screenings compared to men, and the fact that women tend to use health care more often (in part because of additional gynecological checkups and exams).

—Axios

$82.60

Cost of NCM811 battery cells per kWh, at the moment.

This is important because these are the sorts of battery cells typically used in electric vehicles, and that’s around the price necessary to assemble $100-per-kWh EV battery packs—a tipping-point figure for reaching EV price-parity with gas-guzzling vehicles.

For context, when the original Nissan Leaf EV was released in 2011, the typical price for a kWh was around $1000, so a lot of price-relevant progress has been made in this space in a relatively short period of time.

—Jalopnik

Trust Click

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

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey indicted on federal bribery charges

Summary: New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and his wife have been indicted for bribery, the US Justice Department announced late last week, on charges that they accepted stacks of cash, bars of gold, and other assets in exchange for nudging government policy to benefit the Egyptian government.

Context: This is a rapidly evolving story, but basically this senator has allegedly been abusing his position as a senator and as the head of the Foreign Relations Committee to enrich himself and his wife, netting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold, paychecks for made-up jobs, and a luxury vehicle, by helping to facilitate military sales and financing for the Egyptian government, in one case helping them attain hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the US despite human rights concerns; Menendez has also been accused of trying to disrupt federal investigations of his allies and attempting to get people sympathetic to his goals into office; Menendez was charged with corruption in 2017, but the jury was deadlocked and he won reelection the following year; this case is far bigger, a lot more colorful, with gobs of photographic evidence of the bribes in question, and will be conducted in New York instead of New Jersey, all of which could mean a steeper, uphill legal battle for Menendez and his wife; some Democratic lawmakers have publicly demanded Menendez resign, but he has thus far claimed to be innocent and has said he doesn’t plan to step down.

—The Washington Post

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Hundreds of ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia

Summary: Days after the Azerbaijani military seized control of the disputed, breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, thousands of ethnic Armenians have fled across the border into Armenia, fearing ethnic cleansing.

Context: This is another rapidly evolving story, and in essence this region is highly contested, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but governed by the Republic of Artsakh since 1994; in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed most of the territory surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, alongside a third of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, and on September 19th the Azerbaijani government launched a large-scale offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, ultimately disarming the Republic of Artsakh military, and that, in turn, has worried Armenians in the region that local Azerbaijanis might feel emboldened to kill them, and that has triggered this growing exodus to the west, across the Armenian border; this region has long been war-torn, ethnic animus at times being tempered by negotiations moderated by Russia, but now that Russia is distracted by its invasion of Ukraine, these two governments have generally had to deal with each other more directly, with middling success.

—Al Jazeera

Amazon to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic as AI arms race escalates

Summary: Amazon has announced that it will invest up to $4 billion in AI company Anthropic, the latter using Amazon-made custom chips while the former incorporates Anthropic’s AI technology into its suite of business tools.

Context: This is just the most recent agreement between a major tech behemoth and a rapidly growing AI-focused startup, the first of which was Microsoft’s deal with OpenAI, but pretty much everyone is getting involved in this emerging dynamic at this point, the AI companies needing a lot of money and the entrenched tech-titans wanting to get a foot in the door in a segment of the tech industry they might otherwise miss out on, falling behind their rivals; Anthropic is best known for its AI chat assistant, Claude, which directly competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT offering, and the company has also seen recent investments from Google and Salesforce, while Amazon has indicated it’s open to investing in other AI startups, as well.

—The Wall Street Journal

Lake Prespa in North Macedonia is one of Europe’s oldest lakes and is foundational to the country’s ecosystems, but over the past few months the lake’s water level has been dropping precipitously, amplifying a decades-long trend that has seen its surface area decrease by 7% since 1984, which has worried locals, impacted other nearby lakes (which are interconnected), put a slew of native wildlife at risk, and has made survival for human residents in the area more tenuous.

—Reuters

2,180

Number of climate-related legal cases being tracked, globally, as of the end of 2022.

That’s double the number tallied in 2017, and the majority of them are based in the US, brought by US citizens and organizations against polluters, governments, and the like (which makes sense, as the US is highly litigious in part because a lot of change occurs as a result of the incentives provided by the legal system).

—Vox

Trust Click

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

NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

Summary: Yesterday morning, the first asteroid samples to be captured by a spacecraft were successfully returned to Earth, parachuting into a Utah desert where they were fetched by NASA scientists for analysis, successfully capping a seven-year journey and providing researchers with an estimated cup-full of asteroid rubble.

Context: This asteroid material, thought to be mostly pebbles and dust (though that’ll be confirmed when they open the container), should help researchers learn more about the carbon-rich asteroid, Bennu, from which it was taken three years ago; we should know more about how much material was captured in the next day or two, and NASA is planning a public show-and-tell revolving around this rubble and what we may learn from it—including potential findings related to how life forms on planets like Earth, the chemicals necessary for that life possibly spread by asteroids—in October.

—The Associated Press

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India’s clash with Canada over killing follows new wave of calls for Sikh homeland

Summary: Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has publicly alleged that the killing of a Canadian Sikh activist was linked to agents from India, setting off a diplomatic row between the two nations.

Context: Sikhs living in India have been calling for an independent Sikh homeland for years, but Indian President Modi’s pivot toward Hindu nationalism has upped the intensity of proposals to turn a portion of Indian territory, in the northern Punjab state, into a new Sikh nation called Khalistan; Modi is not at all keen on the idea for many reasons, and back in February a protest by Sikh activists that became violent further fanned the flames on this issue, turning up the heat on these activists, including those living overseas, like the Canadian citizen who was gunned-down in a temple parking lot in Canada in June; all of which is tricky geopolitical business, as Canada has come under fire for providing shelter for people the Indian government considers terrorists, the Canadian government is now pointing the finger at India, calling them out for what seems to have been an assassination of one of their citizens on their soil, and the US apparently provided Canada with intelligence that places the blame for the killing on India, which further complicates relations between these otherwise fairly tight-knit nations.

—The Wall Street Journal

Across Washington, officials brace for government shutdown

Summary: Far-right members of the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives are continuing to play hardball with the leadership of their own party, essentially holding government funding hostage until and unless their demands, which are largely political in nature, are met, and this may lead to a shutdown on October 1.

Context: This group of Republican lawmakers, which some analysts have been calling the Wrecking-Ball Caucus, has been aiming for exactly this type of showdown, hoping the threat of a shutdown will give them leverage to achieve their political goals, including a focus on impeaching President Biden and knocking Republican House Speaker McCarthy from his position so one of their own can take the reins, despite their caucus making up a relatively small percentage of the total number of Republican Representatives; lawmakers throughout Congress have been scrambling to prepare for an October 1 shutdown, which would hurt the country’s economy and reputation long-term, but which more immediately would mean government employees don’t get paid and maintenance on all sorts of programs and infrastructure can’t be done until enough votes are garnered for a plan that would allow the government to start funding itself again.

—The New York Times

As mentioned above, the US government is primed for a shutdown beginning today, and if history is any indication of what we might expect, we could see somewhere between a few days and up to a month of unfunded government programs, which could in turn send ripples throughout the US (and consequently, global) economy.

—Axios

28%

Percentage of single people living alone in the US, as of 2021.

That’s a significant increase from five years earlier, when it was 24%, and some cities (like Arlington, Virginia, which saw the most dramatic increase) popped from 11% to 41% over that period.

—SmartAsset

Trust Click

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

Note: I’ll be visiting family in Seattle all next week, so I won’t be publishing normal editions of OSN—instead I’ve pre-scheduled visual-focused emails (similar to what paid subscribers get on Saturdays, but with two visuals instead of four) for the days I’ll be away. Sorry about the change-up, but things will be back to normal Monday the 25th and I hope you enjoy those in the meantime :)

Libyan rivals 'coordinating over flood relief'

Summary: In the wake of heavy rainfall that caused floods which burst dams, which then triggered more, heavier flooding, the two rival governments that run the eastern and western portions of Libya have told the United Nations they’re coordinating with each other to deploy relief efforts throughout the region; more than 5,300 people have been confirmed killed by these floods, so far, and officials have said the death toll could reach 20,000 in the coming days.

Context: In addition to those confirmed deaths and the number of people still missing, tens of thousands of people have been displaced, their homes completely destroyed or washed out to sea, and there are concerns that disease could become an issue, too, due to the large number of bodies that have yet to be recovered from the rubble; Libya has been split between these two governments since the fall of the previous ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, in late-2011; these rival groups were at all-out war with each other until 2020, at which point tensions eased, but there are still periodic skirmishes between them, and this discordance in leadership has resulted in all sorts of issues, including difficulties responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and difficulties maintaining public infrastructure, like the aforementioned collapsed dams.

—BBC News

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Unity seeks to clarify new game engine charges amid outrage from developers

Summary: Unity, the tech company behind a popular video game engine that allows game-makers to more rapidly create in-game physics, characters, and landscapes, among other assets, recently announced changes to their business model that will require game companies using their engine to pay Unity every time a game is downloaded, sparking protests from pretty much every game company that uses the engine.

Context: The pushback against this announced change, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2024, has been substantial and vitriolic, and though Unity has since stipulated that the fee would only go into effect after the game has made $200,000 over the course of a year and has had at least 200,000 lifetime installs, and that downloads from charity bundles wouldn’t accrue fees, nor would downloads from demos or subscription services, many of the folks behind companies big and small are still contending that this will upend aspects of the gaming industry at a moment in which it’s experiencing a bit of a renaissance, especially on the indie side of things, in large part because of these sorts of engines, which have dramatically reduced the time and money required to make and release games have become so fundamental; the company continues to try to reassure their customers, but the reputational damage from this announcement seems to have been done, and the major concern being voiced by those customers, at this point, seems to be Unity’s decision to retroactively change the terms and conditions on existing products and sales, which is a concern the company has yet to address.

—The Guardian

MGM ‘cybersecurity issue’ shuts down slot machines and ATMs in Las Vegas casinos

Summary: MGM Resorts, which owns casinos and hotels in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and other gambling tourism hotspots, has announced that it’s facing a cybersecurity issue that has resulted in the shutdown of some of its systems, including its casino machines, website, and other digitally connected assets like on-site ATMs, room keys, and food services.

Context: Unconfirmed insider accounts have suggested that MGM is suffering from a ransomware attack, which would make it the second of two casinos-hotel companies—the other being Caesar’s—to be targeted by such an attack in recent months, the latter having paid about $30 million to the hackers earlier this summer to keep their systems operational and their customer data from being released; MGM is reportedly working with the FBI on investigating who’s to blame for these issues, and though many of their electronic assets are back online, customers have reported staff having to keep track of things with pencils and paper in recent days.

—The Verge

The European Commission President recently said that the EU will need to rethink its place in the world, and in Eurasia, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the changing world, more broadly; in particular, it would need to expand, and potentially quite soon, which raises the possibility of bringing more Central European states (like Ukraine and Moldova) into the fold, alongside Balkan nations like North Macedonia and Serbia.

—Bloomberg

76

Current age of Republican Senator Mitt Romney (of Utah) who recently announced that he will not be seeking reelection in 2024 because, in essence, he’s too old to stay in politics and wants to make way for younger leaders.

This is being seen as a thinly veiled attack on presidential candidates Trump and Biden who are 77 and 80, respectively, and who are (in both cases, though by slightly different measures) historically aged candidates.

—The New York Times

Trust Click