One Sentence News

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

China’s youth unemployment eased in April

Summary: New data from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics indicate that the jobless rate amongst the country’s 16-to-24-year-old demographic (excluding those enrolled in school) dropped to 14.7% in April, which is down from 15.3% in March.

Context: Youth unemployment has been a persistent problem in China for years, and it’s being seen as both a consequence of and contributor to the county’s relatively woeful economic figures, which lopsidedly improved a little bit last month, overall; the country’s government stopped publicly providing youth unemployment figures in June of last year after reporting 21.3% that month, but it started divulging these numbers again in January after changing their formula to exclude folks in that age-demo who were still in school—which is different from how many other wealthy nations do things, but seems to have lowered this figure enough that they feel comfortable reporting it, again.

—The Wall Street Journal

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The first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is on hold indefinitely

Summary: A helium leak in the propulsion system of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has led to another delay in the craft’s launch, it’s most recent intended launch day, this upcoming Saturday, nixed, its launch now put on indefinite hold until they can find and fix the problem.

Context: There’s a chance the Starliner craft could launch as soon as next week, if they’re able to quickly and convincingly solve this new problem, which is just the most recent of several high-profile issues that have scrapped launches since 2019; if they can’t sort it out soon, there’s a chance the launch will be delayed until sometime in late summer; Boeing products, including several models of their airliners, have seen a slew of very public and embarrassing failures, of late, and the company has come under new scrutiny, and become the target of much criticism, for its alleged focus on market valuation and leadership compensation, rather than safety and innovation.

—Ars Technica

Microplastics found in every human testicle in study

Summary: A new study that looked at the composition of 23 testicles from the bodies of men who died between the ages of 16 and 88, those bodies preserved in 2016, and 47 testicles from neutered pet dogs, found microplastics in all the tested testes, and that the human testicles contained nearly three-times as much plastic as the dog testes.

Context: The most common microplastic found in these testicles was polyethylene, which is most commonly found in disposable plastic products like bags and water bottles, followed by PVC, which is found in pipes, credit cards, and cable insulation, among many other use-cases; this follows another, smaller 2023 study in China that found microplastics in human testes and semen samples, and recent research indicates that mice that were exposed to microplastics suffered reduced sperm count, abnormal sperm quality, and hormone disruptions, which supports—though doesn’t confirm—concerns that microplastics may be contributing to the notable decrease in human sperm count over the past several decades, that decrease correlated with a decrease in fertility numbers, and linked to other chemical products, like pesticides, as well.

—The Guardian

There’s a notable age-gap in which Americans are more likely to support Israel and which are more likely to support Palestinians, with young people more likely to favor the latter, and older folks (especially those 50-and-up) a lot more likely to support the former.

—Axios

51

Median age of MTV, a station that was previously (and famously) youth-focused, but which in recent decades has pivoted—like much of non-streaming television—to serve its predominantly older audiences.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Spain, Norway and Ireland recognize a Palestinian state

Summary: On Wednesday, Spain, Norway, and Ireland announced that they would formally recognize Palestine as an independent state—a move that’s being seen as a statement against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.

Context: Dozens of countries have long recognized Palestine as a sovereign nation, and this new wave of recognition, like those that came before, is mostly symbolic, but because few Western European nations have thus far recognized Palestine and because Israel’s invasion of Gaza has brought renewed attention to the matter of Palestinian statehood—and for context, Gaza, like the West Bank, is currently an occupied territory of Israel—and because there are burgeoning concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is aiming for some kind of military government in the region, which would do away with the possibility of a near-future two-state solution, the issue of statehood is being seen as newly relevant.

—The New York Times

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Severe turbulence during Singapore Airlines flight leaves several people badly injured and one dead

Summary: A Singapore Airlines flight between London and Singapore that was carrying 211 passengers and 18 crew members experienced significant turbulence over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, leaving dozens of people injured, a half-dozen severely, and one person—a 73-year-old British man—dead.

Context: The plane descended around 6,000 feet, which is about 1,800 meters, in about three minutes, and the turbulence was so bad that people were slamming into the overhead bins, in some cases—according to reports from people aboard—denting the bins, or breaking through the portions of the ceiling containing the lights and masks; the flight diverted to Bangkok in the wake of this tumult, and while turbulence can arise anywhere at any time, extreme cases of it are becoming more common along popular airline routes.

—The Associated Press

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea rules carbon dioxide is an ocean pollutant

Summary: The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a court created by the United Nations to rule on maritime-related matters, has found that greenhouse gases count, for legal purposes, as marine pollution, and that global governments thus have a responsibility to mitigate their effects on oceans.

Context: The United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea was established in May of 2023 and has 168 signatory nations, and this treaty basically says that those nations have to prevent oceanic pollution that harms marine life, and this ruling has added greenhouse gas emissions to the list of marine-life-harming pollutants, because of their impact on the climate, which in turn negatively impacts marine life; this court’s rulings are non-binding, so the degree to which this outcome will matter is in question—all of those nations can interpret the results however they like—but it does add heft to the argument that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the deterioration of marine ecosystems, which could help spur more such cases in other courts, and impact the decisions to which those courts ultimately arrive, as this marks the first time such a legal body has linked what’s happening in the atmosphere with what’s happening in the ocean in this way.

—ABC News

Despite booming profits and a slew of mergers and acquisitions in recent years, the International Energy Agency still believes that global oil demand will peak this decade, based mostly on structural changes and a significant shift toward renewables in many parts of the world (including major oil consumers, like China).

—Axios

53%

Portion of the human population that’s unable to speak freely (as of 2023), according to a new report from free speech advocate group Article 19.

That’s up from 34% in 2022, a large portion of that change attributable to speech freedom-backsliding in India under Prime Minister Modi, who has clamped down on speech (formally and practically) throughout the country in recent years.

—The Guardian

Trust Click

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

Hims & Hers is now selling Ozempic-like weight loss drugs for $199

Summary: Hims & Hers Health, a telehealth company that specializes in providing everything from hair-loss to erectile dysfunction to skin-care products, online, announced on Monday that it is now offering a compounded version of semaglutide, which is the active ingredient in weight loss drugs like Ozempic and diabetes drugs like Mounjaro.

Context: Semaglutide-based drugs, though rife with side effects, some of them substantial, have surprised the medical community by proving incredibly effective for helping folks who have traditionally had trouble losing weight, lose substantial amounts of it, and new studies have shown that it can reduce the risk of major cardiovascular events and the risk of severe liver disease, as well, alongside other benefits; compounded drugs, like the one Hims & Hers is offering, are basically mixed versions of a more standardized, FDA-approved drug, and they are not reviewed by the FDA, and are generally frowned-upon if a standardized, reviewed version—like Ozempic—is available, because of that lack of oversight; the branded versions of these drugs have been in very short supply since they began to boom in popularity and use, though, and this custom version costs a fraction of the price of Ozempic (about $199 per month compared to around $1,000), which is why Hims & Hers’ stock boomed following the announcement of this new offering, and why we’ll likely see more compounded versions of this drug from other companies in the coming months.

—Quartz

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Ex-South African leader Zuma, now a ruling party critic, is disqualified from next week’s election

Summary: The former President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, is not qualified to run for Parliament in next week’s election because of an earlier criminal conviction, according to a ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court.

Context: This will almost certainly complicate the election, in part because the ruling was handed down so last-minute, but also because Zuma—who was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2021 for refusing to testify during an inquiry into governmental corruption, and who was forced out of power in 2018 under a tidal wave of corruption allegations—has become a prominent force in local politics, having started a new party last year and having become a critic of his former party and the person who replaced him in office, current President Cyril Ramaphosa; the country’s governing party, the ANC, is facing its most significant challenge since it took power decades ago, and some analysts are expecting it’ll have to form a coalition government for the first time if it wants to hold onto its majority.

—The Associated Press

Scarlett Johansson says OpenAI chatbot voice 'eerily similar' to hers

Summary: Scarlett Johansson, an actress who, among many other prominent roles, provided her voice to an artificial intelligence in the movie Her, has accused OpenAI of creating a voice for its ChatGPT tool that sounds a lot like her, despite her not having approved her voice for that use.

Context: The voice in question was pulled from OpenAI’s offerings following the actresses’ accusations, and while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said no effort was made to create a copy of Johansson’s voice for their product, he’s previously said that Her is his favorite movie, posted the word “her,” without context, on the social platform X two days before the new voice options were announced, and apparently asked Johansson to license her voice for ChatGPT purposes in September, and then again a few days before the release, which she declined; though OpenAI contends that they hired a different voice actress without considering how similar she sounds to Johansson, this is being seen as the most recent instance of what many creatives are worrying about right now, namely their work or likenesses being used by AI systems without their permission and without any kind of compensation, which arguably puts their livelihoods at risk.

—Reuters

Many US homeowners are feeling trapped by the “golden handcuffs” of low mortgage rates they locked-in before the Fed started hiking interest rates, which in turn dramatically increased mortgage rates; current mortgage rates are not historically high, but the gap between what many homeowners enjoy and what’s available on the mortgage market is historically significant.

—The New York Times

$15.7 million

Median pay of CEOs in 2023 in a WSJ analysis of executives for S&P 500 companies.

That’s up from a median of $14.5 million in 2022, and the highest-earning CEO in this survey is the CEO of Broadcom, who earns $162 million a year.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Iranian President and Foreign Minister killed in helicopter crash

Summary: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s Foreign Minister, and seven other people have died in a helicopter crash in a remote and mountainous part of the country, seemingly due to bad weather conditions.

Context: Raisi was sometimes called the “Butcher of Tehran” for involvement in the execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in the late 1980s, and he was a reliable ally of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in the country’s non-religious political structure; many of Iran’s allies and neighbors have expressed condolences and declared periods of mourning, and new presidential elections will take place within 50 days, Iran’s vice president stepping into the role of president in the meantime.

—The Wall Street Journal

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International Criminal Court prosecutor requests warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas leaders

Summary: Karim Khan, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, has announced that he’s requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel’s defense minister, and three Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity, related to the attack on Israel on October 7, and the subsequent attacks on Gaza by Israel.

Context: This request still has to be approved by judges before those warrants are issued, and Israel doesn’t recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, nor is Hamas likely to care overmuch about what the Court has to say, but this is still embarrassing for Netanyahu in particular, and could complicate travel for those who are being targeted by these warrants, if they’re issued, as it means they could be arrested if they travel to one of the 124 countries that are members of the Court, which doesn’t include the US, but does include most European nations.

—The New York Times

New Taiwanese president calls on China to stop its threats

Summary: In his inauguration speech, the new president of Taiwan, Lai Ching-te, said that peace was the only choice in the region, and asked China to stop making military and political threats against the island, which China claims as its own, but which operates independently.

Context: Lai’s accession to the presidency has been a cause for concern amongst some of Taiwan’s allies, as he’s been a proponent for formal, overt independence for the island, which China has signaled could trigger some kind of attack; Taiwan currently operates in a sort of superposition enabled by a lack of clarity about its status, most of its allies assuming it to be independent, but seldom saying it outright, to avoid triggering a response from China, while China says it belongs to them, but doesn’t do much beyond posturing to show that this is the case; there are concerns that Chinese leader Xi could be planning to more formally claim Taiwan sometime this decade, and that too much talk about independence, especially from Taiwan’s government, could provide justification for such an attack.

—Reuters

New research shows that around 38% of all webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible in 2023, and that this has led to a lot of dead links and missing references and research across journalistic and government websites, among others.

—Pew Research

$73 million

Sum laundered (“at least”) from defrauded victims by two Chinese nationals who were charged by US authorities last Friday.

These fraudsters were arrested at the Atlanta airport in April and allegedly engaged in a type of crypto scam called “pig butchering,” which involves manipulating targets into depositing money into accounts set up for the purpose before laundering it into bank accounts in the Bahamas.

—Reuters

Trust Click

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

Israel’s wartime government frays as frustration with Netanyahu grows

Summary: A politically centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet, Benny Gantz, announced over the weekend that he would leave the government if Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t present a plan for the future of the war in Gaza by June 8.

Context: This ultimatum is being seen as an indication that the temporary alliance of necessity between political parties in Israel following Hamas’ attack on the country on October 7 is beginning to fray, and that Netanyahu’s seeming lack of a plan for what happens after Israeli forces root out the last of Hamas’ leadership in the Gaza Strip is a broad cause for consternation; the country’s defense minister recently demanded that Netanyahu make a pledge to not establish a military government in Gaza, which he worries is where things are headed, and which is a situation he says would be untenable for many reasons; Netanyahu, in response, has accused Gantz of supporting Israel’s defeat in the conflict against Hamas.

—The New York Times

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UN urges US to stop forced returns to Haiti after latest deportation flight

Summary: The UN refugee agency has asked the US government to stop forcibly returning Haitian refugees to Haiti, as doing so puts those refugees at life-threatening risk due to widespread gang violence.

Context: This call for a change in policy came after the US’s most recent deportation flight last week, and the concern is that Haiti is basically under the control of a slew of gangs, which unified against the government in recent months; the UN estimates that 362,000 people, about half of them children, are internally displaced in Haiti right now, and the UN’s refugee agency is asking the US to redesignate Haiti for a temporary protective status which grants Haitian refugees temporary permission to stay and work in the US—this status is currently set to expire in early August.

—Al Jazeera

France mobilises police to regain control of New Caledonia airport road

Summary: In the wake of several days of at times violent and destructive riots, French police have cleared barricades from the main road leading to the airport in the New Caledonian capital city, Noumea, though officials say it will still be a few days before all the debris has been cleared.

Context: The French territory’s main airport is still closed because of unrest, and these protests, which sparked the rioting, were catalyzed by a constitutional amendment that would allegedly dilute the vote of indigenous people by allowing French people who had lived in New Caledonia for ten years to vote in provincial elections—something pro-independence (from France) indigenous groups say is an attempt to prevent their movement from ever resulting in a decoupling from European governance.

—Reuters

According to a new survey, Americans are reporting being more stressed on average, and the number for women is substantially higher than for men across four major age-groups, though young women in particular are reporting the highest levels of stress across all age and gender demographics.

—Gallup

40,000

Milestone (in points) that the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached late last week for the first time.

The surge in money flooding into Dow-listed companies is being attributed to new data that showed annual inflation in the US has eased a bit, following three months of less-than-ideal inflation news—suggesting the Fed could still lower their interest rate sometime this year.

—NPR News

Trust Click

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

Former Kazakh minister gets 24 years in prison for murdering wife

Summary: The former economy minister of Kazakhstan has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for murdering his wife, following a trial that was broadcast live over the past seven weeks, and which has stoked discussions and outcries about women’s rights in the country.

Context: Kuandyk Bishimbayev was found guilty of torturing and then murdering his wife, and there was CCTV footage of him assaulting her in the lead-up to all of that, alongside videos from his phone in which he abused her in various ways; the President of Kazakhstan has said he wants to improve rights for women in the country, and this case led to new demands for a law that criminalizes domestic violence, which passed last month; government data shows that one in six women in Kazakhstan have experienced some form of violence from their partner.

—Reuters

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Biden signs Russian uranium ban

Summary: US President Biden has signed a bill that bans the import of Russian enriched uranium, but which allows some companies to continue importing it until 2028.

Context: This was a bipartisan bill that’s meant to keep the $1 billion or so that the US sends to Russia for uranium, each year, from enriching Russia’s coffers; this uranium is used to fuel nuclear power plants, and it’s part of a larger effort to disentangle the US economy from Russian fuel exports, which included a ban on oil, gas, and coal soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022; Russia currently supplies about 20% of the enriched uranium US energy companies use for this purpose, and that allowance to keep importing until 2028 is meant to give said companies some leeway as they find new sources from US companies, or those located in less antagonistic nations.

—Axios

Fires used as weapon of war in Sudan destroyed or damaged 72 villages last month, study says

Summary: A new study by UK-based Sudan Witness indicates that fires were used as a weapon of war in Sudan in at least 72 instances last month, alone, and that fire has been used in this way at least 201 times since fighting originally broke out between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in mid-April of 2023.

Context: The RFS has been especially enthusiastic in its use of arson in this conflict, in many cases setting entire villages on fire in order to kill, punish, and force people to flee; hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced as a result, and more than 14,000 people have been confirmed killed, so far; the capital city of North Darfur, el-Fasher, reportedly faces imminent attack from the RFS, raising concerns that those numbers, both of people killed and displaced, will rise still further in the near-future.

—The Associated Press

Nearly 10% of TV-viewing time in the US in April of this year was spent watching YouTube’s smart-TV app, according to new data from Nielsen, marking a transition (for many, at least) for the platform from “place to watch quick videos in between doing other things” to “something like a channel where one might watch a bunch of stuff over long periods.”

—The Wall Street Journal

20%

Percent by which heart attack, stroke, or death due to cardiovascular disease was reduced in participants of a study that tested the impact semaglutide had on these conditions.

Semaglutide is best known as the active ingredient in diabetes and weight-loss medications like Wegovy and Ozempic, but new studies are increasingly showing its efficacy in treating or preventing other diseases and conditions, as well.

—The Guardian

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

US consumer prices increased 3.4% in April from year earlier

Summary: For the first time in six months, core CPI inflation numbers have cooled, marking an increase of 3.4% in April of 2024 compared to April of 2023, which is the smallest increase since April of 2021.

Context: This is being seen as an overall good sign, as it suggests that stubborn inflation numbers over the past half-year or so may be slowly tempering, and the US Fed might still implement its first key interest rate reduction in September, which had, until this announcement, been in question.

—The Wall Street Journal

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Climeworks opens world's largest plant to extract CO2 from air in Iceland

Summary: The world’s largest direct air capture plant, with the capacity to pull 36,000 metric tons of CO2 from the air each year, has officially started operating in Iceland.

Context: This is Climateworks’ second direct air capture facility in Iceland, the first, which was previously the world’s largest, has a capacity of just 4,000 tons a year, and both were built in Iceland in part because of the country’s abundant geothermal energy, which allows these facilities’ enormous fans, which suck up air and then filter CO2 from it, to operate without generating new emissions; Climeworks hopes to build a plant capable of pulling a million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year in the US, next, though to put this all in context, most estimates say we need to be pulling something like 10 billion tons of CO2 from the air each year to reach our climate goals by 2050, and around 20 billion tons each year to cancel out our emissions—so these are still very early efforts, and not everyone is convinced they’re the way to go in terms of addressing these issues.

—Reuters

US gives Saudis green light to try to revive peace deal with Houthis

Summary: The US government has reportedly given the Saudi government an informal go-ahead to revive peace deal negotiations with the Houthis who have been fighting a long-term civil war with the government of Yemen, and recently have been attacking commercial vessels passing through the Red Sea.

Context: Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014, the Houthis backed by Iran, the country’s government backed by Saudi Arabia, and though that conflict has been stuck in a practical stalemate most of that time, the Houthis were able to grab global attention beginning last November by launching attacks on cargo ships headed to and from the Suez Canal, severely disrupting global trade as a consequence; the Saudi government, with the backing of the US and the UN, have decided to push ahead with a peace talks roadmap that could result in a bunch of money being handed over to the Houthis, and their leadership being granted a permanent spot in Yemen’s unity government, but that’s apparently being seen as a sacrifice worth making, at this point, as the Saudi government is keen to refocus on other irons it has in the regional fire, like what’s happening in Gaza, and getting things settled in neighboring Yemen would help it do that.

—The Guardian

Chinese fishing boats, often accompanied by light naval vessels, have increasingly swept in to claim and “claim” portions of the South China Sea (and surrounding area) that contain valuable resources, denying those resources to their neighbors (who also claim them) and reinforcing the country’s practical hold on the area.

—Bloomberg

$1.66 billion

Value of loan guarantees conditionally committed to hydrogen producer Plug Power by the US government.

These loan guarantees are earmarked for the construction of up to six facilities that would allow the company to upscale its hydrogen-producing efforts, and this is being seen as a bit of a lifeline, as the company has been short on cash for about a year, which has made further scaling difficult.

Hydrogen is seen by some as a vital component of shifting away from fossil fuels, as it can be subbed-in for some of those fuels, can be manufactured using clean power, and is currently more practical for some use-cases than battery-stored electricity.

—Bloomberg

Trust Click

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

Georgia students walk out, PM passes 'foreign agent' bill

Summary: Hundreds of university students in the Georgian capital city, Tblisi, walked out of classes in solidarity with the thousands of protestors who have been taking to the streets almost every night for a month in opposition to a bill that will ostensibly allow the government to clamp down on foreign NGOs, while also making eventual accession to the European Union more difficult or impossible; despite that opposition, Georgia’s parliament voted the law through yesterday.

Context: The governing Georgian Dream party has argued that they need to know who’s behind NGOs operating in the country, and that this legislation would give them a better idea of who’s funding what, which in turn would help them flag potential interference by Western powers; opponents of this law have argued that it’s a clone of a Russian law that allows them to basically label anyone they don’t like a foreign operative, which in turn allows the ruling party to jail their political opponents and anyone else who makes trouble for them; the Georgian Dream party has thus been accused to attempting to stall or prevent Georgia’s joining the EU in favor of better relations with Russia, while the vast majority of the country supports more alignment with Europe; Georgia’s president is expected to veto the law, though parliament can override that veto with another vote.

—Reuters

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US energy panel approves rule to expand transmission of renewable power

Summary: After two years of development, US federal energy regulators approved a rule that’s meant to help boost the country’s power grid by streamlining aspects of the infrastructure deployment and upgrade progress, while also changing how costs are divvied-out to involved states.

Context: This is a big rule—about 1,300 pages long—so there are a lot of specifics and niche situations addressed, but in essence it’s meant to simplify existing rules and folkways in the energy infrastructure space that have incentivized energy companies to not expand and invest in new poles, cables, and the like, while also leaving a lot of existing power infrastructure un-upgraded, despite the huge amount of new power generation that’s been coming online, and which is scheduled to come online in the next decade; this is generally being seen as a big deal, but there’s still ample room for it to be challenged in court, most likely by energy companies that don’t want to make these investments or risk losing their regional monopolies, and state legislators who oppose the deployment of new renewable energy power production.

—The Associated Press

China to start $138 billion bond sale to boost economy

Summary: Beginning this Friday, China’s government will begin selling 1 trillion yuan, which is about $138 billion US dollars, in long-term bonds as part of an ongoing effort to boost its economy at a tricky moment.

Context: China’s economy has faced several years of less-than-impressive numbers, in part because of how regional governments have been spending and how much debt they’ve been taking on, in part because of normal ebbs in productivity and population figures, and in part because of how dependent the economy had become on real estate, an industry that in recent years has suffered from all sorts of collapses and scandals; this debt is ultra-long-term, with more than half of it maturing in 30 years, about a third of it in 20 years, and around a tenth in 50 years, according to a report by Bloomberg, which hasn’t been confirmed by the Chinese government; word of this sale has been well received by investors, in part because it’s thought the People’s Bank of China will loosen regulations on banks alongside this bond sale, and some analysts believe this sale could add as much as a full percent to China’s GDP.

—Bloomberg

A recent survey by Generation Lab supports the assertion that, though Gaza-related protests at universities around the US have been dominating headlines, Israel’s invasion of Gaza is a priority of relatively few students, and the majority are more concerned about healthcare and economic issues.

—Axios

$1 billion

Amount of reelection campaign contributions former President (and now candidate) Trump asked for at a fundraising dinner with top oil executives last month.

In exchange, he offered to allow for more oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Alaskan Arctic, to reduce car pollution regulations, and to pause natural gas export permits that have limited oil companies’ ability to export as much gas overseas as they would prefer—alongside a general promise to do a complete U-turn on climate-related policies and legislation passed by the Biden administration.

—The Guardian

Trust Click

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

Putin replaces Shoigu as Russia’s defense minister as he starts his 5th term

Summary: Over the weekend, Russian President Putin, fresh into his fifth term running the country, announced the replacement of his long-time Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, replacing him with a close ally Andrei Belousov.

Context: Belousov’s appointment will need to be approved by Russia’s upper parliamentary house, though the Russian government mostly rubber-stamps Putin’s decisions, so that’s not expected to hold up this ascension, and his appointment as defense minister is interesting in part because it comes shortly after a successful attack by Ukrainian forces on Russia’s border city, Belgorod, and because Belousov has generally held economics-focused positions in the government, though he was made first deputy prime minister in 2020; upon stepping down from his position as defense minister, Shoigu was appointed as a secretary of Russia’s Security Council.

—The Associated Press

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Venezuela loses its last glacier as it shrinks down to an ice field

Summary: Venezuela’s last remaining glacier, the Humboldt Glacier, has been reclassified as an ice field, after having shrunk a lot more than anticipated.

Context: Venezuela is now thought to be the first country to have lost all of its glaciers in the modern era, and it was previously home to six of them, though five had already disappeared by 2011; there’s no globally accepted size criterion for a glacier, but one commonly used minimum is about 10 hectares, and the Humboldt Glacier shrank to less than two hectares over the course of just a few years—a rate of depletion that’s considered to be quite rapid for a large body of ice.

—The Guardian

Biden to quadruple tariffs on Chinese EVs

Summary: Today, the Biden administration is expected to announce a significant hike in the tariffs applied to Chinese electric vehicles sold in the States, increasing the existing 25% levy to around 100%, alongside an existing 2.5% duty on all vehicles imported into the country.

Context: This is considered to be a pretty big deal, as protective tariffs of this kind are meant to safeguard local businesses from international competition, and China has become the clear dominant player in the EV and connected technologies space, boasting by far the largest output, and by many metrics the best and cheapest products, as well; US automakers have complained that it’s an uneven playing field, as the Chinese government often puts its thumb on the scale, supporting Chinese companies in vital industries in various ways, and while some analysts see these sorts of protectionist measures as vital to ensure a competitive landscape, disallowing Chinese companies from killing off all their competition before they can really get started on their own EV portfolios, others see it as a wasted opportunity to take advantage of cheap, abundant EVs that could help more people transition to electric vehicles, and in turn help reduce the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, faster.

—The Wall Street Journal

New data released by the US National Insurance Crime Bureau indicate that Kia and Hyundai cars (brands owned by the same umbrella-company) were by far the most-stolen in the US in 2023, in part because of easy-to-abuse security vulnerabilities, and in part because they have some highly popular (and thus, highly visible and available) models on the market.

—Axios

2.1-2.2

Number of babies being born per woman in 2023, globally, according to a new estimate by an economist who specializes in demographics.

If accurate, that would put global birthrates below the commonly accepted “replacement rate” of about 2.2 for the first time, potentially heralding peak population levels (though per-country birthrates still vary substantially, from around 0.72 in South Korea to about 6.6 in Niger—though this sort of data is also collected in a variety of different ways by different organizations, and isn’t always accurate or directly comparable, country to country).

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Pioneering gene therapy restores UK girl's hearing

Summary: A British girl who was born deaf underwent a new gene-therapy treatment just before her first birthday, and now—six months after that treatment—can hear as if she was never deaf, and is beginning to talk.

Context: This treatment uses a virus that is modified to be harmless, but which carries a working copy of a gene into the relevant portion of the patient’s ear; that gene, when inoperable, is what causes this type of deafness, and the therapy basically replaces that gene, which in turn repairs hair cells in a part of the ear called the cochlea, which is what allows the ear to capture sound; more than half of hearing-loss cases in children are genetic and thus potentially targetable by this sort of therapy, and researchers are hoping that, with time, this same general approach will allow them to address other sorts of hearing loss, as well.

—BBC News

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Israel pushes back into northern Gaza and ups military pressure on Rafah

Summary: Following a night of heavily bombing the area, Israeli forces moved into eastern Jabalia in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and where the Strip’s largest historic refugee camp, which currently houses more than 100,000 people, is located.

Context: The Israeli military said it needed to clamp-down on Jabalia because Hamas operatives were beginning to reestablish themselves there now that Israel has turned most of its attention toward the southern portion of the Strip, and civilians in Jabalia are being told to move south just as civilians in the southern city Rafah are being told to flee north, as Israeli forces down there continue to bombard and make small incursions into the city, preparing for what’s expected to be a larger invasion sometime soon.

—Reuters

Google DeepMind’s new AI can model DNA, RNA, and ‘all life’s molecules’

Summary: In the wake of the release of AlphaFold 2 a few years ago—which is an AI model that’s capable of predicting the final shapes of every known protein, a few hundred million of them, with usable accuracy most of the time—Google’s DeepMind team has announced a new version of the model, AlphaFold 3, which boasts a 50% improvement in accuracy and the capacity to model other sorts of molecules as well, according to the company.

Context: There’s a big difference between being able to explain what goes into a molecule and how that molecule will look in real life—a bit like the difference between having a written recipe and knowing what the final dish you’re preparing will look like, in detail; the “protein folding problem” pointed at this difficulty, and though about 170,000 proteins were 3D-modeled in their folded state over the past 60 years or so, doing such modeling is expensive and tedious, so AlphaFold’s capacity to model these proteins, taking what amounts to just the ingredients list and doing so with sufficient accuracy that researchers could work from the resulting prediction, was a big deal; this new model will purportedly allow researchers to do the same with DNA, RNA, and other sorts of molecules (and the interactions between them), which ostensibly will allow for all sorts of new research that wasn’t previously possible, including the modeling of new drugs, faster and cheaper; like previous iterations of AlphaFold, this third iteration is being made available free for academic and noncommercial uses, and is free for some commercial partners, as well.

—The Verge

Palestinian civilians who fled to Rafah on the Israeli military’s orders are now being told to leave the city and head north to a point just south of another Israeli military mustering point aimed at previously invaded portions of the Strip where Hamas is allegedly retaking control.

—The Wall Street Journal

>$100 million

Sum former President (and current candidate for President) Trump may have to pay in back-taxes, according to an IRS inquiry that was recently uncovered by the Times and ProPublica.

This payment would be the result of an alleged double-dipping maneuver that allowed Trump to write off Great Recession-era losses, twice, his second write-off attempt triggering alarms that led to a legal review during his presidency, which in turn led to an ongoing audit (the results of which he will likely appeal, if it doesn’t go his way).

—The New York Times

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