One Sentence News

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

'Malign actor' hacked UK defence ministry payroll, Sunak says after China reports

Summary: Following a wave of reports from the BBC and other news entities, British Prime Minister Sunak has said that a “malign actor” has likely compromised the payment systems used to pay British military personnel, and that personal information was likely accessed by the hackers.

Context: Those reports indicate that China was behind this cyberattack, though Sunak didn’t name China, and Chinese officials have said they would never do such a thing, and that this is a political smear job; Sunak said that the Ministry of Defence has taken actions to secure the relevant databases, and that folks whose information was accessed would be provided support; this is the third high-profile hack against the UK of which China has been accused in recent years, and these attacks have seemingly hobbled efforts by the UK government to build closer economic ties with China.

—Reuters

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TikTok sues to block US ban

Summary: As expected, social video app company TikTok has filed a lawsuit to block the implementation of a recently passed law that would ban the app in the US if the Chinese company behind it, ByteDance, doesn’t divest itself of its US assets within up to a year of the law’s passage.

Context: The lawsuit compares the ban to China’s Great Firewall, which serves to keep foreign influences out of the country and applies strict censorship on pretty much everything, country-wide, and it claims the law is illegal on First Amendment grounds; ByteDance has said it cannot and will not sell its US operations within the allowed time period, so if this lawsuit doesn’t work, it will almost certainly no longer be legal in the States by next January.

—The Wall Street Journal

FTX customers poised to recover all funds lost in collapse

Summary: Folks who lost money when cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed in 2022 may receive their money back, plus interest, following efforts by bankruptcy lawyers to recover said money from the defunct company’s other assets.

Context: According to the bankruptcy plan, essentially everyone who invested in the exchange and lost their assets when FTX collapsed, including individual people and companies, would receive cash payments equivalent to the value of what they held at the time, plus 18% interest on top of that; the downside would be that they’d receive payments and interest equal to the value of these assets in 2022, which in many cases is substantially less than those assets would have been worth had they owned and held onto them until today; this plan still has to be approved by the court before it can be implemented.

—The New York Times

Grid-scale batteries in California are rapidly increasing the state’s renewable energy usage, and dropping electricity prices in the state, in large part because they can shift the use of energy generated by solar during the day to peak-demand periods just after sundown.

—The New York Times

$40,000

Annual price of a new longevity-oriented program being offered by gym chain Equinox.

That membership fee nets members blood tests, a smart ring (which tracks some vital signs all day) and a gym membership, alongside coaching, personal training, and meetings with a sleep coach, nutritionist, and massage therapist.

—The New York Times

Trust Click

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

Judge postpones start of Trump documents trial without new date

Summary: As anticipated, the judge in former President Trump’s classified document trial has indefinitely postponed the start of the trial, citing unresolved issues that need to be figured out before things could get started.

Context: The judge in the case, Aileen Cannon, who was appointment by Trump in his final days in office, has been accused of dragging her feet in this case, and it was expected that she would further delay things when she failed to expeditiously act on some of the fundamental issues that need to be resolved in a classified documents case, like what information a jury can hear and what needs to be held back, while also seeming to slow-walk some otherwise fairly standard issues that typically would move quickly in this sort of case; the main concern for prosecutors, now, is that the case will almost certainly be scheduled for sometime after the November election, at which point—if Trump wins—it will likely be moot, as he may be able to either pardon himself, or get someone in his administration to do away with the charges.

—The New York Times

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Whooping cough epidemic sweeps Europe, health agency says

Summary: A surge in whooping cough cases have been reported across Europe, beginning in 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, with ten-times as many confirmed cases compared to the same period in recent years.

Context: Whooping cough is a lung- and airways-based bacterial infection that is especially dangerous for babies and older people, and even in countries with high vaccination rates, we tend to see outbreaks every 3 to 5 years—though this year’s outbreak is historically high, with as many confirmed cases in the first quarter of 2024 as are typically tallied in an average year.

—Reuters

US paused bomb shipment to Israel to signal concerns over Rafah invasion, official says

Summary: The US has paused a shipment of bombs to Israel due to concerns that the Israeli military is planning to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which the US has warned against.

Context: Israel told Gazan citizens to flee to Rafah, where they would be safe, but it now says they need to invade the city in order to weed-out the last remnants of Hamas’ leadership in the region; the US government has been criticized for providing weapons to the Israeli military, which they’ve then used to kill Gazan citizens, and the pause on this shipment was reportedly meant to send a signal that the US is reconsidering what sorts of weapons and support it sends to Israel, due to concerns about how they’ll be used, but also because these bombs in particular would be devastating if dropped in a densely populated city like Rafah; a recent ceasefire proposal that Hamas agreed to was dismissed by Israel as not aligning with their demands, though Israel’s government has said it will engage in further ceasefire talks, and that they’ll continue to prepare for their assault on Rafah in the meantime.

—The Associated Press

Rebels in Myanmar continue to rack up victories over the military government, now controlling about half of the country’s territory, including some important bases, towns, and trade-related choke-points.

—The New York Times

~40%

Portion of all the plastic produced, globally, that’s used to make disposable foodware and packaging.

That’s a lot of “made to throw away almost immediately” production, and a big part of why many governments are trying out regulations that either reduce the impact of such waste, or introduce reusable options meant to replace some of it.

—Grist

Trust Click

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

Russian finance flows slump after US targets Vladimir Putin’s war machine

Summary: A fresh round of US sanctions and bans have prompted many lenders to avoid working with anyone or anything even tangentially connected to Russia, which has triggered a slump in trade volumes between Russia and some of its largest trade partners.

Context: The US, EU, and other primarily western nations have been slapping sanctions on Russia and Russia-related things since Russian President Putin decided to full-scale invade Ukraine a few years ago, and while some of those initial bans and threats worked decently well, Russia’s economy continued to do okay as its government figured out ways around some of the most significant limitations; more recent efforts have been aimed at the financial service backing for such trades, essentially cutting off the flow of resources required to buy and sell goods at an international level, and while this isn’t foolproof or loophole-less, dodging these restrictions now requires a lot of middlemen and a fair bit of risk for anyone dealing with Russia, which means they have to work harder and spend more to get what was previously cheaper and more easily accessed.

—Financial Times

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UK's Lib Dems to submit motion of no-confidence in Rishi Sunak's government

Summary: The UK Liberal Democratic party said on Monday that it will submit a motion of no-confidence in Prime Minister Sunak’s government in order to force a general election in June—earlier than the election Sunak has previously said he plans to hold in the second half of 2024.

Context: Sunak’s Conservative party lost 474 local council seats in last week’s elections, while Labour and the Lib Dems gained 186 and 104 seats, respectively; the Conservatives are expected to handedly lose the next wave of Parliamentary elections, though Sunak has said that he believes the eventual outcome will be closer than polls currently predict; the last time such an election was forced by a no-confidence motion in the UK was in 1979.

—Reuters

EV makers get two-year reprieve on tax-credit restrictions

Summary: The US Treasury Department has announced that electric vehicles containing graphite from China will still be eligible for EV tax credits through 2026.

Context: This is a pivot from the department’s previous stance, which would only provide these credits for vehicles that were built almost entirely using US-oriented supply chains; China currently dominates the global EV market, including the materials required to build these vehicles and their batteries, and the US government is hoping to flesh-out and bulwark its own version of the same by providing monetary incentives and resources for car companies to refocus appropriately—but under current conditions, few, if any cars would be eligible for a completely US-made EV tax-credit, and this wiggle-room is meant to help address that supply chain shortfall in the interim, giving them a few more years to get their non-Chinese graphite supplies locked-in.

—The Wall Street Journal

Recent data indicate that the Panama Canal’s water shortage, which has led to dramatically lower ship-passage numbers than is typical (even during the region’s rainfall low-season) is primarily attributable to the now-waning El Niño phenomenon, rather than climate change; water levels have since stabilized a bit, the regional drought subsiding, and traffic is picking back up as a consequence.

—Financial Times

1.6 million

Estimated number of people who attended a free concert put on by Madonna on Copacabana beach in Brazil last weekend.

This performance capped her retrospective Celebration Tour, and far surpasses her previous largest audience size of around 130,000 back in 1987, in Paris.

—The Associated Press

Trust Click

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

South and Southeast Asian countries cope with a weekslong heat wave

Summary: Portions of Southeast and Southern Asia have been enshrouded in a heat wave for weeks, charting record-high temperatures and disrupting everyday life throughout the region.

Context: Cambodia saw the hottest temperatures in 170 years, clocking 43 degrees Celsius, which is about 109 degrees Fahrenheit, Myanmar hit 48.2 C (118.8 F), and Thailand reached 40 C (104 F)—though the heat index in these countries were all higher, taking into account heavy humidity levels, so in that latter case, the Thai capital Bangkok actually surpassed 50 C (122 F); some of this heat wave is being attributed to the waning effects of El Niño on normal seasonal temperature changes, while the rest is being attributed to human-amplified climate change.

—The Associated Press

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Three arrested and charged over Sikh activist's killing in Canada

Summary: Three Indian citizens have been arrested in Canada and charged with the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil last June.

Context: The Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was shot by masked gunmen in Vancouver, and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau publicly alleged that the Indian government may have been involved in the killing based on intelligence they’d received, but the Indian government said they had nothing to do with it, and counter-accused Canada of sheltering someone they consider to be a terrorist, because Nijjar called for the formation of a breakaway Sikh nation in what’s currently Indian territory; diplomatic relations between Canada and India remain strained in the wake of these accusations and arrests.

—BBC News

Israeli cabinet votes to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in the country

Summary: Following the passage of a law that allowed the temporary closing of foreign media outlets in the country last month, the Israeli government has ordered Qatar-based Al Jazeera to shut down its local operations, and has seized some of its equipment.

Context: Al Jazeera is one of the most popular and well-regarded sources of news in the Arab world, and it’s based in Qatar, where Hamas’ leadership resides; Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has accused Al Jazeera of highlighting the suffering of Gazans, which he has said incites violence against Israeli forces operating in the Strip, though evidence of this claim has not been made public.

—The New York Times

The number of publicly traded companies in the US has dropped substantially since the mid-1990s, and one of the primary theories as to why is that new regulations that tamp down on fraud has made going public too costly—they can’t afford to dot all those i’s and cross all those t’s, so they remain private companies—though it may also be the result of venture capital’s rise, as VCs tend to fund private companies, giving them a longer (still private) runway before they have to go public (which is another, more conventional means of achieving investment cashflow).

—Sherwood News

>750,000

Number of robots Amazon has deployed to work alongside its 1.5 million employees.

That’s up from 520,000 robots in 2022, and around 200,000 in 2019.

Notably, its human workforce is down from 1.6 million in 2021, in part because it’s been able to replace some of them with robots.

—Yahoo Finance

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

US lawmaker Cuellar hit with bribery charges tied to Azerbaijan and Mexican bank

Summary: A Democratic US House Representative from Texas, Henry Cuellar and his wife have been indicted for allegedly accepting bribes to use his position and influence for the benefit of an energy company in Azerbaijan and a bank in Mexico.

Context: According to the indictment, the Cuellars received bribes totaling around $600,000 via fake consulting contracts funneled into shell companies owned by Mrs. Cuellar between 2014 and 2021; Representative Cuellar has issued a statement denying the allegations, though he will step down from his position as the ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee while the case is ongoing.

—Reuters

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Netanyahu says Israel cannot accept Hamas demands

Summary: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that he can’t accept a demand made by Hamas to begin the process of ending the invasion of Gaza, because doing so would allow Hamas to retain control in the region, which would represent a permanent threat to Israel.

Context: This demand was made during peace talks in Cairo that were reportedly going well, but while Hamas indicated they liked the overall deal on the table, which would involve the release of all hostages in exchange for a 40-day ceasefire, an additional demand that this ceasefire lead to a permanent halt in the fighting and a full withdrawal by Israeli forces from Gaza was apparently a bridge too far for Netanyahu; Netanyahu has been accused of keeping the invasion going for political and personal reasons, as further-right members of his government are keeping him in office, and a corruption case against him has been delayed because of the conflict, and protestors have been taking to the streets across Israel demanding that the government refocus their attention on freeing the hostages, rather than fixating on an internally and internationally unpopular invasion of the densely populated Gazan city, Rafah, where Netanyahu alleges the remnants of Hamas’ local leadership are hiding out.

—BBC News

Death toll from rains in southern Brazil rises to 57 as 69,000 people displaced

Summary: Floods across Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, have killed at least 57 people and displaced more than 69,000, with 67 people still missing.

Context: Roads and bridges have been destroyed, landslides have been triggered, and the dam at a hydroelectric plant has partially collapsed, while another such dam is on the brink of collapsing; all flights from the region’s international airport have been suspended indefinitely, and rains are expected to continue for another day or two, though the volume of rainfall is on the decline; as is the case in many other parts of the world right now, heavy rains are common in this part of Brazil, but the intensity of those rains, and the on-the-ground consequences of that intensity, are being amplified by a shift in the planet’s climate and its associated tweaks to the global water cycle.

—The Guardian

Avian flu is showing up in mammals all over the place, raising concerns that it could make the leap to humans (which it already has in very limited, close-contact-with-infected-animals circumstances, but not in an “actively spreading between humans” way).

—Axios

$995 million

Approximate sum paid out in in claims by the space insurance industry in 2023, marking a new record.

These payouts are mostly the result of an increasingly crowded Low Earth Orbit zone, and the Geosynchronous range is beginning to face the same issues.

As of early 2024, there were 12,597 spacecraft in orbit, 2877 of which were deployed in 2023, which is up 14.6% from the previous year.

—The Register

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

Office-loan defaults near historic levels with billions on the line

Summary: More than $38 billion-worth of US office buildings are on the brink of defaulting or being foreclosed, marking the highest level of such debt-related distress in this real estate sector since 2012.

Context: Commercial property owners typically borrow half (or more) of the money they invest in a building, so the current high interest rates in the country are making life difficult for those buyers, and the reduction in demand for office buildings has made affording those increased payments tricky, as post-COVID-19 workplace realities have collapsed entire chunks of the market, and tenants are now paying closer attention to their landlords’ financial health, which—for the aforementioned reasons—is tending to be less good than it would have been several years ago, compounding this issue for some property owners.

—The Wall Street Journal

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Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers and new vehicles

Summary: Following a wave of layoffs that saw more than 10% of the company’s employees fired in mid-April, EV company Tesla’s leadership has announced that two key executives—those responsible for new vehicle development and the company’s Supercharger network—have been laid off, along with most of their teams.

Context: This new batch of firings will effect around 500 employees on those two teams, plus the company’s public policy team, and this is being seen as a puzzling move, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently said that he’s doubling-down on efforts to create autonomous robo-taxi networks, which would seem to require more public policy efforts, not fewer; the company’s Supercharger network is also considered to be something of a crown jewel, as it has more fast EV chargers installed around the US than every other company combined, and a recent decision to open those chargers to non-Tesla vehicles has meant more revenue for the company at a moment in which it’s seemingly hemorrhaging money due to heightened competition and the at times bizarre and highly political antics of Musk, himself.

—Ars Technica

OpenAI inks strategic tie-up with UK’s Financial Times, including content use

Summary: The Financial Times, a longstanding London-based news entity, has signed a deal with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to license their archive for AI-training and information-gleaning purposes.

Context: This deal is being framed as a strategic partnership, and in essence it means that the Financial Times will be paid by OpenAI to allow the latter to use the former’s work to train their AI systems, while also allowing those systems to provide information from the FT to users, when relevant; OpenAI has recently made similar deals with the Associated Press, Axel Springer, and Le Monde, among others, and other AI companies are doing the same, all of them seemingly trying to get ahead of a jumble of legal actions by all sorts of publishing entities aimed at AI companies that are scraping up this sort of work without providing compensation to the owners of said work.

—TechCrunch

While word of TikTok’s potential near-future ban in the US might play a role in Snapchat’s growth in the West, the app has been seeing a huge surge in growth elsewhere around the world for years, with 90% of their new daily active users living outside the US and Canada (two of its biggest markets).

—Sherwood News

52%

Portion of the US public that uses some kind of ad-blocker on the web, according to a new survey conducted by Censuswide.

That’s up from 34% in 2022, and the number is even higher for more experienced web-users like programmers and cybersecurity experts: 72% and 76% of folks working in those trades, respectively, use ad-blockers.

—The Register

Trust Click

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

Flash floods and landslide kill at least 45 in central Kenya

Summary: Flash floods that were initially blamed on a burst dam, but which were later confirmed to have been caused by a river tunnel becoming blocked by debris, and a landslide have killed at least 45 people and injured more than 100 others in central Kenya.

Context: This new wave of flooding brings the total death toll attributable to heavy rains and flooding in Kenya to more than 140 people since last month, and more than 185,000 have been displaced by those floods over the same period; flooding isn’t unusual in this part of the world during its annual rainy season, but flooding has become more irregular and powerful in recent years due to shifts in the climate.

—Reuters

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US poised to ease restrictions on marijuana in historic shift, but it’ll remain a controlled substance

Summary: The US Drug Enforcement Agency will reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, according to sources familiar with the government’s plans.

Context: Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, alongside substances like LSD and heroin, and this reclassification would put it in the same category as some types of anabolic steroid and ketamine—substances that are often used for various sorts of therapies, but which are still controlled and require a prescription; this change in classification could have a dramatic impact on marijuana’s status at the state level, as it would reduce the penalties for possession and could make it easier for marijuana-oriented businesses to work within the banking system; recent polls found that 70% of US adults support legalizing marijuana, up from just 30% in 2000.

—The Associated Press

Florida’s six-week abortion ban is now law, with political implications

Summary: A ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy came into effect in Florida on Wednesday, marking a major policy shift in the state.

Context: This new ban dramatically reduces a woman’s options when it comes to abortions, as most women don’t know they’re pregnant at six months, and most neighboring states also have abortion bans on the books, which means traveling to get one performed might require a significant and expensive trip; this ban could complicate things for the Republican lawmakers who passed it in November, as while abortion restrictions and bans remain a key focus for some components of the party, public opinion polls in Florida indicate broad, bipartisan opposition to strict abortion bans, and every time abortion bans have been on the ballot following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, folks have voted against them, even in deeply conservative parts of the country.

—The New York Times

New data show that the Consumer Price Index (one measure of inflation) rose 3.5% in the US in March, compared to the previous year, but auto insurance in the country was up 22.2% during the same period, marking the largest increase since the 1970s (and representing a big headache for car owners).

—Reuters

2035

Year by which the G7 group of wealthy industrialized countries has committed to have completely phased-out coal, with a little bit of leeway left for Japan, which is highly reliant on the fuel.

That’s a big commitment, but still falls short of the target recommended by the IPCC which would require coal is phased-out by 2030 and their economies are completely decarbonized by 2035.

—The Associated Press

Trust Click

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

China ready to launch lunar far side sample return mission

Summary: China’s space agency has prepared a rocket for its Chang'e 6 mission which will attempt to land on the far side of the Moon and collect lunar material, which it will then attempt to return to Earth; the launch is currently expected on May 3.

Context: This mission is the first of its kind, as while China previously landed a lander craft and rover on the far side of the Moon, which is never visible from Earth, and still has a relay satellite that transmits data from over there back to China, no material has been recovered and returned to Earth, thus far; this is a robotic mission, so no humans will be on board, and it will set a lander down on the Moon’s surface, which will collect samples that will then be launched into orbit on a smaller ascent vehicle, that vehicle collected by an in-orbit service module that will haul it back to Earth, which it will deliver to the surface in a reentry capsule, if all goes according to plan.

—Space News

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FCC fines big three carriers $196 million for selling users’ real-time location data

Summary: The US Federal Communications Commission has announced a $196 million fine levied against wireless carriers T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon for illegally sharing their customers’ real-time location data without their customers’ informed consent, and without taking measures to ensure that data isn’t used inappropriately.

Context: These carriers have said they will appeal the fines and that they’ve long-since discontinued the programs through which they were collecting and sharing the relevant data, but in essence it looks like these carriers were collecting this information for legit purposes, then selling it, in less legit ways, to data aggregators, which then sold data-packets to a variety of customers, ranging from bail-bond companies to bounty hunters to law enforcement entities, some of which used this data inappropriately, resulting in these fines; these programs were originally reported upon in 2018, after which the companies started to back away from them.

—Ars Technica

Georgia's ruling party stages mass rally to counter anti-government protests

Summary: Following weeks of large and widespread anti-government protests targeting a law that critics say will allow the government to silence dissent, the Georgian government has bussed supporters in from across the country to hold large rallies in an effort to show that this law does have support, despite those protests.

Context: The proposed law in question is directed at so-called “foreign agents” in the country, and protestors have compared it to a Russian law that allows the Russian government to jail or otherwise harass and threaten anyone they like, as long as they can somehow connect them, with real or fabricated evidence, to an anti-Russian scheme supposedly concocted by outsiders intent on harming the Russian state; the governing Georgian Dream party allegedly forced government employees to attend the rally, and has said that this law would help them force transparency upon currently non-transparent, foreign-funded NGOs that operate in the country, but opponents of the law contend it will make their ambitions to join NATO and the EU (bids supported by 80% of the population) all but impossible.

—France 24

As NATO ramps-up its efforts to increase funding levels and deploy more troops along its border with Russia, the alliance is having to tangle with its own internal disputes and ensure they don’t become larger issues that might prevent it from serving as a deterrent in Europe.

—The Wall Street Journal

3.8 million

Number of people who die per year, globally, with invasive fungal infections, about 2.5 million of whom die with the fungus serving as their primary cause of death, according to a new paper published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

That means fungal infections are already responsible for about 5% of all deaths, and experts expect climate change to increase the number of such infections in the coming years; this is also about twice as many deaths as previous estimates suggested.

—Financial Times

Trust Click

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

Note: my new book, How To Turn 39: Thoughts About Aging for People of All Ages is now available as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook! If you find value in my work, consider picking up a copy—it’s written for people of all ages who want to figure out what it means to grow older, better :)

G7 to target sixfold expansion of electricity storage

Summary: Representatives from the G7 countries, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, have “agreed in principle” to a new goal that would expand global electrical storage capacity to 1,500 gigawatts by 2030.

Context: That’s up from about 230 gigawatts in 2022, and would represent a huge expansion in the deployment of battery storage, but also the use of other storage methods like pumped hydro, underground compressed air, and possibly even long-term heat storage and hydrogen conversion technologies; this is just one of several clean energy-related topics being discussed by these representatives at the moment, but widespread, reliable storage for the electricity produced by often intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind is vital if these sources are to replace existing, greenhouse gas-emitting fuels like coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

—Financial Times

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Spain's Sanchez says he will stay on as PM despite wife's graft probe

Summary: The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, has said that he will remain in office after several days of uncertainty following an announcement in which he said he might resign due to harassment he said his wife is facing from far-right opposition members and their followers.

Context: This post and the followup confirmation that Sanchez would not be resigning come in the wake of a preliminary probe into the prime minister’s wife for alleged influence peddling and corruption; this probe is the result of a complaint by a far-right political organization that has sparked a series of similar, and thus far unsuccessful legal moves against politicians they don’t like, and there’s reportedly no evidence of the PM’s wife’s alleged corruption, other than media reports that also offer no evidence; Sanchez’s Socialist party oversees a minority government that relies on far-left and separatist parties to get anything done, and some of the laws his government has passed to appease those further-left parties have consistently riled conservatives in the country, including a proposed amnesty for Catalan separatists.

—France 24

Philippines closes schools as heat soars to ‘danger’ level

Summary: Public schools across the Philippines were closed yesterday and remain closed today, classes moved online for the duration, due to incredibly high temperatures that have coincided with a nationwide strike by jeepney drivers.

Context: These high temperatures, which hit 45 degrees Celsius (which is about 113 degrees Fahrenheit) in Manila, follow a week of also high levels of heat, which have topped 40 C (100 F) in some parts of the country, the heat index even higher in most areas; jeepneys are open-air vehicles that make up the lion’s share of public transit across most of the Philippines, and the drivers of these vehicles are protesting a government plan that will see their rides replaced with expensive new minibuses, which would be more energy-efficient, comfortable, and safe, but also a big investment for the drivers—many of whom say they can’t afford to make the upgrade.

—The New York Times

The words we use to talk about our beliefs and politics matter, and a recent survey from Ipsos shows that “MAGA” and the “2nd Amendment” are among the most divisive terms in the American political lexicon, at the moment, while “National Parks” and “Honesty” are more likely to refer to shared, cross-spectrum values.

—Axios

3.6 million

Number of babies born in the US in 2023 according to the CDC.

That represents a decrease of 2% from 2022, and may mark the end of a small bump in the nationwide birthrate we saw from 2020 to 2022.

—The Washington Post

Trust Click

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

China EV price war to worsen as market share takes priority over profit, hastening demise of smaller players

Summary: A wave of discounts on popular electric vehicles in China has resulted in price-drops of an average of 10% on 50 models over the past three months as carmakers compete to grab market-share in the hottest EV market on the planet.

Context: Only a few Chinese EV-makers are profitable right now, and some—including BYD—are investing heavily in expanding to foreign markets, which is causing all sorts of disruptions in those markets, as local competitors can’t come close to these Chinese brands’ prices; this price war is also raising alarm bells within companies like Tesla, which has traditionally been a dominant player in this space, but which is being elbowed-out as these new, cheaper, increasingly high-quality players establish a global toehold.

—South China Morning Post

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Student protesters seek amnesty to keep arrests and suspensions from trailing them

Summary: Hundreds of student and faculty protestors have been arrested for protesting what they consider to be their institutions’ and governments’ role in Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, and negotiations between protestors and the folks running the universities where the protests are centered are partially focused on amnesty for those who have been arrested or otherwise punished.

Context: A lot of ink has been spilled reporting on the day-to-day of these protests, in part because of their relevance to various political culture wars that are playing out in the US right now, but alongside these arrests and the in some cases violent crackdowns on protestors by police who have been called in by those running these universities, protesting faculty and students have been punished from within the school system, booted from their jobs or expelled—and those latter concerns are now included in negotiations, alongside demands that the universities divest from weapons companies and Israel-associated entities, even as the culture war-style commentary continues to dominate most of the conversations and headlines about these protests and those involved with them.

—The Associated Press

EPA severely limits pollution from coal-burning power plants

Summary: Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a new regulation that will require coal plants in the US reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2039—a year earlier than originally planned.

Context: The EPA also said coal plants will face stricter limitations on their mercury emissions, will need to better control toxic ash seepage into water supplies, and will have to constrain their wastewater discharge; all of which is being seen as a practical cap on the lifespan of coal plants in the US, as these regulations can only be met at great expense, and analysts are generally assuming the folks running these plants will run the numbers and find that it makes more sense to shut them down than to upgrade them in such a way that they can continue to legally operate.

—The New York Times

View of Athens from the Tourkovounia hills last week, as a cloud of dust blew north from the Sahara desert, cloaking the Greek city in an orange haze; this is a semi-regular occurrence, but the dust clouds of recent years have been more concentrated than usual, which makes it hazardous for locals’ respiratory health and impacts normal, everyday behavior in all sorts of ways.

—The New York Times

7

Number of years the Canadian federal government and Alaskan state government have banned fishing of chinook salmon on the Yukon River, in order to allow the species to recover from years of overfishing that has depleted its population.

Seven years is about the length of a salmon’s total lifecycle.

—CBC News

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