One Sentence News

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

Russia takes Avdiivka from Ukraine, its biggest gain in nine months

Summary: The Ukrainian military has been forced to retreat from the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, marking Russia’s most notable territory gain since the middle of 2023.

Context: This town has been a Ukrainian stronghold since it was retaken from Russian-backed separatists in 2014, and it was then bulwarked by substantial defense infrastructure; the Ukrainians say they had to pull out due to a lack of ammunition and a desire to avoid being encircled by Russian forces, and though some Ukrainian forces are reportedly still holed up in a coke plant in the city, it’s expected that Russian President Putin will tout this capture as a major victory, and promote it leading up to the country’s election next month—which isn’t a real election, but these faux-elections do tend to serve as a sort of pretend-democracy ceremony that allows Putin to rally the nation around him, and this victory may help in that regard.

—Reuters

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Thousands march against López Obrador’s institutional overhaul in Mexico

Summary: Hundreds of thousands of people hit the streets across Mexico over the weekend to protest President Obrador’s overhaul of the government, which has already significantly truncated state institutions, and which they claim could hobble the nation’s burgeoning collection of checks and balances, as well.

Context: A new proposal by the president would see election authority board members and Supreme Court justices directly elected, like politicians, and all sorts of democracy activists, scholars, and civil society groups within Mexico have said this would reduce checks and balances by essentially ensuring that whomever is running the government also runs the courts and elections, while currently these forces tend to compete with each other, keeping each other in check; Obrador claims that this system favors economic elites over normal people, and his party is currently quite popular—though his opposition says that he’s using government resources and broadcasts to support his and his party’s image, which may be contributing to that popularity.

—Financial Times

Satellite photos show Egypt building a wall near Gaza Strip as Israeli offensive on Rafah looms

Summary: Egypt is clearing land and building a wall near its border with the Gaza Strip, according to satellite images of the region.

Context: This is notable because the Egyptian government hasn’t publicly announced any construction thereabouts, and because Israel is reportedly planning to invade a town located on its border with Egypt, Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have been forced to relocate by Israel’s invasions further north; Israel’s defense minister maintains that they have no intention of pushing Palestinians across the border into Egypt, and the Egyptian government has warned them not to do so, but about a week ago a human rights organization said it was building infrastructure in the area to help take care of Palestinian refugees in Egypt, in case there’s a mass exodus across the border, and hard-liners within the Israeli government have previously said they’d like to kick Gazan civilians out of the area entirely, taking the land for themselves; so, while everyone is saying this is not going to happen, it also seems like everyone’s preparing for it to happen, just in case.

—The Associated Press

It only took eight years for the United States to catapult from a non-entity in the global liquified natural gas market to the dominant player, and this feat has allowed the US to support its allies during the energy market recalibration that occurred after Russia invaded Ukraine, but it continues to concern climate scientists, who worry a reliance on LNG could slow the global transition to renewables.

—The New York Times

47.3%

Increase in tourism revenues in China during its recent Lunar New Year holidays travel period over 2023’s numbers.

That’s up to around 632.7 billion yuan (~$87.96 billion), which is higher than the country’s 2019 tourism revenues from the same period (a rare, positive economic story out of China, right now).

—Reuters

Trust Click

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

Recession reality hits major economies

Summary: Both Japan and the UK met the technical requirements for recession in 2023, according to new data, and there are concerns that several European nations could be next.

Context: Growth has been meager in most wealthy countries this past year, and this is partly the result of larger economic forces, partly a hangover from pandemic-era expenses, and partly the result of tumult—economic and military—elsewhere; the US has proven to been almost bizarrely resilient in the face of this, compared to its peer economies, though there’s trepidation about that, too, as China’s economy continues to falter and the interconnected nature of all these countries risks pulling those that are doing pretty well into a slowdown or recession at some point in the near-future.

—Axios

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Trump fraud ruling threatens to handcuff family business operations

Summary: A New York fraud case against former US President Trump has resulted in a $355 million ruling, alongside limitations on how his businesses can operate and how much oversight they require.

Context: This case was based on allegations that Trump and his people lied about how much their assets were worth in order to attain better loan terms, and though Trump has said he’ll appeal the ruling, an appeal would also tie up a large amount of money, possibly more than the judgement sum, as a sort of guarantee that must be put down during the appeal process, alongside interest, which is expected to be more than $100 million; so while not the absolute worst punishment that could have been applied, this is likely to place a significant monetary burden on Trump’s businesses, and could make it more difficult for him to get loans and do business in New York in the future.

—The Wall Street Journal

Alexei Navalny’s team confirms his death and says his mother is searching for his body

Summary: The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been confirmed dead by the people running the remote Arctic penal colony where he was serving time for opposing the Russian government.

Context: Navalny was seemingly poisoned by the Russian government in 2020, allegedly at the behest of President Putin, and returned to the country in 2021, at which point he was arrested, and then moved to progressively more punishing prisons; so while he survived that poisoning, he’s been on a sort of assumed deathwatch ever since, because he was the figurehead of one of the few anti-Putin political and ideological movements in Russia; world leaders have criticized Putin’s government following the announcement of Navalny’s death, many suggesting or outright saying he had been murdered by Putin; pro-Navalny protests and ceremonies around Russia have been violently broken up by government security forces, and hundreds of people have been arrested.

—The Associated Press

Military spending in 2023 marked a new record of $2.2 trillion, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and a general sense of insecurity around the world.

—The Washington Post

18%

Reduction in soil degradation in the Dominican Republican from 2009 to 2019 stemming from intense land recovery efforts, leading to a re-greening of previously desolated areas.

This is restoring entire ecosystems, and helping the country restore its depleted tourism industry.

—El País

Trust Click

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

Imran Khan’s opponents reach deal to shut his allies out of government

Summary: Two of Pakistan’s main parties have agreed to form a coalition government, nudging former Prime Minister Khan’s supporters out of the picture in the process.

Context: These two parties are backed by the country’s powerful military, and they’re both run by political dynasties, so they’re not exactly underdogs; that said, Khan’s supporters, who were forced to run under a variety of different party names, collectively took the majority of the votes, and have now been relegated to the opposition, and while legal wrangling over claims of vote-manipulation by Khan and his supporters could theoretically change things eventually, in the short-term it looks likely that Khan will remain in prison due to corruption charges that he denies, and the military will run things through this new coalition, which will be led by a prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, who stepped into the role in 2022 after Khan was ousted and who was incredibly unpopular throughout his tenure.

—The New York Times

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New high-powered charging network IONNA launches in USA

Summary: A new joint venture launched by BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis to build-out a network of fast-chargers for EVs, has announced its first approved projects.

Context: Its initial batch of charging stations are expected to come online this year, and the venture is aiming to install about 30,000 of them across North America, challenging Tesla and a few other, smaller businesses that have so far installed the majority of chargers, with Tesla dominating the fast-charger market in these countries; a lack of charging stations remains one of the biggest barriers for EV-adoption in the US and Canada, and this is meant to both address that concern and serve as an ongoing source of recurring revenue for the involved entities.

—CleanTechnica

Malawi lifts visa restrictions for 79 countries

Summary: The government of Malawi has lifted visa restrictions on people visiting from 79 countries, including a broad swathe of African nations and overseas locations like China, Germany, Australia, and Canada.

Context: This exemption is meant to help increase the flow of tourists to Malawi while also increasing its trade and diplomatic ties with these other nations, and it’s representative of similar visa-easings in other southern African nations, many of which are trying to increase tourism and stoke new economic opportunities, locally and globally.

—Africanews

Researchers working on three different geoengineering field experiments are receiving government funding to assess the cost and veracity of these options, all of which were once considered absolute no-nos, but which are increasingly looking like valid options (mostly because the consequences of not artificially cooling the planet while we attempt to pull more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere could be even worse than the potential consequences of large-scale geoengineering).

—The Wall Street Journal

2 billion

Approximate number (it’s actually “nearly 2 billion”) of viewers the Africa Cup of Nations 2023 attracted in late-January through early-February, according to the president of the Confederation of African Football.

That’s a huge surge in viewership (matches were shown in around 180 countries), and provides the league with all sorts of new opportunities in terms of revenue, exposure, and expansion.

—Semafor

Trust Click

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

Venezuela defends military buildup, accusing neighboring Guyana of granting illegal oil contracts

Summary: Over the weekend, the government of Guyana accused neighboring Venezuela of moving military assets, including significant hardware like tanks, near their shared border, and the Venezuelan government responded that they were doing so because Guyana’s government has granted what they consider to be illegal oil exploration concessions to ExxonMobil.

Context: This is a continuation of a feud that began decades ago when Venezuela started arguing that a significant portion of Guyana should belong to them, that portion of the country perhaps not coincidentally containing vast natural resource wealth; this topic bubbles back up to the surface periodically, usually when a Venezuelan leader needs to rile up their nationalistic base, and this modern iteration of the issue is being wielded by increasingly unpopular Venezuelan President Maduro, who recently banned his main competition from running in an upcoming election, and agreed to address this disagreement with Guyana peacefully; the contested Essequibo region is currently home to energy infrastructure that’s producing 645,000 barrels of oil a day, and this and other such assets are rapidly enriching Guyana’s economy.

(More info about the conflict and escalation can be found in this recent LKT episode.)

—The Associated Press

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Tear gas fired as thousands of farmers march on Delhi

Summary: Police are firing tear gas and deploying razor wire and fences to keep farmers, who have descended on the outskirts of Delhi in the thousands to protest crop pricing policies, from entering the city.

Context: Police have also reportedly fired plastic bullets at protestors, who protested in even larger numbers in 2020, dozens of them killed in scuffles with police over the course of a year, their efforts resulting in a promise from the government to establish a minimum price for their goods and to double their income—that promise, so far at least, has not been kept; traffic jams have already been reported as a result of this protest, though it hasn’t yet reached the scale of that earlier version of the same, which blocked highways leading to the capital for months.

—BBC News

US inflation, more stubborn than expected, edged down to 3.1% in January

Summary: The US’s year-over-year inflation rate dropped to 3.1% in January of this year, the lowest it’s been since June of 2023, but still shy of the 2.9% level that was anticipated by most forecasts.

Context: Inflation is continuing to drop in the US and in most other wealthy countries, but not as rapidly as many experts had hoped and expected, which led to a big stock market sell-off in the US on Tuesday after the numbers were announced, as traders hoping for a March or May interest-rate drop revised their models, some pushing back their projection of the first such decrease until later in the year.

—Investopedia

Investment index company MSCI is removing 66 companies from its China Index in the wake of a significant market crash—the highest number of index-drops for at least two years.

—Bloomberg

$350 million

Sticker price for one of ASML’s new High NA EUV chip-making machines, which are about the size of a double-decker bus and are capable of producing the highest-end semiconductors on the market.

ASML essentially owns this facet of the global semiconductor industry, and though most chip companies aren’t expected to invest heavily in these newer machines immediately, they’re expected to shape the market headed into the 2030s.

—Reuters

Trust Click

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

Critical 1.5C threshold breached over 12-month period for first time

Summary: For the first time, global average temperatures have surpassed the pre-industrial baseline by 1.5 degrees Celsius for a full year, according to data collected by the European earth observation agency.

Context: This is notable in that it’s a major deviation from those prior norms, but also in that 1.5 degrees Celsius represents the ceiling of several international climate agreements, a level of change we’re attempting to avoid because of the potentially catastrophic consequences associated with such a climactic shift; there’s some indication that these past 12 months might be unrepresentative because of the El Niño phenomenon that’s heating up the surface of the Pacific Ocean right now, though there’s also a chance our measurements aren’t taking into account opposite factors, like sulfur-seeded cloud cover that artificially cools the planet, so this record is considered to be worrying, even though we will have to see several straight years of average temperatures heightened to this level before the climate science community formally declares that we’ve made a transition into a 1.5 degrees-warmer world.

—Financial Times

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Permian rivals reach deal to create $50 billion oil-and-gas behemoth

Summary: Fossil fuel giants Diamondback Energy and Endeavor Energy Resources have agreed on a merger that will create a new oil-and-gas-focused entity worth more than $50 billion.

Context: This is just the most recent of several huge fossil fuel industry mergers, and it’s focused in the US Permian Basin, where the majority of the country’s oil is currently produced; this wave of mergers suggests that companies in this space are scrambling to lock-down resources and infrastructure for the coming wind-down period of fossil fuels, all of them hoping to be the last business standing, essentially owning a dwindling, but probably still vital for decades into the future, facet of the global economy.

—The Wall Street Journal

Deepfake scammer walks off with $25 million in first-of-its-kind AI heist

Summary: A multinational company based in Hong Kong reported a loss of more than $25 million in early February after an employee was tricked by scammers using deepfake technology.

Context: The details of this scam are pretty wild, as it involved digitally faking the company’s chief financial officer and several other employees, having them all appear on a video call that was convincing enough that the employee made fifteen off-books monetary transfers that he didn’t realize were illegitimate until about a week later; the increasing sophistication and realism of these technologies, and their casual and inexpensive availability is expected to make this sort of scam more common, and a version of it that uses a replicated voice to falsely confirm a person’s identity when calling their workplace, bank, or loved ones, ordering a transfer or asking for money for an emergency, have already been reported by victims and would-be victims around the world.

—Ars Technica

Both illegal crossings and asylum applications are at their highest levels since 2015-2016 across EU nations, and 27 of those nations have clamped down on immigration as a consequence—though these same nations are experiencing worker shortages that are leading to calls for immigration-related solutions, some of which are now being deployed on a selective basis, leading to a strange situation in which new legislation is trying to limit and increase immigration simultaneously.

—Le Monde

123.4 million

Number of viewers who tuned in to watch this year’s Super Bowl, according to early data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

If the data holds up, that’s a new US viewership record, making this game the most-watched TV program of all time.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Shocking opposition victory throws Pakistan into chaos

Summary: Despite having the deck stacked against them by the country’s military-aligned government, parties associated with Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan have taken the most seats in the country’s recent election, sparking a crisis.

Context: In essence, Khan is in prison for alleged corruption, the country’s military, which has long been at odds with Khan, reportedly pulled the strings on the court cases that put him there (and which are likely to keep him there for a long time into the future), politicians tied to Khan weren’t able to run under the auspices of his party, so they ran under different party names but collectively won more seats than the current, military-backed government, and now, because no one took enough seats to have a simple majority, everyone is scrambling to put together a coalition government, and it looks like there will be some court cases related to alleged vote-rigging by the military, as well—so political chaos that has been the name of the game in Pakistan since Khan was booted from his position in 2022 looks likely to continue, and will possibly become more disruptive for the foreseeable future, as well.

—Axios

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Trump's NATO comments draw scorn, White House calls them 'unhinged'

Summary: Former US President Trump told a story at a political rally in South Carolina last week in which he indicated that if reelected he would not just ignore the tenets of the NATO defense alliance, he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies that failed to raise their military investment to 2% of their GDP.

Context: The story is generally thought to be made up and demonstrated a significant misunderstanding of how NATO and similar alliances work, but the policy implications of telling that story have rippled through geopolitics, as the NATO alliance has been fundamental to the creation of the current global security apparatus and all the economic and social infrastructure arising from that general state of peace across Europe—so everyone is kind of scrambling to figure out how to respond to this, even panicking a bit, as it implies the US could become a non-entity in that aspect of geopolitics if Trump were to be reelected, and that raises the question of whether the US government can be trusted as an ally considering that someone could be elected who just one day decides to pull out of long-term alliances of this kind.

—Reuters

Disney invests $1.5 billion in Epic to create ‘persistent universe’ tied to Fortnite

Summary: Disney has announced an investment of $1.5 billion in Fortnite-maker Epic Games as part of a larger effort to build-out a branded metaverse using Disney’s huge portfolio of intellectual property.

Context: Epic recently made a similar deal with Lego, which led to the creation of a game that works a lot like Minecraft, but with Lego-branded everything, and it suggests that Disney—now that it’s clear its streaming services are not going to be huge sources of profits any time soon—is looking at other areas of possible expansion, with Epic’s offerings allowing them to become more involved in the video game space, while also creating a persistent virtual world in which users can interact with their characters and stories continuously, granting the company more interactive media options in the future.

—The Verge

Myanmar’s military government has warned that the country could break into pieces if its ongoing conflict with separatists and pro-democracy activists isn’t ended soon; the government has recently started enforcing a new conscription law meant to help them in this regard, following series of defeats that have necessitated such an (unpopular) move.

—BBC News

$5-7 trillion

Size of investment OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is said to be seeking for a new tech initiative focused on scaling-up global chip-building capacity.

The idea is to increase the number and quality of AI-capable chips being made, as that’s currently a bottleneck for businesses trying to scale their computationally intensive efforts, and this figure is being seen by many as a non-starter (and is possibly meant to grab headlines, not represent a real-deal goal), though others have suggested that trillions would be required to get where we need to be if AI and similar technologies are going to reach their potential any time soon.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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

Proposal would add a "Category 6" as hurricanes get stronger

Summary: A new research paper suggests that hurricane intensity is increasing so dramatically that it may be prudent to add a Category 6 designation to the commonly used Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale, which currently tops-out at Category 5.

Context: The paper argues that because more hurricane systems are far surpassing the typical range of Category 5 storms, and because the strength of storms increases dramatically as sustained wind speeds reach those heightened levels, calling a hurricane with winds of 157 mph and another that weighs in at 192 mph the same category makes little sense, and underplays the danger associated with the latter; the paper thus proposes designating storms that surpass 192 mph as Category 6, placing a ceiling on the currently uncapped Category 5 label.

—Axios

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Kenyan doomsday cult leader charged with murder of 191 children

Summary: Cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 29 of his associates have been charged with the murder of 191 children whose bodies were recently discovered in a mass grave filled with more than 400 bodies, the rest adults.

Context: Mackenzie and his codefendants all deny the charges, but prosecutors have said that he told his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could ascend to heaven before the end of the world; Mackenzie’s church, the Good News International Church, was based in a grouping of isolated settlements, and he was previously charged and sentenced to a year in jail for producing and distributing films without a license.

—Reuters

ESPN, Fox and Warner team up to create sports streaming platform

Summary: A new, not-yet-named sports-centric online streaming platform co-created by ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery will be launched sometime this fall, according to representatives from these companies.

Context: The involved media behemoths will each own a third of the new platform, and it will include content from all major sports leagues, according to the companies; this is a pretty big deal in the sports and media world, as the online streaming landscape is in the midst of a grand reshuffle, Netflix the only brand making a profit from such efforts, and the rest all trying to cut costs and merge assets in order to staunch the economic bleeding from investments they’ve made over the past few years; a big shift away from cable TV has made sports programming a huge and profitable opportunity, though, and this seems to reflect a desire by these entities to claim a sizable portion of that pie before their competitors, many of which are scooping up their own sports assets, often at high costs, can do the same.

—The Wall Street Journal

Japan’s population is aging rapidly, and that’s already having all sorts of disruptive consequences for its culture, society, and economy (disruptions the rest of the wealthy world is beginning to experience, too—this isn’t a Japan-specific issue, they’re just a little bit ahead of everyone else in terms of low-and-dropping birthrates).

—Chartr

$3 billion

Approximate sum spent by Chinese online retailer Temu in 2023 on advertising in the United States as part of a larger effort to steal market share from Amazon.

About $1.2 billion of that total was spent on Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) alone, according to Goldman Sachs, and analysts have questioned the validity of this approach, as while Temu is undoubtedly gaining in popularity, there’s some indicated that it has still only captured about 1% of the US ecommerce market—far shy of Amazon’s ~40%.

—Financial Times

Trust Click

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

Federal appeals court rejects Trump’s claim of absolute immunity

Summary: A US federal judge has rejected a claim made by former President Trump that he is immune from prosecution for things he did while in office which he says were in service of his official responsibilities, including attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost to current President Biden.

Context: This ruling was unanimous, decided by a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC, and it’s being seen as a defeat for Trump who hoped this would help him dodge a slew of legal issues related to his alleged election interference activities, though he’s likely to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court in the near-future, which is then likely to decide the matter, though they could also decide to allow this appeal court’s ruling to stand.

—The New York Times

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EU backs down on agricultural emissions after farmers’ protests

Summary: The European Commission has removed a recommended greenhouse gas reduction target from its proposed road map for achieving its climate-related goals, following a wave of protests by farmers across the bloc.

Context: The removed target suggested that EU nations should try to cut agricultural emissions, mostly from nitrogen and methane, by 30% as part of a larger effort to cut all such emissions by 90% by 2040; farmers contended that this would reduce their already razor-thin profits to unsustainable levels, and held flashy protests in large cities, gumming up roads and blocking traffic, to make their point; riot police were deployed in a few instances, though these protests remained relatively peaceful, and now it would seem that some sustainability-related efforts are being set aside in order to appease this population, partially to keep the economy ticking along, and partially, it’s suspected, for political purposes, since they tend to be a powerful voting bloc in rural parts of these countries.

—Financial Times

Turkey agrees to provide drones to Egypt

Summary: The Turkish government has agreed to provide its Bayraktar TB2 drones to Egypt, following a normalization of relations between the two countries last year.

Context: This is notable because Turkey and Egypt are both power players in the Middle East, and Turkey’s drones are popular because they’re cheap and effective; this purchase implies Egypt is investing in an upgraded military presence as we step into the drone-era, the performance of such weapons, especially compared to far more costly missiles, in the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza increasing demand and upping the influence of nations like Turkey and Iran which make reputable, exportable models.

—Reuters

YouTube remains the dominant online platform for every generation, surpassing even the ubiquitous internet phonebook and birthday reminder service Facebook, and youth-addicting TikTok in terms of regular utility.

—Chartr

>8 million

Number of paid subscribers boasted by YouTube TV, which is a US-only cable-package alternative that starts at $72.99 per month.

That’s by far the biggest subscriber haul for any internet-streaming service in the US (Hulu + Live TV is the second largest, with 4.6 million subscribers, and Dish’s Sling TV is in third with 2.1 million) and is up from about 5 million in mid-2022.

—Variety

Trust Click

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

Biden promises aid to California after mudslides and power outages

Summary: An atmospheric river that rolled through California over the past few days has triggered more than 120 mudslides, forced evacuations and rescue missions, and left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power for several days, alongside all the destruction to roads and buildings and other sorts of infrastructure; there are three confirmed deaths so far, and millions of residents remained under flood alerts as of late Tuesday night.

Context: This new wave of storms follows another wave a week earlier and though these atmospheric rivers are normal aspects of the water cycle in California, typically providing the area about 50% of the rain it receives in a year, these storms have become more intense in recent years, with 46 atmospheric river events tallied on the US West Coast since last winter, nine of which were categorized as strong, two that were extreme, and one that was exceptional.

—The New York Times

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Samsung billionaire acquitted in succession suit

Summary: The executive chairman of Samsung, Jay Y. Lee, has been acquitted of stock manipulation charges by a Seoul court, the judge in the case saying there wasn’t enough admissible evidence to find him guilty.

Context: This is a somewhat surprising ruling, but one that should allow Lee and Samsung to move on from a case that’s plagued them since 2015; Lee was convicted on charges of bribery and corruption in a separate case in 2017, and he spent some time in prison, but was ultimately pardoned by the president in 2022; Samsung is a vital business for the South Korean economy, and is enmeshed with much of the larger, global tech industry, which has made the series of corruption-related charges against company leadership in the past few decades incredibly inconvenient for a lot of people, including facets of the South Korean government.

—Bloomberg

Nayib Bukele reelected as El Salvador president in landslide win

Summary: El Salvadoran President Bukele won his reelection bid in a big way, taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-85% of the vote.

Context: The 42-year-old leader has been controversial, using authoritarian tactics to reshape the government in his image, filling all facets of it with loyalists, while cracking down on gangs in the country in a manner that has alarmed international human rights organizations; at the same time, though, he’s become incredibly popular in-country because those gangs were a persistent and pernicious issue, shaping everyday life in El Salvador in a big and negative way; so while he’s been called a dictator by some, many locals seem happy with how he’s using his allegedly dictatorial powers, which is why, despite the constitution disallowing his reelection, he was able to run and win, and could possibly continue to do so in the future as many times as he pleases.

—The Guardian

A remarkably large chunk of all of China’s GDP and investment growth in 2023 came from renewable energy industry products and services like solar, battery storage, and electric vehicles.

—CarbonBrief

98%

Estimated data center GPU (graphics processing unit) market share claimed by Nvidia, according to research conducted by Wells Fargo and shared by a Microsoft employee.

GPUs have traditionally been used for video production, high-end video games, and crypto-mining, but have in recent years been adapted for general computing purposes and for AI-oriented tasks, making them increasingly vital and allowing entities like Nvidia (which has long focused on GPUs) to elbow-aside other market behemoths like Intel, which were slower to enter this sub-industry.

—ExtremeTech

Trust Click

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

Canada to sanction West Bank settlers and Hamas leaders

Summary: The foreign minister of Canada has announced sanctions on Israeli settlers who incite or commit violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and new sanctions against Hamas leaders.

Context: The details of these sanctions haven’t been divulged, but they’re likely to be similar to sanctions imposed by the US on the same groups last week, as both governments are attempting to both support the Israeli government and protect Palestinian civilians from violent elements within Israel, including settler groups that regularly engage in violent attacks on civilians in the West Bank as they illegally claim land in the territory for themselves and their government.

—Reuters

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Google will no longer back up the Internet

Summary: Following years in which the search giant would keep a backup of webpages it crawled while mapping-out links and generating search results, Google has announced that it will be doing away with its cached webpage feature.

Context: The feature was created to help users who had unreliable internet connectivity load the sites they wanted to visit, and it allowed folks to reference earlier versions of sites, and sites that are not loading for whatever reason; the majority of users probably weren’t aware cached sites even existed, which is likely part of why Google is getting rid of this no doubt expensive to maintain feature, but online archivists are concerned because these cached pages represented a huge stockpile of internet history documentation, and their disappearance from Google’s servers leaves the Internet Archive as the only entity still attempting to keep these webpage snapshots alive and available on a large-scale.

—Ars Technica

Crash tests indicate nation’s guardrail system can’t handle heavy electric vehicles

Summary: New research from the University of Nebraska has found that electric vehicles can plow right through the steel guardrails that line American highways despite those same guardrails being more than capable of containing most gasoline-powered cars.

Context: Electric vehicles weigh about 20-50% more than their conventional vehicle kin because their batteries are incredibly dense and heavy, in some cases weighing as much as a small passenger vehicle all by themselves—which makes them more resilient and safe for their passengers, on average, but causes more damage to anything they collide with; consequently, steel barriers meant to keep cars from flying off overpasses or toppling over cliffs aren’t capable of handling the increased weight of some EVs, pointing at one more element of the existing US transportation system that will probably need increased investment and an overhaul as the country continues to slowly segue toward electrification.

—The Associated Press

Further evidence that AI is where the money’s at in the US tech scene can be found in San Francisco’s commercial real estate market, where more than a quarter of all leases were held by AI-oriented companies in 2023.

—Quartz

$250 million

Value of a deal (it’s actually “up to $250 million”) struck between Spotify and podcaster Joe Rogan for the former to distribute the latter’s show, including an upfront payout minimum, and a revenue-sharing agreement (for ad sales).

This deal deviates from the previous one Rogan had with Spotify in that the show will no longer be kept exclusive to the Spotify platform, focusing on a YouTube-distributed video version and allowing the audio version to be more widely broadcast.

Rogan’s show is consistently one of the most popular in the world, and regularly attracts headlines for being controversial.

—The Hill

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