10 Items from the week | 9 Mar 25
News from the past week, and a few other things.
👋 Hello Reader, I hope you had a great week.
Of the items that crossed my desk this week, here are a few that stood out.
1. Top U.S. Officials to Meet Ukraine Counterparts Next Week in Saudi Arabia (WSJ)
The Trump administration believes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has apologized for his recent behavior, and top U.S. officials are prepared to meet with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia next week to set the stage for potential peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow. “The idea is to get down a framework for a peace agreement and an initial cease-fire,” Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, said Thursday. He will be traveling with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national-security adviser Mike Waltz to the Riyadh meeting on Tuesday. The meeting could signal a healing of relations between Kyiv and Washington, which accused Zelensky of being ungrateful for U.S. military aid and not ready for peace talks following a contentious Oval Office meeting last week between Trump, his top aides and the Ukrainian president.
2. Big Chunk of North American Trade Remains Exposed to Tariffs (WSJ)
President Trump on Thursday suspended for one month the 25% tariffs he placed on Mexican and Canadian products earlier this week. But there is a catch: The deal only applies to goods that had been traded duty-free under a 2020 North American trade agreement. That is less straightforward than it might seem, as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement sets forth an intricate and complex set of rules governing trade among the three countries. Thursday’s turnabout has trade experts and lawyers rushing to determine exactly what goods will be subject to higher tariffs, let alone businesses that have skin in the game.
NOTE: I spent some time trying to better understand the US tariff system—namely what tariffs are/were before the increases, and what the increases would mean. While this AP article provides a basic overview of tariffs, it’s the US International Trade Commission website on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) that gives you exact “rates of duty” (i.e. taxes/tariffs) for about 5,000 groups of different commodities you might bring into the US.
As you can see in the chart below, the HTS very detailed, with many product categories and subcategories. The image below from chapter 22, “Beverages, spirits, and vinegar” just shows whiskies; there are other subsections for rum, gin, vermouth, brandy, vodka, tequila, kirschwasser and ratafia (whatever those are), etc..
Next to each of these items is the relevant duty (or tax) based on any agreements, or sanctions, we may have on a country.
Here’s the description of those categories:
So, in general, we charge a higher duty to Belarus, Cuba, North Korea and Russia, than we do other countries.
Now, that area in the “Special” column have these codes:
…which relate to these various tariff treatments:
Thus, for every product item listed in the HTS, there are various tariffs, and caveats to those tariffs.
What’s notable about the pause in the recent increase in tariffs by the Trump administration is that the pause only covers those items included in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (notated as S or S+ above), as I understand it.
Then, as the WSJ article above points out, there caveats even within that agreement, “as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement sets forth an intricate and complex set of rules governing trade among the three countries. Thursday’s turnabout has trade experts and lawyers rushing to determine exactly what goods will be subject to higher tariffs, let alone businesses that have skin in the game. Generally speaking, under the [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement], which took effect during Trump’s first term, products enter the U.S. duty-free if businesses can show they comply with certain rules regarding the origins of those products’ components. For example, a passenger vehicle only complies with USMCA if the majority of the components—including steel and aluminum—originate in North America. In addition, 40%-45% of the vehicle’s value must come from factories where workers earn at least $16 an hour. Because USMCA rules are so complicated, businesses have sometimes chosen to pay a tariff on a given product instead of expending time and money to figure out whether it is USMCA-compliant, according to trade experts.”
In the end, I simply don’t have the time to dive into each of the categories and subcategories to understand the economic impact. But, maybe I don’t need to—the end result of tariffs is that prices will go up on goods imported from other countries.
3. Nuclear Power’s Revival Is Here. What Do You Do With All the Radioactive Waste? (WSJ)
A nuclear power renaissance—driven in part by power-hungry AI data centers—has revived a thorny problem: what to do with the radioactive waste left behind. Already, more than 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is being stored at sites in 39 states. These include 73 commercial nuclear power plants and more than three dozen university and government facilities, according to a 2024 report by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The waste has accumulated in spent-fuel pools and dry casks intended for temporary storage since the U.S. nuclear industry began to take off in the 1960s, and the DOE’s failure to permanently dispose of the waste as required by law has cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars to compensate the utilities. New efforts to store nuclear waste away from reactor sites are also getting pushback. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will determine whether private companies can temporarily store spent fuel at facilities in Texas and New Mexico. France generates 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, recycles about 96% of its waste into new fuel and stores the remainder in a centralized cooling pool in Normandy. French officials expect to start construction in 2027 on a permanent underground repository in northeastern France to open by 2035. In November, Canadian officials selected a permanent site for nuclear waste to be dug out of bedrock in northwestern Ontario. But U.S. efforts stalled decades ago, when a $15 billion project to build a permanent, underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was halted amid opposition by elected officials in the state, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office. The Yucca Mountain failure cast a shadow over efforts to build a permanent disposal site, according to interviews with nuclear experts, policymakers and elected officials. “There are no technical issues, there are no engineering issues,” said Paul Murray, the DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and high level waste disposition, during a Nov. 26 webinar sponsored by the agency. “What we’re trying to do is really try to establish a public trust and political will to actually do something. We’ve done all the studies we need to do.” Until a permanent storage facility is built, Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture between Orano USA, a nuclear decommissioning firm, and Waste Control Specialists, a Texas disposal company, has proposed temporarily storing up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel aboveground in dry casks at a facility in Texas that currently holds low-level radioactive waste. Separately, Holtec International, a nuclear engineering services company, proposed a below-ground storage facility for dry casks in New Mexico, about 40 miles away from the Texas facility, that could store up 8,680 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel.
4. Too Many Trends! (NYT)
For the past few years, opening up social media has felt like standing in front of a fire hose of fashion and internet fads and cranking open the nozzle, full blast. New “it” water bottles are anointed almost quarterly. Influencers urge their viewers to style themselves as coastal grandmothers, ballet dancers, indie sleazers and coquettes — looks that have little in common besides the consumption they require. Specious fads like the “mob wife aesthetic,” recognized by publications including this one, prompted The New Yorker’s humor column to predict what might come next: How about “Supreme Court casual” or “spotted-lanternfly goth”? To keep up would leave most people broke, not to mention disoriented. And while a majority of these crazes are labeled “Gen Z trends,” members of that generation may be the ones most fatigued by the churn. It’s not that they don’t get what’s going on: Today’s young adults can comfortably discuss the way that social media and fast fashion keep many members of their generation buying, sharing and discarding items. They are aware, sometimes painfully, that their insecurities are being harnessed for someone else’s bottom line. But awareness does not equal liberation. Understanding the mechanisms at play does not always mean they can escape them — although many are trying.
NOTE: Good article with a lot of great points/observations.
5. Is parenting really harder these days, or is it just that everything else is? (CBC)
Modern parenting has become so intense that researchers now have a term for it: the intensification of parenting. As examples, data shows parents today spend more time with their children than in previous generations, and the predominant modern parenting style centres on acknowledging a child's feelings — leaving many parents feeling burned out. Children's sports are more competitive and demanding, and child care has become so coveted that parents are making daycare deposits in their first trimester and booking summer camps in January. "I can't even take my kids to free public library programs without the sign-up being weeks in advance. If you miss it, it's full," a parent commented on Biggers-Stewart's video. Meanwhile, parents are encouraged to become engaged and involved in their kids' schools even while more women are working full time. There's the stress of policing our children's online activities in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world. And in the outside world, there's another term: "safetyism," used in parenting literature to describe the modern culture of overprotecting children through methods like softer, lower playgrounds and constant hovering.
6. How to eat and drink fewer microplastics (WP)
Microplastics are everywhere. They’re in your liver, blood and even in your brain, and they’re almost impossible to avoid. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to minimize your exposure. Drink tap water. Avoid plastic food containers. Use glass in the microwave. Avoid highly processed foods. Ditch the plastic tea bags.
7. Israel Sees Growing Threat in Islamists Trying to Unify Syria (WSJ)
For two decades, Israel’s next-door neighbor was Bashar al-Assad, a hostile dictator who was weakened by Syria’s sectarian divisions. Now, Israel is trying to neutralize what security officials see as a threat: Turkish-backed Islamists trying to unify Syria. In recent days, Israel’s military has targeted more military sites in new areas of southern Syria to keep weapons out of the new government’s hands. Israel said Tuesday it would spend more than $1 billion to assist the Druze in northern Israel, in what security analysts said was a move to coax the minority group to help persuade Syrian Druze to reject the new government. And Israel is lobbying world powers around the idea of making the new state emerging in Syria a federal system of autonomous ethnic regions, with the southern border areas by Israel demilitarized—an idea the Damascus government has rejected.
8. Stock Investors Go on Defense With Dividends (WSJ)
Rattled by the threat of trade restrictions and a slowing economy, some investors are turning to a classic defensive play: dividend stocks. Shares of companies that offer relatively hefty cash payouts are beating the broader market this year. Some of the market’s largest dividend-focused funds, such as the Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF and the SPDR S&P Dividend ETF, have risen more than 4% in 2025, even as major indexes slipped into the red.
9. Your Phone Needs a Burner Number (WSJ)
More companies are asking for our phone number. Need access to airport Wi-Fi? Enter your digits to receive a code. Bought a coffee? The cafe will text you a receipt. Forgot your password? The app can text you a sign-in link. The result is messages from businesses crowding out friends and family—on top of the barrage of text spam and scams already flooding us. Brands sent 31% more texts in 2024 compared with the previous year, according to research firm eMarketer. Getting a second number can help. Virtual calling apps such as Google Voice allow you to spin up new digits in a jiffy, and some carriers offer an additional line for a fee. There are plenty of other privacy-protecting benefits, too. Here’s why you should get one, and how to do it.
10. Kara Lawson: Handle Hard Better
NOTE: This past week in my classes we talked about resiliency. Admittedly, I don’t approach this topic in an upbeat manner; it’s not a class that stud ents are going to leave feeling happy. But that’s OK, and that’s kind of my point. I’m pretty honest with them that life is going to be very difficult at times, and if they continually look for the easy or comfortable path in life, then they won’t have skills they need to handle the difficult things when they do come…and they will definitely come. After class, one of my students shared this video with me, and I think is right on point.
And a few more…
A few other items that crossed my desk.
World
Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to Freeze Foreign Aid
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid in a closely divided decision indicating that the justices will subject his efforts to reshape the government to close scrutiny. The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. It said only that the trial judge, who had ordered the government to resume payments, “should clarify what obligations the government must fulfill.”
Europe
Where Are U.S. Forces Deployed in Europe?
U.S. forces have been stationed in and deployed to Europe since the end of World War II. Numbers have fluctuated since that time, reaching a high of roughly 475,000 active-duty personnel in the late 1950s when the U.S. military served as a bulwark against Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces at the height of the Cold War. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, those numbers dropped to the tens of thousands. In early 2025, the United States had nearly eighty-four thousand U.S. servicemembers in Europe, according to the United States European Command (EUCOM). The total amount varies due to planned exercises and regular rotations of troops in and out of the continent. For example, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some twenty thousand additional U.S. soldiers were deployed to states neighboring Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to support Ukraine and contain the conflict. Over the course of the war, the total number of troops has ranged between approximately 75,000 and 105,000 military personnel, primarily from the Air Force, Army, and Navy.
NATO Hunts for Sea-Cable Saboteurs but Can’t Find Proof
Just after midnight on Dec. 26, a team of Finnish commandos dropped from two helicopters onto the deck of a ramshackle Russian oil tanker in the Baltic Sea and ordered the ship’s crew to sail into port. They were acting on the orders of Finnish officials who suspected the Eagle S had hours earlier dragged its anchor along the seabed to slice through a vital power cable between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish action also potentially prevented the ship from cutting another cable nearby, officials say. It was the latest incident of suspected sabotage involving ships carrying Russian cargo in the region, and the first time authorities had boarded a suspicious vessel while it was under way. Then came the real work: finding the evidence to prove sabotage. Proving sabotage is difficult and requires significant evidence or testimonies to support the finding, say investigators, prosecutors and officials involved in the investigations. To issue an arrest warrant or bring a case, prosecutors must provide substantial evidence of intentional wrongdoing, rather than an accidental and unnoticed dropping of an anchor. The difficulties of prosecuting such cases are frustrating Western officials who are trying to combat what they say is a hybrid war against critical infrastructure in the West that they blame on Russia.
Space
Private spacecraft Blue Ghost lands on Moon
A private spacecraft has landed on the Moon, becoming only the second commercial vehicle to reach the lunar surface. Blue Ghost left Earth on 15 January, after being launched by US firm Firefly Aerospace with the intention of exploring the Sea of Crises, a huge basin visible from Earth. The project is the latest collaboration by US space agency Nasa and private companies. Intuitive Machines, another firm, is hoping to land its Athena spacecraft near the Moon's south pole in the next few days. Intuitive was the first private company to achieve a lunar landing. Its spacecraft Odysseus reached the Moon on 22 February last year. However, the mission was short-lived as the spacecraft landed on the slope of a crater, broke some landing gear and toppled over. Blue Ghost touched down smoothly, having been orbiting the Moon for the last two weeks. Staff at Firefly's headquarters in Texas broke out into cheering and applause when they were told their landing was successful.
Business
Starbucks CEO Tells Workers to Step It Up After Layoffs
Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol is delivering a tough-love message to corporate workers: Step it up, get back in the office and take responsibility for improving the company’s performance. In his first address to employees since announcing widespread layoffs last month, Niccol said Tuesday that Starbucks needed to reorganize to make leaders more accountable for financial and operational improvements.
Walgreens Seals $10 Billion Take-Private Deal With Sycamore
Walgreens’s almost centurylong run as a public company is coming to an end. The embattled drugstore chain has struck a deal to be taken private by Sycamore Partners in one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in recent memory. Sycamore has agreed to pay $11.45 a share in cash for Walgreens Boots Alliance, representing an equity value of around $10 billion and 29% above where the stock was trading last year. Shareholders could also receive up to an additional $3 a share down the road, based on proceeds from selling the company’s primary-care assets. The total value of the deal, including debt and the potential future payouts, would be almost $24 billion. The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Food & Drink
Why America Now Eats a Crazy Number of Avocados
These days, the average American devours about 9 pounds of avocados a year. If that sounds like a lot of avocados, that’s because it is. In the 1970s, it was less than 1 pound. In the 1990s, it was still less than 2 pounds. Even since 2000, America’s national avocado consumption has quadrupled. And the reason avocados have exploded in the U.S. is that most of them are no longer grown in the U.S. We have developed such a voracious appetite for this versatile fruit that the U.S. now annually brings in nearly 3 billion pounds of avocados. In fact, 90% of the avocados that Americans eat are imported—and close to 90% of those imports come from Mexico. It’s hard to remember a time when their availability was so limited that avocados were more like a luxury item. Except that time wasn’t very long ago. They were only allowed into the country from Mexico in 1997. They weren’t accessible across the country until 2007.
Nature
World’s Largest Iceberg Runs Aground
After months of drifting, the world’s largest iceberg has come to a halt near the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean. A23a, as the iceberg is officially known, was born in 1986 when it broke off from another iceberg, A23, that had torn away from Antarctica earlier that year. The separation of a smaller ice chunk from a larger one is called calving. Its early life was uneventful; it sat in the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, for decades. A23a’s travels began in 2020, when it freed itself from the sea floor and began to move. By 2023, it was ready to leave Antarctic waters entirely. This spring its progression hit a snag when it began spinning about in place, caught in a current known as a Taylor column near the South Orkney Islands. Escaping after several months of spinning, it then headed for South Georgia, an island east of the southern tip of South America that is a British territory and home to a couple dozen people and many seals and penguins. Initially it was measured to be about 1,500 square miles. It has lost some of that girth, but still is believed to be more than 1,300 square miles. In contrast, New York City is 300 square miles. A23a will begin to break up and melt, though it will probably take a while, maybe years. “Now it’s grounded, it is even more likely to break up due to the increased stresses, but this is practically impossible to predict,” Dr. Meijers said. “Large bergs have made it a long way north before — one got within 1,000 kilometers of Perth, Australia, once — but they all inevitably break up and melt quickly after.”
Sports
LeBron James sinks 3 to surpass 50K combined career points: Remembering his previous milestones
LeBron James has never viewed himself as a scorer. He has long said his scoring journey happened organically, with him preferring to be the playmaker setting his teammates up for assists rather than scoring himself. But now James, 40, is the first player in NBA history to reach 50,000 points across the regular season and playoffs. After facilitating over the first few minutes of a game versus the New Orleans Pelicans on Tuesday, James caught a pass from Luka Dončić on the left wing, set his feet and drilled a 3-pointer to push him to 50,002 points.
NOTE: Just some quick math—LeBron sank his first shot on Oct 29, 2003, then, on Mar 4, 2025, he scored his 50,000th point. Between those two dates are 7797 days, averaged out, that means he scored almost 6.5 points every single day of his career.
For Fun
NOTE: In another of my classes, we talk about memorization techniques. One of my students shared this video with me on how to memorize Braille very quickly—it’s great!
Have a great week!
The Curator
Two resources to help you be a more discerning reader:
AllSides - https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
Media Bias Chart - https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
Caveat: Even these resources/charts are biased. Who says that the system they use to describe news sources is accurate? Still, hopefully you find them useful as a basic guide or for comparison.