10 items that crossed my desk | 20 Oct 24
News from the past week, and a few other things.
👋 Hello Reader,
Of the things that crossed my desk this week, below are items that stood out.
1. Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low (Gallup)
Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media -- such as newspapers, television and radio -- first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year. For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.
2a. Why there's a rush of African satellite launches (BBC)
The cost of launching a satellite has fallen significantly in recent years, says Kwaku Sumah, founder and managing director at Spacehubs Africa, a space consultancy. “That reduction in cost has opened the market up,” he adds. “These smaller nations… now have the opportunity to get involved.” To date, a total of 17 African countries have put more than 60 satellites into orbit and, along with Senegal, both Djibouti and Zimbabwe have also watched their first satellites become operational during the past 12 months. Dozens more African satellites are expected to go into orbit in the coming years. And yet, the continent currently has no space launch facilities of its own.
2b. First breathtaking images from Euclid telescope's map of the universe (New Scientist)
A mosaic of images from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope captures more than 14 million galaxies, offering a first glimpse of a “cosmic atlas”. The mapping project could add to our understanding of the role dark matter and dark energy play in the structure of the universe. “The scale is utterly incomprehensible,” Carole Mundell, the director of science at the ESA, said at a meeting of the International Astronautical Congress in Italy on 15 October. Representing the image at full resolution would require more than 16,000 4K TV screens, she said. The mosaic of 260 images is the first glimpse into Euclid’s project to create the largest and most accurate map of the universe yet. The vast number of galaxies was captured during a two-week survey in April and represents only 1 per cent of the final map. The image covers an area of the southern sky about 500 times the size of the full moon.
2c. Reflect Orbital: The Stanford Dropout Taking on the Sun (Stanford Review)
In a world where Stanford startups increasingly churn out iterations of food delivery apps and poorly disguised duplicates of ChatGPT, original thinking and boundless ambition are rare traits. However, these traits are at the core of Reflect Orbital, an energy startup with a mission so audacious it borders on science fiction: selling sunlight after dark. The company, founded by Stanford dropout Tristan Semmelhack ‘26 and Ben Nowack, aims to solve one of humanity's oldest limitations—daylight—by controlling and redistributing sunlight from space. During an interview with the Review, Semmelhack shared the vision behind the company: "At the highest level, we’re selling sunlight. We’ve developed a system where we can project a 5-kilometer-wide spot of light anywhere in the world after sunset." Reflect Orbital plans to sell sunlight by placing a massive mirror in space that reflects sunlight onto the Earth, a strategy that the Soviet Union tried many years ago.
NOTE: Company’s website here.
2d. To Offer Gigabit Speeds, SpaceX's Starlink Makes New Push for 30,000 Satellites (PC Mag)
SpaceX is making a new push to receive regulatory clearance to operate nearly 30,000 Starlink satellites in Earth’s orbit. The company is making the request to the US Federal Communications Commission as part of an effort to upgrade the Starlink network to deliver gigabit speeds to users. Last Friday, SpaceX revealed some of the plans in an earlier FCC filing, which requests to modify the second-generation Starlink network to harness additional radio spectrum and use lower orbits. This includes tapping E-band frequencies and operating Starlink satellites from around 530 kilometers down to 480 kilometers in orbit. [Oct 17], the company made another FCC filing that requests even more radio spectrum and even lower orbits for the second-generation system. In addition, SpaceX is seeking permission to deploy up to 29,988 satellites, matching the number initially requested for its second-generation Starlink network. (Back in 2022, the FCC only granted permission for up to 7,500.)
NOTE: Current SpaceX satellites:
3. How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah (Reuters)
The batteries inside the weaponised pagers that arrived in Lebanon at the start of the year, part of an Israeli plot to decimate Hezbollah, had powerfully deceptive features and an Achilles' heel. The agents who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a novel detonator that was invisible to X-ray, according to a Lebanese source with first-hand knowledge of the pagers, and teardown photos of the battery pack seen by Reuters. To overcome the weakness - the absence of a plausible backstory for the bulky new product - they created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a Reuters review of web archives shows. The stealthy design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully constructed cover story, both described here for the first time, shed light on the execution of a years-long operation which has struck unprecedented blows against Israel's Iran-backed Lebanese foe and pushed the Middle East closer to a regional war.
4. Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar Killed in Gaza, Israel Says (WSJ)
Israeli forces killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of last year’s Oct. 7 attack, officials said Thursday, dealing a major blow to the militant group and achieving one of Israel’s top objectives for the war. Sinwar was Israel’s most wanted man in Gaza, and his death marks a potential inflection point for the war. It will likely bring pressure on Israel from the U.S. and domestically to end the military offensive there and reach a deal to bring the remaining hostages home. The killing represents a major win for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had vowed to destroy the leadership and military capabilities of Hamas.
5. North Korea says revised constitution now defines South as 'hostile state' (VOA)
North Korea confirmed Thursday that its recently revised constitution defines South Korea as "a hostile state" for the first time, two days after it blew up front-line road and rail links that once connected the country with the South. The back-to-back developments indicate North Korea is intent on escalating animosities against South Korea, increasing the danger of possible clashes at their tense border areas, though it's highly unlikely for the North to launch full-scale attacks in the face of more superior U.S. and South Korea forces. The official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday that its recent demolition of parts of the northern sections of the inter-Korean road and rail links was "an inevitable and legitimate measure taken in keeping with the requirement of the DPRK constitution which clearly defines the ROK as a hostile state." DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name, while ROK stands for Republic of Korea, the South's formal name.
6. IMF says global public debt to top $100 trillion, growth may accelerate (Reuters)
The world's total public debt is set to exceed $100 trillion this year for the first time, and may grow more quickly than forecast as political sentiment favors higher spending and slow growth amplifies borrowing needs and costs, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. The IMF's latest Fiscal Monitor report showed global public debt will reach 93% of global gross domestic product by the end of 2024 and approach 100% by 2030. That would exceed its 99% peak during COVID-19. It would also be up 10 percentage points from 2019, before the pandemic exploded government spending.
7. Neom ‘uses one fifth of world’s steel’ (AGBI)
The Neom giga-project in Saudi Arabia is currently using one fifth of all the steel produced in the world, an official said on Monday. The futuristic city will be the world’s largest customer for construction materials for several decades, said Manar Al Moneef, Neom’s chief investment officer. She told the Global Logistics Forum in the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh that the $500 billion project would be one of the world’s leading drivers of the global logistics sector in coming years. “Neom is going to be the largest customer over the next decade. If you look at our demand in logistics it’s 5 percent of the global logistics market,” she told the forum, in rare public comments.
8. America’s New Millionaire Class: Plumbers and HVAC Entrepreneurs (WSJ)
Few businesses are as vital to their customers as local plumbing, heating or air-conditioning companies—especially in places like Tucson, Ariz., where Rice works and residents sweltered in 100-degree heat most days this summer. For years, Rice, 43 years old, was skeptical when out-of-state investors offered to buy his company. He assumed most of them knew little about skilled-trade work or his customers. They were just looking to make a buck. But in 2022, when approached by a local HVAC company backed by private equity, he changed his mind, figuring that they knew the business. “The trades are hard work. A lot of today’s society, picking up a shovel is foreign to them,” he says. Private equity, however, is no foreign player in the skilled trades these days. PE firms across the country have been scooping up home services like HVAC—that is, heating, ventilation and air conditioning—as well as plumbing and electrical companies. They hope to profit by running larger, more profitable operations. Their growth marks a major shift, taking home-services firms away from family operators by offering mom-and-pop shops seven-figure and eight-figure paydays. It is a contrast from previous generations, when more owners handed companies down to their children or employees. The wave of investment is minting a new class of millionaires across the country, one that small-business owners say is helping add more shine to working with a tool belt.
9. Mystery Drones Swarmed a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped (WSJ)
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline. Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors. For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly. The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers. The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.Over 17 days, the drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back. Some shone small lights, making them look like a constellation moving in the night sky—or a science-fiction movie, Kelly said, “‘Close Encounters at Langley.’” They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them. Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley, he said, were unlike any past incursion.
10. The Guru Who Says He Can Get Your 11-Year-Old Into Harvard (WSJ)
“A great education transformed my life,” said the chief executive and co-founder of Crimson Education. “It can change yours too.” The kids took note of every word. “He’s like the Steve Jobs of college counseling,” said one of the attendees, a Japanese high-school student. Private equity is also paying attention. Crimson, launched in 2013, is now valued at $554 million after several funding rounds, according to PitchBook. Investors include venture capital giants Tiger Management and related firm Tiger Global Management, plus Icehouse Ventures, former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Verlinvest, a Brussels-based fund created by the founding families of Anheuser-Busch. This year, Beaton’s clients made up nearly 2% of students admitted to the undergraduate class of 2028 at several elite schools including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Among his clients, 24 earned admission to Yale, 34 to Stanford and 48 to Cornell. The acceptance letters were certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers and a list of students admitted was provided by Beaton to The Wall Street Journal. Clients pay Beaton’s firm from $30,000 and $200,000 for a four- to six-year program that includes tutoring in academics and test-taking, and advice on how to gather stellar teacher recommendations and how to execute extracurricular projects. Those can range from writing a book, to publishing an academic research paper or starting a podcast. Crimson has come to dominate an elite slice of the growing U.S. market for help navigating the competitive, confusing and shifting university admission process. Eager families pay more and more for a leg up into an elite school, aiming to acquire what is seen as a vital chip in a winner-take-all economy. Revenue in college consulting overall has tripled to $2.9 billion over 20 years, according to IBISWorld, a market research firm. Around 10,000 people work as full-time college consultants in the U.S., with another 3,000 abroad, said Mark Sklarow, chief executive of the Independent Educational Consultants Association. That’s up from less than 100 in 1990. There are few regulations or barriers to entry—most are mom and pop shops—and fraud has tainted the industry, including by Rick Singer, the now-jailed ringleader of the Varsity Blues college-admissions cheating scheme. At the top end is Beaton, whose own eye-popping resume is packed with exclusive degrees. He attended Harvard and won a Rhodes scholarship, which he used to earn a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Oxford. He followed that with two masters from Stanford, one in business and the other in education technology. He also earned a masters in education entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania, a masters in finance from Princeton, a law degree from Yale and a masters in global affairs from Tsinghua University in China.
Have a great weekend!
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.