This week in the news | 16 Mar 24

News from the past week, and a few other things.

Mar 16, 2024

👋 Hello Reader, I hope you had a great week.

Below you’ll find the “quick shot”—a supercharged summary of summaries, followed by the “slow brew”—longer summaries with select graphics, and comments from me.

THE QUICK SHOT 🚀

A supercharged summary of summaries

A lock icon (🔒) indicates articles behind a paywall, and a chart icon (📊) indicates an informative chart/graphic in “Slow Brew.”

North America

Latin America

Europe

As Putin Pitches His Vision, Voters Avert Their Gaze From the War (NYT🔒)
War in Ukraine Is Shifting in Russia’s Favor, US Spies Warn (Bloomberg🔒)
US Providing $300 Million in New Ukraine Military Aid (VOA)
Sweden and Finland have dropped neutrality. Austria still fetes it. (Defense News)
First photo of Princess of Wales since her surgery is retracted because image appeared manipulated (AP)
A ‘Perfect Monolith’ Appears in Wales (NYT🔒)
UK to ban foreign governments from owning newspapers (Semafor)

Middle East

Africa

China-Africa relations (Chatham House)
Congo faces unprecedented crisis as violence displaces 250,000 in the last month, a UN official says (AP)
Somalia has 99% of $2bn debt cancelled in major boost to fragile recovery (The Guardian)
Exclusive: Nigerian kidnappers demand $620,000 for release of school hostages (Reuters)

Asia-Pacific

Space

Four astronauts from four countries return to Earth after six months in orbit (AP)
Giant SpaceX rocket blasts off in most successful test launch yet (Sky News)
Japan's Space One rocket explodes shortly after launch (Japan Times)
Voyager 1’s Immortal Interstellar Requiem (Scientific American)

Government

Defense

Pentagon unveils $850 billion budget request amid spending uncertainty (Defense News)
West Point military academy drops ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from mission statement (NY Post)
Performers, speakers pull out of Texas festival over Army sponsorship (Military Times)
Study Shows Higher Rates of Some Cancers in ICBM Personnel (Air & Space Forces)

Economy

Inflation Comes In Higher Than Expected For Fourth Straight Month (Forbes🔒)
US Jobless Rate Hits Two-Year High Even as Hiring Stays Strong (Bloomberg🔒)📊
America’s Plumber Deficit Isn’t Good for the Economy (Bloomberg🔒)
New immigration estimates help make sense of the pace of employment (Brookings)
Immigration Drove America’s Postpandemic Urban Growth (WSJ🔒)📊

Business

South Korea gets tough with Chinese platforms AliExpress, Temu, Shein (KED Global)📊
US airlines warn of more Boeing delivery delays due to safety crisis (Reuters)📊
US Steel Plunges for Second Day as Biden Comes Out Against Deal (Bloomberg🔒)📊
Lyft and Uber say they will leave Minneapolis after city council forces them to pay drivers more (AP)
Apple Reverses Termination Of Epic Games’ Developer Account Days After Removing It (Forbes🔒)

Crypto

Crypto Gets Blamed for a Real-Life Currency Crisis (WSJ🔒)📊

Energy

United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever (USEIA)📊
Analysis: UK emissions in 2023 fell to lowest level since 1879 (Carbon Brief) 📊

Auto

Real Estate

Less money, less house: How market forces are reshaping the American home (WP🔒) 📊
Mortgage Rates Continue to Decrease (Freddie Mac) 📊

Technology

Cyber

The U.S. could ban TikTok. These countries have blocked or restricted it. (WP🔒)
U.S. Spy Agencies Know Your Secrets. They Bought Them. (WSJ🔒)
On popular online platforms, predatory groups coerce children into self-harm (WP🔒)
Behind the OnlyFans porn boom: allegations of rape, abuse and betrayal (Reuters)
Cybercrime Losses Have Tripled Since 2020 (Chartr) 📊
Undersea Internet Cables Are Vulnerable Targets In Future Wars (Forbes🔒)

Artificial Intelligence

Life

The Rough Years That Turned Gen Z Into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters (WSJ🔒) 📊
How couples meet in the US (Twitter) 📊
It's Obviously the Phones (Substack) 📊
Why young men and women are drifting apart (Economist🔒) 📊
LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6% (Gallup) 📊
Book Review: "The Two-Parent Privilege" (Substack) 📊
OPINION | Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore (Bloomberg🔒)

Education

New numbers show falling standards in American high schools (Economist🔒) 📊
U. of Texas at Austin Will Return to Standardized Test Requirement (NYT🔒)
Who Needs Paper? Many Students Embrace the All-Digital SAT. (NYT🔒)
Inside the Blunders That Plunged the College Admission Season Into Disarray (NYT🔒)

Health

Children will not be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, [England National Health Service] says (ITV News)
America’s fentanyl epidemic, explained in six charts (Economist🔒) 📊
How well do you score on brain health? (Harvard Health Blog)
America’s 100 most obese cities revealed — and the top 10 have something in common (New York Post)
Under-five mortality (UNICEF) 📊

Food & Drink

The World Has Too Much Wine, and Farmers Are Ripping Up Vines (Bloomberg🔒)

Nature

Travel

Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras (NYT🔒)
The Charges That Can Nearly Double Your Uber or Lyft to the Airport (WSJ🔒)
Airlines Want to Stop ‘Travel Hack’ JSX From Luring Rich Flyers Away (Bloomberg🔒)

Entertainment

Oppenheimer Is The Biggest Box Office Earner To Win Best Picture At The Oscars In Two Decades (Forbes🔒) 📊

Sports

THE SLOW BREW ☕

A more relaxed approach to the summaries.

North America

Biden’s budget proposal for a second term offers tax breaks for families and lower health care costs (AP)

President Joe Biden on Monday released a budget proposal aimed at getting voters’ attention: It would offer tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law, the proposal for fiscal 2025 is an election year blueprint about what the future could hold if Biden and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November. The president and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, and they provided the fine print on Monday.

Terrorist Threat to US Has Reached ‘Whole Other Level,’ FBI’s Wray Warns (Bloomberg🔒)

Terrorist threats toward the US have reached a “whole other level” from the already heightened situation before the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and its response, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday. “You’ve seen a veritable rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations calling for terrorist attacks against us in a way that we haven’t seen in a long, long time,” the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations told the House Intelligence Committee in an annual presentation on the biggest “worldwide threats” facing the US. Wray, speaking alongside other top US intelligence officials, said the FBI is also concerned about the risk of violent attacks by lone actors inspired by calls for violence from the Middle East.

James Crumbley, who bought gun used by son to kill 4 students, guilty of manslaughter in Michigan (AP)

The father of a Michigan school shooter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday, a second conviction against the teen’s parents who were accused of failing to secure a gun at home and doing nothing to address acute signs of his mental turmoil. The jury verdict means James Crumbley has joined Jennifer Crumbley as a cause of the killing of four students at Oxford High School in 2021, even without pulling the trigger. He and his wife each face a possible minimum sentence of as much as 10 years in prison when they return to court April 9.

Some of Washington’s Iconic Cherry Trees Are About to Disappear (NYT🔒)

Around 140 cherry trees that form part of Washington’s iconic spring attraction will be chopped down this year to make way for the construction of new, taller sea walls to protect the area around the Jefferson Memorial. The National Park Service, which is overseeing the project, said on Wednesday that it had tried to minimize the loss of the trees, which erupt each year in a burst of pink and white splendor that draws more than 1.5 million visitors. But the age of the existing barriers, rising sea levels and poor drainage forced its hand. The current sea walls have sunk as much as five feet since their construction in the late 1800s and are no longer an effective bulwark against tidal waves and storm surges. Tides submerge parts of the walls twice a day, the Park Service said.

New York’s population has shrunk the most of any state since 2020 (Chartr)

Even as the Covid years recede further in the collective rearview mirror, it seems that many New Yorkers are still running back the pandemic play of ditching the city that never sleeps to set up life elsewhere. Last year, NYC lost a further 78,000 citizens, taking the net population decrease to over 546,000 since April 2020. Data from the Census Bureau shows that the declines haven’t just been contained to the 5 boroughs either: New York posted the largest drop of any state over the last 3 years, down 2.7% since 2020 to 19.6 million. That slide in citizenship makes it the biggest loser over the period by some distance, with second-place Illinois losing just 1.9% of its population and Louisiana & California shedding 1.7% and 1.4%, respectively. ‍The story playing out across the US more broadly, however, is much different. 60% of American counties posted annual population gains rather than losses in 2023, according to Census data published yesterday, up from 52% the year before. That trend has seriously translated in states like Idaho, Florida, South Carolina, and Texas, where citizen headcounts have grown 4.3% to 6.2% since 2020, as fewer deaths and a return to pre-pandemic immigration levels saw the US population tick up by 1.6 million last year.

Latin America

Haiti crisis boils over, forcing pivot in US policy (The Hill)

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s resignation on Tuesday marks a watershed moment for U.S. diplomacy, which for the last 32 months focused on keeping him in power against the warnings of experts and Haitian civil society. Under Henry, who served as acting prime minister and acting president, armed gangs grew stronger as the government’s reach shrank, with the Caribbean nation becoming more and more reliant on U.S. support and the promise of an international police mission. Henry, who was officially a transitional figure, was the longest tenured prime minister since the end of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. Though the State Department’s support was officially intended to help him rebuild a government structure in the wake of the 2021 assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse, Henry had shown few signs of relinquishing power until he was shut out of the country. “If you look at the background and the context, Prime Minister Henry has always been a transitional figure,” State Department Matt Miller told reporters Tuesday. Miller added that over the past few days it became clear “not to the United States, but to members of CARICOM [the Caribbean Community], to members of Haitian civil society, to a number of Haitians,’’ that the political situation under Henry was untenable.

US military airlifts embassy personnel from Haiti, bolsters security (Reuters)

The U.S. military said on Sunday it has carried out an operation in Haiti to airlift non-essential embassy personnel from the country and added U.S. forces to bolster embassy security, as the Caribbean nation reels under a state of emergency. The operation was the latest sign of Haiti's troubles as gang violence threatens to bring down the government and has led thousands to flee their homes. "This airlift of personnel into and out of the embassy is consistent with our standard practice for embassy security augmentation worldwide, and no Haitians were on board the military aircraft," the U.S. military's Southern Command said in a statement.

Milei’s Decree Suffers Major Setback After Repeal in Senate (Yahoo)

[Argentina] President Javier Milei’s initial dose of shock therapy is teetering on the edge of collapse after Argentina’s senate defeated his sweeping executive decree in a 42-to-25 vote Thursday. The decree now goes to the lower house of Congress, where a simple majority can scrap the more than 300 measures aimed at deregulating Argentina’s economy, which have been in place since late December. Pushback against his initiative comes after Milei failed to secure enough votes for his much larger omnibus reform package in February, stoking investor concern about his legislative strategy to revive a crisis-prone economy hurtling into recession with 270% inflation.

Europe

As Putin Pitches His Vision, Voters Avert Their Gaze From the War (NYT🔒)

Vladimir V. Putin, casting himself as the only leader able to end the war in Ukraine, is all but assured another term in a rubber-stamp election this weekend.

War in Ukraine Is Shifting in Russia’s Favor, US Spies Warn (Bloomberg🔒)

The deadlock in Ukraine is “shifting the momentum” in the war there in Moscow’s favor, US intelligence agencies told senators on Monday. Moscow has made continual, incremental battlefield gains since late 2023 and benefits from uncertainties about the future of military assistance from the US and allies, the top intelligence officials told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in their annual presentation on the biggest “worldwide threats” facing the US. “This deadlock plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor,” they said. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns testified that “the Ukrainians are not running out of courage and tenacity. They’re running out of ammunition, and we’re running out of time to help them.” Burns warned that without additional US military assistance, “Ukraine is likely to lose ground — and likely significant ground — in 2024.” He said Russia is interested in the “theater of negotiations” over ending the war, he said, and wasn’t ready to make significant compromises to do so.

US Providing $300 Million in New Ukraine Military Aid (VOA)

The United States is providing a new round of military aid for Ukraine valued at up to $300 million, the first such announcement since late December, in what defense officials have called an “ad hoc” package made possible through U.S. Army procurement savings. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced the 55th presidential drawdown authority (PDA) package at the White House on Tuesday and said it would include artillery rounds and munitions for HIMARS, weapons desperately needed on the Ukrainian front lines where shortages abound. “This ammunition will keep Ukrainians’ guns firing for a period, but only a short period,” Sullivan said. Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder added that the package would provide Stinger anti-aircraft missiles along with anti-armor systems. The aid package comes despite a Pentagon funding shortfall of about $10 billion for U.S. military weapons needed to replace those already sent to Ukraine, a shortfall that requires additional money from Congress to fix, according to top defense officials.

Sweden and Finland have dropped neutrality. Austria still fetes it. (Defense News)

The halls of Vienna’s Hofburg, the former imperial palace central to the Austrian government, have been home to proud talk of “perpetual neutrality” ever since the Alpine republic’s founding from the ashes of World War II. Chancellors, presidents and ministers alike will speak of the obligation to serve as a global mediator and of Austria’s unique position as a bridge between the East and the West. But simultaneously, Austria has supported European weapons deliveries to Kyiv, authorized sending the military to the Red Sea and has deepened defense cooperation with its Western European NATO neighbors. Questions about Austrian neutrality have come to the fore since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, catapulting neutrality into the center of attention and touching a nerve in public discourse. With Sweden and Finland abandoning longstanding traditions of non-alignment and joining NATO, Austria is now one of just three European Union countries – alongside Ireland and Malta – that consider themselves neutral.

First photo of Princess of Wales since her surgery is retracted because image appeared manipulated (AP)

The first official photo of Kate, the Princess of Wales, since her abdominal surgery nearly two months ago was issued after weeks of speculation about her whereabouts. But The Associated Press and other news agencies retracted it from publication because it appeared to have been manipulated, fueling more conjecture.

A ‘Perfect Monolith’ Appears in Wales (NYT🔒)

Mr. Muir, 37, who works as a stone mason, said the monolith stands roughly 10 feet tall, and that it’s about a foot-and-a-half wide at each point. He said that he didn’t know how deep into the ground it goes. Calling it a “perfect monolith,” Mr. Muir said it was “exactly like the ones they have in Egypt” but “made of steel, and there’s no markings on there at all.” The monolith appears to have been made from surgical steel, he said, adding that he did not think it was aluminum because “it had too much shine to it.” For a time — a few weird months in the depths of the pandemic — things like the one in Wales seemed to be popping up everywhere. A bighorn sheep survey in Utah spotted the first, in November 2020 in a remote canyon in Red Rock Country. Even though that one was dismantled under the cover of night a few days later, others were soon built in California, Romania and Turkey. People widely called them monoliths, because they were large and sheer and appeared in surprising places, like the thing in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” albeit without as much of an aura of mystery and dread. In a few cases, people took credit for their creation. Some other people sought them out, seeking a strange metaphysical experience to rival those in the film. Mostly, though, people took cellphone photos and made internet jokes.

UK to ban foreign governments from owning newspapers (Semafor)

The U.K. on Wednesday said it would ban foreign governments from owning newspapers and magazines in the country, fueling an international debate about overseas influence on both traditional media and social platforms such as TikTok. The decision follows concern over the proposed takeover of The Telegraph newspaper and The Spectator magazine by a United Arab Emirates-linked firm backed by Emirati Vice President Sheikh Mansour.

Middle East

The Palestinian Authority’s president names an insider to be prime minister. (NYT🔒)

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority appointed a longtime insider within the authority’s top ranks as prime minister on Thursday, rejecting international pressure to empower an independent prime minister who could revitalize the sclerotic authority.

Hamas presents ceasefire proposal detailing exchange of hostages, prisoners (Reuters)

Hamas has presented a Gaza ceasefire proposal to mediators and the U.S. that includes the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for freedom for Palestinian prisoners, 100 of whom are serving life sentences, according to a proposal seen by Reuters. Hamas said the initial release of Israelis would include women, children, elderly and ill hostages in return for the release of 700-1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, according to the proposal. The release of Israeli "female recruits" is included. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Thursday a new Gaza truce proposal presented by Hamas to mediators was still based on "unrealistic demands".

Israeli Strike Kills a Hamas Operative in Lebanon (NYT🔒)

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it had killed a senior Hamas operative in an airstrike in southern Lebanon, the latest in a series of targeted killings there following the deadly Hamas-led attacks against Israel on Oct. 7. The man, Hadi Ali Mustafa, was “a significant operative in Hamas’s department responsible for its international terrorist activities,” the Israeli military said in a statement. It added that he had been involved in attacks “against Israeli and Jewish targets in various countries around the world.” It provided no further details, and its claims could not be independently verified. In a statement, Hamas’s military wing confirmed that Mr. Mustafa had been killed but gave no indication of his role within the organization.

Schumer Calls for End of Netanyahu-Led Government in Israel (WSJ🔒)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has lost his way” and called for new elections aimed at choosing a new government, a sign of growing U.S. pressure on Israel over the war in Gaza.

Biden Admin Renews Iran Sanctions Waiver That Unlocks Upwards of $10 Billion for Regime (Free Beacon)

The Biden administration on Wednesday reapproved a sanctions waiver that unlocks upwards of $10 billion in frozen funds for the Iranian government, according to a copy of the notice submitted to Congress late Wednesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress raised concerns about the waiver earlier this week, the Free Beacon reported, saying that sanctions should not be lifted on the hardline Iranian regime in light of its support for Hamas and other terrorist proxy groups waging war on Israel and American outposts in the region. While the State Department maintains the funds can only be accessed by Iran to pay for humanitarian supplies, like food and medicine, critics of the sanctions waiver argue that money is fungible, and that the waiver frees up cash for Iran to spend on its global terrorism operations.

Inside Saudi Arabia’s plan to dominate mining (Semafor)

Saudi Arabia sees vast riches beyond oil within its reach. The kingdom’s broad-ranging ambition, a top mining official told Semafor, is to extract the more than $2.5 trillion in metals in its soil, invest in minerals extraction around the world, and capture as much of the minerals value chain as possible. “Saudi Arabia is being transformed. Through this transformation we want to be an economic powerhouse,” Khalid al-Mudaifer, the vice minister for mining, said. “To be an industrial [power], we need minerals. To build projects, we need minerals. Therefore, mining of Saudi Arabia [is] the first step, bringing minerals from outside is the second step, third step is to build Saudi Arabia as a hub.” As part of its “Vision 2030” effort to refashion and diversify its economy, the kingdom is adding mining as a “pillar” of its industrial foundation — joining the mainstays of oil, gas, and petrochemicals — and creating a new economic backstop against the eventual decline of fossil fuels. It aims to use its targeted role as a commercial, refining, and research hub to attract companies in other minerals-dependent sectors, from electric-vehicle makers to battery manufacturers, while bolstering its domestic infrastructure along the way. It is, however, unlikely to join a largely Western club of buyers and sellers that Washington envisions as heading off the formation of an OPEC-like grouping for minerals.

Africa

China-Africa relations (Chatham House)

In 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched by Xi Jinping, featuring an ambition to reinvigorate the old silk trading route along the East African coast. This should theoretically have seen Chinese investment concentrated in East Africa, but many other African states also sought opportunities through the BRI, making the initiative quickly expand in scope and ambition. The BRI saw a huge number of signature infrastructure projects built across Asia and Africa, funded by Chinese loans whose size, nature and origin were often opaque. Some African countries became badly exposed to Chinese lending during this period. Chinese investment peaked around 2016. Since then, Chinese loans to African governments declined significantly, falling from $28.4 billion in 2016 to $1.9 billion in 2020 – partly due to changing priorities in domestic Chinese politics, and partly due to the apparent difficulty African countries had repaying loans.

Congo faces unprecedented crisis as violence displaces 250,000 in the last month, a UN official says (AP)

Escalating violence in Congo’s eastern region has displaced at least 250,000 people in the last month, a senior United Nations official said Wednesday, describing the situation as an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Far from the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, eastern Congo has long been overrun by more than 120 armed groups seeking a share of the region’s gold and other resources as they carry out mass killings. The result is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with about 7 million people displaced, many of them beyond the reach of aid.

Somalia has 99% of $2bn debt cancelled in major boost to fragile recovery (The Guardian)

The Paris Club, a collection of some of the world’s wealthiest creditor nations, has announced the cancellation of 99% of Somalia’s debt, in a major boost as the country continues its fragile economic recovery from an ongoing three-decade conflict. In a statement released by the Paris Club, which is run by senior officials from the French Treasury, Somalia’s creditors, including the US, UK, Russia, Norway, and Japan, announced the cancellation of $2bn owed to club members as of January 2023.

Exclusive: Nigerian kidnappers demand $620,000 for release of school hostages (Reuters)

(Reuters)Gunmen who kidnapped 286 students and staff from a school in northern Nigeria last week have demanded a total of 1 billion naira ($620,432) for their release, a spokesman for the families of the hostages and a local councillor told Reuters. The school children, some older students and members of the school staff were abducted on March 7 in the town of Kuriga, in Nigeria's northwestern Kaduna State, in the first mass kidnapping in the country since 2021.

Asia-Pacific

Putin resumes ‘sabre-rattling’ with warning Russia ready for nuclear war (Al Jazeera)

President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia is “ready” to use nuclear weapons if there is a threat to its statehood. In a recorded interview broadcast by Russian media on Wednesday, the Kremlin chief said his country is ready for a nuclear war from a “military-technical” point of view. His comments signal a resumption of nuclear “sabre-rattling“, as it was branded a year ago, just ahead of this weekend’s presidential election. Two weeks ago, Putin claimed during an annual address to the nation of a “real” risk of nuclear war if Western countries sent troops to fight in Ukraine. On Wednesday, he insisted that Russia’s nuclear arsenal and troops hold the advantage over the West. “From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready. They [Russian forces] are constantly in a state of combat readiness,” Putin said during an interview with the Rossiya-1 state TV channel. There was no “rushing” to the nuclear scenario, he said.

Opinion | Yulia Navalnaya: Putin isn’t a politician, he’s a gangster (WP🔒)

To defeat Putin, or at least seriously punish him, one must realize who he is. Unfortunately, too many people in the West still see him as a legitimate political leader, argue about his ideology and look for political logic in his actions. This is a big mistake that breeds new mistakes and helps Putin to deceive his opponents again and again. Putin is not a politician, he’s a gangster. Alexei Navalny became famous in Russia and hated by Putin precisely because, from the beginning of his fight, he openly described Putin and his allies as gangsters who had seized and used power only for their own enrichment and to fulfill their personal ambitions.

NOTE: Yulia Navalnaya is the widow of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

After Ukrainian Strikes, Russia Fires Top Naval Commander (NYT🔒)

The Kremlin has fired its top naval commander, the biggest fallout yet from a series of devastating attacks by Ukraine on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, according to a Ukrainian and a Western official. Adm. Nikolai Yevmenov, the head of the Russian Navy for the past five years, was removed from command and replaced by the head of the Russia’s Northern Fleet. Russian publications, citing anonymous sources, reported on Sunday that Admiral Yevmenov had been fired. The Financial Times, citing Ukrainian officials, reported the development on Monday. The Russian government, however, has declined to confirm any of the personnel changes.

Citizenship Law That Excludes Muslims Takes Effect, India Says (NYT🔒)

Weeks before a national election, the Indian government has abruptly announced that it will begin enforcing a citizenship law that had remained dormant since late 2019 after inciting deadly riots by opponents who called it anti-Muslim. The incendiary law grants Indian citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees and Christians from a few nearby countries. Muslims are pointedly excluded.

Space

Four astronauts from four countries return to Earth after six months in orbit (AP)

Four astronauts from four countries caught a lift back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to end a half-year mission at the International Space Station. Their capsule streaked across the U.S. in the predawn darkness and splashed into the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Panhandle. NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, a Marine helicopter pilot, led the returning crew of Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov. They moved into the space station last August. Their replacements arrived last week in their own SpaceX capsule.

Giant SpaceX rocket blasts off in most successful test launch yet (Sky News)

SpaceX's Starship completed nearly its entire test flight after blasting off in a successful launch. The rocket cleared its launch pad in Texas, separated from its "Super Heavy Booster" and began coasting at an altitude of 145 miles. But it was eventually destroyed as it re-entered the atmosphere, the company said. However, it's still the most successful test flight of the spacecraft yet. Starship is the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, at nearly 120 metres tall, and is intended to carry astronauts to the moon this decade. It's big enough that SpaceX says it "will be able to carry up to 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights".

Japan's Space One rocket explodes shortly after launch (Japan Times)

Tokyo-based startup Space One failed Wednesday to become Japan's first private firm to put a satellite into orbit after its solid-fuel Kairos rocket burst into flames just seconds after liftoff, in a major setback for Japan’s space development aspirations. The 18-meter, 23-ton Kairos rocket, carrying a mock-up of a government spy satellite, took off from a new space facility in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, shortly after 11 a.m. The rocket exploded in midair five seconds after launch, with its remains falling onto a nearby mountainous area. Live news footage of the event showed fragments of the rocket lying on the ground, as firefighters attempted to extinguish a large fire. The fire was put out eventually, and nobody was hurt, Wakayama Gov. Shuhei Kishimoto told reporters a couple of hours after the explosion.

Voyager 1’s Immortal Interstellar Requiem (Scientific American)

Yesterday, the team announced a significant step in breaking through to Voyager 1. After months of stress and unsuccessful answers they have managed to decode at least a portion of the spacecraft’s gobbledygook, allowing them to (maybe) find a way to see what it has been trying to say. In the time it will take you to read this story, Voyager 1 will have traversed approximately 10,000 miles of mostly empty space; in the weeks it took me to report it, the probe traveled some 26 million miles. And since its communication first became garbled last November, the spacecraft has sailed another 10 light-minutes away from home. Voyager 1 and its twin are slipping away from us as surely as the passage of time itself. Sooner or later, these hallowed space-age icons will fall silent, becoming no more than distant memories.

NOTE 1: Great infographic showing you the exact locations of Voyager probes can be found here.

NOTE 2: I’m secretly waiting for the day that one of our two Voyager probes end up sentient:

Government

Biden and Trump clinch nominations, setting the stage for a grueling general election rematch (AP)

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump clinched their parties’ presidential nominations Tuesday with decisive victories in a slate of low-profile primaries, setting up a general election rematch that many voters do not want.

No Labels, a Centrist Group, Moves Toward a Third-Party Presidential Bid (NYT🔒)

The centrist group No Labels said on Friday that it would move forward with plans to nominate a presidential ticket, a move that, if it comes to fruition, would add another complicating factor to the November election. Leaders of the group announced the plan after an online meeting of its members. The group said it had 800 delegates who voted “near unanimously” to nominate a ticket. No Labels has yet to announce a candidate who might run on its ballot line, however, and several of the best-known politicians it has courted have ruled out a presidential run on a third-party ticket.

Why Congress is Becoming Less Productive (Reuters)

The U.S. Congress is navigating yet another government funding deadline — the eighth in less than six months — and are at an impasse over sending aid to key allies in Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. Divisions among Republicans in the House and Senate killed a major bipartisan border policy bill. Reforms to bedrock programs like Medicare and Social Security are desperately needed but no closer to getting passed. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives spent close to a month without a speaker last year due to infighting between moderate and hard right factions of the Republican party. When U.S. Representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, begged his colleagues in November to “give me one thing I can campaign on and say we did,” he was articulating what many lawmakers and observers were feeling: Congress isn’t working. The simplest expression of this is the number of bills passed by Congress. Just twenty-seven bills were passed last year — a record low — but even before that, the number of bills signed into law by the president has been falling.

NOTE: This made me wonder—should the productivity of congress be measured by the number of laws & measures passed? It’s an easy measurement, for sure, and it’s a (possible) sign that lawmakers are working together and compromising. But, carried to an extreme, it would mean that congress passes thousands of laws and measures each year. I, for one, don’t want that—partly because I don’t think we need that many new laws every year, and partly because it would make me suspicious about collusion among lawmakers in such a way that dissenter’s voices are not acknowledged.
So, perhaps productivity is not what we should measure, but instead focus on effectiveness—passing the right laws. And this, is much harder, both to do and to measure.
When there is more polarization, and less compromise, then fewer bills are passed, and these charts do measure that, but I don’t care for calling it “productivity.”
Now, that said, the danger in fewer bills getting passed is pointed out in the article, because “it means the small number of mandatory ones that Congress must pass — such as government funding or annual legislation authorizing defense policies — are getting longer…as lawmakers try to jam the bills with policies that wouldn’t otherwise get a vote.”

Judge Quashes Six Charges in Georgia Election Case Against Trump (NYT🔒)

In a surprise move on Wednesday, a judge in Atlanta quashed six of the charges against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in the sprawling Georgia election interference case, including one related to a call that Mr. Trump made to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state in early January 2021. The judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court, left intact the rest of the racketeering indictment, which initially included 41 counts against 19 co-defendants. Four of them have pleaded guilty since the indictment was handed up by a grand jury in August.

Defense

Pentagon unveils $850 billion budget request amid spending uncertainty (Defense News)

The Pentagon released its fiscal year 2025 funding request, officially beginning one of the most chaotic budget seasons in recent memory. The top line for national defense is $895.2 billion, and the Pentagon’s share of that will be just under $850 billion. These figures are lower than projected in the request for fiscal 2024, due to a deal struck to avoid a government default. That deal capped spending for the upcoming fiscal year, amounting to a small drop in defense funding when adjusted for inflation. Hence the inevitable question leading up to this year’s request was what accounts would have to slim down. The answer is mainly those for procurement and research, development, testing and evaluation. The previous year’s ask for those accounts was $315 billion. This year’s is $310.7 billion, and that doesn’t account for inflation.

West Point military academy drops ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from mission statement (NY Post)

The US Military Academy at West Point has made the decision to remove the “Duty, Honor, Country” motto from its mission statement. In a letter sent to students and supporters, Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland said the phrase, which was first added to the mission statement in 1998, would be replaced with the words, “Army Values.” “Our responsibility to produce leaders to fight and win our nation’s wars requires us to assess ourselves regularly,” Gilland wrote in a letter to cadets and supporters on Monday. “Thus, over the past year and a half, working with leaders from across West Point and external stakeholders, we reviewed our vision, mission, and strategy to serve this purpose.” He continued: “As a result of this assessment, we recommended the following mission statement to our senior Army leadership: ‘To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.’” The lieutenant general said the new mission statement “binds the Academy to the Army.” He clarified that the patriotic phrase would “always” remain the school’s motto.

Official statement: https://www.westpoint.edu/news/press-releases/west-point-mission-statement-update-0

Performers, speakers pull out of Texas festival over Army sponsorship (Military Times)

More than 80 music artists and multiple panelists have canceled appearances at South by Southwest Festival over the U.S. Army’s sponsorship of the event. Gov. Greg Abbott’s response is “Bye. Don’t come back.” Bands, musicians and speakers slated to appear at the festival — which runs from March 8 through March 16 — are pulling out in protest of the U.S. military’s support for Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. “It is done in solidarity with the people of Palestine and to highlight the unacceptable deep links the festival has to weapons companies and the U.S. military who at this very moment are enabling a genocide and famine against a trapped population,” Ireland-based rap group Kneecap said in a statement on X. Many groups have issued statements on social media citing the inclusion of military defense manufacturers like Collins Aerospace, RTX and BAE Systems in the festival as a reason they canceled performances. “We are proud of the U.S. military in Texas,” the Governor wrote on X. “If you don’t like it, don’t come here.” The festival’s organizers responded to Abbott with their own statement on the social media platform, writing that South by Southwest “does not agree with Governor Abbott.”

Study Shows Higher Rates of Some Cancers in ICBM Personnel (Air & Space Forces)

The Air Force found increased rates of breast and prostate cancers in service members who worked on nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles compared to the general population, according to a preliminary study of data publicly released on March 13.

Economy

Inflation Comes In Higher Than Expected For Fourth Straight Month (Forbes🔒)

Inflation was worse than anticipated in February, even as underlying metrics show signs of progress in the war against price increases. Annual headline inflation was 3.2% last month, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index, worse than consensus economist estimates of 3.1%, where it stood in January. It’s the fourth consecutive month that inflation was above economist expectations. Core inflation, which excludes the oft-erratic food and energy subindexes, checked in at 3.8%, above forecasts of 3.7% and declining from January’s surprise increase. Still, that’s the lowest annualized core inflation reading since May 2021, though the metric still remains well above the 2% level the Federal Reserve has long targeted.

US Jobless Rate Hits Two-Year High Even as Hiring Stays Strong (Bloomberg🔒)

The US jobless rate climbed to a two-year high in February even as hiring remained healthy, pointing to a cooler yet resilient labor market. The report illustrates a labor market that is gradually downshifting, with more moderate job and pay gains that suggest the economy will keep expanding without much risk of a reacceleration in inflation. Such a combination gives room for Federal Reserve policymakers to lower interest rates this year.

America’s Plumber Deficit Isn’t Good for the Economy (Bloomberg🔒)

Pay varies widely around the country. A plumber in the Piedmont region of North Carolina earns $43,000 a year. One in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, can pull in almost $100,000. Despite the decent salary, the pace at which the US is minting new plumbers is lagging retirements. The widening plumber deficit matters for households facing hefty charges to fix a leak and businesses trying to get new buildings completed on time and on budget. This shortage cost the economy about $33 billion in 2022, according to an analysis by John Dunham & Associates, a research company in Longboat Key, Florida, which projects the country will be short about 550,000 plumbers by 2027.

New immigration estimates help make sense of the pace of employment (Brookings)

This analysis considers the macroeconomic implications of recent estimates of immigration flows. Recent immigration flows are notably higher than previous projections. New numbers from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that 3.3 million net immigrants arrived in 2023 compared to the 1.0 million projected prior to the pandemic. Higher immigration rates mean that employment growth does not need to slow significantly to get the labor market to a sustainable pace: The authors estimate that the labor market in 2023 could accommodate employment growth of 160,000 to 230,000—versus previous projections of 60,000 to 130,000—without adding pressure to wages and price inflation. The uptick can also help to explain the surprising strength in consumer spending and overall economic growth since 2022.

Immigration Drove America’s Postpandemic Urban Growth (WSJ🔒)

A Wall Street Journal analysis of county estimates for the year that ended June 30 shows that immigration was the main factor slowing or reversing population losses in large metros in the Northeast and Midwest after an exodus during the pandemic. Yet for some big U.S. cities, the latest figures offer a glimpse at how they still haven’t recovered from heavy outflows that started four years ago. New York City last year had a half million fewer people than it did at the start of the pandemic. San Francisco had lost about 65,000, the figures show. Nationwide, counties that form the core of the 50 largest metro areas last year gained 122,000 people, or 0.1%, reversing a small loss the previous year, the analysis shows. Those counties saw 566,000 net arrivals from abroad last year, up 15% from a year earlier, as immigration approached prepandemic levels.

Business

South Korea gets tough with Chinese platforms AliExpress, Temu, Shein (KED Global)

South Korea plans to introduce a get-tough e-commerce policy on Chinese platforms such as AliExpress, Temu and Shein amid increasing complaints about fake products and a lack of dispute settlements by online shopping mall operators.

US airlines warn of more Boeing delivery delays due to safety crisis (Reuters)

U.S. air carriers warned on Tuesday that their plans to increase capacity were in doubt due to more jet delivery delays from Boeing, opens new tab, as the hit to the airline industry from the planemaker's safety crisis worsens. The airline industry has cut expectations for deliveries this year due to Boeing's problems, complicating efforts to meet record travel demand. Boeing has been under heavy regulatory scrutiny following a harrowing Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines, opens new tab mid-air panel blowout that led to probes into the company's safety and quality standards in its production process.

US Steel Plunges for Second Day as Biden Comes Out Against Deal (Bloomberg🔒)

United States Steel Corp. plunged for a second day after President Joe Biden said the company should retain American ownership, coming out against a takeover by Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp. despite the risk of upsetting a key ally. The stock dropped as much as 11%, and has lost about a fifth of its value in the past two days, when news first broke that Biden would express concern about the deal. The shares are now trading at levels last seen before the Nippon deal was announced in December, suggesting investors are increasingly skeptical about its chances of success amid an ongoing federal review.

Lyft and Uber say they will leave Minneapolis after city council forces them to pay drivers more (AP)

Lyft and Uber said they will cease operations in Minneapolis after the city’s council voted Thursday to override a mayoral veto and require that ride-hailing services increase driver wages to the equivalent of the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour. Lyft called the ordinance “deeply flawed,” saying in a statement that it supports a minimum earning standard for drivers but not the one passed by the council. Seattle and New York City have passed similar policies in recent years that increase wages for ride-hailing drivers, and Uber and Lyft still operate in those cities.

Apple Reverses Termination Of Epic Games’ Developer Account Days After Removing It (Forbes🔒)

Apple will reinstate Epic Games’ developer account, according to a blog post update from the Fortnite developer, just days after terminating it over a licensing agreement dispute that would have prevented Fortnite from being available on the App Store in Europe, in the latest regulatory tussle between the two companies.

Crypto

Crypto Gets Blamed for a Real-Life Currency Crisis (WSJ🔒)

Tigran Gambaryan, Binance’s head of financial-crime compliance, flew to Nigeria’s capital to solve a problem: The government had blamed the world’s largest crypto exchange for crashing the currency. The American, a former Internal Revenue Service special agent, left his wife and children at home in Georgia in late February with a small suitcase for what he thought was a quick business trip. He hasn’t come back. Nigerian authorities detained Gambaryan and a colleague, Nadeem Anjarwalla, a U.K. and Kenyan national and Binance’s regional manager for Africa, according to the men’s families. The Binance employees, who are being held in a guarded house, haven’t been charged with any crimes. The government, which invited them to Nigeria for meetings, hasn’t publicly discussed the detentions. Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy with a population of more than 220 million, has faced many currency crises before. This is the first time that crypto has played a starring role. Bayo Onanuga, a special adviser to the Nigerian president, accused Binance of setting the exchange rate for Nigeria and hijacking the role of the central bank.

Energy

United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever (USEIA)

The United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row. Crude oil production in the United States, including condensate, averaged 12.9 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023, breaking the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million b/d, set in 2019. Average monthly U.S. crude oil production established a monthly record high in December 2023 at more than 13.3 million b/d. The crude oil production record in the United States in 2023 is unlikely to be broken in any other country in the near term because no other country has reached production capacity of 13.0 million b/d. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudi Aramco recently scrapped plans to increase production capacity to 13.0 million b/d by 2027.

Analysis: UK emissions in 2023 fell to lowest level since 1879 (Carbon Brief)

Carbon Brief’s analysis, based on preliminary government energy data, shows emissions fell to just 383m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2023. This is the first time they have dropped below 400MtCO2e since Victorian times. The UK’s territorial greenhouse gas emissions – those that occur within the country’s borders – have now fallen in 25 of the 34 years since 1990. This is the lowest since 1879 – outside the 1926 general strike – as shown in the figure below.

Auto

Negative Equity on Vehicle Trade-Ins Pick Up Steam as Used Car Values Dwindle, According to Edmunds' Q4 Used Vehicle Report (Edmunds)

A growing number of consumers are finding themselves upside down on their car loans as the used vehicle market continues to stabilize and used values dwindle. According to the latest Edmunds Used Vehicle Report: Used car values continue on a downward trend. The average transaction price (ATP) for all used vehicles in Q4 2023 dipped to $28,371, a 4.4% decrease from $29,690 in Q4 2022. Trade-ins with negative equity are on the rise. 20.4% of new vehicle sales with a trade-in had negative equity in Q4 2023 — the highest in two years — compared to 17.7% in Q4 2022 and 14.9% in Q4 2021. Consumers who are upside down on their auto loans owe more than ever before. The average amount owed on upside-down loans climbed to a record high of $6,064 in Q4 2023, compared to $5,347 in Q4 2022 and $4,143 in Q4 2021. "A storm is brewing in the used market as incentives and inventory continue to trickle back into the new vehicle market," said Ivan Drury, Edmunds' director of insights. "With demand for near-new vehicles on the decline, used car values are depreciating similarly to the way they did before the pandemic, and negative equity is rearing its ugly head."

The report: https://static.ed.edmunds-media.com/unversioned/img/industry-center/press/lp-promos/2023-q4-edmunds-used-vehicle-report.pdf

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies (NYT🔒)

In recent years, insurance companies have offered incentives to people who install dongles in their cars or download smartphone apps that monitor their driving, including how much they drive, how fast they take corners, how hard they hit the brakes and whether they speed. But “drivers are historically reluctant to participate in these programs,” as Ford Motor put it in a patent application that describes what is happening instead: Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry. Sometimes this is happening with a driver’s awareness and consent. Car companies have established relationships with insurance companies, so that if drivers want to sign up for what’s called usage-based insurance — where rates are set based on monitoring of their driving habits — it’s easy to collect that data wirelessly from their cars. But in other instances, something much sneakier has happened. Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis.

What to Do if Your Car Is Submerged in Water (WSJ🔒)

The death of a 50-year-old chief executive highlights a little-discussed reality of motor-vehicle safety: Approximately 400 people die annually in North America in a submerged vehicle. Angela Chao’s death resulted from a mistake she made with the gearshift in her Tesla SUV, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The error caused the vehicle to tip over an embankment and into a pond located on her Texas ranch’s 900 acres. There are no federal regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to protect people inside the car during these dangerous scenarios. Here’s what you need to know if you are ever in this situation. How much time do I have to act? Drivers have about one minute to get out of the car before it fills with water. In those 60 seconds, it is necessary to have the clarity of mind to act decisively, said Gordon Giesbrecht, a senior scholar at the University of Manitoba who studies vehicle-submersion safety. Try to stay calm, unbuckle your seat belt and lower your window down. Exiting through the open window is preferred above anything else. If there are children in the car, get them out first. It is important to act swiftly before the water level rises too high and the window can no longer be opened because the pressure on it becomes too great.

Hyundai and Kia to recall nearly 170,000 EVs over software problem in South Korea (Reuters)

Hyundai Motor Co, and sister company Kia Corp will recall about 170,000 electric vehicles (EVs) in South Korea over problems with software in the charging systems, South Korea's transport ministry said on Thursday. Hyundai will recall 113,916 EVs in the country, affecting five EV models, including Ioniq-series and Genesis models, the ministry said.

Real Estate

Less money, less house: How market forces are reshaping the American home (WP🔒)

The new American home is shrinking. After years of prioritizing large homes, the nation’s biggest and most powerful home builders are finally building more smaller ones, driving a shift toward more affordable housing. The boom in smaller construction has cut median new-home sizes by 4 percent in the past year, to 2,179 square feet, census data shows, the lowest reading since 2010. That’s helped bring down overall costs and contributed to a 6 percent dip in new-home prices in the same period.

Mortgage Rates Continue to Decrease (Freddie Mac)

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage decreased again this week, with declines totaling almost a quarter of a percent in two weeks’ time. Despite the recent dip, mortgage rates remain high as the market contends with the pressure of sticky inflation. In this environment, there is a good possibility that rates will stay higher for a longer period of time.

Technology

How the World’s Biggest Plane Would Supersize Wind Energy (WSJ🔒)

An aerospace engineer thinks he knows how to transform renewable energy: by building the world’s largest plane. Mark Lundstrom, an MIT-trained rocket scientist and Rhodes scholar, has spent more than seven years with an engineering team designing the WindRunner, a gargantuan cargo plane. If completed, it will be the largest plane by length and cargo volume. The plane’s purpose is to carry wind turbine blades the length of football fields. The blades, among the world’s longest, are currently used only for offshore projects because of transportation limitations onshore. Opening vast swaths of land to the largest turbines could transform wind energy, which has seen a slowdown in new U.S. onshore projects and price turmoil for offshore projects. The result would be land-based wind power installations with a blade tip reaching about 300 feet higher than the current average, roughly as tall as the U.S. Capitol with the Washington Monument stacked on top. Such projects would produce about double the energy current onshore installations do and be possible in more places, too.

Surgeons perform UK's first operation using Apple's Vision Pro headset (TechSpot)

Apple's Vision Pro might have its detractors, not least due to the $3,500 price tag, but its use in the enterprise and other non-consumer sectors could be revolutionary. In the UK, for example, surgeons have performed the first operation in the country where the mixed reality headset was utilized. Apple hopes that one area where the Vision Pro will find plenty of success is the medical industry. The profession is examining the use of mixed reality in certain fields and, according to some analysts, Apple's powerful headset could be a game changer. During a recent operation to repair a patient's spine at the private Cromwell Hospital in London, a scrub nurse working alongside the surgeon used the Vision Pro to help prepare, keep track of the procedure, and choose the right tools, reports the Daily Mail. This marked the first operation in the UK where the Vision Pro was used.

Cyber

The U.S. could ban TikTok. These countries have blocked or restricted it. (WP🔒)

The House of Representatives passed a measure on Wednesday that could lead to the forced sale of TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance — or to a nationwide ban in the United States. TikTok says it has 170 million users in the country. While the bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, the move represents growing fears about whether China may be able to access Americans’ personal data or otherwise influence them. The company has denied claims of government influence, stressed that it does not share data of U.S. users with the Chinese authorities and pointed to its funding from international investors. The federal government already bans TikTok on government-owned devices. Other countries around the world have also taken steps to ban or restrict the popular app — even as TikTok bans have faced criticism including from free-speech advocates, content creators and Beijing. Here’s what to know.

U.S. Spy Agencies Know Your Secrets. They Bought Them. (WSJ🔒)

In recent years, U.S. intelligence agencies, the military and even local police departments have gained access to enormous amounts of data through shadowy arrangements with brokers and aggregators. Everything from basic biographical information to consumer preferences to precise hour-by-hour movements can be obtained by government agencies without a warrant. Most of this data is first collected by commercial entities as part of doing business. Companies acquire consumer names and addresses to ship goods and sell services. They acquire consumer preference data from loyalty programs, purchase history or online search queries. They get geolocation data when they build mobile apps or install roadside safety systems in cars. But once consumers agree to share information with a corporation, they have no way to monitor what happens to it after it is collected. Many corporations have relationships with data brokers and sell or trade information about their customers. And governments have come to realize that such corporate data not only offers a rich trove of valuable information but is available for sale in bulk. It’s legal for the government to use commercial data in intelligence programs because data brokers have either gotten the consent of consumers to collect their information or have stripped the data of any details that could be traced back to an individual. Much commercially available data doesn’t contain explicit personal information. But the truth is that there are ways to identify people in nearly all anonymized data sets. If you can associate a phone, a computer or a car tire with a daily pattern of behavior or a residential address, it can usually be associated with an individual.

On popular online platforms, predatory groups coerce children into self-harm (WP🔒)

The perpetrators — identified by authorities as boys and men as old as mid-40s — seek out children with mental health issues and blackmail them into hurting themselves on camera, the examination found. They belong to a set of evolving online groups, some of which have thousands of members, that often splinter and take on new names but have overlapping membership and use the same tactics. Unlike many “sextortion” schemes that seek money or increasingly graphic images, these perpetrators are chasing notoriety in a community that glorifies cruelty, victims and law enforcement officials say. The FBI issued a public warning in September identifying eight such groups that target minors between the ages of 8 and 17, seeking to harm them for the members’ “own entertainment or their own sense of fame.”

Behind the OnlyFans porn boom: allegations of rape, abuse and betrayal (Reuters)

OnlyFans is an adults-only website where anyone – celebrities, porn stars, cash-strapped moms and aspiring influencers – can sell sexually explicit videos of themselves. Top earners make millions of dollars a year. Created in 2016, OnlyFans now boasts almost 240 million users and has achieved mainstream fame. Beyoncé namechecked it in a song lyric. Rapper Iggy Azalea said it had brought her a small fortune. But other people have reaped pain, not profit. They describe lives upended after sexually explicit content featuring them was posted and sold on OnlyFans without their consent.

Cybercrime Losses Have Tripled Since 2020 (Chartr)

oday, so much of our lives are online that perhaps it's no surprise that criminals are increasingly targeting us in the digital world as well as the physical. Indeed, in the FBI’s latest annual Internet Crime Report, it was estimated that American consumers and businesses lost a record $12.5bn to internet crimes last year, a 22% jump from 2022, with losses related to investment scams in particular rising, up 38% in 2023.

FBI Internet Crime Report: https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2023_IC3Report.pdf

Undersea Internet Cables Are Vulnerable Targets In Future Wars (Forbes🔒)

On [4 Mar], three fiber optic cables were damaged in the Red Sea, causing a reduction in internet bandwidth in the region that could take weeks or months to repair, due to ongoing conflict in Yemen. The three cables carried about 25% of the internet traffic in the region, forcing operators to turn to other cables and to satellites to route around the damage. The cause of the cable cuts was likely the anchor of the cargo vessel Rubymar, according to a CBS interview with White House national security communications advisor John Kirby, which was struck by missiles and abandoned by its crew in mid-February. Cutting these cables wasn’t deliberate, but the incident highlights the particular vulnerability of undersea cables, which carry about 97% of the planet’s internet traffic, to intentional disruption. “It’s concerningly easy,” Michael Darrah, a military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Forbes. “In fact it’s so easy that in many cases it’s hard to determine if it’s an accident or intentional.”

Artificial Intelligence

Adobe Firefly repeats the same AI blunders as Google Gemini (Semafor)

Firefly, Adobe’s AI image creation tool, repeats some of the same controversial mistakes that Google’s Gemini made in inaccurate racial and ethnic depictions, illustrating the challenges tech companies face across the industry. Google shut down its Gemini image creation tool last month after critics pointed out that it was creating historically inaccurate images, depicting America’s Founding Fathers as Black, for instance, and refusing to depict white people. CEO Sundar Pichai told employees the company “got it wrong.” The tests done by Semafor on Firefly replicated many of the same things that tripped up Gemini. The two services rely on similar techniques for creating images from written text, but they are trained on very different datasets. Adobe uses only stock images or images that it licenses. Adobe and Google also have different cultures. Adobe, a more traditionally structured company, has never been a hotbed of employee activism like Google. The common denominator is the core technology for image generation, and companies can attempt to corral it, but there is no guaranteed way to do it. I asked Firefly to create images using similar prompts that got Gemini in trouble. It created Black soldiers fighting for Nazi Germany in World War II. In scenes depicting the Founding Fathers and the constitutional convention in 1787, Black men and women were inserted into roles. When I asked it to create a comic book character of an old white man, it drew one, but also gave me three others of a Black man, a Black woman and a white woman. And yes, it even drew me a picture of Black Vikings, just like Gemini.

Underdog Who Beat Biden in American Samoa Used AI in Election Campaign (WSJ🔒)

The little-known presidential candidate who beat President Biden in American Samoa’s Democratic caucus earlier this week says artificial intelligence played a big role in his campaign strategy. Jason Palmer, an impact investor and venture capitalist who entered the race in November, has leveraged generative AI to communicate with voters via SMS text and email, and answer specific questions about his background and policy. Additionally, Palmer’s campaign website has an avatar, PalmerAI, that answers questions with the candidate’s voice and likeness. Palmer himself never set foot on the tiny territory of islands in the South Pacific during the campaign, conducting his entire bid virtually. He credits his 11-vote victory to an exceptional local team and its grassroots effort, but also said his use of AI made a meaningful difference. Text and email outreach to voters is nothing new for candidates, but in Palmer’s case, the AI can generate specific responses to voter questions and engage with them on a personal level without much human assistance—a huge benefit for a lean campaign with only five full-time staffers. Palmer spent less than $5,000 on the American Samoa campaign. “If I had millions of dollars to market to Colorado or Vermont, who knows I might have been more competitive in those states,” he said.

Life

The Rough Years That Turned Gen Z Into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters (WSJ🔒)

Young adults in Generation Z—those born in 1997 or after—have emerged from the pandemic feeling more disillusioned than any living generation before them, according to long-running surveys and interviews with dozens of young people around the country. They worry they’ll never make enough money to attain the security previous generations have achieved, citing their delayed launch into adulthood, an impenetrable housing market and loads of student debt.

A related graphic from chartr:

How couples meet in the US (Twitter)

Basically every category of meeting one's romantic partner is diving toward zero and getting eaten by online.

It's Obviously the Phones (Substack)

A year ago, I published an opinion essay for the New York Times that changed the trajectory of my career. It was about how fewer Americans are having sex, across nearly every demographic. For any of the usual caveats — wealth, age, orientation —the data almost always highlighted that previous generations in the same circumstances were having more sex than we are today. My purpose in writing the essay was mainly to try to emphasize the role that sex plays in our cultural wellbeing its connection to the loneliness epidemic. Many of us have developed a blasé attitude toward sex, and I wanted people to care. It wasn’t really about intercourse, and I said as much. It was about wanting to live in an lively, energetic society. Since writing, I have been continuously asked what I think the cause of all this is. Obviously, there isn’t one universal answer. After publishing, I went on radio shows and podcasts and was asked to share what I thought some of them could be. Economic despair, political unrest, even climate fears were among the reasons I’d heard cited. But all of that, honestly, feels pointlessly abstract. It puts the problem entirely out of our hands, when in fact I believe it may quite literally be in them. The problem is obviously our phones.

Why young men and women are drifting apart (Economist🔒)

In much of the developed world, the attitudes of young men and women are polarising. The Economist analysed polling data from 20 rich countries, using the European Social Survey, America’s General Social Survey and the Korean Social Survey. Two decades ago there was little difference between men and women aged 18-29 on a self-reported scale of 1-10 from very liberal to very conservative. But our analysis found that by 2020 the gap was 0.75 (see chart 1 ). For context, this is roughly twice the size of the gap in opinion between people with and without a degree in the same year.

LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6% (Gallup)

LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to grow, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual. The current figure is up from 5.6% four years ago and 3.5% in 2012, Gallup’s first year of measuring sexual orientation and transgender identity. Women are more likely than men to have an LGBTQ+ identification in the three youngest generations, especially in Generation Z and the millennial generation. Close to three in 10 Gen Z women, 28.5%, identify as LGBTQ+, compared with 10.6% of Gen Z men. Among millennials, 12.4% of women and 5.4% of men have an LGBTQ+ identification.

Book Review: "The Two-Parent Privilege" (Substack)

I like thinking about culture war topics from the perspective of forecasting and so Melissa Kearney’s new book, The Two-Parent Privilege, seemed like it would be a good background for a new project. There are a lot of people talking about how America has bifurcated into two societies. People in the upper middle class have college degrees and own their own homes, and working class Americans do not. But Kearney argues that one of the biggest distinctions is that the children of the upper middle class have fathers and the working class does not. This is a relatively recent occurrence. In 1960 only about 5% of children were raised in single parent homes, but then: “over the past 40-plus years, American society has engaged in a vast experiment of reshaping the most fundamental of social institutions—the family—and the resulting generations of data tell us in no uncertain terms how that has played out for children.” …Kearney’s intent was to talk about the topic in a data-driven way, so I think it deserves a data-driven review. I want to answer a few questions. Is the impact of single parenting on our society as bad as Kearney claims? Is economics really what caused this situation? And why did this surge of single parenting start so suddenly?

NOTE: Good book review and analysis of the data.

OPINION | Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore (Bloomberg🔒)

Frank Notestein, the Princeton demographer who became the founding director of the United Nations Population Division (UNPD), estimated in 1945 that the world’s population would be 3.3 billion by the year 2000. In fact, it exceeded 6.1 billion. Today it is estimated to be more than 8 billion. In its most recent projection, the UNPD’s median estimate is that the global population will reach 10.4 billion by the mid 2080s, with an upper bound of more than 12 billion by the end of the century. Yet that seems rather a low-probability scenario. The European Commission’s Centre of Expertise on Population and Migration projects that the global population will peak at 9.8 billion in the 2070s. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent research organization, it will peak at a lower level and earlier still, at 9.7 billion in 2064. The key word is “peak.” Nearly all demographers now appreciate that we shall likely reach peak humanity this century. This is not because a lethal pandemic will drive up mortality far more than Covid-19 did, though that possibility should never be ruled out. Nor is it because the UNPD incorporates into its population model any other apocalyptic scenario, whether disastrous climate change or nuclear war. It is simply because, all over the world, the total fertility rate (TFR) — the number of live children the average woman bears in her lifetime — has been falling since the 1970s. In one country after another, it has dropped under the 2.1 threshold (the “replacement rate,” allowing for childhood deaths and sex imbalances), below which the population is bound to decline.

Education

New numbers show falling standards in American high schools (Economist🔒)

The trend at Springfield High is all too common. Between 2007 and 2020 the average graduation rate at public high schools in America leapt from 74% to 87%. During this period pupils notched up gains in course credits and grade-point averages. Yet SAT scores fell (see chart 1). Results from the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international test of 15-year-olds, show that maths and reading literacy are flat or down. An analysis by The Economist suggests that schools are lowering academic standards in order to enable more pupils to graduate. And the trend is hurting low-performing pupils the most.

U. of Texas at Austin Will Return to Standardized Test Requirement (NYT🔒)

The University of Texas at Austin said Monday that it would again require standardized tests for admissions, becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores that were abandoned during the pandemic. A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began to move away from requiring test scores, at least temporarily, amid concerns they helped fuel inequality. But a growing number of those schools have reversed those policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown and Purdue, with several announcing the changes in recent months.

Who Needs Paper? Many Students Embrace the All-Digital SAT. (NYT🔒)

On Saturday, students in America took the newest version of the SAT, which was shorter, faster — and most notably, all online. Some exams were briefly mired by technical glitches, but even so, many test takers had positive views about the new format. They were especially relieved with the brevity of the exam — which dropped from three hours to a little over two hours — as well as the ability to set their own pace as they worked through the questions. Given on paper for 98 years, the SAT was updated to reflect the experience of a generation raised in an era of higher anxiety, challenged attention spans and remote learning. The change comes as the College Board, which administers the test, and proponents of standardizing testing say that the exams still have a place in determining college acceptance and aptitude.

Inside the Blunders That Plunged the College Admission Season Into Disarray (NYT🔒)

There were just days left to process a batch of federal financial aid applications when Education Department officials made a fateful discovery: 70,000 emails from students all over the country, containing reams of essential data. They were sitting in an inbox, untouched. That discovery last week started a panicked, three-day crash effort by more than 200 of the department’s employees, including Richard Cordray, the nation’s top student aid official, to read through each of the emails one by one and extract crucial identifying information required for financial aid. The students’ futures depended on it. It was another setback in the botched rollout of a new version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA, that millions of families and thousands of schools rely on to determine how students will pay for college. Three years ago, Congress ordered the Education Department to revamp the new form to make it easier and more accessible. It has been anything but.

Health

Children will not be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, [England National Health Service] says (ITV News)

Children will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed. The government said it welcomed the “landmark decision”, adding it would help ensure care is based on evidence and is in the “best interests of the child”. The NHS England policy document, published on Tuesday, said: “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of (puberty blockers) to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”

America’s fentanyl epidemic, explained in six charts (Economist🔒)

Purdue Pharma first released OxyContin, an opioid painkiller, in 1996. Other drugmakers followed, and scores of Americans got hooked on the highly addictive pills. In 2010 Purdue reformulated OxyContin to make it harder to crush and then snort or inject. That, plus stricter guidelines for prescribing opioids, reduced supply and increased the price. Addicts in withdrawal turned to heroin instead. Later, many moved on to fentanyl because they craved a more powerful high. Not everyone who dies of a fentanyl overdose takes the drug knowingly: fentanyl powder is often mixed with other substances and counterfeit fentanyl pills are passed off as less dangerous drugs. The DEA says that it is so powerful that “one pill can kill”.

How well do you score on brain health? (Harvard Health Blog)

An international study led by researchers at the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital devised and validated a Brain Care Score (BCS) card that makes it easy to total up what you're doing well and where you might do better. The prize is a healthier brain — specifically a lower risk for dementia and strokes. Designed to predict how current habits might impact future brain health, the user-friendly scorecard is apparently the first of its kind, says Dr. Andrew Budson, a lecturer in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

The scorecard: https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/1291020/fneur-14-1291020-HTML/image_m/fneur-14-1291020-g001.jpg

America’s 100 most obese cities revealed — and the top 10 have something in common (New York Post)

A new report has determined that America’s 10 most overweight cities are bottom-heavy — located entirely in the South, that is. Researchers from WalletHub analyzed obesity statistics from all over the country — 42% of Americans struggle with their weight — along with additional factors like health consciousness and diet to create the findings, which determined the country’s 100 most obese locales. McAllen, a small city on the southern tip of Texas near Mexico, was ranked the most obese in the U.S., followed by Jackson, Mississippi; Shreveport, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; and Little Rock, Arkansas, rounding out the top five. The 10 most overweight U.S. cities McAllen, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; Shreveport, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Knoxville, Tennessee; Memphis, Tennessee; Lafayette, Louisiana; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Under-five mortality (UNICEF)

The under-five mortality rate refers to the probability a newborn would die before reaching exactly 5 years of age, expressed per 1,000 live births. In 2022, 4.9 million children under 5 years of age died. This translates to 13,400 children under the age of 5 dying every day in 2022. Globally, infectious diseases, including pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, remain a leading cause of under-five deaths, along with preterm birth and intrapartum-related complications. The global under-five mortality rate declined by 60 per cent, from 93 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 37 in 2022. Despite this considerable progress, improving child survival remains a matter of urgent concern. In 2022 alone, roughly 13,400 under-five deaths occurred every day, an intolerably high number of largely preventable child deaths.

Food & Drink

The World Has Too Much Wine, and Farmers Are Ripping Up Vines (Bloomberg🔒)

It’s a problem that’s playing out all around the world. Though global production hit a 60-year low in 2023, a wine glut is persisting, signifying that demand is falling even faster. And while data from the International Organization of Vine and Wine show that global consumption has lagged behind production of wine since at least 1995, the industry has hit an inflection point as changing drinking patterns and lackluster economic conditions look here to stay. California is currently experiencing “one of the worst imbalances in demand and supply we’ve seen in 30 years,” said Stuart Spencer, executive director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission in the Central Valley. Meanwhile, Australia produced its smallest amount of wine in 15 years in the 2022-23 season but continues to struggle with historically high inventory levels, according to a November report by industry group Wine Australia.

Nature

Why did menopause evolve? New study of whales gives some clues (Reuters)

Menopause is a rare trait among Earth's species, known to exist in only a few. Humans are one. Killer whales and four other toothed whales are the others. New research examines menopause in these whales, with findings that may help explain why this phenomenon evolved, given that it is known in just six of the 6,000-plus mammal species living today. It might be titled: the tale of the helpful grandma whale. The scientists compared the lifespans of 32 toothed whale species. They found that in the five menopausal species - killer whales, false killer whales, beluga whales, narwhals and short-finned pilot whales - the females live about four decades longer than the females of non-menopausal species of similar size. Other toothed whales such as sperm whales, as well as the filter-feeding baleen whales, including the blue whale, have not been found to experience menopause. "This result gives a unique insight into how menopause has evolved. Menopausal species of whales have a similar reproductive period to non-menopausal species. It is the life after reproduction that differs," said Sam Ellis, a lecturer in animal behavior at the University of Exeter in England and lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Giant redwoods: World’s largest trees 'thriving in UK' (BBC News)

The trees, which were first brought to the UK about 160 years ago, are growing at a similar rate to those found in their native range in California. The scientists believe the UK trees are also outnumbering the ones in the mountains of Sierra Nevada. However, they aren't yet as tall. In California the biggest reach 90m high, but in the UK the tallest is 54.87m. But that's because the introduced trees are still very young. Giant redwoods can live for more than 2,000 years, so there's still plenty of time for the UK's trees to catch up. It's estimated there are half a million redwoods in the UK - this includes the giant redwoods studied (Sequoiadendron giganteum - also commonly called giant sequoias) as well as coastal redwoods and dune redwoods, both of which were introduced at later dates. But the scientists in the study say they think most of the UK trees are giant redwoods. By comparison there are about 80,000 mature giant redwoods in their native range in the forests of California.

Staff at Virginia wildlife center pretending to be red foxes as they care for orphaned kit (AP)

Employees of the Richmond Wildlife Center are doing their best to act like mother foxes in interactions with an orphaned kit that found her way into their care.

Travel

Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras (NYT🔒)

Airbnb said this week that it was banning the use of all indoor security cameras in its listings worldwide, an update to its current policy allowing the devices to be installed in common areas such as hallways and living rooms.

The Charges That Can Nearly Double Your Uber or Lyft to the Airport (WSJ🔒)

The typical price for similar rides booked without a reservation: $35 to $40. Airlines and hotels get plenty of grief for extra charges. The major ride-hailing companies are in on the game, too. They have a lineup of fees and upsells galore—extra comfort and XXL cars and priority pickup among them—that are pushing up trip prices. These add-ons are helping boost the companies’ financial fortunes: Uber just reported its first annual profit and Lyft has trimmed its losses. They also now have some travelers seeking other options when available.

Airlines Want to Stop ‘Travel Hack’ JSX From Luring Rich Flyers Away (Bloomberg🔒)

Alex Wilcox’s furious rivals say he’s exploiting a loophole. Wilcox counters that they’re just annoyed he’s treading on their turf. At the heart of their dispute is JSX, a Dallas-based carrier beloved by work travelers for offering convenience like a chartered plane at near business class prices. Wilcox got the idea for the service in what’s possibly the least glamorous business origin story of all time. Combing through US Federal Aviation Administration regulations, he learned that while scheduled flights with more than nine seats have to meet onerous safety and security requirements, on-demand public charters have separate, less stringent rules. Though, they can’t specify flight times or cities or sell single seats. To get around that, Wilcox decided to create two companies that would work together: One would make a flight schedule and sell tickets, and a second would fly the aircraft on specified routes at set times and dates. In reality, though, it’s one entity working behind the scenes.

NOTE: Just for fun, I checked out the prices—it’d cost me about $1K to fly round-trip from Austin to Taos (the only city JSX had a route to from Austin); a similar route (Austin to Albuquerque) would cost me $500 on American. But, it would also save me a lot of time on JSX (no TSA lines or having to deal with other airport stuff). You’re paying for convenience (as long as they’re going to the city you want).

Entertainment

Oppenheimer Is The Biggest Box Office Earner To Win Best Picture At The Oscars In Two Decades (Forbes🔒)

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” ended a years-long Academy Awards drought for big-budget blockbusters on Sunday, winning the Oscar for best picture and six other prizes and bucking a trend of small-budget or independent films winning the prize that had prompted questions about the Academy being out of touch with the film audience.

Sports

2024 March Madness: Men's NCAA tournament schedule, dates (NCAA)

Here is the schedule for March Madness 2024, which begins with Selection Sunday on March 17, 2024.

Female Athletes Sue NCAA Over Transgender Competitors in Sports (The FP)

Over a dozen female athletes are suing the National Collegiate Athletics Association for letting transgender athletes compete against them and use female locker rooms in college sports. At the center of the class-action lawsuit is Lia Thomas, the trans athlete who dominated the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. The suit states that both the NCAA and Georgia Tech, which hosted the event, knowingly violated Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for men and women in college education and sports. The lawsuit, the first federal action of its kind, seeks to change the rules, rendering any biological males ineligible to compete against female athletes. It demands the NCAA revoke all awards given to trans athletes in women’s competitions and “reassign” them to their female contenders. It also asks for “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants’ wrongful conduct.”

Girls are falling in love with wrestling, the nation’s fastest-growing high school sport (AP)

This year, hundreds of girls competed in Pennsylvania’s first sanctioned state tournament as the state rocketed to more than 180 high school teams from none in 2020.

See-Through Baseball Pants Have Fans, and Brands, Pointing Fingers (NYT🔒)

People cannot stop talking about the league’s new uniforms, specifically the pants, which leave little to the imagination. The issue of fabric so sheer it seemed transparent cropped up in late February when players began having their photos taken at spring training, which gave fans — and some players — their first glimpse of M.L.B.’s new uniforms, which were designed by Nike and produced by the sports memorabilia behemoth Fanatics. “Fanatics is going to hell,” an X user said in reference to a particularly explicit photo of a San Diego Padres player bending over on the field. The transparency of the pants quickly became an online sensation. “Buying my wife Fanatics baseball pants instead of lingerie,” read an X post with more than 33,000 likes. “Whenever I’m nervous public speaking I just pretend people in the audience are wearing Fanatics baseball pants,” another person joked.

Watching Sports Is a Mess. Can a New Streaming Service Fix That? (WSJ🔒)

Last month, a consortium of media giants unveiled plans for a new streaming service that is expected to make sports watching simpler. The streamer, which is scheduled to go live this fall, will bundle ESPN+ with 14 sports-heavy with Fox, ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery. The companies have yet to come up with a name or disclose a price for the service, but news of its creation sent shock waves through the sports and media worlds. Sports has never been more crucial to the survival of traditional television: Of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2023, sports accounted for a whopping 96, according to Nielsen.

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.

Curated Compositions

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