This week in the news | 3 Feb 24
News from the past week, and a few other things.
👋 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
WORLD
NORTH AMERICA
DATA: December migrant encounters hit record while drug seizures fall (ABC15) 📊
Lt. gov.: Texas ‘will not stop’ putting up razor wire on border after Supreme Court ruling (The Hill)
‘Pandemic of snow’ in Anchorage sets a record for the earliest arrival of 100 inches of snow (AP)
LATIN AMERICA
EUROPE
MIDDLE EAST
OPINION | A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big. (NYT🔒)
US Strikes Multiple Drones in Yemen, American Official Says (VOA)
Inside Saudi Arabia’s $800 Billion Tourism Moonshot (Forbes🔒)
The State Department allows the sale of F-16 jets to Turkey to move forward (NPR)
Saudis Resume US Defense Talks After Pause From Israel-Hamas War (Bloomberg🔒)
AFRICA
Ecowas: Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso quit West African bloc (BBC)
Major Donors Pause Funding for U.N. Agency as Scandal Widens (NYT🔒)
Naira Plunges 31%, Moving Closer to Nigeria’s Street Rate (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
A fire set off by a gas explosion in Kenya kills at least 3 people and injures 280 others (AP)
ASIA-PACIFIC
China Evergrande ordered to liquidate in landmark moment for crisis-hit sector (Reuters)
China Merges Hundreds of Rural Banks as Financial Risks Mount (Bloomberg🔒)
How the US is preparing for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (Reuters)
The Myths That Warp How America Sees Russia—and Vice Versa (Foreign Affairs)
SPACE
Webb telescope captures 'stunning' images of 19 spiral galaxies (Reuters) 📊
Japan’s ‘Moon Sniper’ Wakes Upside-Down On Moon, Immediately Starts Snapping Pics (Forbes🔒)
GOVERNMENT
DEFENSE
US approves sale of F-16 jets to Turkey, F-35s to Greece (Defense News)
Foreign Military Sales Sets New Record, Up 55.9 Percent in 2023 (Air and Space Forces)
Navy to allow those without high school diploma or GED to enlist (Navy Times)
Expect ‘AI versus AI’ conflict soon, Pentagon cyber leader says (Defense One)
ECONOMY
Fed's Powell sees lower rates on the horizon as inflation ebbs, economy bounces ahead (Reuters) 📊
Jobs Growth of 353,000 Blasts Past Expectations as Labor Market Stays Hot (WSJ🔒) 📊
Job Quitting Fell 12% Last Year—and That’s Bad News for the Economy (WSJ🔒) 📊
Inflation has fallen. Why are groceries still so expensive? (WP🔒) 📊
U.S. winning world economic war (Axios) 📊
BUSINESS
Air freight rates rise amid Red Sea crisis and in run-up to Asia's Lunar New Year (Reuters)
Russian oil flows through Red Sea still face lower risks (Reuters)
The $400,000 Job That Doesn’t Require a College Degree (WSJ🔒)
Why Elon Musk’s $55.8 Billion Tesla Pay Package Was Struck Down in Court (WSJ🔒)
Elon Musk is unfathomably rich. Here’s where his money is stashed. (WP🔒) 📊
Should Amazon Be Responsible for Everything It Sells and Ships? A U.S. Agency Will Soon Decide (WSJ🔒)
Efficiency Vs. Productivity At Work: How To Balance Both (Forbes🔒)
CRYPTO
ENERGY
Saudi Aramco Drops Expansion Plan, Raising Demand Questions (Bloomberg🔒)
California and Big Oil are splitting after century-long affair (Reuters) 📊
REAL ESTATE
PERSONAL FINANCE
TECHNOLOGY
SCIENCE
CYBER
Exclusive: US disabled Chinese hacking network targeting critical infrastructure (Reuters)
German railway seeks IT admin to manage MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 systems (TechSpot)
Meta, TikTok and other social media CEOs testify in heated Senate hearing on child exploitation (AP)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Opinion | Should 4 People Be Able to Control the Equivalent of a Nuke? (Politico)
AI Officer Is the Hot New Job That Pays Over $1 Million (Bloomberg🔒)
LIFE
HEALTH
Can San Francisco Solve Its Drug Crisis? Five Things to Consider. (NYT🔒) 📊
Destigmatizing Drug Use Has Been a Profound Mistake (The Atlantic)
FOOD & DRINK
US Chicken Prices to Fall at Last Thanks to Green Fuel Boom (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
The plants used to make the world’s best mezcal are disappearing (WP🔒)
How a trendy sushi roll usurped the traditions of ‘Setsubun’ (The Japan Times)
NATURE
ENTERTAINMENT
Alberto Cartuccia Cingolani (YouTube)
Pop songs are getting shorter in the era of streaming and TikTok (WP🔒) 📊
Amazon Prime is now charging you if you want to avoid commercials on its streaming service (Fortune)
Suits was streamed more in a single year than any TV show in history (Chartr) 📊
Universal Planning New Orlando Theme Park Featuring Mario And Harry Potter—Here’s What We Know (Forbes🔒) 📊
Universal Music Group, Taylor Swift’s label, says it will pull tunes from TikTok (LA Times)
SPORTS
LeBron has played against 35% of all players in NBA history (Twitter)
Lewis Hamilton to Join Ferrari F1 Team in 2025, Leaving Mercedes (Bloomberg🔒)
FOR FUN
THE SLOW BREW ☕
A more relaxed approach to the summaries.
WORLD
Think the Baby Bust Was Bad Before? Just Look at It Now. (NYT🔒) 📊
The baby bust that we all know about has gotten worse in a way that isn’t yet widely understood. Birthrates, which have been falling for decades, declined even more during the Covid pandemic. And they have continued to fall since, according to a report to clients by James Pomeroy, a global economist for HSBC, the London-based bank. While the final numbers may come in marginally different, they’re unlikely to change the message of this chart below, which itself is slightly updated from the one that appeared in the bank’s report. In most of the countries for which Pomeroy managed to get data, the total number of births continued to fall steeply in 2023. The United States did better than most, with a decline of 1.9 percent. The Czech Republic, Ireland and Poland all experienced declines of 10 percent or more. To Pomeroy, the most “staggering” decline is the 8.1 percent drop in South Korea, because that nation already had the world’s lowest total fertility rate in 2022, at 0.78. (The total fertility rate is the number of children a woman would have over her lifetime if in each year of her life she experienced the birthrate that women of that age experience now. The total fertility rate required to keep a nation from shrinking over the long term in the absence of immigration is 2.1.)
NORTH AMERICA
DATA: December migrant encounters hit record while drug seizures fall (ABC15)
In December, more than 302,000 migrant encounters were reported by US Customs and Border Protection. It's the highest number of encounters in at least 52 months. At the same time, there were 608 drug seizure events. It ranks as the lowest in 52 months.
US Customs and Border Protection data 📊
Official data from CBP filtered for Southwest and Northern land borders. Categories include: Accompanied Minors (AM), Individuals in a Family Unit (FMUA), Single Adults, Unaccompanied Children (UC) / Single Minors.
NATIONWIDE ENCOUNTERS
SOUTHWEST LAND BORDER ENCOUNTERS
TEXAS ENCOUNTERS
Lt. gov.: Texas ‘will not stop’ putting up razor wire on border after Supreme Court ruling (The Hill)
Migrants who are either apprehended and expelled from the country or were apprehended but allowed to go through routine removal proceedings, which include seeking asylum while in the U.S., are categorized as encounters.
‘Pandemic of snow’ in Anchorage sets a record for the earliest arrival of 100 inches of snow (AP)
Even by Alaska standards, there’s a lot of snow this winter. So much snow has fallen — so far, more than 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) — that roofs on commercial buildings are collapsing around Anchorage and officials are urging residents to break out their shovels to avoid a similar fate at home. Over the weekend, there was nearly 16 more inches (41 centimeters) of snowfall, pushing Alaska’s largest city past the 100-inch (254-centimeters) mark earlier than at any other time in its history.
LATIN AMERICA
US reviewing Venezuelan sanctions policy in wake of court decision (Reuters)
The U.S. is reviewing its sanctions policy against Venezuela after a court in that country upheld a ban preventing presidential candidate Maria Corina Machado from holding office, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday. The ruling by Venezuela's Supreme Justice Tribunal on Friday means Machado, a 56-year-old industrial engineer, cannot register her candidacy for presidential elections scheduled for the second half of 2024.
EUROPE
EU leaders unlock €50bn support package for Ukraine (BBC) 📊
All 27 European leaders have agreed to a €50bn ($55bn; £43bn) aid package for Ukraine, European Council President Charles Michel said. "We have a deal," Mr Michel wrote on X, formerly Twitter. He said that the agreement "locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine". There had been fears that Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban would block the aid package as he had done already at a European summit last December. Mr Orban had said he wanted to force a rethink of EU policy towards Ukraine and questioned the idea of committing to fund Ukraine for the next four years. News of the agreement was announced less than two hours after the summit started, surprising many observers who had expected talks to go on much longer due to the depth of disagreement between Mr Orban and the other EU leaders.
England's hedges would go around Earth ten times (BBC) 📊
England's hedgerows would stretch almost ten times around the Earth if lined up end to end.
MIDDLE EAST
U.S. Strikes Iran-Backed Groups in Syria and Iraq (WSJ🔒)
The U.S. began a series of airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq on Friday, hitting seven facilities in a bid to deter further attacks against American forces in the region after U.S. troops were killed in a deadly drone strike in Jordan, a U.S. defense official said.
OPINION | A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big. (NYT🔒)
There are two things I believe about the widening crisis in the Middle East. We are about to see a new Biden administration strategy unfold to address this multifront war involving Gaza, Iran, Israel and the region — what I hope will be a “Biden Doctrine” that meets the seriousness and complexity of this dangerous moment. And if we don’t see such a big, bold doctrine, the crisis in the region is going to metastasize in ways that will strengthen Iran, isolate Israel and leave America’s ability to influence events there for the better in tatters. A Biden Doctrine — as I’m terming the convergence of strategic thinking and planning that my reporting has picked up — would have three tracks. On one track would be a strong and resolute stand on Iran, including a robust military retaliation against Iran’s proxies and agents in the region in response to the killing of three U.S. soldiers at a base in Jordan by a drone apparently launched by a pro-Iranian militia in Iraq. On the second track would be an unprecedented U.S. diplomatic initiative to promote a Palestinian state — NOW. It would involve some form of U.S. recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel. Biden administration officials have been consulting experts inside and outside the U.S. government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian statehood might take. On the third track would be a vastly expanded U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia, which would also involve Saudi normalization of relations with Israel — if the Israeli government is prepared to embrace a diplomatic process leading to a demilitarized Palestinian state led by a transformed Palestinian Authority.
US Strikes Multiple Drones in Yemen, American Official Says (VOA)
The United States struck up to 10 unmanned drones in Yemen that were preparing to launch, a U.S. official said late on Wednesday, amid escalating tensions from the war in Gaza spreading through the region. A U.S. Navy ship also shot down three Iranian drones and a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile in the Gulf of Aden, the U.S. military's Central Command said in a statement. There were no injuries or damage reported, it said. The Iran-aligned Houthi militants, who control the most populous parts of Yemen, have launched a wave of exploding drones and missiles at commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in recent weeks, calling it a response to Israel's military operations in Gaza and a show of solidarity to Palestinians.
Inside Saudi Arabia’s $800 Billion Tourism Moonshot (Forbes🔒)
The Middle East kingdom is on massive building spree—creating private islands, luxury hotels, theme parks, cruise ports, even a desert ski resort. The question remains: If they build it, who will come?
The State Department allows the sale of F-16 jets to Turkey to move forward (NPR)
The State Department said it would allow the sale of some $23 billion worth of fighter jets and equipment to Turkey, among the final steps in a much delayed transaction that has severely strained the relationship between Ankara and Washington. The sale of the 40 F-16 fighter jets and upgrades to dozens of other jets became linked to Sweden's accession to NATO, with the U.S. postponing the transfer of the Lockheed Martin-produced aircraft until the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan approved Sweden's membership this past week.
AFRICA
Ecowas: Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso quit West African bloc (BBC)
Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have announced they are leaving the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). The junta-led countries had already been suspended from the bloc, which has been urging them to return to democratic rule. The three governments said it was a "sovereign decision" to withdraw from Ecowas. They were also founding members of the bloc, first established in 1975. In a joint statement - that was read out on state broadcasters in the three countries - they said Ecowas had " drifted from the ideals of its founding fathers and the spirit of Pan-Africanism." It goes on to say that Ecowas "under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, has become a threat to member states and peoples," adding that the bloc had failed to help them tackle the jihadist violence in their countries.
Major Donors Pause Funding for U.N. Agency as Scandal Widens (NYT🔒)
Germany, Britain and at least four other countries said Saturday they were suspending funding for the United Nations agency that provides food, water and essential services for Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, many of whom have been described as being on the brink of starvation after 16 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas. The countries joined the United States, which said on Friday it would withhold funding for the group, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, after a dozen of its employees were accused by Israel of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks. The United Nations has not made public the details of the accusations against the UNRWA employees, who have been fired, but a senior U.N. official briefed on the accusations called them “extremely serious and horrific.”
Naira Plunges 31%, Moving Closer to Nigeria’s Street Rate (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
Nigeria’s naira plunged to a record against the dollar following a revision of the methodology used to set the exchange rate, in effect the second devaluation of the currency in seven months. The local unit depreciated 31% to 1,413 naira a dollar on Monday in the so-called NAFEX fixing, the official foreign exchange window, according to data published by FMDQ, which calculates the exchange rate for the West African nation. The move came after the Central Bank of Nigeria accused traders of manipulating the exchange rate by under-reporting transaction rates. Africa’s biggest oil producer has battled volatility in the exchange rate since the foreign currency reforms in June. The central bank has blamed inadequate dollar liquidity for exacerbating price swings and promised to boost supply to clear a backlog of foreign-exchange demand.
A fire set off by a gas explosion in Kenya kills at least 3 people and injures 280 others (AP)
A truck loaded with liquid petroleum gas cylinders exploded in a depot in the Kenyan capital and set off a late-night inferno that rapidly spread and burned homes and warehouses, killing at least three people and injuring 280, officials said Friday. The death toll was expected to rise. At least 24 people were critically injured, the Kenya Red Cross said, after a huge fireball erupted from the gas depot. Some gas cylinders were thrown hundreds of meters (feet), sparking separate fires in the neighborhood.
ASIA-PACIFIC
China Evergrande ordered to liquidate in landmark moment for crisis-hit sector (Reuters)
A Hong Kong court on Monday ordered the liquidation of property giant China Evergrande Group, opens new tab, dealing a fresh blow to confidence in the country's fragile property market as policymakers step up efforts to contain a deepening crisis. Justice Linda Chan decided to liquidate the world's most indebted developer, with more than $300 billion of total liabilities, after noting Evergrande had been unable to offer a concrete restructuring plan more than two years after defaulting on its offshore debt and following several court hearings.
How the US is preparing for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (Reuters)
The United States and its allies are increasingly worried that in the coming years Chinese President Xi Jinping could order his military to seize Taiwan, the democratically governed island China considers its own territory. So, the U.S. military is taking a hard look at its own military readiness and trying to play catch-up in a critical area: its logistics network.
China Merges Hundreds of Rural Banks as Financial Risks Mount (Bloomberg🔒)
China is embarking on its biggest consolidation in the banking industry by merging hundreds of rural lenders into regional behemoths amid growing signs of financial stress. After engineering mergers of rural cooperatives and rural commercial banks in at least seven provinces since 2022, policymakers pinpointed tackling risks at the $6.7 trillion sector as one of its top priorities for this year. That means another wave of consolidation is on the way across the nation. China’s banking industry has been weighed down by a litany of troubles over the past years, including a deepening slump in the real estate market and an overall fragile economy. The 2,100 banks in the rural cooperative system saw their bad-loan ratio stand at 3.48% at the end of 2022, more than twice as high as that for the whole sector.
The Myths That Warp How America Sees Russia—and Vice Versa (Foreign Affairs)
Russia and the United States harbor especially powerful myths about each other. The myth that Russia believes about the United States is that it has vassals rather than allies—that it is a hegemonic power that hides ruthless ambition and self-interest behind appeals to liberal principles and legal order. Americans see Russia, meanwhile, as a country without domestic politics—the ultimate autocratic power whose malicious, unaccountable leader runs roughshod over what citizens want. As long ago as 1855, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln described Russia as a place “where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” After more than a century of tension and conflict, the U.S.-Russian relationship is now structured around these myths. Myths weigh down that relationship, obscuring nuance and clear perception. And they have shaped, and will continue to shape, each country’s part in the war in Ukraine. The myth that many Russians hold of the United States is continually driving the Kremlin toward harmful belligerence. The myth that Americans hold of Russia is also a trap, leading policymakers to misread the Kremlin and to miss opportunities to weaken the regime or to find compromises. To minimize dangerous misinterpretations, U.S. leaders need to work harder to rise above these myths and archetypes. A better understanding of the United States’ own myths—and of Russia’s—would give U.S. policymakers more flexibility, help to foster strategic empathy, and anticipate future changes in the Russian body politic.
SPACE
Webb telescope captures 'stunning' images of 19 spiral galaxies (Reuters) 📊
A batch of newly released images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope show in remarkable detail 19 spiral galaxies residing relatively near our Milky Way, offering new clues on star formation as well as galactic structure and evolution. The images were made public on Monday by a team of scientists involved in a project called Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) that operates across several major astronomical observatories. The closest of the 19 galaxies is called NGC5068, about 15 million light years from Earth, and the most distant of them is NGC1365, about 60 million light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
Japan’s ‘Moon Sniper’ Wakes Upside-Down On Moon, Immediately Starts Snapping Pics (Forbes🔒)
Japan’s “Moon Sniper” rover on Monday regained power and has woken up on the Moon, a surprise turnaround for the country’s historic space mission after its successful “pinpoint” landing on the lunar surface more than a week was marred by technical challenges and forced into hibernation.
GOVERNMENT
Trump Could Owe More Than $400 Million After Court Rulings This Week—Here’s What To Know About His Finances (Forbes🔒)
A jury ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll on Friday, ahead of an anticipated verdict in his civil fraud trial that could sentence him to pay out $370 million as soon as this week—potentially dealing a significant blow to the billionaire’s finances.
DEFENSE
US approves sale of F-16 jets to Turkey, F-35s to Greece (Defense News)
The Biden administration has approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey following the Turkish government’s ratification this week of Sweden’s membership in NATO. The move is a significant development in the expansion of the alliance, which has taken on additional importance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The State Department notified Congress of its approval of the $23 billion F-16 sale to Turkey, along with a companion $8.6 billion sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets to Greece, late Friday. The move came just hours after Turkey deposited its “instrument of ratification” for Sweden’s accession to NATO with Washington, which is the repository for alliance documents and after several key members of Congress lifted their objections.
Foreign Military Sales Sets New Record, Up 55.9 Percent in 2023 (Air and Space Forces)
The U.S. transferred a record $80.9 billion worth of military equipment and services to other countries in fiscal 2023, a 55.9 percent increase over the fiscal 2022 level of $50.9 billion, according to the U.S. State Department. “This is the highest annual total of sales and assistance provided to our allies and partners,” a State Department release said. The total marks progress in State’s goal of accelerating FMS cases after an internal review last year of how the process could be sped up. Of the overall figure, $62.25 billion was funded by “U.S. ally and partner nations,” while the rest was financed by the U.S. The roughly $18 billion remainder includes about $4 billion through the foreign military financing program and $14.68 billion for State Department programs such as anti-narcotics trafficking enforcement and de-mining operations, as well as the Pentagon Defense Building Capacity programs such as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
Navy to allow those without high school diploma or GED to enlist (Navy Times)
The Navy said Friday that it will allow those without a high school diploma to enlist as long as they score a 50 or higher on the Armed Forces Qualification Test that all prospects must take, the latest move to boost recruitment in the face of an historic recruiting crisis reverberating across the services. Those without a General Educational Development, or GED, credential will also be able to enlist, as long as they hit that test score threshold, according to the Chief of Naval Personnel’s office.
Expect ‘AI versus AI’ conflict soon, Pentagon cyber leader says (Defense One)
Low-grade “AI versus AI” conflict in which artificial intelligence systems will be used by adversaries to carry out cyberattacks against the U.S. is likely in the near future, Jude Sunderbruch, the Defense Department’s Cyber Crime Center (DC3) director said Thursday. He spoke at DefenseScoop’s Google Defense Forum alongside Col. Richard Leach, the Defense Information Systems Agency’s intelligence director.
ECONOMY
Fed's Powell sees lower rates on the horizon as inflation ebbs, economy bounces ahead (Reuters) 📊
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in a sweeping endorsement of the U.S. economy's strength, said on Wednesday that interest rates had peaked and would move lower in coming months, with inflation continuing to fall and an expectation of sustained job and economic growth Powell, speaking after the end of a two-day policy meeting, declined to declare victory in the U.S. central bank's two-year inflation fight, vouch that it had achieved a sought-after "soft landing" for the economy or promise that rate cuts would come as soon as the Fed's March 19-20 meeting, as investors had hoped in the run-up to this week's policy decision.
Jobs Growth of 353,000 Blasts Past Expectations as Labor Market Stays Hot (WSJ🔒) 📊
Hiring is booming, defying expectations the economy would cool after going gangbusters last year. Employers added 353,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday. That was the strongest in a year and nearly double what economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected.
Job Quitting Fell 12% Last Year—and That’s Bad News for the Economy (WSJ🔒) 📊
Workers called it quits less frequently in 2023, a sign confidence in the labor market is falling as the U.S. economy is expected to slow and Americans are taking longer to find new jobs. Americans quit 6.1 million fewer jobs last year than in 2022—a decline of 12%, the Labor Department said Tuesday. In December alone, quits fell to the lowest monthly level in nearly three years, after adjusting for seasonal fluctuations.
US job cuts more than double in January -report (Reuters)
Job cut announcements in January increased to its highest level in 10 months as employers in the financial and technology sectors launched restructuring efforts, a report released Thursday showed. Announced layoffs reached 82,307 in January, a 136% surge from December’s 34,817, according to data released by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which helps companies with the offboarding process for employees. It was the highest monthly total since March 2023.
Inflation has fallen. Why are groceries still so expensive? (WP🔒) 📊
Americans are finally getting a break from inflation, with prices for gasoline, used cars and health insurance all falling over the past year, relieving families and buoying President Biden’s 2024 reelection bid. But prices painfully remain high for one particularly frequent purchase: groceries. Grocery prices have jumped by 25 percent over the past four years, outpacing overall inflation of 19 percent during the same period. And while prices of appliances, smartphones and a smattering of other goods have declined, groceries got slightly more expensive last year, with particularly sharp jumps for beef, sugar and juice, among other items. But there is no immediate fix for policymakers. Grocery prices remain elevated due to a mixture of labor shortages tied to the pandemic, ongoing supply chain disruptions, droughts, avian flu and other factors far beyond the administration’s control. Robust consumer demand has also fueled a shift to more expensive groceries, and consolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high, economic policy experts say.
U.S. winning world economic war (Axios) 📊
The United States economy grew faster than any other large advanced economy last year — by a wide margin — and is on track to do so again in 2024. America's outperformance is rooted in its distinctive structural strengths, policy choices, and some luck. It reflects a fundamental resilience in the world's largest economy that is easy to overlook amid the nation's problems. U.S. GDP looks to have grown 2.5% in 2023, according to the IMF's hot-off-the-presses World Economic Outlook, the highest among the G7 economies (Japan was second at 1.9%).
BUSINESS
Air freight rates rise amid Red Sea crisis and in run-up to Asia's Lunar New Year (Reuters)
Global air freight rates have climbed for the first time in seven weeks ahead of Asia's lunar new year and as attacks on Red Sea shipping prompt companies to secure costlier air cargo space. The Baltic Air Freight Index, which shows general cargo weekly transactional rates across a number of routes, rose 6.4% in the week to Monday, price reporting agency TAC Index said, reversing declines since a mid-December seasonal peak. Attacks by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group on vessels in the Red Sea, launched to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, have forced shippers to take longer routes that can add weeks to delivery times.
Russian oil flows through Red Sea still face lower risks (Reuters)
Tankers carrying Russian oil have continued sailing through the Red Sea largely uninterrupted by Houthi attacks on shipping and face lower risks than competitors, according to shipping executives, analysts and flows data. Russia has close ties to Iran, which backs the Houthis, and that may have helped prevent attacks. Ships carrying Russian oil for the most part have no links to Israel, the United States or Britain. The Houthis have said they are targeting ships connected to those countries in attacks to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The $400,000 Job That Doesn’t Require a College Degree (WSJ🔒)
Walmart is giving bigger bonuses and adding stock awards to their annual pay packages, pushing the total compensation for the best ones to more than $400,000 a year. The retail giant has thousands of store managers who act as midlevel executives. Each can often oversee a store with 350 workers and $100 million in annual revenue. Many start as clerks and climb the ranks without college degrees. Store managers will now be able to earn up to $20,000 in annual stock grants and an up-to-200% bonus each year. The average base salary for a Walmart store manager is around $128,000. That means a successful manager of a large Walmart store can earn up to $404,000 a year in total compensation. A Walmart spokeswoman declined to share how many managers generally receive their full bonus each year.
Why Elon Musk’s $55.8 Billion Tesla Pay Package Was Struck Down in Court (WSJ🔒)
A Delaware court found the richest man in the world was overpaid. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick’s opinion on Tuesday struck down Elon Musk’s $55.8 billion compensation deal, saying the process that led to the package was deeply flawed. Here’s what you need to know about the case, and what’s next.
Elon Musk is unfathomably rich. Here’s where his money is stashed. (WP🔒) 📊
Elon Musk, the outspoken billionaire who leads electric automaker Tesla, has a tenuous hold on the title “world’s richest person.” He grabbed the crown in 2021, ousting Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos. But Musk’s top position could be in peril after a Delaware court ruled this week that his $56 billion compensation package at Tesla was unfair, ordering him to return significant stock options he’s received over the past five years. While the options return would likely knock him out of the top spot, Musk would still be a billionaire many times over. Musk lacks significant tranches of cash; his money is largely tied up in ownership stakes of his companies.
Should Amazon Be Responsible for Everything It Sells and Ships? A U.S. Agency Will Soon Decide (WSJ🔒)
Amazon.com is facing a government order that could make it responsible for the safety of goods that it sells for outside vendors on its website and ships for them through its logistics network. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is preparing an order that could classify Amazon’s online retail business as a distributor of goods, according to people familiar with the matter. That designation could give Amazon the same safety responsibilities as traditional retailers and potentially open Amazon up to lawsuits and extensive recalls over items sold through its website. Amazon accounts for nearly 40% of all e-commerce in the U.S., according to eMarketer, a research firm.
Efficiency Vs. Productivity At Work: How To Balance Both (Forbes🔒)
Many of us use "efficiency" and "productivity" interchangeably. But did you know that while the two go hand in hand, they are entirely different concepts? Productivity refers to the amount of work you can complete in a specific amount of time. Efficiency, on the other hand, focuses on achieving the same amount of work with fewer resources. So, while productivity focuses on quantity, efficiency focuses on measuring quality. By increasing productivity, you can complete more projects in the same timeframe. Boosting efficiency means using fewer resources to accomplish the same amount of work. For example, imagine you have two managers making cold calls. In one hour, Patricia makes 40 calls while Robert makes 20. In this case, Patricia is more productive. Now, imagine you give both managers a list of 50 phone numbers. Robert completes his list in 30 minutes, while Patricia completes hers in 45 minutes. Under these circumstances, Robert is more efficient because he finishes the same number of calls in less time. How do you use these concepts to achieve the best results at work? The answer is successfully balancing both.
CRYPTO
German Police Seize $2.1 Billion in Bitcoin From File Sharers (Bloomberg🔒)
German prosecutors provisionally seized nearly 50,000 Bitcoin worth about $2.1 billion as part of an investigation into what they see as an illegal file-sharing platform. It’s the largest amount of Bitcoin ever secured by law enforcement in Germany, Saxony prosecutors said Tuesday. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation supported the investigation.
ENERGY
Saudi Aramco Drops Expansion Plan, Raising Demand Questions (Bloomberg🔒)
Saudi Aramco abandoned a plan to boost its oil output capacity, a huge reversal that will raise questions about the kingdom’s view on future demand. The surprise move comes after the world’s biggest oil exporter had said in November that it was progressing “very well” with a multibillion-dollar project to boost capacity to 13 million barrels a day by 2027 as demand in China and India continues to grow. Saudi Arabia currently has capacity for 12 million and is producing about 9 million a day, after it curbed output as part of OPEC+ efforts to revive the global oil market and prevent a surplus.
California and Big Oil are splitting after century-long affair (Reuters) 📊
It is the end of an era for Big Oil in California, as the most populous U.S. state divorces itself from fossil fuels in its fight against climate change. California's oil output a century ago amounted to it being the fourth-largest crude producer in the U.S., and spawned hundreds of oil drillers, including some of the largest still in existence. Oil led to its car culture of iconic highways, drive-in theaters, banks and restaurants that endures today. On Friday, however, the marriage will officially end. The two largest U.S. oil producers, Exxon Mobil, opens new tab and Chevron, opens new tab, will formally disclose a combined $5 billion writedown of California assets when they report fourth-quarter results.
Biden Pauses New Natural Gas Export Projects (Forbes🔒)
In a controversial decision praised by environmentalists and criticized by the oil and gas industry, the Biden Administration announced Friday a temporary pause on pending approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities.
REAL ESTATE
Home Prices Continued to Rise Across Most US Counties in 2023 (Chartr) 📊
PERSONAL FINANCE
The Reason Your Budget Always Fails? Don’t Forget The Phantom Month (Forbes🔒)
When people budget, they often take a category, say food, track it for a week, then multiply by four to create a monthly plan. The problem with this mental math? If you take 4 weeks and multiply by 12, it comes out to 48 weeks. That leaves an entire month’s worth of time unaccounted for in the budget by the end of the year. This math only works if there are exactly 28 days in each month. Those extra days - 30 or 31 days per month - make a meaningful difference by the end of the year since those days have costs as well. After all, you’re still eating, using electricity, or having coffee on January 30th.
TECHNOLOGY
Disney offers an elegant solution to VR’s movement problem (TechCrunch)
One thing you can say about VR is that it’s inspiring a lot of creative solutions to different issues around the tech. Movement is a major one, of course. You lose some of that visceral sensation when your FPV avatar is cruising around while you’re just sitting there on the couch. For the foreseeable future, however, all solutions will have some key drawbacks. Price is one in Omni’s case, and likely will be for a lion’s share of these sorts of peripherals. Other issues are size (it’s huge) and sound (it’s very noisy). HoloTile — which recently made its YouTube debut at the end of a video honoring Disney Research fellow Lanny Smoot — is an extremely clever and honestly quite elegant solution to some of these issues. The system is composed of hundreds of small, round “tiles” that look to be about the size of a silver dollar. Each serve as a kind of mini, omnidirectional treadmill. Working together, their only task is to stop the walker from leaving the pad.
Disney Imagineer Makes History | Disney Parks:
SCIENCE
Elon Musk's Neuralink implants brain chip in first human (Reuters)
The first human patient has received an implant from brain-chip startup Neuralink on Sunday and is recovering well, the company's billionaire founder Elon Musk said. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday. Spikes are activity by neurons, which the National Institute of Health describes as cells that use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and to the body. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans, a critical milestone in the startup's ambitions to help patients overcome paralysis and a host of neurological conditions.
CYBER
Exclusive: US disabled Chinese hacking network targeting critical infrastructure (Reuters)
The U.S. government in recent months launched an operation to fight a pervasive Chinese hacking operation that successfully compromised thousands of internet-connected devices, according to two Western security officials and one person familiar with the matter. The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation sought and received legal authorization to remotely disable aspects of the Chinese hacking campaign, the sources told Reuters.
German railway seeks IT admin to manage MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 systems (TechSpot)
A German-based railway recently posted a job application for an IT administrator with a peculiar skill set. X user konkretor recently discovered a job listing seeking an IT professional with knowledge of legacy operating systems including Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS. The listing has since been removed but according to the user, the job related to railway display boards widely used in Germany.
Meta, TikTok and other social media CEOs testify in heated Senate hearing on child exploitation (AP)
Sexual predators. Addictive features. Suicide and eating disorders. Unrealistic beauty standards. Bullying. These are just some of the issues young people are dealing with on social media — and children’s advocates and lawmakers say companies are not doing enough to protect them. On Wednesday, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a time when lawmakers and parents are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people’s lives.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Opinion | Should 4 People Be Able to Control the Equivalent of a Nuke? (Politico)
As artificial intelligence becomes more science fact than science fiction, its governance can’t be left to the whims of a few people.
NOTE: Will Hurd was former Congressman from San Antonio and former CIA operative.
AI Officer Is the Hot New Job That Pays Over $1 Million (Bloomberg🔒)
Executives spearheading metaverse efforts at Walt Disney Co., Procter & Gamble Co. and Creative Artists Agency left. Leon’s LinkedIn profile (yes, he had one), no longer exists, and there's no mention of him on the company's website, other than his introductory press release. Publicis Groupe declined to comment on the record. Instead, businesses are scrambling to appoint AI leaders, with Accenture and GE HealthCare making recent hires. A few metaverse executives have even reinvented themselves as AI experts, deftly switching from one hot technology to the next. Compensation packages average well above $1 million, according to a survey from executive-search and leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles. Last week, Publicis said it would invest 300 million euros ($327 million) over the next three years on artificial intelligence technology and talent.
LIFE
The Productivity Boost Missing From Your To-Do List (WSJ🔒)
Few of us start the day without a to-do list, but they can hurt as much as they help. For every item checked off, another hits an unexpected obstacle and two more tasks get added. By the end of the day, our to-do list is often longer than it was in the morning, deflating any sense of progress. Taking the opposite tack—a “done” list—can give you that burst of motivation that to-do lists sometimes fail to inspire, die-hard practitioners say. Instead of obsessing over what you still have to do, take an inventory of everything you’ve already done. The idea is to recognize small wins, no matter how mundane. Together, they can add up to a greater sense of achievement, says Gretchen Rubin, who has written books about happiness and forming good habits.
HEALTH
NOTE: A few articles on the decriminalization and destigmatization of drug use.
Can San Francisco Solve Its Drug Crisis? Five Things to Consider. (NYT🔒) 📊
San Francisco is in the middle of a drug crisis. Overdose deaths reached a record high last year, topping 800. Public drug use is widespread in some neighborhoods. How did San Francisco get to this point? In part, it follows the national story: The rise of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, and a destabilizing pandemic caused a spike in addiction and overdose deaths. But San Francisco’s drug crisis has outpaced the country’s. In 2014, the city’s overdose death rate was roughly in line with the national average. As of last year, its rate was more than double the national average, and San Francisco was No. 4 for overdose deaths among U.S. counties with more than 500,000 people. The country’s overdose crisis worsened over the past decade as fentanyl spread, but San Francisco’s worsened much more quickly.
NOTE: Article includes great comparison between Portugal’s approach to decriminalization and San Francisco’s approach. My inside voice talking: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should; discipline in life is a good thing. And then there’s the article below. Keep in mind that both of these are from the NYT, which drives home the point that much more!
Oregon Leaders Declare Drug Emergency in Portland (NYT🔒)
Oregon leaders on Tuesday declared a 90-day state of emergency in central Portland as part of a broad effort to tackle the effects of fentanyl on the streets of the state’s largest city. Background: Oregon decriminalized most public drug use in 2020. The emergency declaration tries to address a frequent criticism among Oregon taxpayers: Millions of dollars are being spent on homelessness and addiction problems, but the resources are not always reaching people effectively.
Destigmatizing Drug Use Has Been a Profound Mistake (The Atlantic)
The image on the billboard that appeared in downtown San Francisco in early 2020 would have been familiar to anyone who’d ever seen a beer commercial: Attractive young people laughing and smiling as they shared a carefree high. But the intoxicant being celebrated was fentanyl, not beer. “Do it with friends,” the billboard advised, so as to reduce the risks of overdose. That so many influential people are working hard to promote a positive image of a drug that is killing 200 Americans a day is stunning, though the peculiar logic behind their efforts is not hard to understand.
FOOD & DRINK
US Chicken Prices to Fall at Last Thanks to Green Fuel Boom (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
After years of butcher-counter sticker shock, Americans are likely to see a drop in meat prices thanks to an unlikely ally: the emerging renewable fuel industry. Processing the vast amounts of soybeans needed to make the plant-based jet fuel and diesel required to lower US emissions will also create mountains of co-product soymeal, widely used in animal feed. The less expensive it is for meatpackers to feed their animals, the more meat they’ll produce, ultimately trickling down to lower prices at the grocery store.
The plants used to make the world’s best mezcal are disappearing (WP🔒)
Unlike almost every other drink — whiskey, tequila, vodka — some of the world’s best mezcals are made from wild plants. But as demand rises — it surged 700 percent between 2015 and 2022, according to Mexico’s mezcal regulatory commission — harvesting the increasingly scarce specimens is a growing challenge.
How a trendy sushi roll usurped the traditions of ‘Setsubun’ (The Japan Times)
In the early years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), merchants in Kansai would ritually face a lucky direction and eat something without interruption to bring in good business, says Shimizu. But recent efforts to spread the good luck-garnering roll can be traced way, way back to the paragon of auspiciousness known as 7-11.
NATURE
How ants thwarted lions on the African savanna (Science)
Filter David and Goliath through a Rube Goldberg machine, and you’ll get a sense of a bizarre ecosystem shake-up happening in the African savanna. In the grasslands of Kenya, an invasive ant has displaced an insect that protects the region’s acacia trees, allowing elephants to overgraze them. This, in turn, has denuded the landscape, robbing lions of the hiding spots they need to stalk zebras and forcing them to switch to a more difficult—and dangerous—prey: buffalo. “This study was a beautiful snapshot of how complicated ecosystems can be—this idea that you pull on a single thread and the whole system reacts,” says Meredith Palmer, an ecologist at Fauna & Flora International who was not involved in the work, published today in Science.
The Dogs That Live Longest, by a Nose (NYT🔒)
All dogs go to heaven. But a bulldog might find itself headed there years before a Border terrier, according to a new study of nearly 600,000 British dogs from more than 150 breeds. Large breeds and breeds with flattened faces had shorter average life spans than smaller dogs and those with elongated snouts, the researchers found. Female dogs also lived slightly longer than male ones. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday.
ENTERTAINMENT
Alberto Cartuccia Cingolani (YouTube)
5-year-old Italian piano prodigy
Pop songs are getting shorter in the era of streaming and TikTok (WP🔒) 📊
From Taylor Swift’s “Midnight Rain” to Lil Yachty’s “Poland,” new songs are getting shorter. One-fifth of the nominated songs in this year’s Grammy Awards will clock in at under three minutes.
Amazon Prime is now charging you if you want to avoid commercials on its streaming service (Fortune)
Amazon spends billions of dollars every year on programming for its Prime Video platform, and now it wants customers to pay up or get used to seeing ads on their favorite shows. On Monday, the tech giant made ad-supported streaming the default on Prime Video for its more than 200 million subscribers. The company originally announced the plan in September, saying that it was needed, “to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment.” Amazon claimed in its original announcement that Prime Video will show fewer ads than regular TV or other streaming services, but those who want to avoid them altogether will have to pay an additional $2.99 per month on top of the $14.99 monthly fee that already exists.
Suits was streamed more in a single year than any TV show in history (Chartr) 📊
Why China Has Lost Interest in Hollywood Movies (NYT🔒) 📊
In 2023, no American films ranked among the 10 highest grossing in China despite highly anticipated sequels in the “Mission: Impossible,” “Fast & the Furious” and “Spider-Man” franchises. Neither “Oppenheimer” nor “Barbie,” two of Hollywood’s biggest hits last year, cracked the top 30 in China at the box office, according to Maoyan, a Chinese entertainment data provider that has tracked ticket sales since 2011. The only other recent year when Hollywood was shut out of China’s top 10 was 2020, during the pandemic. China’s film industry is producing more high-quality movies that resonate with domestic audiences. The country’s top two films last year highlight the diversity of offerings: “Full River Red,” a dialogue-rich suspense thriller, and “The Wandering Earth II,” a science-fiction blockbuster heavy with special effects. In recent years, some of the highest-grossing films have played up themes of a stronger and more assertive China. The top-grossing Chinese films of all time are “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” a 2021 film that depicts an against-all-odds defeat of the United States during the Korean War; and “Wolf Warrior 2,” a 2017 nationalist action flick in which a Chinese Jason Bourne-like character takes on an American soldier of fortune.
Universal Planning New Orlando Theme Park Featuring Mario And Harry Potter—Here’s What We Know (Forbes🔒) 📊
A new Universal Orlando theme park set to open next year will include a look back at the history of the Harry Potter universe, a Super Nintendo-themed world, a viking village based on "How to Train Your Dragon" and Frankenstein area.
Universal Music Group, Taylor Swift’s label, says it will pull tunes from TikTok (LA Times)
Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company, is threatening to pull its tunes from TikTok over a licensing dispute. The two companies have yet to reach a new music rights agreement to replace the one that expires Wednesday. Santa Monica-based UMG and Chinese-owned TikTok made an agreement in 2021 that allowed the popular video-based social media platform access to UMG’s recorded music from artists on its labels, as well as songwriters with Universal Music Publishing Group. Artists on UMG labels include Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and Ice Spice. If UMG were to remove its music, it would be a blow to TikTok users, who generate videos that often feature popular songs. Labels and artists benefit from licensing music to TikTok, which helps them market new and old songs. Trending videos can often boost the popularity of an artist whose work is used as accompaniment.
SPORTS
LeBron has played against 35% of all players in NBA history (Twitter)
Lewis Hamilton to Join Ferrari F1 Team in 2025, Leaving Mercedes (Bloomberg🔒)
Formula 1 race car driver Lewis Hamilton will leave the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team at the end of the 2024 season for Ferrari, according to announcements on Thursday from both teams.
FOR FUN
How Lego bricks went from five colors to nearly 200 (WP🔒) 📊
Since modern Lego bricks debuted in 1958, their color scheme has undergone a transformation from just a handful to more than 110 at the peak in 2004. The palette has evolved, grown and shrunk over the decades. When Lego started manufacturing bricks, it started small, colorwise. “These were very basic colors,” said Signe Weise, a corporate historian at Lego. The original brick colors, according to Weise, were red, yellow, blue, white and transparent. If you counted every brick produced since 1958, most would be black, gray or white, but such a census obscures the colorful history of the palette. Using data from Rebrickable, a site that crowdsources information about Lego sets, The Washington Post analyzed the palette to explore what the color system says about the evolution of the company.
A grainy sonar image reignites excitement and skepticism over Earhart’s final flight (AP) 📊
A grainy sonar image recorded by a private pilot has reinvigorated interest in one of the past century’s most alluring mysteries: What happened to Amelia Earhart when her plane vanished during her flight around the world in 1937? Archivists are hopeful that Romeo’s Deep Sea Vision is close to solving the puzzle — if for no other reason than to return attention to Earhart’s accomplishments.
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.