Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 11 September 2016
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
Global
Second Asteroid In A Month Sails By Without Us Detecting It First (Popular Science, MSN News) A completely unobserved asteroid snuck up on Earth at the end of last month and went whizzing by our planet like a golf ball, without so much as a “Fore!” from any of our detection systems. And it happened this week. Again. The new asteroid, both smaller and a closer call than the next most recent specimen was still tens of thousands of miles away and had no chance of hitting Earth as it sailed by. Econintersect: Aren’t we supposed to be developing an early warning/detection system for asteroids that will come close to earth? Maybe when the direct hit comes we will be just as clueless as the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM For First Time in 4 Million Years (Climate Central) Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year. There’s a notable new entry to the record books. The last station on Earth without a 400 parts per million (ppm) reading has reached it.
U.S.
Killing Off American Cows to Keep Milk Prices High (Bloomberg) Although American demand for dairy has risen steadily for almost 40 years, some farmers tried to limit the supply of milk by killing off their own cows.
Special Report: ‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising human toll (Reuters) Even when recorded, tens of thousands of deaths from drug-resistant infections – as well as many more infections that sicken but don’t kill people – go uncounted because federal and state agencies are doing a poor job of tracking them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the go-to national public health monitor, and state health departments lack the political, legal and financial wherewithal to impose rigorous surveillance.
UK
Hospitals in England are on the brink of collapse, warn NHS chiefs (The Guardian) The body that represents hospitals across England has issued a startling warning that the NHS is close to breaking point because of its escalating cash crisis. Years of underfunding have left the service facing such “impossible” demands that without urgent extra investment in November’s autumn statement it will have to cut staff, bring in charges or introduce “draconian rationing” of treatment – all options that will provoke public disquiet, it says.
Norway
Norway’s Investment in Home Building Set to Top Oil, Gas: Chart (Bloomberg) Investment in Norway’s housing industry has climbed 12% in two years, overtaking spending on oil and gas and helping spare the economy from recession. Expenditure on fossil fuels slid 29% in the same period. Housing starts have risen 20% in a year and home prices are rallying at an annual pace of almost 10%.
Russia
Edward Snowden attacks Russia over human rights and hacking (The Guardian) The US whistleblower Edward Snowden has attacked his Russian protectors by criticizing the Kremlin’s human rights record and suggesting that its officials have been involved in hacks on US security networks. In an interview by the Financial Times, Snowden said Moscow had “gone very far, in ways that are completely unnecessary, costly and corrosive to individual and collective rights” in monitoring citizens online.
North Korea
U.S. envoy says North Korea could face unilateral sanctions (Reuters) The United States may launch unilateral sanctions against North Korea, a U.S. special envoy for the U.S. to the isolated state said on Sunday, two days after it carried out its fifth and biggest nuclear test in defiance of U.N. sanctions. Sung Kim, the envoy, referring to South Korea by its official name, said:
“In addition to action in the Security Council, both the U.S. and Japan, together with the Republic of Korea, will be looking at unilateral measures, as well as bilateral measures, as well as possible trilateral cooperation.”
Colombia
The Secret History of Colombia’s Paramilitaries and the U.S. War on Drugs (The New York Times) Decades of terrorism in Colombia has resulted in some relatively light prison sentences in The U.S. for drug trafficking rather than harsher convictions for terrorism in Colombia.
Canada
Canada to press U.S. on ‘ludicrous’ marijuana border policy (Reuters) Canada will push the United States to change a border policy that has banned Canadians who admit to having used marijuana from travel to the United States, given Canada’s plans to legalize pot, a government spokesman said on Friday. And of course, recreational marijuana is legal in several U.S. states, making the border policy look like the height of hypocrisy.