Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 16 October 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.
U.S.
Independent may make history in Utah (The Hill) Evan McMullin just might become the first person since 1968 to win a state while not running as either the Republican or Democratic nominee. McMullin, a conservative who is running as an independent opposed to both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, is in a solid position to win his home state of Utah. A poll published Tuesday by the Salt Lake City-based Y2 Analytics found Trump and Clinton tied at 26% in Utah. McMullin took 22% – within the margin of error of 4.4%.
Analysis: Rigged election claims may leave lasting damage (Associated Press) Donald Trump keeps peddling the notion the vote may be rigged. It’s not clear if he does not understand the potential damage of his words – or he simply does not care. Trump’s claim – made without evidence – undercuts the essence of American democracy, the idea that U.S. elections are both free and fair, with the vanquished peacefully stepping aside for the victor. His repeated assertions are sowing suspicion among his most ardent supporters, raising the possibility that millions of people may not accept the results on Nov. 8 if Trump does not win. The responsibilities for the New York billionaire in such a scenario are minimal. Trump holds no public office and has said he’ll simply go back to his “very good way of life” if he loses. Instead, it would be Democrat Hillary Clinton and congressional Republicans, should they win, who would be left trying to govern in a country divided not just by ideology, but also the legitimacy of the presidency.
Bill Maher Goes After Ken Bone: ‘Too Stupid to Pick Hillary Over President Pussy-Grabber’ (The Daily Beast) The jolly man in the red sweater is no “folk hero,” claims the ‘Real Time’ host. He’s just an idiot. And he is not the unassuming, bumbling appearing soul that he appears – see Ken Bone’s Disturbing Reddit History Shows He’s Not Nearly as Adorable as We Thought.
What the United States needs: Investment & Progressive Internationalism (Yanis Varoufakis, CNN) YV has contributed to GEI. This is a good essay with a different bottom line: the most important thing that happened in U.S. politics in 2016 was not Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Varoufakis says it was Bernie Sanders.
UK
AEP: ‘Irritation and anger’ may lead to Brexit, says influential psychologist (The Telegraph) This article from early June presaged the stunning Brexit victory later that month, explaining in it advance through the analysis of a psychologist who is considered the father of behavioral economics and won a Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in 2002. We were inspired to write a piece after reading this: Do Voters Have Death Wishes?
Yemen
Yemen war: US ship faces new round of ‘Houthi missiles’ (Al Jazeera) US officials say a new round of missiles targeting an American warship in the Red Sea has been fired from a region of Yemen controlled by Houthi fighters. The USS Mason, a destroyer, launched countermeasures and was not hit in Saturday’s strike. Three US warships in the Red Sea detected the missiles, the US military said, amid rising tensions with the Iran-allied group.
Iraq
Iraq war map: Who controls what (Al Jazeera) After more than a decade of instability, parts of Iraq still lie in shambles, with several forces and groups fighting for control of large parts of the country. Supported by air strikes from US-led coalition warplanes, the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces have been trying to take territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group. Currently, Mosul is ISIL’s only stronghold in the country, the group having suffered a number of territorial losses over the past few months. ISIL has been losing territory not only in Iraq, but also in Syria, as this map of the Syrian civil war shows.
Russia
Putin, Syria and Why Moscow Has Gone War Crazy (The New Yorker) A viewer of Russian television this week could be forgiven for thinking that the end of the world was imminent, and that it would arrive in the form of grand superpower war with the United States, culminating in a suicidal exchange of nuclear weapons. On one day alone, three separate test-firings of intercontinental ballistic missiles were broadcast on state media: two by submarine, one from a launch pad in the Far East. Last weekend, NTV, a channel under effective state control, aired a segment on emergency preparedness that included a tour of a Cold War-era bomb shelter, fortified in case of atomic war, and a mention of the municipal loudspeakers that will sound upon the arrival of “Hour X.” On Sunday, Dmitry Kiselev, the most bombastic and colorful of Kremlin propagandists, warned on his weekly newsmagazine show that “impudent behavior” toward Russia may have “nuclear” consequences.
India
India to buy S-400 missiles from Russia (The Hindu) India and Russia put up an emphatic display of deep bilateral ties on Saturday, setting aside recent discord, and came out strongly against terror. Both sides signed 16 important deals including one on S-400 missile systems, a game-changer in countering airborne threats. Defense production and acquisition agreements were announced after the summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin.
China
China Plans to Launch Manned Spacecraft Shenzhou-11 on Monday (Bloomberg) China is preparing to launch a manned spacecraft on Monday, marking a crucial step toward the country’s ambition to build and operate its first space station by 2020. The spacecraft is scheduled to blast off on a Long March-2F carrier rocket at 7.30 a.m. Beijing time from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in western Gansu province, Wu Ping, deputy director of China Manned Space Agency, told reporters Sunday. It will be Beijing’s third space-lab mission this year. Astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong will dock with orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 within two days. They will stay 30 days in the space lab, which was launched last month.
Australia
Obituary: Great BarTrump and Clinton May <Loserier Reef (25 Million BC-2016) (Outside) The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old. Climate change and ocean acidification have killed off one of the most spectacular features on the planet.
For most of its life, the reef was the world’s largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. It was 1,400 miles long, with 2,900 individual reefs and 1,050 islands. In total area, it was larger than the United Kingdom, and it contained more biodiversity than all of Europe combined. It harbored 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 species of mollusk, 450 species of coral, 220 species of birds, and 30 species of whales and dolphins. Among its many other achievements, the reef was home to one of the world’s largest populations of dugong and the largest breeding ground of green turtles.
The reef was born on the eastern coast of the continent of Australia during the Miocene epoch. Its first 24.99 million years were seemingly happy ones, marked by overall growth. It was formed by corals, which are tiny anemone-like animals that secrete shell to form colonies of millions of individuals. Its complex, sheltered structure came to comprise the most important habitat in the ocean. As sea levels rose and fell through the ages, the reef built itself into a vast labyrinth of shallow-water reefs and atolls extending 140 miles off the Australian coast and ending in an outer wall that plunged half a mile into the abyss. With such extraordinary diversity of life and landscape, it provided some of the most thrilling marine adventures on earth to humans who visited. Its otherworldly colors and patterns will be sorely missed.
