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Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries (and sometimes longer ones) of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.
This feature is published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the late afternoon New York time. For early morning review of headlines see “The Early Bird” published Monday through Friday in the early am at GEI News (membership not required for access to “The Early Bird”.).
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Topics today include 22 articles and 17 graphics:
- Neural Network Says These 11 Asteroids Could Smash Into Earth
- Identifying Earth-impacting asteroids using an artificial neural network
- Price-to-Sales Ratio Hits an All-Time High for S&P500
- 5 Common Blind Spots on Social Security
- After A Decade, Investors Are Finally Back To Even
- Mikaela Shiffrin’s View From the Top
- The Hill’s review of John Solomon’s columns on Ukraine
- Pam Bondi argues Biden corruption concerns are legitimate
- Trump offered WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange a pardon if he covered up Russian hacking of Democrats, lawyer tells court
- Bloomberg Vows to Restore DOL Fiduciary Rule, Add Financial Transaction Tax
- Mike Bloomberg’s Financial Reform Policy
- Democrat plans to tax the wealthy could hit an unintended target: Average Americans
- A twist in the story of California’s first Asian American sheriff: meet Timothy Saxon
- How climate change has affected each state
- Climate Change and Land
- What if Trump Wins? Europeans Fear a More Permanent Shift Against Them
- Turkey raises stir as philanthropist re-arrested after acquittal
- No place to go: Syrian families fleeing Idlib stranded on the roads
- Passengers leave coronavirus cruise ship at last as Japan control efforts come under fire
- Coronavirus: China receives protective gear from US as death toll passes 2,000
- Convicted criminals are among the special police terrorizing Venezuela
- And More
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Articles about events, conflicts and disease around the world
U.S.
- The Hill’s review of John Solomon’s columns on Ukraine (The Hill) On Nov. 18, 2019, The Hill announced it was reviewing John Solomon’s opinion columns on Ukraine after State Department diplomats criticized several of those columns during House impeachment hearings. This review was conducted independently by The Hill’s news staff under the direction of Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. At the end of this very long review article, The Hill says:
- Pam Bondi argues Biden corruption concerns are legitimate (PBS News, YouTube) Pan Bondi made the presentation below during the Trump impeachment trial:
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- President Donald Trump offered a pardon to Julian Assange if the WikiLeaks chief agreed to say that Russia had nothing to do with hacking emails from Democrats during the 2016 presidential election, Assange’s lawyer said.
- The claim was made at a court hearing in London, where U.S. officials have asked for Assange to be extradited to the U.S. to face multiple criminal charges.
- Russian agents hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Those emails later were made public by WikiLeaks.
- White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham called the claim by Assange’s lawyer “a complete fabrication and a total lie.” She also said Trump “barely knows Dana Rohrabacher,” who reportedly was the intermediary.
- Bloomberg Vows to Restore DOL Fiduciary Rule, Add Financial Transaction Tax (Think Advisor) Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg would restore the Labor Department’s now-defunct fiduciary rule as well as institute a .01% financial transaction tax. See Mike Bloomberg’s Financial Reform Policy (MIKE Bloomberg 2020).
Given how profoundly the 2008 crisis undermined faith in the establishment — and given how close it brought the world to economic collapse — authorities everywhere should be doing all in their power to fix the flaws it revealed. Yet the Trump administration is rolling back what safeguards were put in place, and none of the candidates for president is offering a viable alternative.
- Several Democratic presidential candidates, such as Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, support a financial transaction tax, which would largely affect wealthy households.
- The tax, which imposes an additional cost on stock and bond trades, could also make it more expensive for everyday Americans to save in 401(k) plans, health savings accounts and 529 college savings plans.
- Proponents said that most low- and middle-income Americans wouldn’t be affected and that the benefits outweigh the costs.
- A twist in the story of California’s first Asian American sheriff: meet Timothy Saxon (USA Today) When Paul Miyamoto (first picture below) won election last fall as San Francisco sheriff and again when he was sworn in last month, local and state media headlines echoed his office’s description of him as the first Asian American sheriff in state history. But it turns out he isn’t. Another California sheriff predates Miyamoto. Timothy Saxon, sheriff of northern California’s rural Trinity County, was born in Japan and adopted by his American parents as a newborn infant. See second picture below.
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- How climate change has affected each state (Stacker) The recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report takes an in-depth look at how climate change is affecting our land – – and how land use impacts the climate. On the whole, the news is not great. The report detailed the negative effects that climate change is having around the world in the form of increasing heat waves, droughts, desertification, and food insecurity. See Climate Change and Land.
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EU
- What if Trump Wins? Europeans Fear a More Permanent Shift Against Them (The New York Times) Rightly or wrongly, the consensus among European diplomats and analysts is that Mr. Trump is likely to get a second term. But there was also consensus that such an event would be a significant part of a drastic, and potentially permanent, shift in global affairs for which Europe remains woefully unprepared. Mr. Trump’s re-election would represent a fundamental change, said François Heisbourg, a French analyst:
“Eight years in political terms is an era, not an error. And it would undermine the reality of American democracy.”
Turkey
- Turkey raises stir as philanthropist re-arrested after acquittal (Reuters) Turkey’s judiciary drew international criticism on Wednesday after a prominent businessman was re-arrested over charges related to a failed 2016 military coup, hours after being acquitted over his alleged role in landmark protests in 2013.
Syria
- No place to go: Syrian families fleeing Idlib stranded on the roads (Reuters) Abu Abdallah has been on the road for days. After his family fled the air strikes pounding Idlib, they moved from one village to another in northwest Syria but have yet to find refuge.
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Japan
- Passengers leave coronavirus cruise ship at last as Japan control efforts come under fire (Reuters) Hundreds of passengers trundled off a cruise ship in Japan on Wednesday after being held on board in quarantine for more than two weeks, as criticism mounted of Japan’s handling of the biggest coronavirus outbreak outside China.
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China
- Coronavirus: China receives protective gear from US as death toll passes 2,000 (South China Morning Post) Hat tip to Sig Silber.
- Latest Chinese health guidelines say aerosol transmission is possible in certain conditions but main cause of spread is still close contact
- Hubei continues to be hardest hit, with cumulative totals of 61,682 infections and 1,921 fatalities
- Mainland China’s health authorities reported 1,749 new cases of coronavirus
and 136 new deaths, bringing its totals to 74,185 and 2,004 respectively.
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Venezuela
- Convicted criminals are among the special police terrorizing Venezuela (Reuters) Since President Nicolas Maduro founded the Special Action Force of Venezuela’s National Police two-and-a-half years ago, the squad has earned a fearsome reputation in poor neighborhoods across Venezuela.
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Other Scientific, Health, Political, Economics, and Business Items of Note – plus Miscellanea
- Neural Network Says These 11 Asteroids Could Smash Into Earth (Futurism) A team of researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands have developed a neural network called “Hazardous Object Identifier” that they say can predict if an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. Their new AI singled out 11 asteroids that were not previously classified by NASA as hazardous, and which were larger than 100 meters in diameter – big enough to explode with the force of hundreds of nuclear weapons if they impacted Earth, potentially leveling entire cities. For research paper, see Identifying Earth-impacting asteroids using an artificial neural network (Astronomy & Astrophysics).
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- Price-to-Sales Ratio Hits an All-Time High for S&P500 (Constatin Gurgdiev, True Economics) CG contributes to GEI. CG writes:
“sales are a positive function of inflation and inflation has been pretty weak, of late. Which means that sales are facing two headwinds at the same time: low inflation pressures and low demand growth pressures. Yet, share prices are just keep climbing up in this new economic paradigm that looks like the old Dot.Com paradigm.”
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- 5 Common Blind Spots on Social Security (Think Advisor) A majority of people don’t know the standard benefits they could be receiving, according to a SimplyWise survey that found less than one in eight Americans aged 60 to 70 saw themselves as “very knowledgeable” on the subject. The group also found that there are five areas that are especially confusing to recipients, and only one in 300 of those who took a five-question quiz answered all the questions correctly. The percent of respondents giving correct answer follows each question.
- Claiming at which age maximizes your monthly earned Social Security benefit? (42%)
- What is the earliest age non-disabled people can receive survivor benefits? (9%)
- Does a current spouse need to be receiving Social Security benefits for the other spouse to qualify for spousal benefits? (20%)
- Can divorced spouses receive survivor benefits? (38%)
- Can divorced spouses receive spousal benefits? (67%)
- After A Decade, Investors Are Finally Back To Even (Lance Roberts, Seeking Alpha) Lance Roberts is a weekly contributor to GEI. If you had invested $100,000 at the market at the peak of the market in 2000, or in 2007, your portfolio would have gotten back to even in 2013. Since then, your portfolio would have grown to more than $200,000. All that is true. But are you really back to even when you recover money lost over the years? For someone who had $100,000 invested in 2000, the following two graphs explain why they are not back to even but actually almost $140,000 short of even today.
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- Mikaela Shiffrin’s View From the Top (Sports Illustrated) Mikaela Shiffrin is the most dominating skier in the world and may be the best ski racer who ever lived. She held a commanding World Cup lead entering February with 11 podiums (after setting a new record of 17 wins last winter, 3 more than the old record) and had finished a photoshoot for the current cover of Sports Illustrated who declared her “the world’s most dominant athlete“. But she hasn’t finished a race since – she hasn’t even started one. Her father died in an accident on February 2 and Mikaela has been home with her family since, with no indication when she might return to racing.
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