My apologies to my listeners for skipping the 8-20-2018 show with no warning. A family emergency developed Saturday that required me to go out of town on short notice.

I will be back on the air on Monday, 8-27-2018, and am looking forward to speaking with you all.

Mike

 ——————————————————————

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 2-3 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Don.

Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

Please take a moment to visit Pledge.KPFT.org and choose THINKWING RADIO from the drop-down list when you donate.

For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
  

  Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]:

 

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1. Make sure you are registered to vote:
   1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
   2. VoteTexas.gov
   3. You may vote early by-mail if you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      2. Sick or disabled;
      3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day;
      4. or Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
   4. LAST DAY TO REGISTER FOR GENERAL ELECTION: Oct-9-2018
   5. GENERAL ELECTION:11-6-2018
   6. Make sure you are registered:
      1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
      2. VoteTexas.gov
   7. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
   8. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE<– CLICK
2. THE GREAT DEPRESSION: In response to Brian, one of last week’s callers — What [was] the unemployment rate in 1933?
   3. As the above graph indicates the economy descended from full employment in in 1929 where the unemployment rate was 2 percent into massive unemployment in 1933 when the unemployment rate reached 25 percent. The first question is why was there such high unemployment in 1933. ~ The Depression of the 1930s and Its Origins or Causes (www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/dep1929.htm)
   4. In most countries of the world, recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the S., recovery began in early 1933, but the U.S. did not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high of 25% in 1933. ~ Great Depression – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
3. Shooter charged with manslaughter in Clearwater stand your ground case, BY Kathryn Varn (More articles by) [Tampa Bay Times] Published: August 13, 2018, Updated: August 13, 2018 at 01:14 PM
   1. Prosecutors charged Michael Drejka, the man accused of killing Markeis McGlockton in a shooting [related to a parking space dispute] that has reignited a debate around Florida’s stand your ground law, with manslaughter Monday.
   2. According to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, Drejka was taken into custody Monday morning. He is being booked into the Pinellas County Jail, where he will be held in lieu of $100,000 bail.
   3. Drejka, 47, has avoided arrest since he shot 28-year-old McGlockton on July 19 because of the controversial self-defense law that eliminated one’s duty to retreat before resorting to force.
   4. Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced July 20 that his agency was precluded from arresting Drejka because evidence showed it was “within the bookends of stand your ground and within the bookends of force being justified,” which provides immunity from arrest, the sheriff said. He forwarded the case Aug. 1 to the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office to make a final charging determination.
      1. ORIGINAL STORY: No arrest in fatal shooting during argument over handicap parking space
      2. DOUBLING DOWN: Sheriff Gualtieri defends ‘stand your ground’ decision in convenience store shooting
   5. State Attorney Bernie McCabe’s decision to charge Drejka signals that prosecutors believe they can show by “clear and convincing” evidence that a stand your ground defense is not applicable in Drejka’s case. …
   6. Several questions must be considered in deciding whether someone can be protected under the [Florida] law when they use force: Was the person acting lawfully? Did the person have a right to be there? And was the person in reasonable fear of serious injury or death?
   7. The encounter between the two men started when Drejka confronted McGlockton’s girlfriend … about why she had parked in a handicap-reserved parking space without a decal at the Circle A Food Store … near Clearwater.
   8. McGlockton, inside the store with his 5-year-old son, caught wind of the heated argument from witnesses. Surveillance video shows him leaving the store, walking up to Drejka and pushing him to the ground. Drejka then pulls out a gun and shoots McGlockton. He told deputies he was in fear of further attack.
   9. [Sheriff] Gualtieri said Monday he supports McCabe’s decision. He reiterated that in order to make an arrest, the facts of the case would have to clearly show stand your ground doesn’t apply, which he said wasn’t the case here. Otherwise, Drejka would have been in custody while prosecutors considered whether they could meet the burden established under the law. …
   10. … Drejka has remained largely a mystery to the public in the weeks since the shooting. The Tampa Bay Times reported last week that he has been the accused aggressor in four incidents since 2012, including two in which he was reported to have shown a gun. He was not arrested in any of the cases and does not have a criminal history in Florida.

Trump/Omarosa News: Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy? A new report finds that big companies could have given their workers thousands of dollars’ worth of raises with the money they spent on their own shares, By Annie Lowrey [THEATLANTIC.com] Jul 31, 2018

1. Stock buybacks are eating the world. The once illegal practice of companies purchasing their own shares is pulling money away from employee compensation, research and development, and other corporate priorities—with potentially sweeping effects on business dynamism, income and wealth inequality, working-class economic stagnation, and the country’s growth rate. Evidence for that conclusion comes from a new report by Irene Tung of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and Katy Milani of the Roosevelt Institute, who looked at share buybacks in the restaurant, retail, and food industries from 2015 to 2017.
2. Their new paper contributes to a growing body of research that might help explain why economic growth is so sluggish, productivity so low, and increases in worker compensation so piddling, even as the stock market is surging and corporate profits are at historical highs. Companies are working overtime to make their owners richer in the short term, more so than to improve their longer-term competitiveness or to invest in their workers.
3. Buybacks occur when a company takes profits, cash reserves, or borrowed money to purchase its own shares on the public markets, a practice barred until the Ronald Reagan administration. (The regulatory argument against allowing the practice is that it is a way for companies to manipulate the markets; the regulatory argument for it is that companies should be able to spend money how they see fit.) In recent years, with corporate profits high, American firms have bought their own stocks with extraordinary zeal. Federal Reserve data show that buybacks are now equivalent to 4 percent of annual economic output, up from zero percent in the 1990s. Companies spent roughly $7 trillion on their own shares from 2004 to 2014, and have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on buybacks in the past six months alone. …
4. … How much might workers have benefited if companies had devoted their financial resources to them rather than to shareholders? Lowe’s, CVS, and Home Depot could have provided each of their workers a raise of $18,000 a year, the report found. Starbucks could have given each of its employees $7,000 a year, and McDonald’s could have given $4,000 to each of its nearly 2 million employees.
5. “Workers around the country have been pushing for higher wages, but the answer is always, ‘We can’t afford it. We’d have to do layoffs or raise prices,’” Tung said. “That is just not true. The money is there. It’s just getting siphoned out of the company instead of reinvested into it.”
6. The report examines the period just before President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut came into effect, leading to an even greater surge of buybacks …
7. … What did publicly traded corporations do with that money? Buy back shares and issue dividends, mostly. …
8. … more and more analysts disagree. Larry Fink, who runs BlackRock, a huge money-management firm, has argued that buybacks are bad for companies and even bad for democracy. “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” he wrote in an open letter. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.”

1. In Presidential Tweet, Trump Says Former Aide Was ‘A Loser’ And ‘Vicious’, by Tamara Keith [NPR.org August 13, 201810:46 AM ET
2. Omarosa Manigault Newman reveals recording she made of Trump day after she was fired – The tape, played exclusively Monday on “Today,” appears to show Trump having no idea that Manigault Newman had been dismissed by his chief of staff, John Kelly, by Adam Edelman / [NBCNews] 13.2018 / 6:09 AM ET/ Updated 10:26 AM ET
   1. Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former “Apprentice” contestant who became a White House aide, has provided an audio recording that she says is from 2017 and on which President Donald Trump expresses surprise that she’d been fired from his administration.
   2. The tape, which was played exclusively Monday on “Today” and sparked a harsh attack from Trump on Manigault Newman just hours later, appears to show the president having no idea that she had been dismissed by his chief of staff, John Kelly.
   3. “Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?” Trump is heard saying on the tape, which Manigault Newman said was made one day after her termination in December 2017 when Trump called her.
   4. She responds, “General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.”
   5. “Nobody even told me about it,” Trump replies.anigault Newman then says, “Wow,” before Trump reiterates his shock.
   6. “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it,” Trump is heard saying on the tape. “I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.”
   7. NBC News does not know what was said before or after that exchange. …

3. FBI agent Peter Strzok fired over anti-Trump texts, By Bob Fredericks [NY POST] August 13, 2018 | 11:19am

   1. The FBI [has now] fired Agent Peter Strzok — at one time one of the leaders of the bureau’s investigation into Russian election meddling and possible collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign — for writing critical text messages about the future president [prior to November 2016], the Washington Post reported Monday.
   2. Aitan Goelman, Strzok’s lawyer, told the paper that FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich ordered that Strzok be canned on Friday — even though the head of the FBI office that usually metes out discipline had ruled Strzok should face only a demotion and 60-day suspension.
   3. [Strzok’s lawyer] Goelman said the move undercuts the FBI’s assurances that Strzok would go through the normal disciplinary process. “This isn’t the normal process in any way more than name,” Goelman said.
   4. Trump took to Twitter to gloat about the agent’s termination — and once again slam the bureau.
   5. “Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI – finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction – I just fight back!” he said. …
4. Blue light from phones, tablets could accelerate blindness and hurt vision, study finds, By Brett Molina, USA Today Network, USA TODAY Published 9:05 a.m. ET Aug. 13, 2018 | Updated 11:56 a.m. ET Aug. 13, 2018
   1. The blue light … from smartphones and tablets is changing cells in our eyes that could accelerate blindness, according to a study.
   2. Researchers from The University of Toledo [Ohio] studied the impact of blue light — which comes from the sun as well as digital devices — on our eyes.
   3. The study found blue light triggers “toxic” reactions in retinal molecules that sense light … The [retina using] photoreceptors in our eyes is what allows people to see.
   4. Results showed blue light helps generate poisonous chemical reactions killing photoreceptors, which cannot be restored once they die off.
   5. This leads to macular degeneration, an incurable eye disease that causes blindness starting in your 50s or 60s, researchers said.
   6. “It’s no secret that blue light harms our vision by damaging the eye’s retina,” said Ajith Karunarathne, assistant professor in the University of Toledo’s department of chemistry and biochemistry, and one of the study’s authors, in a statement. “Our experiments explain how this happens, and we hope this leads to therapies that slow macular degeneration, such as a new kind of eye drop.”
   7. The study was published July 5 in the journal Scientific Reports.
   8. Researchers are studying blue light coming from TVs, smartphones and tablets to figure out what impact it has during everyday exposure. They advise people wear sunglasses filtering UV and blue light, and avoid using their digital devices in the dark.
   9. “By learning more about the mechanisms of blindness in search of a method to intercept toxic reactions caused by the combination of retinal and blue light, we hope to find a way to protect the vision of children growing up in a high-tech world,” Karunarathne said.
   10. In recent years, companies including Apple, Amazon and Google have introduced blue light filters to limit users’ exposure. For example, Apple’s iOS and MacOS features a Night Shift mode where users can adjust displays to warmer colors.
   11. Blue light can also affect your sleep, suppressing your body’s ability to create the hormone melatonin, according to the National Sleep Foundation. They suggest staying away from devices at least 30 minutes before going to bed.
5. ‘They be pirates’ – An old scourge is reappearing in the Caribbean, By Anthony Faiola | Photo and video by Jahi Chikwendiu [WASHIGNTON POST] Aug. 12, 2018
   1. … the Caribbean … region is confronting a new … era of pirates.
   2. Political and economic crises are exploding from Venezuela to Nicaragua to Haiti, sparking anarchy and criminality. As the rule of law breaks down, certain spots in the Caribbean, experts say, are becoming more dangerous than they’ve been in years.
   3. Often, observers say, the acts of villainy appear to be happening with the complicity or direct involvement of corrupt officials — particularly in the waters off collapsing Venezuela.
   4. “It’s criminal chaos, a free-for-all, along the Venezuelan coast,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-director of Insight Crime, a nonprofit organization that studies organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean.
   5. Comprehensive data on piracy is largely lacking for Latin America and the Caribbean. But a two-year study by the nonprofit Oceans Beyond Piracy recorded 71 major incidents in the region in 2017 — including robberies of merchant vessels and attacks on yachts — up 163 percent from the previous year. The vast majority happened in Caribbean waters.
   6. The incidents range from glorified muggings on the high seas to barbaric attacks worthy of 17th-century pirates.
6. For Some Facebook Employees, Free Food Is Coming To An End, By Tonya Mosley [NPR.org From KQED] August 12, 20185:06 PM ET
   1. For years, tech employees of companies in Silicon Valley have enjoyed free meals around the clock. That’s changing — at least in Mountain View, Calif., where the city is banning the social media giant Facebook from offering free food in its newest office building.
   2. Currently, Facebook’s main campus in Menlo Park, Calif., is the stuff of lore. The 430,000 square foot compound offers perks like an onsite cleaners, a dentist and free food — basically a smorgasbord of anything your heart desires — custom omelets, braised beef, handmade sushi and desserts often made to order by trained chefs. …
   3. … But about eight miles away, in Mountain View, Calif. — also the home of Google — free food, at least at the new Facebook campus — won’t be on the menu.
   4. “We believe these companies are part of our community,” says Mountain View Mayor Lenny Siegel. “A growing number of their employees live in our community, and we want them to be a part of our community.”
   5. Siegel, a Democrat, says that for years, restaurant owners have complained that employees of Google never come out to eat or shop. So when the city learned that Facebook would be opening a new office in the fall of 2018 at a building project known as the Village at San Antonio Center, the city passed a project-specific requirement that bars the company from providing free daily meals to employees at any in-house cafeteria. The company is also prevented from providing deeply discounted meals.
   6. … Under the agreement between Mountain View and Facebook, meals within the Facebook offices can’t be subsidized by more than 50 percent on a regular basis. However, the company can fully subsidize meals if employees go to restaurants that are open to the public. Mayor Siegel acknowledges there are still a few kinks that need to be smoothed out.
   7. “Facebook is a global company and some of their people work in the middle of the night,” Siegel says. “If all the restaurants are closed, maybe I would be open to considering food service in the middle of the night.” …
   8. … The city of San Francisco is also considering a similar measure that would ban cafeterias in all new office buildings, forcing tech employees to venture out and share a bit of the wealth outside of their walls.
7. Some Bacteria Are Becoming ‘More Tolerant’ Of Hand Sanitizers, Study Finds, By Melody Schreiber [NPR.org] August 2, 20184:22 PM ET
   1. In the early 2000s, hospitals across Australia began installing more hand-sanitizer dispensers in their rooms and hallways for staff, visitors and patients to use. Research showed these alcohol-based disinfectants helped battle staph infections in patients and certain kinds of drug-resistant bacteria. And rates of these infections went down.
   2. But other infections didn’t drop when people started using the sanitizer stations. In fact, certain infections went up.
   3. In the early 2000s, hospitals across Australia began installing more hand-sanitizer dispensers in their rooms and hallways for staff, visitors and patients to use. Research showed these alcohol-based disinfectants helped battle staph infections in patients and certain kinds of drug-resistant bacteria. And rates of these infections went down.
   4. But other infections didn’t drop when people started using the sanitizer stations. In fact, certain infections went up.
   5. In particular, enterococcal infections — caused by bacteria that affect the digestive tract, bladder, heart and other parts of the body — started increasing.
   6. This wasn’t only happening in Australia. Countries around the world saw rises in this type of infection even as hand sanitizer became more popular. Globally, enterococci make up ten percent of bacterial infections acquired in the hospital. In North America and Europe, they are a leading cause of sepsis, a deadly blood infection.
   7. Now, researchers say, they may have found the cause. Blame it on the alcohol.
   8. New research published by Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday shows that several strains of these bacteria have begun adjusting to alcohol-based hand sanitizers. They’re not resistant to the alcohol — at least, not yet — but they’re becoming “more tolerant” of it, the authors write. That means the bacteria were able to survive for longer periods of time after being doused with alcohol.
   9. The researchers used different strengths of alcohol concentrations to combat the bacteria, starting with 23 percent. Eventually, at a 70-percent alcohol mixture, the bacteria were conquered. Typically, hand sanitizers are 60 percent alcohol.
   10. To make matters worse, many of these alcohol-tolerant bacteria are resistant to multiple drugs as well. Half of the strains the researchers studied cannot be treated with vancomycin, a last-line antibiotic. That means the bacteria are spreading more easily within hospitals, and there aren’t many options for treatment.
   11. The researchers were surprised by their findings.
   12. “To our knowledge this was the first time anyone had shown hospital bacteria becoming tolerant to alcohols,” says Timothy Stinear, a coauthor of the study and a researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. …
   13. … Health-care institutions trying to control the spread of these infections will need to “adhere rigorously to hand-hygiene protocols,” Stinear says — and probably institute additional measures to stop the spread, such as increased hand-washing with soap after coming into contact with the bacteria. …
   14. … Lance Price, a professor at the George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and the founding director of GW’s Antibiotic Resistance Action Center, was also surprised by the findings. … “If you’re washing your hands less because that alcohol-based hand sanitizer makes you feel confident that your hands are clean,” Price says, “all of a sudden you can become a vehicle for alcohol-resistant organisms.”
   15. The research is still clear that alcohol-based hand sanitizers are more effective at battling some bacteria, like those causing staph infections. However, this study indicates that other bacteria are best cleaned off with simple soap and water.
   16. “It’s the physical action of lifting and moving them off your skin, and letting them run down the drain,” Price says.
   17. “We have to be careful about this new trend towards heavy reliance on alcohol-based hand sanitizers,” Price continues. “Soap and water should be our number-one protection” — both in hospitals and for personal use….
8. New Drug Wipes Out Malaria In A Single Dose — But There’s One Hitch, by  Michaeleen Doucleff  [NPR.org] July 26, 20181:02 PM ET
   1. The world now has a potent, new weapon against malaria — one that can wipe out the parasite from a person’s body with a single dose.
   2. But before many people around the world can use it, scientists have to overcome a big obstacle. …
   3. … In certain people, tafenoquine can cause red blood cells to burst open and die. As a result, people can become anemic, and in some instances, this can be lethal.
   4. Here in the U.S., there is a lab test available to see which people will respond poorly to Krintafel. It’s called a “G6PD” test. The FDA and the World Health Organization require a health care worker to give this test before prescribing tafenoquine or other similar drugs.
   5. Right now, this test requires expensive machinery and a high level of expertise to run it, Domingo says.
   6. “It requires the kind of laboratory facilities that are not available where most people with malaria seek care,” he says.
   7. But Domingo and his colleagues are trying to change that. Over the past few years, several companies and nonprofits have been working together to develop an affordable, easy-to-use test that runs off a battery. …
   8. … In terms of cost, GlaxoSmithKline and Medicines for Malaria Venture say it’s too early to say how much tafenoquine will cost in poor countries.
   9. “[We] are committed to making tafenoquine accessible and affordable on a not-for-profit basis to those who need it most,” a spokesperson for GlaxoSmithKline wrote in an email to NPR. “A shared goal is for the cost of tafenoquine not to be a barrier to access.”
9. Meteor Explodes with 2.1 Kilotons of Force 25 Miles Above US Air Force Base in Greenland, By Jack Phillips [TheEPOCHTIMES.COM] August 3, 2018 Last Updated: August 3, 2018
   1. A meteor exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force above a U.S. Air Force base in July, but the military has made no mention of the event, according to reports.
   2. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that a meteor exploded 26 miles above U.S. Air Base Thule on July 25. It was detected by … the early missile warning radar at Thule Air Base, The Aviationist reported on Aug. 3.
   3. The Aviationist’s Tom Demerly, … reported on the incident, [and] wrote in an analysis that it’s concerning because there was no public warning from the U.S. government about the meteor blast. “Had it entered at a more perpendicular angle, it would have struck the earth with significantly greater force,” he wrote.
   4. [As of August 3,] The Air Force has remained silent about the incident.
10. MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES (in billions of dollars)

HOLDINGS 1/ AT END OF PERIOD

May     Apr     Mar     Feb     Jan     Dec     Nov     Oct     Sep

Country                           2018    2018    2018    2018    2018    2017    2017    2017    2017

China, Mainland                 1183.1  1181.9  1187.7  1176.7  1168.2  1184.9  1176.6  1189.2  1182.3  1201.7  1166.9  1146.5  1102.2

Japan                           1048.8  1031.2  1043.5  1059.5  1065.8  1061.5  1084.1  1094.0  1096.0  1101.7  1113.3  1090.3  1111.5

Ireland                          301.0   300.4   317.9   314.0   327.5   326.5   324.3   312.4   310.6   309.0   312.3   304.4   297.8

Brazil                           299.2   294.1   286.0   272.9   265.7   256.8   265.3   270.0   272.8   273.6   271.9   269.7   269.7

United Kingdom                   265.0   262.7   263.7   250.5   243.3   250.0   237.5   225.9   237.4   225.0   229.6   236.0   236.4

Switzerland                      243.4   242.2   245.4   248.0   251.1   249.6   250.9   254.0   253.3   248.2   244.5   244.1   239.4

Luxembourg                       209.1   213.9   221.6   218.6   220.9   217.6   218.3   217.9   213.9   213.3   213.0   211.6   208.0

Hong Kong                        191.7   194.0   196.2   196.5   194.1   194.7   194.9   192.3   194.4   194.5   196.7   201.1   196.6

Cayman Islands                   185.8   180.7   165.5   176.9   168.0   170.6   240.4   247.2   246.9   242.9   240.5   249.3   250.1

Taiwan                           164.8   168.1   170.1   170.7   175.4   180.9   179.9   181.7   183.9   182.0   184.1   185.9   181.2

Saudi Arabia                     162.1   159.9   151.2   150.9   143.6   147.4   147.6   145.2   136.7   137.9   142.5   142.0   134.0

Belgium                          150.5   137.6   125.5   125.7   123.7   119.2   115.3   116.0   104.8    96.9    99.4    98.3    98.7

India                            148.9   152.8   157.0   152.9   148.6   144.7   140.8   141.4   145.1   138.9   135.7   130.3   127.3

Singapore                        118.9   118.0   117.8   118.0   122.6   125.0   124.2   130.4   125.2   119.3   112.3   106.4   107.9

Korea                            104.7   100.1   100.4   101.3   101.7    96.2    98.5   100.1    94.3    95.0    97.9    96.8   100.1

Canada                            96.6    89.4    92.9    89.1    85.5    86.1    82.4    78.0    75.0    73.6    75.5    76.5    80.1

France                            89.6    82.5    80.9    77.0    78.4    80.9    76.6    77.9    78.2    76.0    80.0    72.2    74.4

Germany                           78.3    86.0    76.5    78.5    71.0    72.3    71.6    72.9    74.9    73.0    73.3    68.3    68.3

Bermuda                           63.6    64.7    66.4    67.4    67.5    67.0    63.5    62.9    62.4    62.3    61.5    60.2    59.8

Thailand                          62.2    60.8    57.2    68.0    67.2    60.9    68.0    68.4    70.8    71.6    67.2    66.1    66.5

United Arab Emirates              60.0    59.7    59.2    57.5    55.1    57.7    58.2    57.7    54.3    55.9    59.9    58.8    60.5

Norway                            49.7    39.3    40.2    50.4    46.9    51.1    55.3    60.6    64.1    58.0    54.9    53.7    48.3

Sweden                            45.5    45.1    46.2    46.3    46.3    43.9    44.7    45.3    45.9    44.3    42.7    41.0    40.8

Netherlands                       45.1    42.5    43.9    44.8    45.1    48.6    47.6    45.1    47.5    50.3    50.5    53.1    52.2

Kuwait                            43.9    42.6    36.9    36.3    36.9    36.8    36.8    39.4    38.0    35.6    33.0    31.8    31.6

Mexico                            43.2    41.9    45.2    35.4    33.9    38.7    40.6    41.6    40.5    34.7    35.8    32.4    38.9

Poland                            40.2    41.4    40.3    40.4    40.7    40.0    38.4    38.8    37.3    36.3    35.6    34.1    35.0

Italy                             39.6    36.4    37.2    36.6    35.4    35.2    35.6    34.5    35.3    35.4    36.2    36.1    35.6

Australia                         37.6    36.0    34.1    38.5    37.8    37.5    40.6    38.7    36.9    37.8    37.9    38.1    37.1

Spain                             34.5    31.3    32.0    32.4    34.7    33.5    36.2    36.9    38.1    38.2    38.2    36.6    37.9

Turkey                            32.6    38.2    40.9    45.6    49.6    52.6    61.2    61.5    60.8    57.7    54.5    58.9    49.5

Philippines                       31.6    31.5    32.1    33.0    33.8    36.4    35.8    36.4    35.5    36.3    38.1    37.9    38.2

Chile                             30.2    28.4    29.8    30.2    29.0    28.9    29.2    28.8    25.6    26.2    27.1    27.4    27.3

All Other                        512.5   533.5   575.2   575.9   571.4   575.9   585.3   581.3   583.3   566.6   567.7   556.0   565.6

Grand Total                     6213.6  6169.0  6216.6  6216.4  6186.6  6209.7  6306.2  6324.1  6301.9  6249.4  6230.2  6151.9  6108.4

11. Facebook’s 20% Stock Implosion Signalled By Insider Selling, But Is It A Buy Now?, by Roger Aitken Contributor [FORBES.cpm] Jul 28, 2018, 04:16pm

1. … In becoming the biggest-ever one-day wipeout in U.S. stockmarket history, Facebook’s stockmarket value recovered somewhat, but still declined by 19% to around $120 billion. In so doing, the personal wealth of Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of the social networking site, tanked by almost $16 billion over stalling growth. Some analysts described it as a “bombshell” moment and the earnings news caused immediate waves of selling on Wall Street. …
2. … “I think we were all caught off guard by the extent of the move. However, investors should really have seen something like this coming as insiders at Facebook have been selling shares heavily in recent months,” remarked Neil Wilson, Chief Market Analyst at Markets.com in London in the wake of the earnings release.
3. Indeed, over the last three months alone insiders – including Mark Zuckerberg – have sold off $3.8 billion worth of stock in the company. …
4. MIKE: But why isn’t the insider selling for months prior to the crash discussed more in the article?

12. Typhus making comeback in Texas, By Todd Ackerman | August 3, 2017, Updated: August 3, 2017 10:20pm

1. … Between 2003 and 2013, typhus increased tenfold in Texas and spread from nine counties to 41, according to Baylor College of Medicine researchers. The numbers have increased since then.
2. Harris County, which reported no cases before 2007, had 32 cases in 2016, double the previous years’ numbers. Researchers do not know why the numbers are increasing. …
3. … the infection is severe enough that 60 percent of people who contracted the infection during the 10-year period had to be hospitalized. Four died, one in Houston.
4. “We can now add typhus to the growing list of tropical infections striking Texas,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital, “Chagas, dengue fever, Zika, chikungunya and now typhus – tropical diseases have become the new normal in south and southeast Texas.” …

13.Sucking carbon out of the air won’t solve climate change – But it might fill in a few key pieces of the clean energy puzzle, By David Roberts @drvoxdavid@vox.com Updated Jul 16, 2018

1. Climate change is caused by putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What if, instead, we took it out? …
2. … In June, we got the first solid engineering and cost numbers on DAC [“direct air capture”], courtesy of a company called Carbon Engineering out of Calgary, Canada. …
3. … The headline news from the paper is that the cost of capturing a ton of CO2 — estimated at around $600 in 2011 — has fallen to between $94 and $232. Almost any source of renewable energy can prevent a ton of carbon for cheaper than that, but still, down at the lower end, beneath $100, DAC starts to look viable in a low-carbon world. …
4. … To state the bottom line clearly: The ability to pull carbon out of the air is not a silver bullet. It is not the cheapest or most effective way to fight climate change. It won‘t allow us to bypass any of the hard work of reducing our emissions. …
5. ‘’’ From a climate change mitigation perspective, there are two basic ways of dealing with CO2 emissions.
6. The smartest and cheapest is to not emit them in the first place. We can do that in a million different ways, by reducing our consumption, using current technologies more efficiently, or shifting to low-carbon technologies and practices.
7. The second is to remove CO2 from the biosphere and put it back into the geosphere, where it won‘t cook the planet. Such “negative emissions” may end up being necessary if we emit more CO2 than our “carbon budget” for no more than 2 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperatures, the target the world agreed on in Paris.
8. Much of the confusion around [“direct air capture”] arises from the fact that it can play either role — it can either prevent CO2 emissions or draw down CO2. At least for now, Keith’s company, Carbon Engineering, has elected to play in the former space, not the latter. …
9. … getting to true negative emissions [has] the greatest long-term implications: moving carbon from the biosphere back into the geosphere, taking it out of circulation (sequestering it) so that it no longer warms the earth.
10. … From a net-carbon perspective, all that matters for negative emissions is burying more carbon than you dig up. It doesn’t matter what carbon you bury, or where, as long as the overall sign is negative, more in than out. …
11. … Why aren’t the commercial DAC [“direct air capture”] plants burying their emissions? Two reasons.
12. First, … CO2 used for greenhouses has economic co-benefits … Same with CO2 used to make fuels, or for enhanced oil recovery, or as an industrial feedstock. In contrast, burying CO2 has no economic co-benefits whatsoever. …
13. … Second, even if there were a market for sequestration … [it] would pay for any CCS [“carbon capture and sequestration”], anywhere. That would put DAC in direct competition with carbon capture at thermal power plants, and it is always going to be easier to pull CO2 out of an exhaust stream, where it is concentrated (roughly 1 molecule out of every 10), than out of the air, where it is highly dispersed (roughly 1 molecule out of every 2,500).
14. … [T]o get negative, we‘ll have to do more. [T]here are a number of ideas for how it might be done…
15. [One] is bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), which involves burning biomass (plants or biowaste) in a thermal power plant, capturing CO2 from the exhaust stream, and burying the CO2. Biomass is from the biosphere, so this really does involve transferring carbon from the biosphere to the geosphere — reducing net atmospheric carbon.

14.California’s future: More big droughts and massive floods, new study finds, By Paul Rogers | progers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group [mercurynews.com] PUBLISHED: April 23, 2018 at 8:00 am | UPDATED: April 23, 2018 at 9:18 am

1. The extreme weather swings that Californians have experienced over the past six years — a historic drought followed by drenching winter storms that caused $100 million in damage to San Jose and wrecked the spillway at Oroville Dam — will become the norm over the coming generations, a new study has found.
2. Those types of extremes are not new, but because of climate change, they can be expected to occur more frequently, as hotter global temperatures and warming oceans are putting more water vapor into the air, concluded the study, which was published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
3. And perhaps most ominous, the odds are rising that a mega-storm — like the one that famously flooded California in 1862, forcing Leland Stanford to take a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to his inauguration as governor — will strike again. Such a storm “is more likely than not” to hit the state at least once in the next 40 years and twice in the next 80, the study found. The 1862 event, the largest recorded flood in California history, saw 43 days of continuous rainfall that washed whole towns away and forced the state capital to be temporarily moved to San Francisco.

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

1. The Daily 202: Puerto Ricans who fled to Florida after Hurricane Maria are not registering to vote, By James Hohmann [WASHINGTON POST] July 27, 2018 Email the author With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
   1. … Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico last September and prompted a mass exodus of more than 100,000 residents to the mainland United States. …
   2. … The exact number is still not known, but tens of thousands of people permanently resettled in Florida. …
   3. …Because they’re already U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans are eligible to vote as soon as they move to the mainland. The thinking last fall was that they’d be so angry at Trump that they’d be champing at the bit to vote against Republicans in the midterms. Operatives from both parties said that this could prove decisive in a perennial battleground like Florida where elections are always close. …
   4. … The freshest data reveals that there has been no surge in new Puerto Rican voters. During the nine months before the hurricane — January through September of 2017 — there were 343,000 people who registered to vote in Florida, and 18 percent were Hispanic, according to Daniel Smith, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida. During the nine months after the hurricane — from last October through the end of June — there were 326,000 new registered voters. Just 21 percent were Hispanic. That’s a pretty small uptick — and not necessarily explained by Puerto Rican registration at all.
   5. The Puerto Ricans emigres have mostly gravitated toward the Orlando area, mainly because so many other Puerto Ricans already lived there. The number of people of Puerto Rican origin living in Florida surpassed 1 million in 2015, which is more than double what it was in 2000.
   6. Steve Schale, a Tallahassee-based Democratic strategist who directed Barack Obama’s 2008 victory in Florida and was a senior adviser on his 2012 reelection campaign, has been closely tracking these numbers in Excel spreadsheets, which he shared Thursday.
   7. “The concern I’ve had for a while is that … the Maria impact was probably not going to be as significant as people initially thought,” he said. “We’ve got two-and-a-half months left for voter registration. But these numbers show it’s not going to happen organically. … This is a warning flare that there’s real work to be done. … Dems need to be registering around the clock, which they clearly aren’t doing.”
2. Trump’s ‘emoluments’ battle: How a scholar’s search of 200 years of dictionaries helped win a historic ruling, by Fred Barbash July 27 at 10:31 AM Email the author
   1. … John Mikhail, a law professor with a PhD in philosophy and associate dean at the Georgetown University Law School … went to dictionaries available to the framers of the Constitution in 1787, which is what litigants do when trying to figure out what the Founding Fathers meant.
   2. With the aid of a Georgetown law student, Genevieve Bentz, he embarked on a lexicological odyssey into dozens of long-forgotten dictionaries, published over a 200-year period before 1806, 40 regular dictionaries and 10 legal dictionaries, listed here.
   3. The research yielded a very different, much broader definition than that put forward by Trump’s lawyers. “Every English dictionary definition of ’emolument’ from 1604 to 1806″ uses a “broad definition,” including “profit,” “advantage,” “gain,” or benefit,” he wrote in his paper describing the research.
   4. As to the “office-and-employment-specific” interpretation by Trump’s team, Mikhail wrote that “over 92 percent of these dictionaries define ’emolument’ . . . with no reference to ‘office’ or ’employment.’ ”
   5. In other words, by his research, the emoluments clause would bar any benefit or profit to a president via a foreign state, whether in his capacity as president or in any other role, such as the owner of a hotel. It would, specifically, cover Saudi Arabia or Kuwait renting out space at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
   6. … On Wednesday [July 18], Mikhail’s labors paid off. In a historic decision, U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Greenbelt, Md., ruled that a suit brought by the District of Columbia and Maryland could go forward instead of throwing it out, as the administration desired.
   7. Messitte cited, in part, what he called the “exhaustive” research of Mikhail, mentioning him by name 17 times.
   8. And while citing numerous other factors, the judge’s choice of definition proved crucial to the ruling, the first on the meaning of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses. (There are two, one covering domestic gain, the other foreign.)
   9. The judge noted that Mikhail’s dictionary research was more extensive than that of the president’s lawyers, covering “virtually every founding-era dictionary.” Citing Mikhail again, Messitte said, “the President’s definition appears in less than 8% of these dictionaries” vs. 92 percent for the broader meaning.
   10. “The clear weight of the evidence,” wrote the judge, “shows that an ’emolument’ was commonly understood by the founding generation to encompass any ‘profit,’ ‘gain,’ or ‘advantage.’ …
3. TV Talk:
   1. “The Good Place”
   2. “The Orville”
   3. “Adam Ruins Everything”

LINKS:

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

1. Op-Ed: Texans should be wary of bullet train proposal, By Alain Leray  – Guest Contributor, Mar 22, 2018, 12:27pm –
   1. This opinion piece was written by Alain Leray, president and CEO of SNCF America Inc., which is France’s national state-owned railway company
   2. Amtrak partners with Texas Bullet Train for ticketing, access to national routes, By Dallas Business Journal staff, May 4, 2018, 1:09pm

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