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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.

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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]:“Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play.  Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided.  The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.” —Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (from http://laborquotes.weebly.com/unions–labor.html)

 

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1. Make sure you are registered to vote
   1. Early voting location
   2. 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.
   3. LAST DAY TO REGISTER FOR GENERAL ELECTION: Oct-9-2018
   4. GENERAL ELECTION:11-6-2018
   5. Make sure you are registered:
      1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
      2. VoteTexas.gov
   6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
      1. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE ß CLICK
2. US to threaten sanctions against International Criminal Court, close PLO office in Washington, By Elise Labott and Hilary Clarke, CNN | Updated 12:43 PM ET, Mon September 10, 2018
   1. The Trump administration is expected to raise the specter of sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it moves to investigate the US or Israel, according to an official familiar with planned remarks by US national security adviser John Bolton.
   2. Bolton, a former US Ambassador to the United Nations, will lay out a new campaign Monday to punish countries and individuals that try to prosecute American personnel, the US or its allies — in particular Israel — at the ICC, the official said.
   3. Bolton will call for the protection of such allies “by any means necessary” against the jurisdiction of the Netherlands-based court, which the US does not recognize. …
   4. … The potential prosecution of US service members in Afghanistan is of primary importance to the administration, the official said.
   5. Bolton is also set to announce the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, the official said. Bolton is expected to tie its closing to the Palestinians’ refusal to engage in the peace process and to threats by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to take Israel to the ICC….
   6. “We have permitted the PLO office to conduct operations that support the objective of achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between Israelis and the Palestinians since the expiration of a previous waiver in November 2017,” department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in the statement. “However, the PLO has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.
   7. “To the contrary, PLO leadership has condemned a U.S. peace plan they have not yet seen and refused to engage with the U.S. government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise,” Nauert’s statement continued.
   8. The statement added that the decision was “consistent with the administration’s and congressional concerns about Palestinian attempts to prompt an ICC investigation of Israel….
   9. … The Taylor Force Act is a law passed by Congress earlier this year that linked future US funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to a demand that the PA end its policy of paying a stipend to “terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists.” The law’s proponents said the payments were an “incentive to commit acts of terror” — but the law exempted US funding for East Jerusalem hospitals.
   10. Last month, the US also announced it was cutting all funding to the UNRWA, the UN agency that provides schools and healthcare services to more than five million Palestinian refugees, leaving the agency with a shortfall of $300 million.
   11. The US onslaught against the ICC is the latest challenge from the Trump administration to international institutions. This year alone it has left the UN Human Rights Council and threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization. Last year the US withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.
3. Trump’s latest boast about the economy isn’t even close to accurate, By Chris Isidore |CNN | Updated 12:14 PM ET, Mon September 10, 2018
   1. President Donald Trump spent the morning bragging about the economy. At least one of his claims didn’t come close to being true.
   2. “The GDP [annualized] Rate (4.2%) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!” the president said in a tweet….
   3. … But Trump got it wrong — way wrong — when he said it hasn’t happened in a century.
   4. In the last 70 years, it’s happened in at least 62 quarters, most recently in 2006.
   5. “He wasn’t even in the neighborhood of right,” [said Justin Wolfers, professor of economics at University of Michigan] said in an interview.
4. Democrats love Canada. Republicans, not so much, U.S. poll finds, By Daniel Dale | Toronto Star, Washington Bureau Chief | Tues., Sept. 4, 2018
   1. Americans of all political stripes still like Canada. But Democrats are currently much fonder than Republicans, a new poll has found.
   2. In a Pew Research survey in August, 63 per cent of Democrats said their feelings toward Canada were “very warm.” Just 39 per cent of Republicans said the same.
   3. Eleven per cent of Democrats said they were somewhat warm toward Canada, while 20 per cent of Republicans said the same.
   4. On the whole then, 74 per cent of Democrats were favourably disposed toward Canada, compared to 59 per cent of Republicans.
   5. Twenty-six per cent of Democrats said they were either neutral (16 per cent) or cold (10 per cent) toward Canada. For Republicans, that number was 41 per cent: 26 per cent neutral, 15 per cent cold.
5. Ford: Trump wrong on building Focus in US, By Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press Published 6:52 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2018 | Updated 12:04 p.m. ET Sept. 10, 2018
   1. Auto analysts groaned Sunday in response to tweets sent by President Donald Trump that touted his tariffs on Chinese imports and his claim that the trade war would inspire Ford Motor Co. to build its popular Ford Active crossover in the U.S. rather than overseas.
   2. Wrong, Ford said.
   3. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company issued a statement in response to the president’s tweet:
   4. “It would not be profitable to build the Focus Active in the U.S. given an expected annual sales volume of fewer than 50,000 units and its competitive segment. Ford is proud to employ more U.S. hourly workers and build more vehicles in the U.S. than any other automaker.”
   5. Jon Gabrielsen, a market economist who advises automakers and auto suppliers, said, “This is further evidence that neither the president nor his trade representatives have any clue of the complexities of global supply chains.” …
   6. … Building the car may still be the plan, but not in the U.S., [said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of the Industry, Labor & Economics Group at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan] , along with other analysts. At issue is finding low-wage production sites to maintain profit margins, and that doesn’t include the U.S. or Canada. 
   7. “This trade thing turns into Whac-A-Mole,” Dziczek said. “You can shut off China and things will come from India, Thailand, Taiwan, Poland, Slovenia. There are loads of low-cost countries for parts and vehicles.”
6. Florence Now a Major Category 4 Hurricane; Destructive Strike Likely on Southeast Coast, By com meteorologists
   1. At a Glance – Florence has rapidly intensified into a major hurricane.
   2. A strike on the U.S. East Coast is now likely Thursday.
   3. Life-threatening storm surge and destructive winds are expected.
   4. Massive inland rainfall flooding is also expected from Florence lingering into next week.
   5. Tropical storm force winds may arrive as soon as Wednesday night.
   6. Florence is also generating dangerous surf and rip currents along the East Coast.Hurricane Florence has rapidly intensified into a Category 3 major hurricane southeast of Bermuda and is likely to lash the East Coast later this week with life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds and massive inland rainfall flooding in one of the strongest strikes on this part of the East Coast on record.
   7. If you’re in the East Coast threat zone, the time is now to develop or firm up your hurricane preparedness planand be ready to implement it if necessary. Residents in coastal areas should follow evacuation orders from local officials because of the potential for life-threatening storm surge flooding.
   8. The first hurricane watch and storm surge watch for the southeastern coast will likely be issued Tuesday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center.
   9. Current Status: As of late Monday morning, Florence was more than 1,200 miles east-southeast of Cape Fear, North Carolina, moving westward.
   10. Projected Path: (The red-shaded area denotes the potential path of the center of the tropical cyclone. It’s important to note that impacts (particularly heavy rain, high surf, coastal flooding, winds) with any tropical cyclone usually spread beyond its forecast path.)
7. U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question, By Kevin Sieff |WASHINGTON POST | September 1, 2018
   1. Editor’s note: During the reporting of this story, the State Department declined to provide figures on passport denials. After publication, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issued a statement challenging the accuracy of the article and offered data on passport applications along the southern border region. That information has been added to the story.
   2. PHARR, Tex. — On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.
   3. His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.
   4. But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.
   5. As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.
   6. In a statement, the State Department said that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications,” adding that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”
   7. MIKE: Old friends of mine recently reported straying across The Mexican border without passports because they accidentally got into a bridge lane that wouldn’t let them turn around before leaving the US. They were “briefly” detained.
8. Live From the Battleground Districts: Polls of the Key Races for House Control – In a first, the Upshot and Siena College will publish polling results in real time, By Nate Cohn | NY Times | Sept. 6, 2018
   1. Over the next two months, The New York Times will talk to more voters than ever before. It starts tonight, when we’ll publish the first New York Times Upshot/Siena College polls of the most competitive battlegrounds in the fight for Congress.
   2. But there’s a twist. None of these polls are finished. One hasn’t even begun.
   3. We’re doing it live.
   4. For the first time, we’ll publish our poll results and display them in real time, from start to finish, respondent by respondent. No media organization has ever tried something like this, and we hope to set a new standard of transparency. You’ll see the poll results at the same time we do. You’ll see our exact assumptions about who will turn out, where we’re calling and whether someone is picking up. You’ll see what the results might have been had we made different choices.
   5. By the time we finish on Nov. 4, two days before the election, we expect to have conducted nearly 100 live polls of the races most likely to decide control of Congress. They include those in the once reliably Republican Orange County, Calif., and the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky, two districts where we begin tonight. …
   6. … Tonight, we’ll report findings from the last two days of interviews with voters in California’s 48th and Illinois’s Sixth and 12th. And we’ll begin reporting our first findings from Kentucky’s Sixth. You can follow the live polling here, and you can learn more about the choices we made in designing the poll here.
9. Russian TV May Have Cropped Photo to Support Conspiracy Theory, September 09, 2018, polygraph.info/
   1. On September 5, British authorities named two suspects in the Salisbury and Amesbury poisoning case, and also released photographs of the two men in security camera footage from different locations in the Britain. According to British Prime Minister Theresa May, the two men are suspected operatives of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, colloquially known as the GRU.
   2. Among the materials released by the British government were two separate photographs, one of each suspect passing through a customs control corridor at London’s Airport.
   3. Later, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova appeared on the Russian talk show 60 Minutes, on the state-owned channel Rossiya-24. She attacked the British evidence based on the photographs of the two men at Gatwick. With the photos of both men on the screen in front of her, Zakharova pointed out that the time stamps on both photos were identical down to the second. She implied that it would be impossible for two people to occupy the same space at the same time.
   4. Fact checkers on the internet quickly pointed out a problem with the spokeswoman’s detective work. It is clear that the two men are walking in different, but identical-looking corridors at the same time. While the surroundings are identical, the photographs were taken at slightly different angles, indicating different cameras in different positions.
   5. Bellingcat released a report showing the corridors from another angle. Given their position and construction, it is entirely possible for two people walking abreast at the same pace to walk into adjacent corridors and be photographed at the same second, as Bellingcat put it, “here are multiple parallel gates that would have allowed the two suspects pass through the gates at the same time.”
10. Trump Tweets ‘Thank You’ to Kim Jong Un After North Korean Military Parade – The president responded to the news that the Pyongyang celebration didn’t include a display of nuclear missiles. By Doha Madani 09/09/2018 07:22 pm ET | HUFFINGTONPOST.com
    1. President Donald Trumpsent his thanks to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday after the country made changes to its military parade in Pyongyang. 
    2. North Korea celebrated its 70-year anniversary on Sunday with a show of its military strength but strayed from the traditional display of the country’s intercontinental missiles. The parade instead featured floats and flowers as Kim chose to focus on building economic power. 
    3. Trump, who met with Kim for a denuclearization summit in Singapore in June, tweeted his gratitude to the North Korean dictator on Sunday. …
    4. “This is a big and very positive statement from North Korea,” Trump tweeted. “Thank you To Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.”
11. Turkey’s woes could be just the start as record global debt bills come due, By David J. Lynch [com] September 3 at 10:59 AM
    1. Ten years after the worst financial panic since the 1930s, growing debt burdens in key developing economies are fueling fears of a new crisis that could spread far beyond the disruption sweeping Turkey.
    2. The loss of investor confidence in the Turkish lira, which has surrendered nearly 40 percent of its value this year, is only a preview of debt problems that could engulf countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Russia and Indonesia, some economists say.
    3. “Turkey is not the last one,” said Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, an economics professor at the University of Maryland. “Turkey is the beginning.”
    4. For now, few experts think that a broader crisis is imminent. But the danger of a financial contagion that could hit Americans by crushing U.S. exports and sending the stock market plunging should be taken more seriously in light of a massive increase in global debt since the 2008 downturn, the economists said.
    5. Total debt is a whopping $169 trillion, up from $97 trillion on the eve of the Great Recession, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
    6. While previous debt crises involved U.S. households and, later, profligate European governments such as Greece, this time the concern centers on companies in emerging markets that borrowed heavily in dollars and euros….
    7. … Those bills are coming due, and Turkey, like other developing countries, may not have the dollars and euros to pay them back.
    8. That is in part because the Fed is raising interest rates in the midst of a healthier U.S. economy. The stronger dollar — along with the sinking lira — makes it increasingly expensive for Turkish borrowers to repay their dollar debts. Paying off a $100,000 loan at the start of this year would have required 379,000 lira. Now, that same loan would take more than 600,000 lira….
    9. …The prospect of a new debt crisis is striking because the world has already seen two in the past 10 years. …
    10. … Turkey’s problems are likely to get worse before they get better. Inflation is headed to a peak of 22 percent by year’s end, and the economy will shrink next year for the first time in a decade, according to S&P.
    11. But even if the country’s currency woes do not herald a global crisis, their impact is unlikely to be quarantined there.
    12. “We’ve depended on emerging markets to bring up global growth, some of it due to a credit boom,” Lund said. “This is going to take a bite out of growth, which will affect the U.S., Europe and the entire world economy.”
12. National debt of the United States (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
    1. As of July 31, 2018, debt held by the public was $15.6 trillion and intragovernmental holdings were $5.7 trillion, for a total or “National Debt” of $21.3 trillion.^[5] Debt held by the public was approximately 77% of GDP in 2017, ranked 43rd highest out of 207 countries.^[6] The Congressional Budget Office forecast in April 2018 that the ratio will rise to nearly 100% by 2028, perhaps higher if current policies are extended beyond their scheduled expiration date.^[7] As of December 2017, $6.3 trillion or approximately 45% of the debt held by the public was owned by foreign investors, the largest being China (about $1.18 trillion) then Japan (about $1.06 trillion).^[8]
    2. … According to the CIA World Factbook, during 2015, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio of 73.6% was the 39th highest in the world. This was measured using “debt held by the public.”[22] However, $1 trillion in additional borrowing since the end of FY 2015 has raised the ratio to 76.2% as of April 2016 [See Appendix#National debt for selected years]. Also, this number excludes state and local debt. According to the OECD, general government gross debt (federal, state, and local) in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2015 was $22.5 trillion (125% of GDP); subtracting out $5.25 trillion for intergovernmental federal debt to count only federal “debt held by the public” gives 96% of GDP.[23]
    3. MIKE: Low Taxes That lead to higher debt, which leads to higher interest rates, paid to banks and investors. This seems okay to Republicans who cut taxes in good times and thus raise borrowing and, unavoidably, interest rates. John Maynard Keynes talked about pump priming, spending borrowed money in bad times but running surpluses to pay it back in bad times.
    4. MIKE: Question: Would you rather pay higher taxes that build infrastructure, create jobs and improve the competitiveness and way-of-life in this country, or higher interest rates that buy the nation nothing? Which one is better for YOU?
13. 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….
14. 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.”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.
15. 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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