Budget Bills Pass & Resurrecting The Woolly Mammoth (Maybe)
March 7, 2024
Hello, readers – happy Thursday! Today, we’re talking about government funding, Red Sea violence, Israeli settlements, Zelenskyy’s close call, a Texas ruling, pollution disclosures, and bringing back the Woolly Mammoth.
Here’s some good news: Google is making some changes to how it ranks search results, which will do a better job of downranking content that appears to be AI-generated. Google’s measurements show a reduction in “unhelpful content” by up to 40% so far. Also, scientists have confirmed a sighting of a gray whale off New England that went extinct in the Atlantic Ocean two centuries ago. There have only been five observations of the animal the last 15 years.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” – Steve Jobs
Nothing Brings Us Together Like A Nice Deadline
The GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a package of six government funding bills on Wednesday just before a partial government shutdown scheduled for March 8, which would have affected multiple major federal agencies, including the Department of Transportation and the Food and Drug Administration. Representatives voted 339-85 in favor of the bipartisan spending bills, with 83 Republicans and two Democrats opposing.
Both parties have claimed victories hidden among the 1,050 pages. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer highlighted increased spending for social safety net programs, increased investment in infrastructure projects, and the bolstering of veterans’ benefits programs. House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, said, “This legislation forbids the Department of Justice from targeting parents exercising their right to free speech before school boards, while it blocks the Biden Administration from stripping Second Amendment rights from veterans. It imposes deep cuts to the EPA, ATF, and FBI, which under the Biden Administration have threatened our freedoms and our economy, while it fully funds veterans’ health care.”
Blood Spills In The Red Sea
A missile strike by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea yesterday took the lives of at least three crew members of a commercial vessel and injured multiple others, marking the first time the group has killed anybody since it began attacking ships in the area late last year. The Houthi ballistic missile hit the M/V True Confidence, a Barbados-flagged, Liberian-owned carrier.
“The targeting operation came after the ship’s crew rejected warning messages from the Yemeni naval forces,” said a Houthi statement released after the attack. The group added that its attacks on shipping vessels once Israeli “aggression stops and the siege on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted.”
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “The United States will continue to hold the Houthis accountable for their attacks.” U.S. and U.K. forces have been patrolling the Red Sea to intercept missiles and the Pentagon has been carrying out strikes on Houthi weapons stores, but it’s unclear if the U.S. has been able to make a solid dent in the group’s military capabilities.
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Settling For More Conflict
- Israel has announced plans to build thousands of new houses in the occupied West Bank, expanding the country’s settlements in the West Bank, considered by most of the international community to be illegal. An Israeli minister said that most of the new settler homes would be built in Maale Adumim, a settlement where three Palestinian men opened fire on an Israeli checkpoint last week, and made it clear that the new construction was a direct retaliation.
- A total of 3,476 new settler homes were announced as part of the plans, with 2,452 in Maale Adumim, 694 in Efrat, and 330 in Kedar. “The enemies try to harm and weaken us but we will continue to build and be built up in this land,” wrote Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on X. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his disappointment with Israel’s expansion plans, reiterating the White House’s position that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal.
A Close Shave For Kyiv
- On Wednesday, a Russian missile exploded in the Ukrainian city of Odesa, hitting a port just minutes after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis departed the area. Zelenskyy had taken Kyriakos on a tour of the port as part of the Greek leader’s visit to Ukraine, and the pair had left the area to continue their discussions in a car, which was just a few hundred feet away from the port when the missile struck.
- “It hit in a couple of hundred of meters (about 300 feet) from us, while the meeting was going,” said a source, adding that the incident was “the closest call ever.” A government spokesperson clarified that the strike was “not in any way related to a specific visit. It is related to the terror that the enemy is carrying out quite methodically.” The representative said that Zelenskyy’s visit to Odesa was not announced prior to the meeting, but his presence in the city was known before the strike hit.
More Mixed Nuts
- Haiti gang leader threatens ‘civil war’ if PM does not resign (BBC)
- Millions go hungry as war and waves of ethnic killing disrupt food supply in Sudan (NBC)
- South Korea’s president vows not to tolerate walkouts by junior doctors (AP)
- Peru’s prime minister steps down after alleged audio leak (Reuters)
- Navalny widow calls for Russia election day gatherings to show dismay with Putin (ABC)
- UK Budget: Jeremy Hunt cuts taxes for workers as election looms (CNN)
Middle East Mixed Nuts
- Newborns die of hunger and mothers struggle to feed their children as Israel’s siege condemns Gazans to starvation (CNN)
- Iron Dome interception of rocket barrage fired from Lebanon toward Israel caught on camera (AP)
Jim Crow In 2024 (Literally)
- A federal judge in Texas has sided with a white plaintiff and ordered that the Minority Business Development Agency help people of all races. The 55-year-old federal agency was created to help minority-owned businesses, presuming that businesses owned by people of color were at a disadvantage.
- U.S. District Court Judge Mark T. Pittman argued that this business model violates the Equal Protection Clause. Pittman, a Trump appointee, also said the agency places extra barriers on white business owners, comparing it to discrimination faced by Irish people in the 1800s and Black people during the Jim Crow era.
Freedom Is When We Don’t Track Our Emissions
- Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) passed a rule that will require companies to share their contributions to pollution. Business owners argued the law overstepped, while environmentalists said it didn’t go far enough – ultimately, the business owners (and some lawmakers) seem to have won with a significantly milder version of the original draft.
- The initial proposal required businesses to disclose “scope 3 emissions,” which are emissions for which the company is indirectly responsible. For example, emissions from cars would be scope 3 emissions for an oil company, because the oil company provides the gas for those cars. The final version of the rule only requires companies to disclose the direct and indirect greenhouse gas pollution they consider worth sharing with investors.
More Nuts In America
- Nikki Haley suspends her campaign and leaves Donald Trump as the last major Republican candidate (AP)
- Mitch McConnell endorses Donald Trump for president (NBC)
- Schiff and Garvey will advance to California Senate general election (CNN)
- San Francisco voters pivot right on drugs, policing (Politico)
- Alabama lawmakers advance legislation to protect IVF providers after frozen embryo ruling (AP)
- National Guard to be deployed in New York City subway in crime crackdown (ABC)
That’s Woolly Good News
- We’re not sure when resurrecting a woolly mammoth became a major goal for the scientific community, but apparently it is – and researchers have taken a large (one might even say mammoth) step towards that goal this week. According to Colossal Biosciences, a group dedicated to resurrecting extinct species like the dodo and woolly mammoth, researchers were able to successfully create induced pluripotent stem cells for Asian elephants, which are the mammoths’ closest living relatives.
- Pluripotent stem cells are able to grow into any other cell in the body, and the researchers hope that they can be manipulated to create elephants with important of mammoth-like traits, including the thick fat and heavy coats that allowed mammoths to survive during the Ice Age.
- “We’re very, very excited that we have derived the first elephant induced pluripotent stem cells,” said the head of Colossal’s mammoth project. “These cells will benefit the elephant conservation community just as much as being engineered to bring back the woolly mammoth.” Researchers hope that the stem cells will also be useful to study the biology of Asian elephants as well, allowing them to help the elephants’ survival as a species.
More Loose Nuts
- Apple terminates Epic Games developer account calling it a ‘threat’ to the iOS ecosystem (TechCrunch)
- Prosecutors drop charges midtrial against 3 accused of possessing stolen ‘Hotel California’ lyrics (AP)
- TSA testing new self-service screening technology at Las Vegas airport. Here’s a look at how it works. (CBS)
- Chinese national arrested and charged with stealing AI trade secrets from Google (NPR)
- Conservative-backed lawsuit takes aim at alleged diversity quotas in Hollywood (Guardian)
- An offer he couldn’t refuse: Sopranos diner booth sells for $82,600 (Guardian)
