The Economist (May 12)
SoftBank’s founder Masayoshi Son is now a contender for “the most influential person in technology.” His $100 billion Vision Fund is “gobbling up stakes in the world’s most exciting young companies…. disrupting both the industries in which it invests and other suppliers of capital…. Even if the fund ends up flopping, it will have several lasting effects on technology investing.”
Tags: Capital, Disrupting, Influential, Investing, Lasting effects, Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, Technology, Vision Fund
Washington Post (May 11)
“Lord save the world…. President Trump is making rash and risky moves that promise either brilliant success or catastrophic failure. The odds aren’t great, “given that it’s Trump we’re dealing with.”
BBC (May 10)
“Mahathir Mohamad is on course to become the world’s oldest elected leader at 92, after a shock victory in Malaysia’s bitterly fought election” over his former protégé Najib Razak also “ousted the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which has been in power since independence in 1957.”
Tags: BN coalition, Elected, Election, Independence, Leader, Mahathir, Malaysia, Najib Razak, Oldest, Shock victory
CNN (May 9)
“While Beijing has slowly become mindful of the monster it has unwittingly unleashed, it still believes that it can walk both these very thin lines—a North Korea that is weak but stable, and disruptive yet not explosive—in part because it must: China’s internal instability cannot withstand much in the way of external shocks, of which the leadership is well aware.”
Tags: Beijing, China, Disruptive, External shocks, Instability, Monster, North Korea, Stable, Weak
New York Daily News (May 9)
“Kudos to President Trump and his administration for the breakthrough: Three Americans are free from the prison that is North Korea, a meaningful achievement on its own terms that just might suggest better things to come from Kim Jong Un. We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, though.” Afterall, there were 11 releases during the term of former President Barack Obama.
Tags: Breakthrough, Free, Kim Jong Un, Kudos, Meaningful, North Korea, Obama, Prison, Trump
Reuters (May 8)
“Hedge funds and speculators spent the first four months of the year betting heavily against the dollar. They’re now running for the hills. The increasingly rapid rate at which they’re slashing their short dollar positions is creating a vicious cycle.” Moreover, it looks like “this ‘pain trade’ has further to run because, historically, the overall short position remains large.”
LA Times (May 8)
California appears to be headed “toward requiring solar panels on all new houses,” which would make it “the first state to require solar panels on all newly built single-family houses.”
Tags: California, First, New houses, Single family, Solar panels
New York Times (May 7)
“It’s breathtaking and yet, by now, so predictable. Like aspiring authoritarians everywhere, Mr. Trump sees law enforcement in intensely personal terms. When the law investigates you, it’s a witch hunt; when it’s used to punish your enemies, it’s an essential tool…. Americans should remember May 9, 2017,” the day Trump fired FBI director James Comey, “as the beginning of one of the great tests of American democracy.”
Tags: Authoritarians, Breathtaking, Comey, Democracy, Enemies, FBI, Law enforcement, Personal, Predictable, Punish, Trump, U.S.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser (May 6)
“Since a series of fissures opened up in Leilani Estates on Thursday, spitting lava and toxic sulfur dioxide, it seems that everyone in South Puna has become an amateur geologist and volcanologist, convinced they know which communities are safe and which ones are vulnerable to further outbreaks.” But two weeks ago, no one “predicted that lava from Kilauea would suddenly shoot from the ground in Leilani Estates, along with earthquakes and fears that all the shaking will trigger a tsunami.”
Tags: Earthquakes, Fissures, Hawaii, Kilauea, Lava, Leilani Estates, SO2, Tsunami, Vulnerable
Chicago Tribune (May 6)
The Migratory Bird Treaty was enacted to prevent other birds from following the fate of passenger pigeons. Now, however, “the Interior Department has announced a sharp change in how it interprets the law,” which will essentially create a huge loophole that will “excuse any bird deaths that result from accidents, no matter how large or preventable, and limit penalties to cases of deliberate killing. So if a company sprayed pesticides with the purpose of killing a lot of birds, it would be guilty. But if it sprayed the same pesticides to get rid of insects and killed a lot of birds in the process, it would be in the clear.” This is clearly “a new threat to migratory birds.”
Tags: Accidents, Birds, Deliberate, Interior Department, Killing, Loophole, Migratory, Passenger pigeons, Penalties, Pesticides, Preventable, Treaty, U.S.
