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Welcome back to this week’s installment of What Just Happened?!, a semi-comical digest of the most important news from the UK, US and the World. Look out for us every now and again, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The US
How to make a Hurricane Worse
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene made landfall, which would ultimately kill well over 200 people across 6 US states, the most powerful Hurricane of the year (so far…) arrived. Hurricane Milton increased in intensity from insignificantly powerful to a ~100 year storm event within record time; making Milton a great case study of what meteorologists call Rapid Intensification (RI). With winds up to 180 miles per hour and likely damage incurred in the tens of billions (and that’s just the insured damage, with approximately $85 billion in “economic damages”), Milton was the most powerful hurricane of 2024 and the fith most powerful on record in the Atlantic.
It’s not uncommon for US households, under evacuation orders for tropical storm events, to not have insurance policies covering flooding. In fact, the vast majority of storm damage is not covered by insurance (what counts as an “Act of God” anyway?). The geographic areas that Milton hit have more than doubled in population since the 1980’s.
“In the process, Milton became the fastest Atlantic storm to intensify from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds increasing from 35 mph to 160 mph in just over 48 hours” Source: Nasa.
Source: NOAA-21 satellite. Credit: NASA Worldview, NOAA
Two contributing factors to the intensity of this hurricane were:
1) The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where water temperatures of 31°C (88°F) were measured not just at the surface of the ocean, but at depth too (more on that here: Geothermal gradients and subsurface temperatures in northern Gulf of Mexico). The warmer the water under a hurricane the more energy there is in the system, the more severe the storm surge and the greater the danger. Also, and this isn’t up for debate (it’s what previous generations and societies might’ve considered something resembling a “fact”), the surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico has gotten about 1°C warmer since the 70’s (Source: NOAA). Here’s the data:
Source: Upper-Oceanic Warming in the Gulf of Mexico between 1950 and 2020
Also, fun fact; the top few meters of the global ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere.
2) Both Hurricane Helene and Milton appear to have been influenced in their early formation by intense thunderstorms over central America and the Gulf of Mexico. The Central American Gyre (CAG) describes cyclonic rotations over the Western Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean, during the region’s rainy season (May to November). This broad area of low-pressure can provide even more moisture to hurricanes forming in the Caribbean. For more on CAGs, see: A Climatology of Central American Gyres.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) experienced an interruption to their operations following reports of an Armed Militia cruising around in trucks with “Hunt FEMA” on them, which have since been largely debunked, though an armed man was arrested and charged with “going armed to the terror of the public”. The misinformation environment has even resulted in a Hurricane Rumor Response page on the FEMA website.
Would a million dollars change your mind?
How do you feel about a South African billionaire buying a public company (such as Twitter), with the benefit of billions of dollars of Saudi money (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is the main source of funds after Musk), and taking it private such that significant public scrutiny is now much harder to apply? Many of these backers have lost billions on their “investment”, though it’s easy to shoulder such a burden if one has ulterior motives behind similar expenditures.
More recently, Musk has been interfering in the US election by offering a $1 million give-away to registered voters in key battle-ground states. The imaginatively named “America PAC”, where PAC stands for Political Action Committee, is already receiving legal challenges for encouraging the electorate, with a gigantic golden carrot, to hand over information that would likely be useful for political purposes.
“America PAC claims it has received over 280,000 petition signers who are registered voters in Pennsylvania, and on information and belief, among those 280,000 petition signers are residents of Philadelphia County. As alleged herein, those signers have accepted America PAC’s offer to: (a) provide their personal data in exchange for an opportunity to win the lottery; (b) provide their personal data in exchange for the $100 compensation; or (c) pay them in exchange for referring the names of others for the purpose of procuring additional individuals who will provide personal data, sign the petition, or otherwise endorse America PAC.”
Source: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public Enforcement Action
Too Close for Comfort
Three individuals have gotten really quite close indeed to killing Donald Trump. One got so close that he actually shot him in the ear, while severely wounding others and killing a man in the crowd. The elephants in the room on Trump’s assassination attempts are, in our view, the fact that the kid had a military grade rifle and obviously that a threat was not anticipated or mitigated by the security services.
That a 20 year old kid got within hundreds of yards of the former president, and a large crowd of people, with an AR-15 (a rifle originally developed to replace existing military assault rifles and billed by the gun-toting National Rifle Association (NRA) as “America’s Rifle”). The AR-15 has been used in an alarmingly increasing number of mass shooting events, with 656 (source: Gun Violence Archive) people killed in America in mass shooting events in 2023. This is, sadly, a rather small portion of the total death toll of 48,204 in 2022 (source: CDC) the most recent year for which the data is complete. It’s worth emphasizing that this death toll is almost entirely civilian. Also, fun fact, for every gun death in America about 1 in 50 is someone using theirs to defend themself. If you’re confused about the dangers of these weapons it’s worth remembering that the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017 saw the shooter fire over 1,000 yards into a crowd, killing 60 and wounding many hundreds, in about 10 minutes.
The failure of the local police forces, who had spotted the gunman on the roof, and the Secret Service to communicate effectively among one another have been at the center of much scrutiny. Inquiries into how the first attempt occurred are finding “cascading and wide-ranging law enforcement failings”. The director of the Secret Service swiftly resigned following the near-miss and the security failure is considered among the worst since Reagan was shot in 1981.
The World
Under PRESS-ure
Three journalists have been killed in Lebanon by the Israeli armed forces, despite cars with PRESS written on them in big letters being parked outside and reports of the media professionals having communicated with all parties about their location. The Committee to Protect Journalists started gathering data in 1992 and has seen the deadliest period for journalists, in its records, in virtue of the Israel-Gaza conflict. At least 134 journalists and media workers are among the tens of thousands killed across Palestine and Lebanon in the past 12 months. In the first 10 weeks of the conflict (following armed militants’ unprecedented attack on Israel, which killed 1,180 people, wounded thousands and saw 251 taken hostage) more journalists were killed than have ever been killed in a single country over a year.
It’s not just journalists, and of course Israeli and Palestinian civilians, that are in danger though. The 7 humanitarian aid workers killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza in April, while driving around in clearly marked cars (“World Central Kitchen” printed on the roofs and elsewhere), had communicated their route to the authorities ahead of time. Those killed included British, Canadian, Australian, Polish and Palestinian nationals. 4 of the Brits and Canadians had been former soldiers before supporting humanitarian work.
Not only were they killed by 3 missiles over 5 minutes, but the survivors from the first attack got into a second car, which was attacked in turn, before the survivors of that second strike got into a third car which was then attacked (in the third strike). All of these vehicles were well marked and supported a very public humanitarian effort to relieve the famine-adjacent conditions in Gaza.
The UK
Labouring the Point
The UK’s first Labour government in a hot minute (since 2010) is busy trying to figure out where they’re going to do with their power. The natural party of the opposition, needs to start deciding what it is actually for.
So far we’ve had a rather great deal of blaming the past 14 years of Conservative government for financial irresponsibility which, given the tendency of the Tories to totally botch things via dual-wielded incompetence and arrogance, is fair. To back that up a little bit, say what you will about Labour as a party, or otherwise, but Brexit happened on the Tories watch. In case you’re confused about how big of a mistake that was: so far, Brexit is estimated to cost the UK up to 10% of per capita income; up to 4.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP); hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the city and possibly millions of jobs nationally, while leaving your typical Brit materially worse off on multiple fronts.
So before we’re even touched on disastrous austerity policies we can all agree that the Tories made a huge mess of things. Nevertheless, Labour will do well to lead with a message of positivity, optimism and competence moving forward. It’s easy to view some policies that haven’t proved very popular, such as cutting fuel-funding for the elderly in the winter (perhaps contributing to the existing governments poor approval ratings), as cruel and unnecessary since that’s what we’ve all become somewhat tragically used to. That said, the facts are: 11.6 million people received Winter Fuel Payments last winter, assuming an average payment of £200 that’s £2.3 billion per winter. A plan to means test this benefit and only provide it to those already received Pension Credits (a supplementary payment to the UK state pension for those with low-incomes), would supposedly reduce the recipients to about 14% of the current lot (or about 1.6 million recipients, costing more like £325 million). Perhaps the biggest mistake here is Labour’s presenting this as a “difficult decision” that has to be made, rather than an easy decision that helps enable balancing the books.
Labour have promised to avoid raising taxes on “working people”, whatever that means. It’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it plays out for them. The UK budget is due to be delivered imminently and we’re looking forward to reviewing it.
The Internet
Never let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story
Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, called Musk out for spreading dangerous disinformation in a climate of perhaps all-time-low faith in the U.S. electoral process. Musk and many others were confused about how voting in Michigan works, and rather than just googling it for 5 minutes, Musk thought it was a better bet to publicly suggest that there are more eligible voters than citizens in the state. According to David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, there are 1.2 million inactive records representing those who’ve moved out of Michigan or are deceased. In the event of someone living out-of-state wanting to vote in Michigan, they would have to prove that they are resident.
To carry on with the theme of public meltdowns from decrepit billionaires who couldn’t keep their family units together, the former president of the US has repeated baseless accusations that migrants have been eating people’s pets. While this is obviously baseless it’s also meaningfully harmful; imagine being a Haitian migrant in Ohio and you have to listen to the former president uttering this absolute drivel? So where did this insane idea come from? Well, Musk, JD Vance and others promoted these outrageous claims and even chose to double down on them when pressed. Rainn Wilson, broadly beloved American comedian, publicly lambasted the extreme cess-pool that Twitter has become following the parroting of racist nonsense such as the above. Nice one Rainn.
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