October 07 2024

FLASH microRNA PIONEERS WIN NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE
1. ECHOS OF CHERNOBYL: HURRICANE HELENE'S DEATH TOLL CLIMBS TO 223, AS RELIEF EFFORTS LAG
2. ROBOT ORDERS FALL AS U.S. MANUFACTURING SLOWS, HUMAN LABOR SUPPLY RISES
3. LONGSHOREMEN WAGE QUIXOTIC FIGHT AGAINST AUTOMATION
4. THE GREAT FLORIDA MIGRATION IS COMING UNDONE: FLORIDA HOUSING BOOM SLOWS AS INSURANCE COSTS SOAR
5. ISRAEL-IRAN MILITARY BRIEF
6. SPORTS: VANDERBILT STUNS TOP-RANKED ALABAMA IN UPSET
October 7 2001: U.S.‑led attack on Afghanistan begins

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Editor’s note: This brief has recently been focused on foreign affairs, particularly the escalating situation in the Middle East. Given the potential world historical significance of these events, this emphasis will continue. The brief’s mission remains to cut through the noise and highlight what truly matters in the world, and right now, what’s unfolding in the Middle East is incredibly important.  

FLASH microRNA PIONEERS WIN NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE

1. ECHOS OF CHERNOBYL: HURRICANE HELENE'S DEATH TOLL CLIMBS TO 223, AS RELIEF EFFORTS LAG

A. Hurricane Helene's confirmed death toll rose to over 223 this week, making it the third-deadliest U.S. storm of the 21st century as rescue crews continue searching for survivors. Millions remain without power days after the storm ravaged communities from Florida to Virginia. Survivors are also challenged by limited access to clean water, shelter, gasoline, and food.  FEMA arrived in Western North Carolina on Monday after President Biden approved federal aid on Sunday, but by Thursday, some residents reported still not seeing any federal officials. See photos of the devastation here.  Sen. Lindsey Graham criticized federal relief efforts in South Carolina, stating that FEMA has been slow to respond and hasn't visited some storm-damaged areas.   

B. Hurricane Katrina looms large in American cultural consciousness. As one of the defining events during George W. Bush’s second term as president, the scale of the devastation that struck Louisiana — combined with the inadequacy of the relief effort — earned notoriety even outside the United States. Almost 20 years after the levees broke, another storm has swept in an unprecedented catastrophe: the economic and human cost of Hurricane Helene might be even greater than that of Katrina. So why, then, are so few people acting like that is the case? …Almost a week into the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, those endless helicopters have failed to appear. And as America readies to surge more troops to the Middle East to potentially fight Iran, it’s clear that they can’t appear, at least not without seriously breaking something somewhere else. Troops and aircraft busy in Tennessee or North Carolina can’t be deployed to Jordan, Iraq or Syria. All of this is becoming eerily reminiscent of Chernobyl — and the accident that in many ways defined the last days of the Soviet Union. That too was just a minor accident that at first seemed like nothing more than a blip to the complacent authorities in Moscow. Only over time did people start to realise that this was truly serious. Chernobyl has since come to be seen as one of the proximate causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, though the reason why has often been misunderstood. Chernobyl wasn’t actually that lethal: approximately 30 people died as a direct result of the reactor explosion, with maybe 4,000 people dying years or decades later from illnesses related to radiation exposure. Hurricane Katrina, by contrast, led directly to 1,392 fatalities. The real reason Chernobyl looms so large in stories about the last days of the Soviet Union was because of all the lying, the governmental incompetence, and the shared sense that the Soviet Union itself was a senile construct that no longer had any real point. A healthy society, one in which people still feel a sense of purpose and common belief, could have endured far worse disasters than Chernobyl. Appalachia has always been forgotten; the people there are used to being treated like dirt. Talking to locals whose families were still stuck in the disaster area, the common refrain was that the help wasn’t arriving because the elites simply hate the people now in need of help. Talking to people in D.C., however, quickly dispelled that notion. What is going on right now isn’t malice, it’s somehow even worse: it’s senility. People weren’t enjoying the suffering of fellow Americans; they were simply so oblivious and zoned out that they couldn’t even notice a problem. Currently, a hurricane disaster that is significantly more challenging than Katrina is being serviced by something like a third of the resources that Louisiana called upon. And yet few people in Washington even think this is a problem. At the same time as Congress has borrowed another 10 or 20 billion dollars to hand over to Ukraine and Israel, presidential candidate Kamala Harris has announced that the victims of Helene will be able to apply for $750 in relief assistance to help them get back on their feet. As Chernobyl was, Helene is now becoming: a point at which the sheer absurdity and uselessness of the machine becomes too obvious to ignore. Looking at the disaster unfolding in Appalachia, the winners of the Cold War are now starting to ask the same question that eventually brought down the Soviet Union: what the hell is even the point of all of this anymore?

Article Source: Flyover, Unherd

2. ROBOT ORDERS FALL AS U.S. MANUFACTURING SLOWS, HUMAN LABOR SUPPLY RISES

Robots are getting less work at U.S. factories.  Manufacturers are cutting back on purchases of automation equipment, executives said, as business slows on production lines and shop floors. More human workers are lining up for work again, too. Orders for factory robots in North America plunged by nearly one-third last year from 2022’s record volume, according to the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group for the robotics industry. Orders slipped further over the first six months of this year. 

Article Source: WSJ

3. LONGSHOREMEN WAGE QUIXOTIC FIGHT AGAINST AUTOMATION

When Harold Daggett looks at the self-checkout scanner in the grocery store or the E-ZPass automatic toll lane on the highway, he does not see a modern convenience. He sees a job killer. Daggett, the combative president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, is determined to prevent what happened to cashiers and toll booth attendants from happening to his 47,000 dockworkers. Fresh from a big win in a three-day port strike, which ended with his members getting a 62 percent raise over six years, the union chief will now turn his focus to a tougher foe: The march of progress. Ports along the East and Gulf coasts reopened on Friday, after the ILA and an employers group announced the wage deal Thursday night. But the pay fight was just half of the battle. The two sides agreed to extend their previous contract, which expired Sept. 30, through Jan. 15 to allow talks to continue on the remaining issues. None looms larger than automation. U.S. ports already lag those in Europe and Asia in their use of technology. And Daggett wants to keep it that way, by prohibiting the operators of marine terminals from automating cargo handling.

Article Source: WaPo

4. THE GREAT FLORIDA MIGRATION IS COMING UNDONE: FLORIDA HOUSING BOOM SLOWS AS INSURANCE COSTS SOAR

Across much of Florida and especially along the western coast, a surplus of inventory and dwindling buyer interest are slowing sales and keeping homes on the market longer. That is cooling off what had been one of America’s biggest housing booms this decade.  Tropical storms and hurricanes, increasingly hitting the state’s western coast, are making matters worse. Now less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit, Tampa Bay is bracing for Hurricane Milton. It is intensifying in the Gulf of Mexico and is predicted to make landfall on Wednesday. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there is no doubt the storm will have a significant impact on the state, and has told residents in its path to prepare to evacuate. Florida’s population soared between 2021 and 2023, making it the fastest-growing state during much of that period. Remote work and other lifestyle changes that were spurred by the pandemic accelerated a migration trend to the Southeast, and the Sunshine State in particular.  The warm climate, lack of state income tax and less business regulation than in many other states made Florida a hotbed for corporate relocations and new residents. For wealthier migrants from New York, Chicago and California, Florida homes seemed like a bargain.  But surging insurance costs, high mortgage rates and high home prices have more people reassessing the Florida dream. Those who must sell their homes right now because of life changes are finding a frosty reception as demand dwindles. After doubling between 2017 and 2024, home prices in most of the state have been mostly flat since March 2023. But with homes valued at all-time highs in many locations, analysts worry that a price correction might be just around the corner. Worst of all are the spiraling home-insurance costs that are pricing many homeowners out of the market. Insurance premiums in Florida are up as much as 400% over the past five years in certain areas, one of the fastest increases in the country.

Article Source: WSJ

5. ISRAEL-IRAN MILITARY BRIEF

A. Iran’s barrage of ballistic missiles this week appears to have overwhelmed Israel’s air defenses in some places, despite causing limited damage, said independent researchers who examined emerging satellite imagery. The assessment means that any new Iranian strikes against Israel, if launched, could have much more serious consequences if they target civilian infrastructure or heavily populated residential areas.  That is an important consideration as Israel contemplates its military response. Tehran has threatened strikes on Israeli power plants and oil refineries if Israel hits Iranian territory in a counterattack expected in the coming days. Unlike April 13, when Iran fired a large number of slower cruise missiles and drones, Tuesday’s barrage was made up exclusively of some 180 much faster ballistic missiles, one of the largest such strikes in the history of warfare. Analysts say that most of these projectiles were Iran’s most modern ballistic missiles, the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan. “The faster the missile, the harder it is to intercept it, that’s simple physics,” Satellite images of a target on Tuesday—the Nevatim air base in southern Israel, home to its F-35 jet fighters—show that as many as 32 Iranian missiles managed to land within the base’s perimeter, according to analysis by professor Jeffrey Lewis, at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, Calif. “Thirty-two missiles is a lot of missiles,” Lewis said. “We have exaggerated ideas about the effectiveness of air defenses. We have this pop-culture idea that missile defenses are much more effective or available than they actually are.”    

B. On Thursday, Biden admitted he was in discussion with Netanyahu about an Israeli strike on Iran’s oilfields. Iran has in the past signalled that it would retaliate to any such strike with attacks on oil infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Brent price of oil has already risen from $70 a barrel on Monday to $78 by Friday. A new round of strikes could send it hurtling towards $100. Asked about such a prospect, all Biden could do was interrupt himself. “I think that would be a little . . . anyway,” he replied. What Biden may have stopped himself from adding is that such an escalation could badly damage Kamala Harris’s chances of beating Donald Trump next month. Yet it is Netanyahu, not Biden, who will decide what happens next. Recent history shows that Israel’s prime minister is unlikely to pay heed to whatever restraint Biden is urging on him in private. “Netanyahu is riding high,” says Marwan al-Muasher, Jordan’s former foreign minister, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He won’t want to do anything to help Harris’s election prospects.”

Article Source: WSJ, FT

6. SPORTS: VANDERBILT STUNS TOP-RANKED ALABAMA IN UPSET

In one corner, we had vaunted Alabama, six-time national champion this century, fresh off a dramatic 41-34 win over then-second-ranked Georgia. In the other, Vandy, 11-38 this decade, and 0-60 all-time against top-five foes. after Vandy (3-2, 1-1 SEC) took a surprising 23-7 first-half lead Saturday, one was right to assume Jalen Milroe and the Tide (4-1, 1-1) would pull away eventually. But Alabama’s defense, which nearly blew last week’s Georgia game, never did figure out Vandy cult hero quarterback Diego Pavia. Running offensive coordinator Tim Beck’s read-option offense to perfection, he was never sacked and completed 16 of 20 throws for 252 yards while running 20 times for 56 yards. Alabama cut it to one score with 2:44 left, but never got the ball back after Pavia completed a 19-yard pass for one first down and gained 8 yards on a keeper for another. Moments later, he was running around the field in celebration as friends, family members and SEC Network reporter Alyssa Lang chased after him. (Lang was the only person all day to successfully stop him.) And Vandy fans took the goal posts on a nice little tour of Nashville, en route to the Cumberland River.

Article Source: NYT

October 7 2001: U.S.‑led attack on Afghanistan begins

Sources

2. A Flyover newsletter
B https://unherd.com/2024/10/hurricane-helene-is-americas-chernobyl-moment/

3. https://www.wsj.com/business/manufacturers-automation-equipment-robot-slow-down-2b850741

4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/05/port-strike-workers-jobs-automation-union/

5. https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/florida-home-sales-slowing-355616a2?st=AAv6wP&reflink=article_copyURL_share

6. A https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-missiles-israel-overwhelm-defence-a7cbd9af
B https://on.ft.com/3Yc2tfg

7. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5821651/2024/10/06/college-football-week-6-analysis-vanderbilt-alabama-tennessee/?source=user_shared_article