WHAT’S THIS? The Stringer publishes every other week with a roundup of news items that you may have missed—with a global bent.
The FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property eclipsed just about everything else over the past couple of weeks.
There are a lot of unknowns at the moment—particularly whether it helps Trump in his bid to retake the presidency by charging up his base long-term—but Trump’s lawyers have requested a “special master” to review the documents seized by the Feds, claiming that the raid was a political cudgel.
A few items that might have gotten lost in the fray:
POLITICS and WORLD
BORDER: A couple of weeks ago, The Atlantic published a deep dive into the vile “parent-child separation” at the U.S.’s southern border. The piece shows that members of the Biden administration are reluctant to speak about the program and its effects. Despite lofty promises and limited reunions and the Family Reunification Task Force, the Biden administration has continued to isolate children from their families, according to advocacy groups. It has also refused to pay restitution. Biden himself called reports that he was considering the idea “garbage.”
KHOMEINI’S REVENGE: The author of Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie, got what’s been called the worst book review of all time when Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwā in 1989. Khomeini—better known as “ayatollah” in his role as Supreme Leader of Iran—had never read the book; he just “knew” it was blasphemous. This month, more than three decades later, Rushdie was stabbed in the neck at the Chautauqua summer arts festival in New York. Iran blamed the victim, but Rushdie is reportedly no longer on a ventilator.
IF IT BLEEDS: Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus claims that racism explains why the world has paid so much more attention to the conflict in Ukraine than the ongoing, brutal crisis in Ethiopia, which is arguably worse in terms of human cost.
SCIENCE and HEALTH
COVID-19: Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech for patent infringement over mRNA vaccines. Moderna is facing its own suits over the tech. But what’s in contention is the future of immunization, Axios points out.
MONKEYPOX: The Monkeypox outbreak trudges on, and so does the rush for more vaccines. In the U.S., the Biden administration has decided to go with the untested idea of “stretching” out the vaccines. Health officials have told reporters that it will likely cause “chaos out in the field.”
ABORTION ACCESS: Since the U.S. Supreme Court penciled out long-standing federal abortion protections with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, the landscape for accessing legal abortions has become even more complicated and confusing. In a piece for Investopedia, I look at how that’s impacted costs and access.
EDUCATION
STUDENT DEBT: The Biden administration will forgive student debt for low-to-middle income borrowers, after all.
BIG BROTHER: Remember those free devices schools passed out in the switch to remote learning during the coronavirus closures? They have software that spies on K-12 students. It’s presumably an attempt to keep them from harming themselves or others. But in a piece for the small nonprofit newsroom EdSurge, I look at a report that suggests it’s really being used to discipline students with a disproportionate effect—and the data is often sent to police.
PROFIT MOTIVES: Higher ed institutions in the U.S. are ravenous for private-public partnerships. It has raised questions about whether letting profit motives into a public institution is like letting a hungry fox into a chicken coop. I talked with some experts who say that the partnerships bring real benefits, but that they need to be carefully weighed so as not to put profits before students.
Comments, questions, complaints or “investment opportunities” that definitely aren’t pyramid schemes? Feel free to leave a comment or reply to the newsletter.