WHAT’S THIS? The Stringer publishes a roundup of news items that you may have missed—with a global bent.
HOUSEKEEPING: The Stringer is back to publishing weekly.
The continuing reverberations of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Mar-a-Lago raid aren’t the only legal troubles involving former U.S. President Donald Trump right now.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, filed a lawsuit for fraud against Trump, his children and his organization.
She claims they have “falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system” over the last decade.
Some other news items:
ECONOMICS and BUSINESS
THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM: The U.S. Federal Reserve will increase interest rates by 0.75 percent—again. Wait, doesn’t that sound familiar? Make it: They’re planning to up interest rates for the third time. Is this recession yet? No, says the Fed. But they’ve signaled that they’re comfortable with a recession if it’s the cost of getting a handle on inflation.
METAVERSE: The net worth of Mark Zuckerberg—perfectly cast by the U.S. Congress as their whipping boy for Big Tech’s many sins—plummeted $70.2 billion over the last year. Zuckerberg’s commitment to the Metaverse isn’t wavering. Clearly, it hasn’t paid off in the short term. Long term, we’ll see.
POLITICS and WORLD
WAR CRIMES AND END TIMES: At the UN Security Council, diplomats shot war crime accusations at each over Ukraine. The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited Russian tortures and slayings in Bucha and Izyum. Before British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly accused him of rage quitting the council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov answered with accusations related to killings in eastern Donbas. This all came after Vladimir Putin called up 300,000 reservists and threatened to use nukes.
TIGRAY: The power struggle in Tigray—already responsible for numerous atrocities and human rights abuses—continues. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front is now claiming that neighboring Eritrea has begun a “full-scale offensive” alongside Ethiopian forces.
CENSORSHIP: If you don’t like a book, just ban it. The culture war has led to more book banning across the country, says PEN America, a century-old nonprofit focused on free expression. Last year, 2,532 book bans affected 1,648 titles—mostly books written by LGBT and minority authors, PEN’s latest report says. Texas has been the most ban-happy.
MIGRANTS: Speaking of the “Lone Star State,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott—totally not as a spite-driven political gambit and at the low, low price of about $12 million—shipped thousands of migrants to Democrat-controlled cities like New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Since then, those cities have been calling on the Biden Administration for help. So far, POLITICO reports, it hasn’t been forthcoming.
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