One Sentence News / May 14, 2024

One Sentence News

Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Putin replaces Shoigu as Russia’s defense minister as he starts his 5th term

Summary: Over the weekend, Russian President Putin, fresh into his fifth term running the country, announced the replacement of his long-time Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, replacing him with a close ally Andrei Belousov.

Context: Belousov’s appointment will need to be approved by Russia’s upper parliamentary house, though the Russian government mostly rubber-stamps Putin’s decisions, so that’s not expected to hold up this ascension, and his appointment as defense minister is interesting in part because it comes shortly after a successful attack by Ukrainian forces on Russia’s border city, Belgorod, and because Belousov has generally held economics-focused positions in the government, though he was made first deputy prime minister in 2020; upon stepping down from his position as defense minister, Shoigu was appointed as a secretary of Russia’s Security Council.

—The Associated Press

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Venezuela loses its last glacier as it shrinks down to an ice field

Summary: Venezuela’s last remaining glacier, the Humboldt Glacier, has been reclassified as an ice field, after having shrunk a lot more than anticipated.

Context: Venezuela is now thought to be the first country to have lost all of its glaciers in the modern era, and it was previously home to six of them, though five had already disappeared by 2011; there’s no globally accepted size criterion for a glacier, but one commonly used minimum is about 10 hectares, and the Humboldt Glacier shrank to less than two hectares over the course of just a few years—a rate of depletion that’s considered to be quite rapid for a large body of ice.

—The Guardian

Biden to quadruple tariffs on Chinese EVs

Summary: Today, the Biden administration is expected to announce a significant hike in the tariffs applied to Chinese electric vehicles sold in the States, increasing the existing 25% levy to around 100%, alongside an existing 2.5% duty on all vehicles imported into the country.

Context: This is considered to be a pretty big deal, as protective tariffs of this kind are meant to safeguard local businesses from international competition, and China has become the clear dominant player in the EV and connected technologies space, boasting by far the largest output, and by many metrics the best and cheapest products, as well; US automakers have complained that it’s an uneven playing field, as the Chinese government often puts its thumb on the scale, supporting Chinese companies in vital industries in various ways, and while some analysts see these sorts of protectionist measures as vital to ensure a competitive landscape, disallowing Chinese companies from killing off all their competition before they can really get started on their own EV portfolios, others see it as a wasted opportunity to take advantage of cheap, abundant EVs that could help more people transition to electric vehicles, and in turn help reduce the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, faster.

—The Wall Street Journal

New data released by the US National Insurance Crime Bureau indicate that Kia and Hyundai cars (brands owned by the same umbrella-company) were by far the most-stolen in the US in 2023, in part because of easy-to-abuse security vulnerabilities, and in part because they have some highly popular (and thus, highly visible and available) models on the market.

—Axios

2.1-2.2

Number of babies being born per woman in 2023, globally, according to a new estimate by an economist who specializes in demographics.

If accurate, that would put global birthrates below the commonly accepted “replacement rate” of about 2.2 for the first time, potentially heralding peak population levels (though per-country birthrates still vary substantially, from around 0.72 in South Korea to about 6.6 in Niger—though this sort of data is also collected in a variety of different ways by different organizations, and isn’t always accurate or directly comparable, country to country).

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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