Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Panel says lawmakers colluded with foreign powers but won’t name names
Summary: A new report about foreign interference in Canada’s government, which was recently made public by a committee of Canadian lawmakers, claims that several unnamed Canadian politicians “knowingly or through willful blindness” took money from foreign entities in exchange for interfering with government processes in such a way that said foreign entities would benefit.
Context: In other words, some currently unnamed Canadian politicians accepted bribes to put their thumbs on the scale in favor of the governments that bribed them, and some of them allegedly shared private government information with those foreign entities, as well; this is considered to be a pretty big deal, and follows other recent allegations about Canadian politicians spying for and sharing information with China, and this document indicates India, Pakistan, and Iran, among other nations, have likewise been meddling in Canadian governance; some Canadian politicians have said they want their intelligence community to name names, and it’s likely these revelations, though not entirely surprising, as rumors of such behaviors have been swirling around the ether for years, will impact the country’s next election, which is likely to take place in 2025.
—The Washington Post
Huge telehealth fraud indictment may wreak havoc for Adderall users, CDC warns
Summary: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned, late last week, that a recent federal indictment of a telehealth company that has allegedly been illegally distributing Adderall and other stimulants, online, could result in disruptions in the availability of these drugs.
Context: Adderall and other commonly prescribed ADHD medications are controlled substances, and a bunch of online-only companies have popped up over the past handful of years, focused on getting their customers prescriptions for these drugs, and the drugs themselves—a business model that has made illegal distribution a lot more common; one of the big names in that space, Done Global, has been taken down by the US Justice Department, two people connected to it arrested by federal agents, and the concern is that folks with legitimate prescriptions will have trouble filling those prescriptions because other companies will be more hesitant to issue scripts and fulfill orders; there’s also a separate, ongoing shortage of these sorts of drugs in the US, and folks who use such stimulants regularly, even for doctor-advised purposes, can have a lot of trouble if that supply is suddenly cut off, hence the CDC’s concern.
—Ars Technica
UK polls point to 'electoral extinction' for Prime Minister Sunak's Conservatives
Summary: A trio of recent opinion polls in the lead-up to the UK’s July 4th election suggest the currently governing Conservative party might not just lose its majority, but experience a truly brutal loss.
Context: One of the polls found that chief rival Labour’s lead has risen 2% since the last poll, five days earlier, to 46%, while support for Conservatives dropped by 4 points to 21%, and another suggested that Conservatives could see their representation in the 650-seat House of Commons drops to just 72 seats, with Labour scooping up 456; this is partly the consequence of what’s generally considered to be a series of blunders and bad policies by the Conservatives, leading to a larger-than-usual desire for a changing of the guard by voters, but the Reform UK party, which is politically further-right than the Conservatives, seems to have also grabbed about 12% of support in one of these polls, suggesting that while some voters who would have supported the Conservatives may sit this one out, many have instead decided to throw in their lot with the chief supporter of Brexit, Nigel Farage, who is leading Reform UK.
—Reuters
The US economy continues to flash mixed signals, many of them broadly indicating a resilient set of economy variables, but some pointing at future tumult, reinforcing a sense that the Fed will probably lower interest rates soon (a move that typically stokes economic activity), but not so much that the amount or pace of interest rate drops is currently predictable.
—USA Today
>80%
Portion of pregnancy-related deaths in the US that are preventable.
About 22 maternal deaths (the mother dying) were tracked for every 100,000 live births in the US in 2022, but that number was as high as 49.5% maternal deaths per 100,000 live births for Black people—pointing at a huge disparity in outcomes between different groups of people, but also further emphasizing that gap between “available, lifesaving treatments” and “treatments that are being applied in different areas for different people.”
—The Washington Post
One Sentence News / June 17, 2024