One Sentence News / August 15, 2023
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Far-right libertarian wins Argentina’s presidential primary
Summary: A congressman, former television pundit, and economist, Javier Milei, has won 30% of the vote in Argentina’s open presidential primary election—a fairly shocking outcome to most election-watchers because of who he is and what he believes.
Context: Milei wants to shrink the Argentine government down to the smallest size possible, adopt the US dollar as the country’s official currency, and abolish the Argentine central bank; these ideas have been pitched with bravado and colorful television appearances, which is part of why he’s attracted and embraced comparisons to former US President Donald Trump, and there’s speculation that his popularity may be the consequence of Argentina’s fairly abysmal current state of economic affairs—there’s nowhere to go but up, basically, and folks might be looking to just scrap the whole thing and start fresh, which is more or less what Milei is proposing, at least superficially.
—The New York Times
Russian ruble at weakest level since early days of Ukraine war
Summary: The Russian ruble has fallen past the symbolic level of 100 rubles to one US dollar for the first time since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February of last year.
Context: The ruble has lost about 30% of its value against the dollar so far in 2023, making it one of the worst-performing currencies in the world; the Russian government has managed to prop it up artificially for a long while, and that paired with boosts in oil revenue and rewired trade relationships with countries like China, helping it defy sanctions, has allowed the country’s central bank to keep things fairly stable till now, though there’s only so much it can do about a seeming loss in confidence in the ruble amongst Russians and its trade partners; this may be just a blip, but a persistently weakened currency would make many of Russia’s imports more expensive while also driving up inflation, so they’ll be keen to handle this posthaste, if they’re able.
—The Wall Street Journal
New COVID vaccines are on the way as 'Eris' variant rises
Summary: A new COVID-19 vaccine is due to be released in the US next month, though it’s anticipated that uptake of this vaccine won’t be very high, despite a surge in hospitalizations caused by a new variant of Omicron called Eris.
Context: The hope amongst public health experts is that folks will get this new shot alongside their yearly flu vaccine, but demand for COVID vaccines has plummeted over the past year as infections, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by the disease have all decreased substantially; the new Eris subvariant, based on what we know so far, doesn’t seem to be more dangerous than previous subvariants, and infection and hospitalization levels are still quite low compared to years past, down about 90% from peak levels in January of 2022—but they are high compared to where we’ve been for the past handful of months, up 40% from recent lows.
—Reuters
We’re slowly getting more clarity on what happened in Maui that led to the almost complete destruction of historic town Lahaina, but the current outlook for the state isn’t great, with other wildfires already burning and more expected, due to abnormally dry and drought conditions across the island chain.
—BBC News
€4.5 billion
Anticipated annual loss reported by energy giant Siemens following a recent review of its wind business.
The company has been struggling with wind turbine hardware issues, which accounts for around half of that loss; Siemens is attempting to delay the delivery of new wind turbines by as much as seven months to help contain and preemptively address these quality-control issues.
—Bloomberg
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