One Sentence News / July 10, 2023
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
US Destroys Last of Its Declared Chemical Weapons
Summary: Rockets containing a nerve agent called sarin stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky were destroyed by the US government last week, marking the end of a period in which the US government maintained an arsenal of chemical weapons that, by the end of the Cold War, weighed-in at more than 30,000 tons.
Context: Chemical weapons have been used by pretty much everyone since WWI, and though they were banned by the Geneva Convention after WWII, many countries continued to stockpile them on a just-in-case basis, including the US; folks in the regions where these weapons have been stored have not been fans of having them nearby, worried they might somehow be released into the air or water, and the international community hasn’t been happy about the US waving its finger at, for instance, the Syrian government, which semi-regularly uses such weapons, while simultaneously maintaining stockpiles of the same.
—The Associated Press
Samsung Flags 96 Percent Drop In Profit Amid Chip Oversupply
Summary: One of the largest electronics companies in the world by revenue, Samsung, has announced that an ongoing oversupply of microchips on the global market has substantially hurt its operating profits in the second quarter of 2023, dropping it from around $10.8 billion in the second quarter of 2022 to about $458 million this year.
Context: That represents Samsung’s lowest quarterly profit-haul since 2009, and though this drop was predicted by analysts, Samsung’s stock still fell on the news; this overall slump in global memory chip-related income started last year and is expected to peak in the third-quarter of 2023, though the eventual, anticipated rebound may be slow.
—Al Jazeera
Collapse of Dutch Government Highlights Europe’s New Migration Politics
Summary: The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, has resigned following significant pushback against a proposed, aggressive new policy on refugees that was rejected by his more centrist coalition partners.
Context: Among other policies, Rutte’s proposal included a two-year waiting period before the children of officially recognized refugees living in the Netherlands could join their parents in the country, and though his reputation and party have survived quite a few scandals over his 13 years in office, this was apparently too much for the politicians that worked with him as part of the country’s governing coalition; this is being seen as one more instance of immigration issues reshaping European politics, as more people flood into the area looking to escape military conflict, intensifying climate-related issues, and ever-worsening economic prospects back home, and as that tide of new arrivals empowers far-right parties and politicians who rally their constituents against the idea of accepting and harboring incoming refugees and immigrants.
—The New York Times
Despite the recent international hubbub surrounding Japan’s decision to release tritium-laced water from its (now-retired) Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, the volume of water being released is actually a fair bit less than is regularly released into shared water sources by other entities (including several of those that are issuing the loudest complaints).
—Bloomberg
$470
Total global revenue (yes, that’s just $470.00) of Meta’s flagship metaverse product, Horizon Worlds, in its first year.
That’s a far cry from the estimated $5-13 trillion in value this and similar efforts were expected to bring in (by prognosticators like McKinsey and Citi) as recently as 2021, and might be part of the rationale behind Meta’s recent (apparent) pivot back toward conventional social networks, as evidenced by its earlier-than-planned release of its Twitter-clone, Threads.
—The Nation
Trust Click
If you’ve found value in this missive, there are several things you can do to support my work:
You can become a paid subscriber to One Sentence News
Or you can support all my projects by becoming an Understandary member