One Sentence News / July 25, 2023
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Inconclusive election thrusts Spain into political muddle
Summary: Following an election over the weekend in which no party attained enough support to form a government, Spain’s political situation seems tenuous, though some analysts have expressed shock and relief that the far-right Vox party failed to live up to its poll-predicted high expectations and lost 19 seats, rather than gaining that many or more.
Context: The centrist conservative Popular Party won 136 seats in parliament, while the centrist liberal Socialist Party, led by the current Prime Minister, won 122 seats, which represents a win for the former, but they fell short of the outright majority they’d hoped to claim, which means they would have to form a coalition with the aforementioned far-right Vox party in order to take control, and Vox has some fairly unpopular beliefs baked into their platform, making that kind of partnership risky; extreme parties on both ends of the political spectrum didn’t do very well in this election, but Spain is now left with an inconclusive voting outcome, which could lead to some fringier groups attaining more power, as the centrist left and right parties will probably need to win some of the smaller parties to their side if they want to form a government and avoid the complexity and headache of another election.
—The New York Times
Trans-Afghan railway to connect Uzbekistan with Pakistan
Summary: Last week, a joint protocol to connect the Uzbek rail network with Pakistan Railways was signed by officials from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, formalizing a long-planned project that will connect the three countries’ railway systems.
Context: This project is estimated to reduce cargo delivery times between Uzbekistan and Pakistan by about five days, and it’s expected to reduce the cost of transporting goods between these countries by at least 40%; it’s estimated that the project will be completed by the end of 2027, and it’s hoped that this railway will help open up new trade opportunities throughout Central Asia and the Middle East.
—Dawn
Fed’s new instant payment system could be trouble for PayPal and Venmo
Summary: The US Federal Reserve’s long-planned FedNow system finally rolled out last week, giving 35 early-adopting banks and credit unions the ability to instantly process payments between US financial institutions for the first time.
Context: This instant-processing capability is something many other countries have boasted for a long time, but in the US there’s always been a delay, which has necessitated the use of intermediary services like PayPal and Venmo for those wanting to move money from place to place, instantly; the Fed hopes to expand the service to 9,000 financial institutions across the US, which in turn should support faster payment processing across many domains, including for things like paychecks and rent payments, which today generally have a several-day lag built into them, by necessity.
—Ars Technica
Though weight-loss drugs like Ozempic (most of which already existed for other medical use-cases and are being reutilized for this purpose) seem to be trending in a serious way, questions remain as to whether this trend will be sustained, or if it will ultimately give way to another, next-phase weight-loss trend.
—Chartr
6
Number of patients to have been “cured” of HIV, having been put into long-term remission as a consequence of medical interventions.
The most recent patient to be added to this (still short) list received a bone marrow transplant, like the others, but unlike previous transplants this one did not come from a donor with a mutation of the CCR5 gene that prevents HIV from entering one’s cells.
This is the first time so-called “wild type” (normal, non-CCR5 mutation-bearing) stem cells from a bone marrow transplant have seemingly cured HIV, and it raises the possibility that long-term remission might be feasible using non-mutated transplanted marrow in the future.
—France 24
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