One Sentence News / November 9, 2022
The news simply summarized / November 9, 2022
OSN is also a podcast / Buy me a coffee
Sponsor: Every week, Weekly Filet is a treasure trove full of serendipity, and every Friday it provides you with a careful selection of great things to read, watch, and listen to.
Sponsorships allow me to produce this publication & send it out to everyone for free—if you’re keen to sponsor an OSN email please respond for details :)
China posts 6-month high COVID count as it sticks with strategy
Summary: Chinese health officials have said that the country’s COVID-zero approach to dealing with the pandemic is “completely correct,” and they will thus continue to lock down areas in which infections have been detected, regardless of the personal, social, or economic consequences of doing so.
Context: COVID cases remain quite low in China by global standards, but out-of-nowhere, severe lockdowns of people who have the bad fortune to be in the same general area as someone who has been confirmed infected has led to buildings, neighborhoods, and at least once an entire theme park being locked down for as long as a week, which has not been good for Chinese businesses or the nation’s larger economic figures, which have been pretty abysmal, of late—not to mention the frayed nerves of citizens, who have been uncharacteristically venting their frustrations (which is often against the law) at these semi-regular lifestyle disruptions.
—Reuters
iPhone maker bets on electric truck firm Lordstown Motors
Summary: Taiwan-based Foxconn, the primary manufacturer of Apple’s iPhones, has announced that it will invest up to $170 million in US-based electric vehicle-maker Lordstown Motors, netting it more than 18% of the company.
Context: This investment arrives at a fortuitous time for Lordstown, which has been operating at a loss but which is planning to spin-up production on an electric pick-up truck meant to capture a significant portion of that burgeoning facet of the larger EV market; Foxconn is also involved in EV-related efforts elsewhere, including Saudi Arabia, where the government hopes to produce vehicles using technology licensed from German carmaker, BMW.
—BBC News
Crypto exchange Binance to acquire rival FTX
Summary: The fourth-largest crypto exchange, FTX, has signed a letter of intent to be acquired by the largest crypto exchange, Binance, following a downturn in the crypto market and a liquidity scare.
Context: Both of these companies allow users to buy and exchange all sorts of crypto assets and tokens, and such assets are typically backed by other assets so people feel comfortable using their services; a recent article speculated that FTX might be facing a liquidity crisis, which would mean they don’t have enough assets to pay out folks who keep their crypto tokens and such on their platform, and reportedly FTX sought out a larger competitor that could buy them out quickly to make up for that liquidity gap; we don’t know the full story here yet, but right now this would seem to be one more piece of evidence that many crypto businesses are built upon relatively shaky foundations, with finances that aren’t as solid as they seem to be from the outside.
—Axios
When analysts say the wealthy world uses more energy (and is thus a much larger greenhouse gas emitter) than the poorer world, this is the scale of imbalance we’re talking about: a household refrigerator purchased in the US, France, or similar country uses more electricity each year than a person living in Kenya, Nigeria, or similar country uses annually for all purposes.
$10 billion
Sum to be paid (collectively) by CVS and Walgreens, the two largest US pharmacy chains, in accordance with a prospective agreement that would settle nationwide lawsuits against the two companies for their role in the ongoing US opioid epidemic.
If this agreement is finalized, it would bring the total value of all such settlements up to more than $50 billion, most of that money going to state and local governments to help combat opioid addiction that has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the US over the past twenty years.
—STAT News