Good morning, day, or evening, folks. Here’s some of the news you’re missing as you
follow the ones dictated by whatever mainstream outlet you’re watching or reading. I
call them unattended stories. No one is trying to hide them. They’ve just gotten lost in
the news cycle frenzy that tends to repeat the top headlines or dwell on minuscule new
developments in events that prompted them until they are sucked dry. Yet, some are
much more consequential than what keeps scrolling on our smartphones.
A selection, in no particular order:
Collapsing fertility rates. The slow burn of fewer births and more deaths now includes
more than seventy countries, with some demographically young developing nations
among them. The transformation is already reshaping some nations’ economies, labor
markets, and political systems.
Shrinking rivers. Apropos slow crises. Some of the world’s great rivers — the Nile, the
Rio Grande, the Colorado, the Indus, the Po, the Yellow River — are shrinking because
of overuse, climate change-induced drought, or both. Entire civilizations have been built
on some of their banks. Now, cities and countries that depend on them face the prospect
of diminishing drinking water, dry irrigation canals, spiking food prices, collapsing
ecosystems, and rising tensions over river ownership.
The other Somali news story. While the US media have focused on the involvement of
some Somalis in Minnesota’s healthbenefits and socialservices fraud case, US
airstrikes have hit al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia more than 40 times this year alone.
Which is not to say the Minnesota story isn’t important. But if Shahab is weakened, it will
have geopolitical consequences for regional stability, migration patterns, and the
outcome of greatpower competition in Africa
New York’s new embrace of nuclear. The decision to build its first new nuclear plant in
15 years is a turnaround for a state that once swore off nuclear energy. It is a bellwether
for a global trend and notable at a time when world anxiety has spiked over energy
supplies because of the Iran war. Countries now rethinking their choices after formally
mandating nuclear phaseouts include Sweden, Belgium, Italy, South Korea, the
Philippines, and Greece.
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