Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Stress is weathering our bodies from the inside out: Physicians and public health experts have pointed to one culprit time and again when asked why Americans live shorter lives than peers in nations with similar resources, especially people felled by chronic diseases in the prime of life: stress. (Washington Post)
• How the Palestinian Authority Failed Its People: Make Palestinian governance better instead of leaving a vacuum for Hamas to fill. (The Atlantic) see also How Hamas Caught U.S. and Israeli Intelligence Unaware: One clear lesson is that human intelligence—that is, old-fashioned spying—has been neglected. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle: Offsetting has been hailed as a fix for runaway emissions and climate change—but the market’s largest firm sold millions of credits for carbon reductions that weren’t real. (New Yorker)
• I Searched for a Con Man for Seven Years. The Result Is ‘The Wedding Scammer.’ Ahead of Episode 1 of The Ringer’s first true crime show, ‘The Wedding Scammer,’ host Justin Sayles reflects on how he stumbled into a story he became obsessed with—and how a team of amateur detectives helped along the way (The Ringer)
• China Got a Big Contract. Nepal Got Debt and a Pricey Airport. China called the project a “signature” of its cooperation with Nepal. Insiders and documents reveal the pitfalls of China’s infrastructure-at-any-cost model. (New York Times)
• How a Fertilizer Shortage Is Spreading Desperate Hunger: Across Africa and in parts of Asia, disruption to the supply chain for fertilizer is raising food prices and increasing malnutrition. (New York Times)
• GOP states raise fees on electric cars as gas taxes fall: Democrats and environmental groups say the new fees are aimed at the culture wars rather than revenue shortfalls. At least eight states, all but one controlled by Republicans, now require drivers of electric vehicles to pay a hefty annual registration fee of $200 or more. GOP lawmakers say it’s an effort to make up for lost gas tax revenue. EV advocates say it’s an effort to block sales of the environmentally friendly vehicles. (Washington Post)
• The horrifying, nearly forgotten history behind Killers of the Flower Moon: A century later, we still don’t know the full, stomach-churning extent of the Osage murders. (Vox) see also Black-Owned Land Is Under Siege in the Brazos Valley: Acre by acre, families have lost long-held property near Bryan and College Station—much of it to the efforts of two men who weaponized arcane documents to acquire plots potentially worth millions. (Texas Monthly)
• The Botched Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Killer: For 13 years, police failed to scrutinize the man now accused of the infamous murders. Why did it take so long? (New York Times Magazine)
• What Sidney Powell’s Deal Could Mean for the Fulton County Case Against Trump: “I think there are a lot of people who are in more trouble than they were before.” (The Atlantic)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Bethany McLean, contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and author of Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Her most recent book is The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind, was coauthored with Joe Nocera.
Gun homicides have reached rates not seen since the 1990s
Source: USA Facts
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