Today's Must-Reads - 28 February 2024

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and fascinating articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. This is a slimmed down version for all readers but is usually for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• Net Zero is a war on the working class. It’s official. Net Zero will make us poorer. A new report finds that the British government’s climate-change policies are likely to ‘make the poor poorer, and push struggling communities further into deprivation and exclusion’. Our Journey to Net Zero, by the Institute for Community Studies (ICS), shows that the transition to Net Zero will cause a rise in unemployment, as carbon-intensive industries are forcibly restructured. Food will become more expensive. And the eco-friendly changes we’ll all be forced to make, such as insulating our homes or switching to electric cars, will be extremely difficult ’for low-income households’. The ICS concludes that the poorest 40 per cent of households are at risk of falling into ‘transition poverty’.

• The Hockey Stick Trial: Science Dies in a DC Courtroom. “Science,” wrote the philosopher Karl Popper, “is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticised and fairly often, in time, corrected.” The sub-title of Popper’s 1963 book Conjectures and Refutations, in which he argued that science progresses through inspired conjectures checked by attempts to refute them through criticism, is “The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.” Now, a six-person jury in Washington, DC has refuted Popper’s formulation of the uniqueness of science, finding in favor of climate scientist Michael Mann in the defamation suit he brought against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn dating back to 2012.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Sir Patrick Vallance joins Tony Blair Institute. Former Government chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has joined the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the ex-prime minister’s organisation has announced. Vallance has been appointed to the TBI’s “team of expert Strategic Counsellors”, alongside former chief of the defence staff General Sir Nick Carter. The Institute’s statement claims that Vallance “brings significant expertise to TBI’s work on the transformative role science and technology can play for governments and societies around the world”.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Maersk warns Red Sea disruptions could last into second half of year. Major container shipping companies have switched away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the longer route around Africa's Cape of Good Hope following attacks on shipping by Houthi militants. "Be prepared for the Red Sea situation to last into the second half of the year and build longer transit times into your supply chain planning," Maersk's head of North America, Charles van der Steene, said in a statement on Tuesday.

• A Slow-Motion Property Crash in Germany Is a Bigger Threat to Banks Than US CRE. As fears about US commercial real estate roiled German banks this month, their message was clear: don’t worry, the vast majority of our property exposure is domestic. That may not prove the comfort it seems. While the country has so far avoided the rapid market corrections that rattled the US, experts argue that reflects arcane accounting practices shielding its lenders and investors from taking immediate hits. Relatively modest adjustments and benign provisions obscure the fact that German lenders are more exposed to commercial real estate than most of their European peers and, according to one study, extended loans more aggressively.

Health

• Britain’s cancer bomb has detonated and the NHS is in denial. We are behind Australia, Canada and Norway in treating a variety of different cancer types, with their five-year survival rates also far superior. The brutal reality is that thousands and thousands of British cancer patients are dying unnecessarily, and many would still be alive had they been cared for in a different system. This study even used data from before the Covid debacle. The current situation is one of persistent treatment delays and a dramatic fall in the quality of care. It’s surely time to start asking why?

• A Spike in Heart Disease Deaths Since Covid Is Puzzling Scientists. Mortality data of the past four years show a wave of deadly cardiovascular and metabolic illness. From 2020 to 2022, a quarter of a million more Americans over 35 years old succumbed to cardiovascular disease than predicted based on historical trends, according to Bloomberg analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, age-adjusted stroke mortality was almost 5% above pre-pandemic levels, according to preliminary data, while rates from deaths related to hypertensive heart disease, rhythm abnormalities, blood clots, diabetes and kidney failure were 15-28% higher.

Politics

• Members of the Bundestag demand the immediate release of Julian Assange. “The political show trial against Assange must be ended immediately,” says the MPs’ letter, which is available exclusively to the Frankfurter Rundschau. “He is entitled to a fair trial before the European Court of Human Rights.” 75 members of the Bundestag from the traffic light parties signed the appeal. The appeal was coordinated by the Green MP Max Lucks, Frank Schwabe from the SPD and the FDP MP Ulrich Lechte. “His case is emblematic of the state of press freedom in Europe,” said Lucks. “My British colleagues should contact their government and join us in demanding a hearing before the ECHR.”

• Where is the Princess of Wales? The royal communication strategy is confusing. Kate has not been seen in public for weeks, nor has she put out any sort of personal statement after her hospitalisation at the London Clinic for a still-mysterious health condition. The only information given out at the time was that she was not suffering from cancer – unlike the King, whose own health issues have been made public with considerably more candour and detail than the princess’s. And since then, all has been silent.

• Japan births hit record low and population down by largest margin in 2023. The number of babies born in Japan totaled 758,631 in 2023, hitting a record low for the eighth straight year and representing half the figure of some 1.5 million logged in 1983, a preliminary health ministry report showed Tuesday. The 2023 figure declined by 5.1% from the previous year's preliminary total of 799,728, the largest ever margin of decline. The figure fell below the 800,000 mark for the first time in 2022. The number of deaths came to a record 1,590,503, up for the third straight year. The country's natural population decline, or the number of deaths minus that of births, came to 831,872. It is the 17th straight year of natural population decline and the biggest fall ever.

Science

• Our solar system map may need an update — the Kuiper belt could be way bigger. NASA's New Horizons mission, which encountered Pluto in 2015 is now riding through the deepest depths of the Kuiper Belt, is encountering a cosmic dust storm that hints there may be more going on in the outermost reaches of the solar system than we imagine. The continued presence of dust implies New Horizons is still within the Kuiper Belt, and that the Kuiper Belt is far more extensive than anyone knew, stretching across billions of miles farther from the sun than our maps presently estimate.

• The surprising origins of wave-particle duality. Take any quantum you like, from photons to electrons to composite particles, and it will behave as both a wave and a particle under the right circumstances. When quanta propagate through free space, they all exhibit wave-like behavior, but when they interact with another quantum, they behave like particles. Made famous by physicists in the early 20th century, the origins of wave-particle duality go back hundreds of years farther. Here's the surprising origin of wave-particle duality.

Ukraine

• Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike. Vladimir Putin’s forces have rehearsed using tactical nuclear weapons at an early stage of conflict with a major world power, according to leaked Russian military files that include training scenarios for an invasion by China. The classified papers, seen by the Financial Times, describe a threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons that is lower than Russia has ever publicly admitted, according to experts who reviewed and verified the documents. Although the files date back 10 years and more, experts claim they remain relevant to current Russian military doctrine.

• Macron not ruling out Western troops on the ground in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron announced Monday new steps to boost Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion, saying not even the sending of Western ground troops was ruled out to achieve Europe's goal of defeating Moscow. He refused to say more about France's position, citing the need for "strategic ambiguity" but saying the issue was mentioned among the "options".

Vaccines

• Medicines regulator failed to flag Covid vaccine side effects and must be investigated, say MPs. All-party group believe MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues in February 2021 but did not highlight the problems for several months. It has claimed that “far from protecting patients” the regulator operates in a way that “puts them at serious risk”. The APPG said it was also concerned that MHRA regulation of medicine was funded by the pharmaceutical industry and said the body had shifted from focusing on scrutiny to trying to help drugs get approved.