1 Week, 7 Stories - Newsletter #39
Mike Spear
40 years of experience ready to help not-for-profits with their communications needs.
Every edition features 7 stories, from the past week. I’ll draw on my background in media, journalism, agriculture, biotech, and renewable energy to come up with an interesting selection and to offer some context.
The war between Ukraine and Russia just clicked up a notch when Ukrainian forces struck inside Russia and claims to control 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of territory in the Kursk region. Also ratcheted up has been the Russian military response and that has earned it the lead story for this week’s newsletter.
This is not the first time Russia has used thermobaric bombs, but it is not a? weapon they generally admit to deploying. A thermobaric bomb is better known as a vacuum bomb or an aerosol bomb and is considered a controversial weapon because of its unique nature (though I wish all bombs were considered controversial). Unfortunately it is also not a complicated piece of military technology according to European Security & Defence. The detonation disperses a cloud of gas, liquid, or powdered explosive much like coal dust explosions. It is a two-stage weapon where the second charge ignites that cloud which creates a fireball, an extreme pressure wave, ?and sucks up all the air around it.? They deliver a longer and more sustained blast wave and are considered the most lethal non-nuclear bomb. The International Review of the Red Cross says that no international law specifically addresses thermobaric weapons but says the weapon may contravene many sections of humanitarian law including the ?prohibition against “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering” and the “anti-personnel use of incendiaries”.
This Wall Street Journal video is available without a subscription for you to catch up on the latest developments of a bomb that has been used in one form or another since WWII.
Monkeypox or mpox is a viral illness that causes fever, rash, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, and can lead to fatal complications. ?(The World Health Organization renamed monkeypox to mpox in 2022.) Like any virus, it mutates to survive and in April scientists? working in Africa warned that a new mpox mutation was particularly efficient at human-to-human transmission and could lead to a global outbreak.?
They were right, and it is here.
It was declared a public health emergency in Africa this week with 15,000 cases and 461 deaths so far this year. Before you dismiss the problem as one restricted to a continent far, far away, Toronto has 93 cases so far this year with the spike occurring? after major events and festivals in June and July.? The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the surrounding area are seeing the biggest concentration of cases, but it is not an “out of sight, out of mind” problem as you’ll hear from a doctor and epidemiologist? in this CTV News video. In Canada during the 2022/2023 period most reported cases were locally acquired and not from international travel. The mutations are also appearing outside Africa. No sooner had it been declared a public health emergency than Sweden reported a case of the latest variant acquired through international travel.
Mpox made its into the headlines in 2022 when there was an outbreak in Central Africa that was characterized by is severity and high mortality. It also seemed to be linked to sexual contact as outlined in this pre-print paper (not yet peer-reviewed), but that does not mean it is a sexually transmitted disease (SDT). Rather it is a case of a virus strain that is easy to contract through human-to-human contact and of course sex is certainly a very direct type of contact.
There is an mpox vaccine available but global supplies are limited and getting them to where they are needed most is difficult because of funding, other disease outbreaks, and health facilities already under intense pressure.? The vaccine is available in Canada and Toronto Public Health has said that at-risk people should get vaccinated. Africa would need about 10 million doses of the vaccine but only has 200,000 on hand.
Canada has a stockpile of one of the approved vaccines, but according to a Globe & Mail report, has no current plans to share any of it with Africa. Many however say that as a “global citizen”, Canada should be doing what it can to help control the disease at home and abroad.
I have checked off both the milestones cited in this Guardian story on human aging.? Instead of being a gradual process, we have two aging bursts when we are 44, then again at 60. Bursts which were described as “really dramatic changes”.
The news came from a study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Aging. The participants in the study were from California and were 25 to 75 years old. A 2019 study had suggested that age-related disease had waves in the 4th, 7th, and 8th decades of our lives but the new study seems to have narrowed it down. Keep in mind that lifestyle and genetics play a role in how we age as well, but the research points to those periods of change as being milestones across the spectrum.
As the old saying goes, “age is just a number” but there should be a tagline that says “age and ageing” are not the same thing. Researchers define ageing as “a progressive loss of physiological integrity leading to functional impairment and an increased likelihood of death”. All we need to do is look in the mirror and we see the signs of our age, but not necessarily of our ageing.
According to UN population projections, 722,000 people around the world have made it to at least 100 years old. Japan has the most centenarians, the United States second and Canada makes the top 20. We have slightly more than 11,000 people who have stuck around on the planet for at least 100 years and that number could top106,000 by 2073.
An Icelandic mussel can live to 500 years and an adult mayfly counts its life in hours. We have only a 1% chance of living to 100.
As much as we would like to live to be older, and perhaps older and older, it may be better if we can just maintain our physical and mental health longer. They are plenty of quack cures and misinformation about living longer but there is legitimate science being done as well. Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine?has a Human Longevity Laboratory which studies just that – living longer, pushing back age-related diseases ,and at least slowing down the inevitable break-down of our body.
This was not a good week for all-news radio.
When I passed along the information to a friend who was travelling in Ontario, he replied that there was no AM Radio in his rental car. That will surely have something to do with? AM all-news formats disappearing, but as you’ll read in this story there is more to what is going on. WCBS had a lot of listeners and no shortage of ad revenue. It also had the need to please shareholders and increase profits.
Radio has been in automobiles since 1930, and US statistics show that commuters still tune in to AM radio in their cars. Radio is free, operates inside and outside, and carries on even in the middle of severe weather and other disasters. ?The content also tends to be highly local and a Canadian survey found that 67% of radio revenue is from local sales. This column in the National Post points out that if the revenue stayed at home, it could be used to keep reporters and cover local news.
Perhaps most importantly, all-news radio delivers what it promises. News. No need to wade through a 45-minute podcast to get a few insights, you are not tied to a screen, and you won’t need an app and an internet connection to find out how close the wildfire is to you. While I am not a fan of highly polarized radio, if you want to tune into a right-wing station while zipping around downtown or out of town, you also have those options. Still free and no app required. It is a democratic medium.
If the US AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act passes, Canada will benefit simply because of the unified nature of the US and Canadian markets, so for that reason alone I hope it makes it through.
In the meantime, whether you listen over the air or live stream, why not check out an all-news radio station near you. Good chance I get at least one of my story ideas every week from one of those stations. ?
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Many years ago, when I was still on my little ranch in the Foothills, we had a plague of grasshoppers. As you can see in the picture they were everywhere. So thick it made walking in the field not only unpleasant, but creepy. Maintaining the garden was uncomfortable and the ‘hoppers ate up a lot of it anyway. The cattle and horses were distressed because as they put their heads down to munch on the rapidly disappearing grass, they got a face full of insects instead. I didn’t depend on my ranch for a living, so I was lucky. But it was still brutal.
Of the 80 species of grasshoppers in this neck of the woods, only 10 of those are agricultural pests. Every year Alberta Agriculture does a grasshopper forecast and the survey for that forecast is being conducted right now. This summer has not seen an explosion of the pest yet, and things are looking good for next year.??
You can thank the weather.
Grasshoppers love heat and dry weather which were the conditions in June of 2023. One farmer said at the time, ?“The ground was literally moving with them”. All it takes is 10 grasshoppers per square metre (about 10 square feet) to inflict considerable damage on crops and grass. June of 2024 however was wet and cool in most of Alberta which slows development in those grasshoppers which survive the unfavourable conditions. However a hot and dry July and August was good news for the insect, bad news for farmers – but it is still manageable. Pesticide control is one option, but it is expensive and kills the good bugs along with the bad ones. (During the Dust Bowl conditions in the 1930s they used flame throwers. No longer a recommended treatment option!)
Meanwhile in parts of the United States they are experiencing a “'Hopperpocalypse”. Farmers in Colorado, Oregon, and parts of California are the worst hit, but so far, no call for flame throwers.
While your robotic vacuum may be handy to keep the pet hair and dust bunnies under control, you may need to be wary of what they are up to. TechCrunch reports that “Ecovacs home robots can be hacked to spy on their owners”. Ecovacs is an established company that sells a range of robotic produces including vacuum cleaners, window cleaners, and lawn mowers. The TechCrunch story says that hackers can access the cameras and microphones of the product. Turning the appliance off does not help because they can be turned back on remotely.
Not only could your lawnmower be keeping an eye on you while it is cutting the lawn, but your smart thermostat and appliances are sharing your secrets while they control your home. A Dutch cybersecurity company says that we are paying twice when we invest in smart technology and use Siri, Alexa, or Google’s Assistant. Once when we buy the tech, and then again when it collects and shares our personal information. The company’s website has a Smart Home Privacy Checker which breaks down appliances by type, manufacturer, and data points to help give you an idea of what is floating about in your own personal Internet of Things.
If you have an electric vehicle, they are well-protected and are not easy for hackers to find a way in, but someone forgot to hack-proof the home EV chargers. Beyond being inconvenient, ?so what if it gets turned off. Perhaps, but PCMag says that the problem comes in the billing process for the charger.” You could hack your own charger and pay nothing. Or hack your neighbor to pay 10 times as much.”
After all that money, time, and effort you put into modernizing your home and vehicle they all turn against you. The simple life may be the safest.
(PS – If you feel you are being watched, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 movie The Conversation has been restored and re-released. Watch it.)
The Titanic sank in 1912 killing 1,500 people. It remains an object of fascination to this day probably because of the mix of people on board, and who survived, and who went down with the ship. It has become the source of stories, movies, books, and in a not-so-shameless plug, one of my own short stories, The Titanic Lives On!, is available free on Substack.
A new exhibit at an equally new museum opened in Seattle recently which offers an “immersive experience” with re-creations of the ship’s interior, music and sounds effects, and stories from survivors. A touring exhibit will be coming to Boston in the fall and if past experience holds true, it will be well attended.
This week the BBC had a chance to visit a “secret” warehouse and shared some of the details of the artifacts they were able to see, many of which have never been on display before. Among the items recovered and stored away are bottles of perfume which have held their aroma, still corked bottles of champagne, cutlery and china from the various classes on the ship (first, second, and third class had different levels of refinement), and rivets from the steel plates which have been cited as one of the possible causes of the sinking due to poor workmanship.
The collection and the warehouse are managed by RMS Titanic Inc which is the only company legally allowed to recover items from the Titanic. One of the conditions for that right is that the items remain together and cannot be sold off separately, hence the warehouse. Many also view the wreckage as a gravesite and are opposed to retrieval of items by anyone. Prior to any legal ruling on the rights however, objects have made it into the public realm. In April a gold pocket watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor sold at auction for ￡900,000 (about $1.5 million Cdn). The auction house had valued the watch at 100,000 - 150,000 GBP.
RMS Titanic Inc. announced late in July that it was organizing a new mission to survey the Titanic site using a remote operated vehicle (ROV). It is strictly a survey mission and not a recovery exercise, but one of the objectives is to see if the Marconi wireless set used to send the ship’s SOS messages is recoverable.? It is the first mission to the site since the OceanGate Titan submersible imploded last year. This week, the family of French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeole who died on the submersible filed a lawsuit for more than $50 million USd ($68.5 Cdn) saying that not only did the OceanGate company fail to disclose problems, but that everyone on board would have known they were about to die and experienced extreme anguish and trauma.
112 years after its sinking, the Titanic is never far away from the news, still captures the imagination, and continues to take lives.
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I’m available for contract and freelance work with not-for-profits and charities. With 40 years of experience behind me and lots of time ahead of me, I’m here to help you make a difference in your media relations, public relations, and general communications needs.
I also have a Substack newsletter which includes 1 Week, 7 Stories and other new material when the mood strikes. Starting in the Fall you’ll be able to read stories from my new short story collection.?