“The US has long placed its faith in expensive weapons as the key to victory in conflicts, but the Ukraine war is forcing it to revise its assumptions, The Washington Post has reported.
Stacie Pettyjohn, the director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told the outlet the conflict had challenged long-held ideas that expensive, precision-guided weapons were key to winning US wars.
US-made Himars or Excalibur shells, which are guided to their targets using GPS, have proven vulnerable to Russian electronic-warfare units, which scramble their signals and send them off course.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraines-war-shown-us-expensive-113140807.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQQwm7N_mY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyiUTv4I_aw
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-avoided-bankrupting-itself-2-003101855.html
“The false idea that getting an abortion makes women irreparably depressed and anxious, that it causes a deep psychic wound, has for decades been used by anti-abortion activists to support abortion restrictions.
But the argument is entirely based on anecdotes, personal beliefs, and vibes. No good science has demonstrated this link.
That’s not because nobody’s tried to answer the question of what the mental health impacts of abortion are on the women who obtain them. It’s because the answer to that question, over and over again, is: none. In study after study, researchers have consistently shown that getting an abortion does not cause mental health problems.
What does reliably worsen women’s mental health, however, is banning or restricting abortion access.
A wealth of research has shown that when people are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies, it negatively impacts their physical health and finances — and mental health. In a survey conducted before the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, women living in states with more abortion restrictions had higher rates of mental distress. In another study, states enforcing abortion restrictions between 1974 and 2016 had higher suicide rates in women of childbearing age in particular.
But when the court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, it wasn’t making a decision grounded in science.
Now we’re more than a year and a half into living with the consequences. And when it comes to women’s mental health, the fallout is following the exact pattern scientists predicted.”
…
“Using data gathered as part of US Census Household Pulse surveys, the researchers looked at respondents’ self-reported anxiety and depression scores from about six months before and six months after the Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. They compared scores on a scale of zero to 12 among people in states with and without trigger bans, abortion restrictions that went into effect as soon as the Supreme Court issued its ruling.
What they found was, frankly, predictable: Before the Court’s decision, anxiety and depression scores were already higher in trigger states — a population-wide average of 3.5 compared with 3.3 in non-trigger states. After the decision, that difference widened significantly, largely due to changes in the mental health of women 18 to 45, what the authors defined as childbearing age. Among this subgroup, anxiety and depression scores subtly ticked up in those living in trigger states (from 4.62 to 4.76) — and dropped in those living in non-trigger states (from 4.57 to 4.49). There was no similar effect in older women, nor in men.”
https://www.vox.com/24071802/abortion-roe-overturn-trigger-ban-states-mental-health
“Russia is entering its third year of war in Ukraine with an unprecedented amount of cash in government coffers, bolstered by a record $37 billion of crude oil sales to India last year, according to new analysis, which concludes that some of the crude was refined by India and then exported to the United States as oil products worth more than $1 billion.
This flow of payments, ultimately to Moscow’s benefit, comes from India increasing its purchases of Russian crude by over 13 times its pre-war amounts, according to the analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), exclusively shared with CNN. It amounts to US strategic partner New Delhi stepping in to replace crude purchases by Western buyers, reduced by sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the analysis said.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kremlin-never-richer-thanks-us-080408989.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovNtkI-Zs6Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAk83kdnFrQ
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/02/01/do-new-documents-prove-a-covid-lab-leak/
“Today, Amazon terminated its planned acquisition of iRobot, manufacturer of Roomba robot vacuums, as the companies saw “no path to regulatory approval.” iRobot then announced that it would be cutting nearly one-third of its work force.
While the companies blamed regulators in the European Union for the termination, meddlesome U.S. lawmakers played their own part in souring the deal.”
…
“as the companies waited on regulators, iRobot was losing money: The company took out a $200 million bridge loan in July 2023 to tie it over until the deal closed (at which point Amazon lowered its offer to account for the new debt). With the deal scuttled, Amazon will now pay a $94 million termination fee, but iRobot expects to report an operating loss of as much as $285 million for 2023.
It’s worth wondering, then, if this is what lawmakers like Warren had in mind. The FTC letter worried the merger “could harm consumers and reduce competition and innovation in the home robotics market.” But without the merger, iRobot could very well face insolvency, and nearly one-third of its work force will lose their jobs—and considering the company is based in Massachusetts, a substantial number of them may very well be Warren’s constituents.”
https://reason.com/2024/01/29/irobot-lays-off-350-employees-as-amazon-kills-merger-elizabeth-warren-opposed/