September 27 2024

1 Children Arrested Nationwide for School Threats After Deadly Georgia Shooting
2 Oil Price Falls as Saudi Arabia Abandons $100 Oil Price Target
3 Data Centers Rapid Expansion, Powering the Digital Age
4 Earth’s Temporary Mini-Moon: Asteroid 2024 PT5 to Orbit Earth for Two Months
5 Friday Ukraine update: A) Russia makes slow but methodical gains in east, B) Ukrainian manpower problems, C) US Intel warns against allowing strikes on Russian homeland, D) Russia establishes drone factory in China
9/27/1962 Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is published

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1 Children Arrested Nationwide for School Threats After Deadly Georgia Shooting

Earlier this month, a detective knocked on Shavon Harvey’s door, in suburban Ohio, to ask about her son. The son had sent a Snapchat message from her phone to his friends, saying there would be shootings at several schools nearby. She rushed to the police station, where her son was already in custody, but the police did not release him. He was charged with inducing panic, a second-degree felony, and officials kept him in detention for 10 nights. He is 10. Ms. Harvey’s son is far from the only child arrested this month after similar behavior. And he’s not even the youngest. In the three weeks since two teachers and two students were killed at Apalachee High School in the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history, more than 700 children and teenagers, including at least one fourth grader, have been arrested and accused of making violent threats against schools in at least 45 states, according to a New York Times review of news reports, law enforcement statements and court records. Almost 10 percent were 12 or younger.

Article Source: NYT

2 Oil Price Falls as Saudi Arabia Abandons $100 Oil Price Target

Saudi Arabia is ready to abandon its unofficial price target of $100 a barrel for crude as it prepares to increase output, in a sign that the kingdom is resigned to a period of lower oil prices, according to people familiar with the country’s thinking. The world’s largest oil exporter and seven other members of the Opec+ producer group had been due to unwind long-standing production cuts from the start of October. But a two-month delay sparked speculation over whether the group would ever be able to raise output, with the price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, briefly dropping below $70 this month to its lowest since December 2021. However, officials in the kingdom are committed to bringing back that production as planned on December 1, even if it leads to a prolonged period of lower prices, the people said. The prospect of Riyadh ditching its unofficial target hit the price of oil and the shares of oil companies on Thursday. Brent crude was down 3.5 per cent on the day at $70.87, while West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, dropped 3.8 per cent to $67.06.

Article Source: FT

3 Data Centers Rapid Expansion, Powering the Digital Age

The data center industry has grown exponentially during the past decade, particularly in Northern Virginia, where some of the massive buildings are a short walk from surrounding homes.  

Different types of data centers meet different demands. Many are connected to one another via a labyrinth of underground fiber-optic cables that make up the public internet network, or to private cables that are accessible only to specific customers. All are geared to minimize latency, or the time it takes for data to get from its source to you, the end user. There are four main types of data centers:

·       An “enterprise” data center serves the needs of the company that owns it. Think of a corporation that stores in-house information on its own computers. 

·       Larger “hyperscale” data centers, owned by companies such as Amazon or Meta, have computer servers that cater solely to the company’s customers. 

·       “Edge” data centers are smaller buildings in or near major population centers, where digital connectivity becomes almost instantaneous for, say, a passing driverless car. 

·       Equinix is among the world’s largest owners of “colocation” data centers. Those facilities lease space to other businesses that hook up their servers to cables that belong to the data center company.

Article Source: WaPo

4 Earth’s Temporary Mini-Moon: Asteroid 2024 PT5 to Orbit Earth for Two Months

For the next two months, an unusual object about the size of a bus will be orbiting above our heads. Say hello to Earth’s temporary new mini-moon. From Sept. 29 to Nov. 25, a passing asteroid will be pulled in by Earth’s gravity — sort of like a window shopper — before returning to its normal orbit around the sun. Objects that get captured by our gravitational force for a short time are known as mini-moons. This one, named asteroid 2024 PT5, came from the Arjuna asteroid belt near our sun, about 93 million miles away.

Article Source: WaPo

5 Friday Ukraine update: A) Russia makes slow but methodical gains in east, B) Ukrainian manpower problems, C) US Intel warns against allowing strikes on Russian homeland, D) Russia establishes drone factory in China

A Russia makes slow but methodical gains in east  

Russia has made fresh gains in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy travelled to the US to discuss plans to end the war. Moscow’s forces captured the town of Ukrainsk near the logistical hub of Pokrovsk, the Russian-installed Donetsk governor Denis Pushilin said on Tuesday. Russian forces also made gains and looked closer to encircling Vulhedar and Kurakove, two towns further south in that same area, according to DeepState. If the two towns fell it would allow Moscow’s forces to encircle and take Pokrovsk, severing Ukraine’s main supply line to the region. Russia’s recent advances in the area have been aided by Ukraine’s manpower and weapons deficits. Kyiv’s own surprise incursion into Russia’s southern Kursk region last month has so far failed to trigger a Russian redeployment from Donetsk, with Moscow redirecting troops from other areas to defend its own territory.  

B Ukrainian manpower problems   

For six gruelling days this month a small team of experienced Ukrainian soldiers managed to withstand Russia’s relentless assault on their position on the eastern front. All aged under 40 and with two years of fighting experience, the six men held their ground despite a barrage of rockets and killed over 100 Russian soldiers, said their commander in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. “When they rotated out, they were trembling. They hadn’t slept or rested,” their commander said near the frontline south-east of Pokrovsk, a city Russia is seeking to occupy. “But those guys did their job and held the line.” The troops who replaced them were less successful. Of the eight soldiers rotated in, only two had combat experience. All six new conscripts — most over the age of 40 — were killed or wounded within a week, forcing the unit to retreat.  Ukraine’s troops and their commanders are growing concerned over manpower problems, particularly the quality of new recruits and the speed at which they are injured or killed. The Ukrainian infantry is most acutely affected: its troops are grappling with exhaustion and flagging morale, leading some to abandon their positions and allow Russia to capture more land, according to frontline commanders. Along the front in Donetsk, four commanders, a deputy commander and nearly a dozen soldiers from four Ukrainian brigades told the Financial Times that the new conscripts lack basic combat skills, motivation and often flee their positions when they come under fire. The commanders estimated that 50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation. “When the new guys get to the position, a lot of them run away at the first shell explosion,” said a deputy commander in Ukraine’s 72nd mechanised brigade fighting near the eastern city of Vuhledar, a key bulwark that the Russians are attempting to flank.  

C US Intel warns against allowing strikes on Russian homeland  

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russia is likely to retaliate with greater force against the United States and its coalition partners, possibly with lethal attacks, if they agree to give the Ukrainians permission to employ U.S., British and French-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia, U.S. officials said. The intelligence assessment, which has not been previously reported, also plays down the effect that the long-range missiles will have on the course of the conflict because the Ukrainians currently have limited numbers of the weapons and it is unclear how many more, if any, the Western allies might provide.  

D Russia establishes drone factory in China  

Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents reviewed by Reuters.

Article Source: FT, NYT, Reuters

9/27/1962 Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is published

Rachel Carson’s watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment. Its publication is often viewed as the beginning of the modern environmentalist movement in America. Though she died only two years after the book’s publication, the movement she helped popularize blossomed over the next decade. Her successors fought for the creation Environmental Protection Agency, formed in 1970, and her arguments were instrumental in securing a nationwide phase-out of DDT, which began in 1972. Carson’s work on pesticides not only drew attention to their unintended consequences but also familiarized the public with the extent of the harm mankind could inflict upon nature, one of the most important lessons our species has had to learn.

Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/us/school-violence-threats-student-arrests.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

2. https://on.ft.com/3BfPfFg

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2024/data-centers-tour-northern-virginia/

4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/19/earth-second-mini-moon-asteroid/

5. A https://on.ft.com/47HpQjD
B https://on.ft.com/3zI3a6k
C https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/us/politics/us-intelligence-stresses-risks-in-allowing-long-range-strikes-by-ukraine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
D https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-has-secret-war-drones-project-china-intel-sources-say-2024-09-25/