Cuba's Fuel Crisis Forces Airlines to Halt Flights, Stranding Thousands of Tourists

Trump Administration Moves to Repeal Landmark Climate Endangerment Finding, Dismantling Legal Basis for Federal Emissions Rules

Soaring Profits and Shrinking Payrolls Tilt Economy's Rewards Toward Capital, Leaving Average Workers Behind

Lancet Study Links Obesity to 70% Higher Risk of Hospitalization and Death from Common Infections

U.S. Shale Producers Look Abroad as Domestic Growth Peaks, Acquiring Acreage from Argentina to the Middle East

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Cuba's Fuel Crisis Forces Airlines to Halt Flights, Stranding Thousands of Tourists

Cuba's aviation fuel shortage, driven by a deepening energy crisis tied to Trump administration sanctions that have largely cut off the island's access to foreign oil, forced major airlines to suspend service beginning Monday. Air Canada halted its 16 weekly flights to four Cuban cities and dispatched empty aircraft from Montreal and Toronto to retrieve roughly 3,000 Canadian tourists stranded on the island, which counts Canada as its largest source of visitors. Russian carrier Rossiya Airlines also canceled a Monday flight despite official assurances that Russian service would continue normally, sending an empty plane to evacuate its own nationals.

NYT

Trump Administration Moves to Repeal Landmark Climate Endangerment Finding, Dismantling Legal Basis for Federal Emissions Rules

The Trump administration plans this week to repeal the 2009 "endangerment finding" — the Obama-era scientific determination that six greenhouse gases threaten public health — in what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called "the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States." The final rule would eliminate federal requirements to measure, report and comply with greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, while repealing associated compliance programs and credit provisions. The rollback would not immediately affect regulations governing power plants and other stationary sources such as oil-and-gas facilities, but administration officials acknowledged that voiding the finding could pave the way for dismantling those rules as well. Carbon dioxide is the most significant of the six greenhouse gases covered by the finding, accounting for roughly three-quarters of total U.S. emissions, alongside methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Critics of the repeal argue that removing the legal basis for regulating these gases — particularly CO₂ — eliminates the federal government's primary tool for addressing what they describe as an existential threat to the planet. Supporters counter that the endangerment finding enabled a sweeping regulatory regime whose economic costs, including higher energy prices and reduced industrial competitiveness, far outweigh climate risks they say have been overstated.

WSJ

Soaring Profits and Shrinking Payrolls Tilt Economy's Rewards Toward Capital, Leaving Average Workers Behind

The growing dominance of capital over labor in the American economy is starkly illustrated by the contrast between two corporate eras: in 1985, IBM was the nation's most valuable company with nearly 400,000 employees, while today Nvidia is nearly 20 times as valuable and five times as profitable in inflation-adjusted terms yet employs roughly a tenth as many people. Profits have surged since the pandemic and market valuations have climbed even faster, concentrating the economy's gains among businesses, shareholders, and top-tier employees while the average worker sees only marginal improvement. The widening divergence helps explain the persistent disconnect between a buoyant economy on paper and widespread household pessimism, and is poised to shape the trajectory of economic growth going forward.

WSJ

Lancet Study Links Obesity to 70% Higher Risk of Hospitalization and Death from Common Infections

A study published Monday in The Lancet found that people living with obesity face a 70 percent higher risk of serious illness from common infections — including influenza, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, and urinary and respiratory tract infections — suggesting that excessive weight poses broader health dangers than previously understood. The findings expand the known consequences of obesity beyond its established links to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, at a time when global obesity rates have more than doubled over the past three decades and continue to climb.

FT

U.S. Shale Producers Look Abroad as Domestic Growth Peaks, Acquiring Acreage from Argentina to the Middle East

Facing dwindling prospects at home, American shale producers are expanding internationally for the first time in over a decade in what analysts are calling "Global Shale 2.0." Harold Hamm's Continental Resources made its second acquisition in Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale formation in January and signed a deal to develop fields in Turkey, while EOG Resources secured exploration licenses in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain last year — moves that mark a departure for pure-play U.S. drillers who have historically stayed in their own backyard. The overseas push comes as the prolific Permian Basin — whose vast reserves and low extraction costs proved so profitable that producers abandoned riskier international ventures to concentrate on domestic drilling — approaches maturity, prompting producers to merge, intensify extraction from remaining domestic acreage, and now seek the next frontier in shale deposits found in sedimentary rock worldwide.

WSJ

February 10 1996: World chess champion Garry Kasparov loses game to computer

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Sources

1. NYT — Cuba Fuel Crisis
2. WSJ — Climate Endangerment Finding
3. WSJ — Capital vs. Labor
4. FT — Obesity and Infection Risk
5. WSJ — Shale Producers Abroad