Wednesday, June 9th, 2021
FBI Crime Sting, Billionaire Tax Records & Internet Outage
All the news you need in about 10 min:
This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp.com/newsworthy and Framebridge.com (Listen for the discount code)
Story Summaries
All the news stories mentioned in today's episode are listed with links below, so you can spend as much -- or as little -- time as you want reading about the latest happenings…
Hundreds Arrested in Global Sting
More than 800 suspected criminals were taken down in an elaborate global sting. For three years, the FBI has been running a secure messaging app called Anom with police in other countries. With the assistance of a former drug trafficker-turned-informant, the FBI was able to distribute Anom to drug gangs and other criminal groups. They have allegedly been using it to arrange international drug shipments, coordinate arms and explosives trafficking, order contract killings, and more. Authorities have collected more than 27 million messages from about 12,000 devices in more than 100 countries.
Read More: NPR, BBC, WaPo, AP, FBI
Senate Report on Capitol Riot
The first congressional report on the Capitol invasion lists dozens of intelligence failures, miscommunications, and security lapses. A bipartisan group of Senators put this report together after a series of oversight hearings. They also reviewed thousands of documents and written statements from 50 Capitol police officers. In the end, the report blamed the FBI and Homeland Security Department for not properly warning about potential violence targeting the Capitol, and gave recommendations on how to improve. In response, both Homeland Security and Capitol Police officials say they’re looking into the recommendations.
Read More: NY Times, WSJ, AP, NPR
Senate Passes Industrial Policy Bill
The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to boost government spending on technology, science, and research. It would cost nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years. The idea is to help the U.S. better compete with new technologies out of China and other countries. Supporters say it’s necessary to protect critical supply chains and keep the U.S. a worldwide leader in innovation. Some critics are pushing back, saying the bill costs too much and interferes too much in the economy. Next up, the bill still needs to be approved in the House before going to President Biden for his signature.
Read More: Politico, Reuters, WSJ, Axios
Richest Americans Income Tax Analysis
The 25 richest Americans have been paying just a small fraction of their wealth in federal income taxes. The news organization ProPublica published tax data from 2014 to 2018, It shows income and tax payments from people like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. During those five years, the 25 wealthiest people reportedly saw their wealth rise by more than $400 billion and paid a true tax rate of only 3.4% on average. The average American household during that time earned around $70,000 and paid about 14% of that in federal taxes.
Read More: ProPublica, NY Times, CNBC, WSJ, CNN
Travel Advisories Updated
This week, the State Department has eased travel advisories for dozens of countries, with Canada, Mexico, Japan, France, Italy, and Spain all being taken off the “Do Not Travel” list. They’re now listed in the “Reconsider Travel” category since there is still some risk. The State Department says it made this change to more closely align with the CDC’s updated COVID-19 safety guidelines. The CDC still says anyone who’s traveling overseas should be fully vaccinated.
Read More: WaPo, Axios, Bloomberg, State Dept.
Global Outage Affects Top Websites
A huge internet outage affected people in dozens of countries, including here in the U.S. Websites like Amazon, Reddit, eBay, Twitter, Hulu, PayPal, and several news outlets all went down for about an hour. This was because of one outage at a cloud computing service called Fastly, which helps websites run faster. The company said it was a “technical issue” that caused the outage, not a cyberattack, and that the issue has been fixed.
Read More: AP, CNET, WSJ, The Verge, Fastly
New Dinosaur Species Discovered
Scientists discovered a new dinosaur species in Australia which they’re calling the Australotitan. They say it’s one of the largest species ever identified, being around two stories tall and as long as a basketball court. Cattle farmers dug up the bones more than a decade ago, and paleontologists have been studying them ever since. They believe the dinosaur was walking around about 95 million years ago, had a long neck and tail, and ate plants. Researchers say the discovery suggests there could be many more dinosaur skeletons and species still left to be discovered.
Read More: BBC, Reuters, CNN, WaPo
Chris Harrison Off ‘The Bachelor’
Chris Harrison is officially not coming back to The Bachelor franchise. The long-time host confirmed the news yesterday, writing on social media that his time with the franchise had been “truly incredible” and he is “excited to start a new chapter.” Harrison has hosted the show and all of its spin-offs for nearly 20 years and is expected to receive a settlement worth millions of dollars, though ABC hasn’t confirmed the exact terms of the deal. Harris was first sidelined back in February following a racism controversy.
Read More: ET, Deadline, USA Today, Chris Harrison
First Black Woman Named Maxim’s Sexiest Alive
For the first time, Maxim Magazine picked a Black woman as the Sexiest Woman Alive. It chose singer, actress, and director Teyana Taylor. She most recently starred alongside Eddie Murphy in Coming 2 America. Her cover shoot was a little unusual, with her being photographed in sweatpants after dropping her daughter off at school and racing to the set. Taylor said she was surprised but thrilled when the photographer didn’t want her to get glammed up and was honored to be chosen for “literally living in the skin I’m in.”
Read More: Maxim, People, Essence, Teyana Taylor
Work Wednesday: Job Qualifications Relaxed
Companies are becoming more willing to pay more and take chances on hiring people who don’t have traditional qualifications. Hourly wages have risen faster than at any other time since the 80s, and the number of jobs with starting bonuses has doubled since a couple of years ago. This is all because businesses aren’t getting enough candidates for open positions. The Labor Department released a new report this week that says there were more than nine million job openings in the U.S. in April. This is due to factors such as COVID-19 fears and enhanced unemployment benefits. These problems aren’t expected to clear up until at least this fall.
Read More: USA Today, NY Times, CNBC, Market Watch