1. Footprints in the dirt
It’s World Refugee Day. Once a year, we share the latest numbers to shine a light on the state of one of the world’s most pressing problems. And this year, that light is even farther from the end of an increasingly long, bleak tunnel. “65.6 million. That’s the number of people who were forcibly displaced from their homes in 2016, including refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), stateless persons, returnees, and asylum seekers … 22.5 million are refugees, 40.3 million are internally displaced persons, and 2.8 million are asylum seekers.” If those numbers don’t seem troubling enough, try this one on for size: 51 percent of all refugees in 2016 are children (and many of them are alone). From Vice, Put simply: There has never been a worse refugee crisis.
+ Economist Daily Chart: The number of forcibly displaced people grew to a record in 2016.
+ NatGeo: Haunting photos of where refugee children sleep. And from Vox: Syria’s lost generation of refugee children, in 12 photos.
+ As you’d imagine, Syria and Afghanistan are the two countries that created the most refugees. We hear less about the third. Here’s Nick Turse in Harper’s: An ethnic-cleansing campaign by the government threatens to empty South Sudan: Ghost Nation. “Many had run with only the clothes they were wearing — threadbare dresses and long colorful skirts, blouses held together by safety pins, a soiled ted nugent: body count T-shirt, a pair of dress pants several sizes too big belted around a diminishing waist with twine, an aqua-blue sandal on one foot and a battered brown loafer on the other.”
+ Let’s end with some folks who are trying to make the situation better: “The intention is to really humanize the refugee issue and to say, let’s meet each other as neighbors. Let’s talk about ways that we’re similar rather than ways that we’re different.” From NPR: These Dinner Parties Serve Up A Simple Message: Refugees Welcome.
2. The Fixers
Florida was a hotbed for the pill mills that helped drive a national crisis. It was also a place where addicts could go to try to kick the opiate habit. “But what many of these addicts find here today is a crippled and dangerous system, fueled in the past three years by insurance fraud, abuse, minimal oversight and lax laws. The result in Palm Beach County has been the rapid proliferation of troubled treatment centers, labs and group homes where unknowing addicts, exploited for insurance money, fall deeper into addiction.” The NYT with a story about drug addiction, health insurance, and a lot more: Haven for Recovering Addicts Now Profits From Their Relapses.
4. Silent might
“Apple’s Global Security team employs an undisclosed number of investigators around the world to prevent information from reaching competitors, counterfeiters, and the press, as well as hunt down the source when leaks do occur. Some of these investigators have previously worked at U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, and in the U.S. military.” (No wonder no one in DC can contain the leaks. All of their best secret-keepers have moved to Cupertino.) The Outline takes you inside Apple’s global war on leakers.
6. Medical mystery
“The Senate will soon have a chance to turn the page on this failed law.” So said Mitch McConnell as a small, all male group of GOP Senators gets set to share their Obamacare replacement with the world (and the rest of the Senate). Somehow, there will only be about a week or two between that move and a vote.
+ “I’m very eager to see the language. I don’t think it gives enough time to thoroughly analyze the bill, but we’ll see when it comes out.” From Bloomberg: Senate Republicans haven’t seen their health bill either.
+ Based on what we know so far, here are 3 ways Senate Republicans can pass an Obamacare repeal, and four ways they could fail.
9. Job lot
“Monster. CareerBuilder. GlassDoor. LinkedIn. When you’re looking for a new job, you’re required to dig through countless job boards, managing logins and apps. Or it did. Now you can just google it.” Following the Amazon purchase of Whole Foods, I’m going to dedicate a few more blurbs to the way a small number of big tech companies are quickly asserting control over everything, including other tech companies. From FastCo: And Just Like That, Google becomes the world’s largest job board.
+ ReCode: Amazon Prime is testing a try-before-you-buy option on up to 15 pieces of clothing at a time.
10. Bottom of the news
“Meet Ken: He is a beefy Asian man with 20/40 vision who frequently works out of doors.
And, meet Ken: He is a young record executive who expresses himself through bold sneaker attire while simultaneously being an African-American man of average build.
And, meet Ken: Against the better angels of his nature, he has bleached his hair peroxide blond, and now is determined to travel on an airplane in comfort and style.
And, meet Ken: He has a man bun, and that’s his whole thing.” GQ on the Ken Doll Reboot: beefy, cornrowed, and pan-racial.
+ Brazil’s president announces plan to protect forest—after plea from Gisele. (Saving wood is the new getting wood.)
+ And, the Internet has a new 404 page…
Quartz now syndicates NextDraft, a daily roundup for the day’s most fascinating news curated by Dave Pell. Read the archive here. Sign up to get the newsletter or download the app here.
powered by sue.ng a legal search engine