A.M. Edition for Aug 4. China has gained leverage over the U.S. military supply chains by choking off the exports of critical minerals to Western defense companies. The WSJ’s Jon Emont explains how these restrictions from China will have significant consequences for the U.S. military. Plus, the Trump administration defends the president’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following Friday’s weaker-than-expected jobs numbers. And, dozens of Texas House Democrats flee the state in a bid to block Republican plans to redraw the state’s congressional map. Azhar Sukri hosts.
Let’s say you were asked to name the greatest health risks facing the planet. Priceton University economist Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder and director of the One Health Trust, would urgently suggest you include anti-microbial resistance near the top of that list.
“We're really in the middle of a crisis right now,” he tells interview David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “Every year, about 5 million people die of infections that are associated with antibiotic resistance -- 5 million. That's nearly twice the number of people who die of HIV, TB and malaria, put together -- put together. Antibiotic resistance and associated deaths are the third leading cause of death in the world, after heart disease and stroke. So you're talking about something that's really, really big, and this is not in the future. It is right now.”
The underlying problem, simply put, is that humans are squandering perhaps the greatest health innovations in the last century by using antibiotics stupidly, allowing pathogens to develop resistance and thus rendering existing antibiotics worthless.
For the last 30 years and in particular through One Health Trust and as director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Antimicrobial Resistance, Laxminarayan has labored to make both shine a light on anti-microbial resistance and push for policies to address it. This, he tells Edmonds, is a social science problem even more so than a medical science problem – but not the exclusive province of either. “I think one of the failures of economics,” he says, “in some ways, is that we don't take the trouble to understand the nitty gritty of the actual other field, especially when it deals with health economics or environmental economics.”
In addition to his role as a senior research scholar at Princeton, Laxminarayan is an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde.
As autonomous vehicles become more common, cities are grappling with how to keep robotaxis from interfering with emergency response efforts. Julia Pickar reports on how Seattle is trying to fix this problem.
Donald Trump’s mission to bend higher education to his will maintains its sharpest focus on Harvard. Will the venerable university settle—and should it? Our correspondents meet with France’s top general, who believes Russia will threaten Europe sooner than many people think. And a look at how satire changes when politics is beyond parody and its practitioners cannot be shamed.
In a dramatic act of protest on Sunday, Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives began to flee the state. It is a last-ditch attempt to stop President Trump and Texas Republicans from adopting an aggressively redrawn congressional map that would eliminate Democratic seats — and could help lock in a Republican majority in next year’s elections.
Shane Goldmacher, a Times political correspondent, explains this new chapter in the era of unvarnished partisan warfare.
Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a political correspondent for The New York Times.
Background reading:
The redrawn map, unveiled by Texas Republicans and pushed by Mr. Trump, puts areas of Houston, Dallas and San Antonio that have incumbent Democrats into districts that would now favor Republicans.
“We’re leaving Texas to fight for Texans,” Gene Wu, a state representative from Houston and the chair of the Democratic caucus in the Texas House, said in a statement Sunday.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
President Trump fires the official who published a disappointing jobs report. Texas Democrats flee the state to stymie efforts to change congressional district maps. And a government agency investigates former Special Counsel Jack Smith.
One of the most legendary legions in the history of the Roman military was the Legio IX (nonam) Hispana, or the Ninth Spanish Legion.
They served under Pompey the Great and later with Julius Caesar in Gaul. They later served Augustus and were pivotal in the conquest of Britain under Emperor Claudius.
Then at some point, they simply disappeared. There was never a mention of them again in the historical record.
For almost 2000 years, it has been one of the world’s greatest historical mysteries.
Learn more about the missing Legion and what might have happened to them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
