Biden will block metal merger: The outgoing president, who has about two weeks left in his time period, has determined to make use of his final vestiges of energy to inform U.S. Metal that it will possibly’t be bought by Japanese firm Nippon Metal, placing the kibosh on a $14.1 billion deal.
The administration is anticipated to announce this choice later as we speak, in accordance with individuals inside. The justification will apparently be nationwide security-related, which is very odd as a result of the 2 corporations have beforehand talked up how this merger will “fight the aggressive menace” posed by China. For his half, President-elect Donald Trump has additionally stated he would block the deal if it landed on his desk. Observe that each President Joe Biden and Trump are almost definitely responding to strain imposed by steelworkers unions throughout the U.S., which have been vocal in opposition to the deal.
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In fact, U.S. Metal nonetheless desires to be acquired. The issue is that the choices are dwindling. “Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., primarily based in neighboring Ohio, pursued US Metal earlier than Nippon Metal received the bidding,” notes Bloomberg, “however it has since purchased a Canadian producer and waffled on whether or not it will nonetheless need all or a few of US Metal.”
Observe too the disturbing precedent this units, when it comes to the varieties of flimsy justifications that can be utilized to dam offers between corporations which have agreed to them. In just about all areas of regulatory coverage—and financial coverage extra broadly—Joe Biden has been a nightmare. Good riddance.
Seattle minimal wage hike forces closures: Shock, shock! The very factor libertarians and conservatives have been warning about for years, which has been born out in locality after locality, is now taking place in Seattle, Washington.
Beginning on January 1, the minimal wage within the metropolis has jumped to $20.76, up from $17.25. However be aware that the minimal wage is all the time and in all places $0—the enterprise you are employed by might all the time flip to mud, and that is what some have performed prematurely of this wage hike taking impact. A well-liked waffle store simply closed, with proprietor Corina Luckenbach citing the high cost of labor as the primary cause. “That is financially simply not going to make sense anymore. As a result of, only for me, the rise would price me $32,000 extra a yr,” Luckenbach told Fox 13 TV. Anticipate extra closures to comply with.
Hell is a warning label: The surgeon normal has a brand new pronouncement to make: With a rising corpus of analysis purportedly linking alcohol to most cancers, warning labels should be affixed so that folks will drink with warning. In fact, this might require an act of Congress, so it is not clear that such a factor can be prioritized.
“Many individuals on the market assume that so long as they’re ingesting on the limits or beneath the bounds of present pointers of 1 a day for girls and two for males, that there is no such thing as a danger to their well being or well-being,” said Surgeon Normal Vivek Murthy. “The information doesn’t bear that out for most cancers danger.” (Full advisory here.)
That is basic Public Well being Mind in motion: Colour me skeptical that warning labels do jack shit. Although cultural change—similar to shifts away from cigarette smoking—can occur over time as new analysis emerges convincing individuals of a substance’s hurt, the warning labels have all the time struck me as wholly foolish.
Scenes from New York: I’ve returned from practically three weeks in Texas simply in time to get all riled up about this New 12 months’s Eve subway shoving, during which 23-year-old Kamel Hawkins pushed a 45-year-old man onto the tracks whereas a practice was coming, severely injuring him. The sufferer is more likely to survive, however the suspect ought to have confronted penalties for his violent conduct way back: He has an extended rap sheet and was already dealing with assault fees for throwing bleach on a lady. (“He is not a foul child,” his father told The New York Occasions, which virtually no one believes.)
On New 12 months’s Day, there have been two subway system stabbings: One in Morningside Heights, and the opposite close to 14th Avenue and seventh Avenue.
Felony assaults within the system are up 55 % in 2024 in comparison with 2019 statistics—earlier than the pandemic despatched plenty of straphangers out of the subway system, and launched lots of chaos inside. There have been 10 murders throughout the system this previous yr, and 25 shovings onto the subway tracks.
When you wished to color a rosier image of subway crime, you possibly can level to the truth that there’s only one assault per 2 million rides. However these stats do not seize the variety of loopy, erratic, and threatening individuals with whom a rider should routinely deal, the grisly backdrop of a dysfunctional metropolis that may’t remedy this downside even with a budget of $4 billion devoted to it.
QUICK HITS
- “South Korean anti-corruption investigators didn’t arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol after a virtually six-hour standoff together with his safety staff on Friday, exhibiting tensions stay excessive even after he has been suspended from his duties,” reports Bloomberg. Yoon, you may recall, briefly imposed martial regulation final month earlier than being stopped by fellow politicians and mass protests.
- “China’s property meltdown has since 2021 destroyed round $18 trillion of Chinese language family wealth, in accordance with an estimate by Barclays, eclipsing the losses suffered by People within the monetary crash of 2008-09,” reports The Wall Avenue Journal. “That hit, together with the trauma of Beijing’s heavy-handed response to the Covid-19 pandemic, helps clarify why Chinese language shoppers aren’t spending freely.”
- Sen. John Thune, the Republican from South Dakota, will serve as Senate majority chief. Thune’s first problem can be “shepherding a number of baggage-laden Trump nominees to affirmation within the intently divided Senate, the place he can afford to lose not more than three Republican votes if Democrats maintain collectively in opposition” per The New York Occasions.
- Bernie Sanders, H-1B visa opponent:
Elon Musk is unsuitable.
The primary perform of the H-1B visa program is to not rent “the most effective and the brightest,” however somewhat to interchange good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from overseas.
The cheaper the labor they rent, the more cash the billionaires make. pic.twitter.com/Mwz7i9TcSM
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 2, 2025
- The author Milli Hill paperwork cases of the phrase girl being culled from content material associated to being pregnant and breastfeeding. Her latest dispatch is the 54th version of documenting this phenomenon; peruse her archive if you would like to see how pervasive that is.
