May 20 2024
Crash in Iran
FLASH New anti-China president assumes office in Taiwan
1 Iranian President and Foreign Minister killed helicopter crash
2 ELECTION 2024 Conservatives ramp up ground game in crucial districts
3 AI to increase power demand by 160% by 2030: Goldman Sachs
4 Unionization bid at southern car plant fails
5 BATTLE FOR EURASIA Ukrainian President Zelensky’s presidential term expires today
Sports
5/20/1873 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans
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1 Iranian President and Foreign Minister killed helicopter crash
The deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s foreign minister leave the country without two influential leaders at a particularly tumultuous moment of international tension and domestic discontent. Mr. Raisi, 63, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday, Iranian state news media reported. They were traveling from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan after inaugurating a dam project when their helicopter went down in a rugged, mountainous area near the city of Jolfa. Search and rescue teams scoured an area of mountains and dense forest through rain and fog for hours before finding the crash site. There were no survivors. The Iranian authorities have sought to project a sense of order and control. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there would be “no disruption” to the government’s work, and that senior officials would remain in control of national and border security. In a statement on Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei offered his condolences and said that the first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, will assume the role of acting president. Mr. Mokhber must organize elections for a new president within 50 days, he added. The death of Mr. Raisi, a conservative who crushed dissentand had been viewed as a possible successor to Mr. Khamenei, occurred weeks after Tehran came close to open conflict with Israel and the United States. A long shadow war with Israel burst into the open in an exchange of direct strikes last month. And looming over everything is the question of Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has produced nuclear fuel enriched to a level just short of what would be needed to produce several bombs.
NYT
2 ELECTION 2024 Conservatives ramp up ground game in crucial districts
Using a relatively simple equation, Turning Point Action [a conservative activist group] is going after crucial wards and precincts in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan. To pull it off, they’re hiring hundreds for a full-time “ballot-chasing army.” According to Mr. Bowyer, the strategy is downstream of the successful “Colorado model” that Democrats and liberal activists used to flip Colorado from red to blue.
Epoch Times
3 AI to increase power demand by 160% by 2030: Goldman Sachs
For years, data centers displayed a remarkably stable appetite for power, even as their workloads mounted. Now, as the pace of efficiencies in electricity use slows and the AI revolution gathers momentum, Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.
In three reports, Goldman Sachs Research lays out the global, US, and European implications of this spike in electricity demand. At present, data centers worldwide consume 1-2% of overall power, but this ratio will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. Along the way, the carbon dioxide emissions of data centers may more than double from 2022 to 2030. In the US, between 2022 and 2030, the demand for power will rise roughly 2.4%, Goldman Sachs Research estimates — and around 0.9 percent points of that figure will be tied to data centers. That kind of spike in power demand hasn't been seen in the US since the early years of this century. It will be stoked partly by electrification and industrial reshoring, but also by AI. Data centers will use 8% of US power by 2030, compared with 3% in 2022. US utilities will need to invest around $50 billion in new generation capacity just to support data centers alone.
Goldman Sachs
4 Unionization bid at southern car plant fails
The United Auto Workers (uaw) union hopes that the Volkswagen victory will set off a domino effect across the sunbelt, a region that has long been hostile to labour organisers. But was the win a fluke or a bellwether? That question will soon be tested: next week 6,100 workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, are due to vote on whether to unionise. There, things look less favourable for the uaw. In the 1980s carmakers began moving from the Midwest to the South, where regulation was sparse and states offered vast subsidies to newcomers. With the rise of globalisation southern politicians made the region competitive by keeping unions out and holding wages down. Right-to-work laws, which let workers opt out of paying union dues, bolstered the strategy. As carmakers from overseas set up factories in towns with more churches than traffic lights, assembly lines at Detroit’s “Big Three”—General Motors, Ford and what was once Chrysler—slimmed down. Today 30% of America’s automotive jobs are south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Economist
Workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama rejected joining the United Auto Workers union on Friday, a major setback in labour’s campaign to organise foreign-owned carmakers across the US south. The National Labor Relations Board said 2,642 votes had been cast against union representation, versus 2,045 in favour. The plant assembles luxury sport utility vehicles, including electric and ultra-luxe Maybach models. The high-profile defeat is a reversal for the UAW after its landslide victory at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga last month. Union leaders had hoped that vote marked the beginning of a wave of labour gains across the US south.
FT
5 BATTLE FOR EURASIA Ukrainian President Zelensky’s presidential term expires today
Abraham Lincoln won a presidential election in civil-war-torn America in 1864, and fdr secured his fourth term in 1944 while American troops were in action across the globe. Winston Churchill, by contrast, avoided the electorate until the war in Europe was over in 1945, at which point he was turfed out. Holding an election when enemies are occupying your territory or raining bombs on it, and when huge numbers of your citizens are away fighting, is tricky. Not holding one is tricky in a different way, opening those in power to the charge of illegitimacy. That is the bind that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, finds himself in, as his five-year term expires on May 20th. He cannot hold elections now, but he must prepare to hold them eventually.
Economist
Sports
Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer, was charged with four crimes, including felony second-degree assault on a police officer. Police say he ignored directions near the scene of a car crash in Kentucky, injuring an officer. Mr Scheffler, who had been on his way to the PGA Championship, said it was a “misunderstanding”. He made it to the tournament, and birdied the first hole.
Economist
5/20/1873 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans
Sources
[3] Goldman Sachs
[4]https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/05/09/will-unions-sweep-the-american-south ;https://on.ft.com/3wuIqxD
[5]https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/05/16/volodymyr-zelenskys-presidential-term-expires-on-may-20th
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