News Recap - After the Storms

Hurricane Florence from space. Photo from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Trump news of the week (or what did he do this time)

The answer to the title above this past week is actually not much. The US government is imposing a new set of tariffs on China. Another almost 600 items will be affected, totaling 200 billion dollars. After this round of tariffs, if China retaliates (spoiler alert: they will), another set of tariffs totaling 267 billion dollars will go in to effect. This would mean that there are tariffs on pretty much all of the trade between China and the US. China, of course, holds massive leverage over the US, and in my opinion is likely to come out on top after this tariff debacle is over. China does employ a variety of unfair tricks to give themselves advantages in trade with foreign countries. This Quora answer lists some of the dirty tricks that China employs, if you are interested. Edit: I also saw this silly video about trade wars by the Washington Post.

The amazing story related to Trump this week wasn't the tariffs though. Buzzfeed News did a piece on suspect money transfers related to the infamous Trump Tower meeting. Apparently, money was transferred to some of the people who helped set up the meeting by Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire. Agalarov is tied to both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. There was a transaction shortly after the meeting and another shortly after Trump won the election. Money was transferred from Russia through the British Virgin Isles, a notorious money laundering technique, to a New Jersey bank account used by Aras Agalarov's son Emin who is a pop-singer. Money then went from this account to Corsy International, a company run by Ike Kaveladze who has ties to the Agalarovs. Kaveladze's company funds a music business ran by Rob Goldstone, the person who first proposed the meeting with the Russians to the Trump Campaign. Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone also work together. The best part of this whole incident is this music video by Emin Agalarov, which is "satire on the news of the past 12 months". The fact that it now seems Emin might actually be involved in the Trump Russia collusion is kinda amazing.

Actual storms the title of this post refers to

Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina last week. The storm affected parts of west Africa and eastern US, particularly the Carolinas. There were 25 fatalities reported, 10 of which were indirectly related. Damages are estimated to be more than 17 billion dollars. Many communities were isolated by flooding and a lot of people were without power during and after the storm. Florence was the wettest tropical cyclone on record in North and South Carolina. Global warming and rising sea temperatures have been blamed for making recent storms wetter. As the water is warmer, more of it evaporates and then causes increased rainfall. More on climate change and hurricanes here.

Typhoon Mangkhut is another big storm that wreaked havok last week. There are unfortunately at least 79 fatalities so far. The areas affected include Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and China. National Geographic has some photos of the aftermath. Mangkhut is the strongest tropical cyclone so far in 2018.

The Weather Channel produced a very high quality content piece on storm surges you should check out.

Conclusion

That is all I'm going to discuss this week. I didn't write anything about the supreme court judge situation in the US, even though that has dominated the news this week. I think there will be more stuff related to that coming out that I might be able to cover later.

The news cycle is fast and hectic nowadays. I've noticed its hard to cover all the stuff that's going on. This week I wanted to discuss the news mostly, but I'm thinking I might add in something social media related if there is anything interesting going on.

Thanks for reading!