In January, Mexican President Andres Manual López Obrador posted a video message celebrating his government’s “very good” relationship with China during a meeting with Beijing’s ambassador to Mexico. The video appeared one day after a report by ProPublica about unsubstantiated charges that aids to López Obrador received narco trafficker money in his various presidential campaigns. The president maintains that the story is part of a U.S. government smear campaign against him.
(”Mexico and the United States Need to Talk About China Now,” Foreign Policy, May 7, 2024)
The top five US uranium producers are re-opening mining operations in Texas, Utah, Wyoming, and Arizona, shut down after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The Yale e360 blog reports that the resurgence of uranium mining is linked to last year’s COP28 U.N. climate conference where, more than 20 countries, including the U.S., committed to tripling nuclear energy capacity by 2050 as a strategy to end dependence on fossil fuels.
(“A Nuclear Power Revival is Sparking a Surge in Uranium Mining,” Yale Environment 360, April 4, 2024)
A federal tax audit of Donald Trump’s investment in a 92-story hotel and tower in Chicago has brought charges of “double dipping.” According to ProPublica and the New York Times, the disgraced former president’s hotel-condo project racked up big losses through a combination of cost overruns and the bad luck of opening during 2008’s Great Recession. When Mr. Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the I.R.S. has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice.
(“Audit of Trump Zeros in on Disputed Accounting,” New York Times, May 12, 2024)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Anna Manzo.
