The Daily Moth 9-25-19
IPCC Special Report on Climate Change; Juul to end advertising and replace CEO; Boy, 11, drives 200 miles to meet stranger from Snapchat; Transcript released of Trump - Ukraine call; “Shark Tank” star’s wife charged in fatal boat crash
[Transcript] Hello, welcome to The Daily Moth! It is Wednesday, September 25. Ready for news?
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IPCC Special Report on Climate Change
Today, the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) held a press conference to present what they called an “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.”
The term cryosphere refers to the frozen water part of the Earth system including Antarctica and the Arctic. The report included the research of more than 100 scientists who spent the last three years looking at the impact of climate change on the Earth’s oceans and the ice around the North and South Poles along with mountain areas.
Due to climate change, the world’s oceans are getting warmer, rising higher, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic faster and melting even more ice and snow. They are projecting 7 inches of sea rise by the end of 2100, a large reduction in fish populations, weakening ocean currents, even less snow, more violent storms and stronger hurricanes.
Also, for the first time, there is a projection that “some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable due to climate-related ocean and cryosphere change.”
A French climate scientist said, “Climate change is already irreversible,” but said measures can be taken to reduce future damages depending on how the world handles the emissions of heat-trapping gases. It’s no longer a question of if or when the consequences will hit us, but how bad they will be.
The UN Secretary General has called on all leaders to come up with a plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next 10 years and to net zero emissions by 2050.
https://apnews.com/7fd1d533c53d46629c842d201145ab73
https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-un-ipcc-report-today-oceans-warming-rising-faster-tipping-points-severe-weather-2019-09-25/
https://www.axios.com/un-report-climate-change-accelerating-e3b60548-575b-4fca-a324-51f1171927ab.html
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046972
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Juul to end advertising and replace CEO
Today, the nation’s largest e-cigarette maker Juul Labs, which is based in San Francisco, announced that they will no longer promote their e-cigarettes in print, digital and TV advertisements.
Juul controls roughly 70% of the US e-cigarette market, according to AP News.
Juul also announced that they are replacing their CEO Kevin Burns with K.C. Crosthwaite, a senior executive from Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.
Burns recently apologized for the company’s role in the current teen vaping epidemic.
According to top government health officials, more than 1 in 4 high school students used e-cigarettes in the last month.
Public health officials are still investigating at least 530 cases of vaping-related illnesses reported by the CDC. At least 9 people have died.
New CEO Crosthwaite gave a statement saying that Juul now recognizes that there is an “unacceptable levels of youth usage and eroding public confidence in our industry.”
Juul has pledged to not lobby against the ban on vaping flavors that was just proposed by the Trump administration earlier this month and said they “will fully support and comply with the final policy when effective.”
The current proposal would require e-cigarette products to be taken off the market until they receive FDA approval, a process that could take years. According to Wall Street Journal, favored e-cigarettes account for 80 percent of Juul’s sales.
https://apnews.com/142caadfe6594cfca969defd1479ae81
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/09/25/juul-ceo-resigns-ads-suspended-vaping/2438133001/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/juul-accepts-flavored-e-cigarette-ban-stop-advertising.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/juul-ceo-kevin-burns-to-step-down-11569411372
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Boy, 11, drives 200 miles to meet stranger from Snapchat
In South Carolina, police said an 11-year old boy took his brother’s car and used a GPS on his father’s tablet to drive 200 miles from Simpsonville to Charleston to an address provided by a stranger that he met on Snapchat.
After the address was lost because his GPS signal went out, the boy pulled up to a police officer around 12:30am and told him that he had driven for 3 hours and was lost.
The boy gave the police officer his father’s name and telephone number and they were able to reunite the boy safely with his family.
Simpsonville police records show that the father called them about a missing child and vehicle about 1:20am. The father then drove to Charleston to pick up the boy and the car which the tablet was placed in evidence.
Investigators are now analyzing the tablet the boy was using to recover information that may lead to the unknown male stranger’s capture. Snapchat messages disappear after they are read so that may not be easy.
The boy’s name is not being released because of his age.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/us/south-carolina-boy-200-miles-snapchat/index.html
https://abc11.com/11-year-old-boy-drives-200-miles-to-meet-stranger-from-snapchat/5565117/
https://www.wyff4.com/article/simpsonville-boy-drove-to-lowcountry-alone-to-live-with-man-he-met-on-snapchat-police-say/29207279#
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/25/snapchat-message-prompts-boy-11-drive-car-across-south-carolina/2437963001/
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Transcript released of Trump - Ukraine call
The White House released a five page long transcript of the phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President Zelensky on July 25 that sparked a whistleblower complaint and led Speaker Pelosi to announce an impeachment inquiry.
The transcript is called a “Memorandum of Telephone Conversation.” A note at the bottom of the first page clarifies that it is not a verbatim transcript, but is based on notes and recollections of staff who listened to the call.
The call starts with Trump congratulating Zelensky on winning his election. Zelensky thanks him and said he admires Trump’s campaign and has learned from it.
Trump then said the U.S. does a lot for Ukraine, much more than European countries. Zelensky was in full agreement and said the U.S. was doing more than European countries on sanctions against Russia and on the military.
The two discussed several things about Crowdstrike, Robert Mueller, and diplomatic relations.
In the middle of the call, Trump brought up the Ukrainian prosecutor that Joe Biden wanted to be fired when he was Vice-President. Trump said he will ask his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and the U.S. Attorney General William Barr to call Zelensky. Trump said that “there is a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.” Trump said Biden was bragging about stopping the prosecution and that it sounds horrible to him.
Zelensky said he understands the situation and will appoint a new prosecutor and have the person start in September, and the person would look into the situation and the investigation. He asked Trump to provide him with any additional information.
Trump said Giuliani and Barr would call Zelensky and that he heard the prosecutor was a fair person who was treated very badly. Zelensky said they will be very serious about the case and would work on the investigation.
The two then had a friendly end to their conversation by discussing future plans to meet with each other.
That’s the phone conversation. There was no explicit quid-pro-quo — nothing that showed Trump saying, “If you don’t investigate Biden, then we won’t provide military aid.” But we know that at the time of the call, U.S. military aid for Ukraine was held back.
The whistleblower, who was from the intelligence community, said Trump may have broken the law by asking for foreign help in the presidential campaign. The Justice Department said they looked at this in August and did not see anything criminal.
The whistleblower report may come out at the end of the week. There will be an impeachment inquiry by a to-be-formed House committee that can lead to an impeachment vote.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the whistleblower is a partisan and was trying to help Democrats.
Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif) said Trump was acting like a Mafia boss who was shaking down a foreign leader.
Today Trump and Zelensky met at the U.N. Zelensky said he doesn’t want to be involved with U.S. elections.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-transcript-of-trumps-call-with-ukraines-prime-minister
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/25/764164340/trump-asked-ukrainian-president-for-a-favor-on-biden-doj-says-no-charges
https://www.axios.com/ukraine-zelensky-trump-biden-elections-e9fd4511-471f-413f-9204-c11abcf846a5.html
https://www.axios.com/adam-schiff-ukraine-trump-transcript-impeachment-0afa23fa-b4c9-4c87-ad67-456624df3f3a.html
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“Shark Tank” star’s wife charged in fatal boat crash
“Shark Tank” star and multimillionaire Kevin O’Leary’s wife, Linda, was charged by the Ontario Provincial Police with careless operation of a vessel in relation to a boat crash that killed two people in Ontario in August.
The O’Learys said Linda was driving a boat that collided with another boat during nighttime and that the other boat did not have navigation lights on. Kevin was a passenger.
The O’Leary boat crashed into a larger boat, killing a 64-year-old man from Florida. It seems like their boat’s bow struck him in the head. A 48-year-old Canadian woman was also seriously injured and later died at a hospital.
After an investigation, Linda was charged with careless operation of a vessel and faces 18 months in jail or a $1 million fine. The driver of the other boat, a 67-year-old man from New York, was charged with failing to exhibit navigation lights.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2019/09/24/shark-tank-star-kevin-olearys-wife-charged-fatal-boat-crash/2429471001/
https://www.foxnews.com/world/canada-boat-shark-tank-kevin-oleary
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That is all for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light!
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