Grumpy Editor

BASEBALL'S CLEVELAND INDIANS TO BECOME CLEVELAND GUARDIANS

Big talk in the sports world is the pending Cleveland Indians name change, notes Grumpy Editor.

 

The Cleveland team, playing under that name since 1915, plans to drop Indians, which has been criticized as racist, at the end of this season, to become known as the Cleveland Guardians.

 

The name change is triggered by protests around the U.S. against racial injustice.

 

Caught up in the movement earlier is the NFL’s Washington football team saying it will no longer be known as Redskins.

 

 

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CURTAILING WATER TO FARMERS PLANNED.  Look for higher food prices if California regulators succeed in stopping thousands of farmers from taking water from major Golden State rivers.  The State Water Resources Control Board votes on an “emergency curtailment” order Aug. 3.

 

OHTANI'S ALL-STAR JERSEY SETS AUCTION RECORD.   Los Angeles Angels’ 2021 American League Shohei Ohtani's autographed All-Star jersey breaks an auction record, going for $130,210.

GREAT SALT LAKE WATER LEVEL SINKS.  The southern portion of Utah’s Great Salt Lake drops to its lowest level on record.  Record-breaking drought accelerates its fall in recent months as the average daily water level drops about an inch below the previous record of 4,194 feet, set in 1963.

 

MORE MONEY BOOSTS LONGEVITY.  Northwestern University researchers say every time another $50,000 is accumulated by middle age, an individual’s risk of death drops, adding for those who stash $139,000 more than siblings, chances of outliving them increase.

 

JOURNALISM HAVES, HAVE-NOTS.  Axios reports there is a sharp divide in American journalism between haves and have-nots. "While national journalists covering tech and politics on the coasts reap the benefits of booming businesses and book deals, local media organizations, primarily newspapers, continue to shrink," it finds.

 

INFLATION BRINGS NEW TERM.  “Shrinkflation” is spreading.  It’s a new term, spurred by inflation, meaning getting less for your money because a manufacturer reduces the size of its product in a bottle or a container.

 

HUGE GOLDFISH WASHES ASHORE.  A 100-pound tropical goldfish washes ashore in Oregon in what aquarium officials call a rare occurrence.

MILITARY RECRUITING BECOMES DIFFICULT JOB

 

The U.S. is finding recruiting for the military is getting to be a tough job, notes Grumpy Editor.

 

“Due to attrition and retirement, the military needs to find more than 150,000 new recruits every year to meet its overall 'end strength' goal," reports Bloomberg.

“In 2020, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all hit their annual recruitment goals --- but those figures were distorted by a historically weak job market, as active-duty service members delayed plans to re-enter the civilian sector, reducing the need for new hires,” continues Bloomberg.  “Last year’s target of 61,200 new Army enlistees, for instance, was 20 percent lower than in 2018, when the Army failed to meet its goal.”

Bloomberg points out “this limited supply compromises national security,” adding, “recruits tend to be drawn from a shrinking segment of the population --- from a small number of mostly southern states and families of veterans, a group whose share of the population is lower than at any time since World War II.”

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SOCIAL SECURITY RECIPIENTS MAY SEE BIG BOOST.  For the 69 million Americans who collect Social Security, estimates project they're on track to get a 6.1 percent cost-of-living adjustment, the biggest increase since 1983.  Official figures are announced in the fall.

FLOODS HIT GERMANY, WESTERN EUROPE.  While parts of the U.S. cope with a long dry spell, worst flooding in decades hits Germany, Belgium and other parts of Western Europe following days of heavy rain that swelled rivers. 

U.S. OVERDOSE DEATHS SOAR.  Overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding it eclipses the high of about 72,000 drug overdose deaths reached the previous year.

VENICE NIXES LARGE CRUISE LINERS.  Declaring Venice waterways a “national monument,” Italy is banning mammoth cruise liners from sailing into the lagoon city.

 

NUMBER OF CRUISE SHIPS TO JUMP.  Shipbuilders are busy.  More than 70 cruise ships are scheduled to debut between now and 2027.

 

FRENCH FRIES AT $200 A PLATE.  Serendipity3, a restaurant on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, creates the world's most expensive French fries to coincide with National French Fry Day:  $200 a plate..

ANOTHER MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE FOUND.   A 9-year-old girl visiting a Hawaii park with her family finds a message --- in English, Spanish and Japanese --- inside a mud-caked glass bottle that was launched from Japan 37 years ago.

BRAZIL DROUGHT LEADS TO HIGHER COFFEE PRICES.  A drought in Brazil coupled with an increase in demand for coffee as the world reopens after the coronavirus pandemic leads to higher coffee prices on grocers shelves.

 

$915,000 FOR ELTON JOHN'S PIANO.  Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay adds to his vast music collection in buying at auction Elton John's Steinway & Sons Model D Grand Piano for $915,000.  It was used on tours from 1974 to 1993.

HIGHER MAILING RATES SEEN AS DAMAGING BLOW TO SMALLER NEWSPAPERS

The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to boost mailing rates could add a damaging blow to the nation’s community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and a drop in advertising revenues, notes Grumpy Editor.

 

Impact of a rate increase for delivering periodicals — up by about 8 percent starting  Aug. 29 — is expected to be felt most by small daily, weekly and rural newspapers after shifting from using independent contractors.

 

To cope with that, publishers could be forced to reduce staff or forgo home deliveries and instead put newspapers in communal news racks — or just shutter their publications, warns Paul Boyle, senior vice president, News Media Alliance, a trade associtaion representing nearly 2,000 U.S. news organizations.

 

 

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U.S. TROOPS MARK FOURTH YEAR AT BORDER.  Stretching into a fourth year, about 3,800 troops are deployed along the southwest border in support of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. The troops are a mix of active-duty service members and National Guard troops from nearly two dozen states.

 

JUNE SETS TEMPERATURE RECORD.  Last month was the hottest on record in North America, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  NOAA adds the exceptional heat waves that swept the western U.S. helped push June 2021 to the top of the list after 127 years of record keeping. Average June temperature across the contiguous U.S. was more than four degrees above average at 72.6 degrees Fahrenheit. 

 

MASSIVE DIAMOND UNEARTHED.  An enormous 1,174-carat diamond is unearthed in Botswana, the second massive diamond to be found in the country in the space of a few weeks.

HELICOPTER LIFTS TRAPPED HORSE.  Caliifornia’s Orange county firefighters use a helicopter to lift a trapped-on-its-back horse to safety after the spooked equine flees from its rider becomes stuck in concrete debris.

PYTHON ESCAPES FROM MALL ENCLOSURE.  Authorities search for a 12-foot white Burmese python that slithers out of its enclosure inside Louisiana’s largest shopping mall in Baton Rouge.

MEDIA GROUP TO HIRE 250 JOURNALISTS.  Overstory Media Group, a startup media group that operates newsletter-based journalism outlets in British Columbia, says it plans to hire 250 journalists and launch 50 outlets by 2023.

ILLINOIS SCHOOLS TO TEACH ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY.  With hate crimes against Asxian-Americans in the news, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker signs a law that requires public schools to teach a unit of Asian American history, a move education experts say is the first of its kind nationwide.

NINE YEAR OLD GIRL BECOMES PUBLISHER.  A nine-year-old girl in Monroeville, Pa. is publishing a neighborhood newspaper that spotlights uplifting stories and important information to neighbors.

AVERAGE PET INSURANCE PREMIUMS ARE MODERATING

With more pets in U.S. households, Grumpy Editor notes there are signs of pet insurance trending lower.

Money magazine says according to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association, average cost of insuring a pet cat against accident and injury has gone down from $349 a year in 2019 to $341 in 2020 while  premiums for dogs rose at a much more modest rate than in any other year since at least 2016.  

Between 2018 and 2019, the annual premium increase for insuring an average dog was $26.47, tallies the magazine.  From 2019 to 2020, the same number went up by  $8.75, about a third of the previous year’s hike.

New pets are the reason average premiums have moderated, says Rick Faucher, CEO and cofounder of The Connected Pet Company and president of NAPHIA. “We’ve seen double-digit growth in gross written premiums, which have increased by 25.5 percent, as well as double-digit growth in the number of pets insured, which grew by 22.5 percent. When a market expands that quickly, you see a unit cost flattening, because you have a larger pool to spread the risk.”

“Pet insurance premiums are a relatively hefty expense,” points out Money.  “On average, you’ll pay around $700 a year to insure a dog and $350 or so to cover a cat. Even a moderation of the premium hikes of recent years could result in spending hundreds of dollars less over your pet’s lifetime than might have been the case. And that in turn could reduce the sting of having pet insurance that rarely if ever pays out, as our analysis suggests will be the case for most dog and cat owners.”

 

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WORLD'S LARGEST YACHT HAS SIX DECKS.  The world's largest yacht when it is launched in 2024 will be fitted with 39 apartments on six decks, along with restaurants, bars and an onboard beach club. At 728 feet, it is to be built by Norwegian ship designer and builder VARD at a cost of around $600 million.

 

IRS FACING MILLIONS OF UNPROCESSED RETURNS.  The tax filing season ends with the Internal Revenue Service facing 35.3 million unprocessed tax returns, higher than in the 2019 pre-pandemic filing season.

 

COUPLE FACES FINE FOR BULLDOZING JOSHUA TREES.  A San Bernardino, California, couple is facing an $18,000 fine after bulldozing 36 Joshua trees from land where they plan to build a home because it is illegal to remove or kill a Joshua tree, a candidate for the California Endangered Species Act.

 

GIANT HAILSTONE DROPS ON TEXAS.  A hailstone that fell one mile south-southwest of Hondo, Texas, measures “an unheard size” of 19.73 inches in circumference and 6.4 inches in diameter and weighs 1.26 pounds, which labels it the largest hailstone to drop on the state.

 

DOG RETURNS, RINGS DOORBELL. Spooked by fireworks, a dog called Rajah runs away from home in Greenville, South Carolina.   She returns home hours later and somehow rings the doorbell to be let in.

 

ROBOCALL DEADLINE ENDS FOR PHONE COMPANIES.   June 30 was the deadline for telephone companies to report to the Federal Communications Commission whether they are implementing the agency's required robocall blocking technology.  Did they meet the deadline?  We’ll find out soon.

 

RUSSIA AND CHINA EYE HAWAII?  Japanese deputy Yasuhide Nakayama tells the Hudson Institute Russia and China are coordinating military drills to threaten not only Taiwan but also Hawaii, and the U.S. should be wary of a Pearl Harbor style surprise attack.