Hits and Misses
MISS: It turns out that, in the age of Trump, even mother’s milk is a source of rancor. Several media outlets reported last week that an innocuous resolution in the United Nations’ World Health Assembly to encourage breast-feeding was met with surprisingly vehement opposition from the United States. When the negotiations over the resolution were happening in the spring, the U.S. delegation sought to water down its language, apparently at the behest of domestic manufacturers of infant formula. The U.S. went so far as to warn Ecuador it would impose trade sanctions and withdraw military aid if it pushed forward with the resolution. However, when Russia intervened, America backed off. The New York Times editorial board put it well when it described this as “bullying, anti-science, pro-industry, anti-public health and shortsighted, to name a few.”
MISS: We were stunned earlier this week to learn the details of a police pursuit in Houston that ended with a state police cruiser hitting a car that had nothing to do with the chase, after pursuing the suspect’s vehicle onto a sidewalk at a red light. Was the trooper chasing Public Enemy No. 1? An armed homicide suspect? Hardly. According to state police, he or she – police won’t identify the trooper – was chasing someone who had been speeding on Interstate 79. This kind of reckless behavior by an officer of the law is totally unacceptable. Driving onto a sidewalk to chase a speeder? Really? At the very least, this trooper needs to be retrained.
MISS: Autocrats and those who aspire to be autocrats love to bully the press, and the regime of President Nicolas Maduro is threatening the existence of one of the last independent news outlets in Venezuela. The newspaper El Nacional, which has reported courageously on the country’s shortages of basic goods and medical supplies, electoral fraud, crumbling infrastructure and protests against its government, is now being threatened with closure because of a defamation case brought against it by one of Maduro’s deputies and ongoing efforts to block its website. If El Nacional is shuttered, it will join 54 radio and television stations that have been closed in Venezuela within the last two years, along with 26 newspapers that have been closed in the last five years. The newspaper has characterized the attacks against it by the government as political retaliation. Venezuela is in the midst of an intense crisis, and the prospects of the country’s citizens will not be made any better if the last vestiges of a free press disappear.
HIT: Its fortunes flagging, its future beyond 2018 in doubt, Black Box Corp. was extended a $10 million lifeline. That was the amount of a contract the Cecil Township-based firm was awarded to provide digital infrastructure, including 100 miles of fiber-optic cable, for a company building a data center in central Ohio. Joel Trammell, Black Box’s president and chief executive officer, said he was not permitted to name the partnering firm, or the location where that data center was under construction. But that partner was identified as “the most well-known social media company in the world.” It could well be Facebook, which is erecting a million-square-foot center in New Albany. The deal, which could run five to 10 years, may ultimately result in a $300 million boost for the local company.