Happy Monday. Hey, guess what!? Redacted reached 1 million subscribers on YouTube over the weekend. What a gift! We want to say thank you for joining our community! We appreciate you so much! Thank you!
Gas prices don’t look to get any better in the coming weeks. Oil prices jumped $1 per barrel in futures on Monday.
Later today, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) will meet about output levels, meaning how much each country will export. They could cut output or keep levels as they are. This possibility has markets super nervous.
It doesn’t help that OPEC+ members are all involved in geopolitical crosshairs. Russia reportedly supports keeping supply levels the same. China is worried about Iran and its nuclear arms deals with the West. All of this is leading to higher gas prices and higher consumer prices for those things that need gas to ship them to us. No wonder the rest of us feel so powerless about our finances! See the story below!
Children in the United States lost about 20 years of educational achievement due to the pandemic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This came from a special administration of exams to measure the detrimental impact. The scores were grim.
Average reading scores dropped 9 points and average scores for math dropped 7 points. These are big drops and the first time average math scores went down instead of up.
Chalkbeat adds this analysis: “It’s as if 9-year-olds were performing at the same level in math as 9-year-olds did back in 1999, and at the same reading level as in 2004.”
The report shows that the lowest performing students had the biggest drops. The gap between the lowest and highest scorers was already widening before the pandemic but it got worse due to the pandemic when some children either had the ability or the resources to keep up with at-home school work and some children just did not.
Chalkbeat has some data that indicates that students are slowly rebounding but middle schoolers are rebounding the slowest. That whole “children are resilient” thing we’ve been telling ourselves about the pandemic is unfair to them. They deserve the same opportunities as previous generations of students.
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Guess what else is lower than it was before the pandemic? Consumer’s sentiments about their finances. In a recent survey, consumers reported feeling lower than ever about this.
Consumers were asked about personal finances, their businesses and buying conditions. Well, inflation is the name of the game for buying conditions and record-high gas prices don’t help.
One thing that might help is that China’s economy is slowing down too. If China can’t produce as many goods, it could pump the breaks on runaway inflation for the U.S. and other countries that gobble those goods up.
Brendan Fraser is trending because he received a 6-minute standing ovation after the first screening of his movie “The Whale” in at The Venice Film Festival.
Bed Bath and Beyond is trending because the company’s CEO died mysteriously.
Saskatchewan is trending after two people went on a stabbing rampage in the Canadian province, killing at least 10.
News By The Numbers
$1,000. That is how much the state of California may offer in tax credits to residents who don’t have a car in order to help ease congestion and curb carbon emissions.
6 years. That is how long one little girl lived with the name Alexa before she just couldn’t take it anymore and changed it to stop the teasing.
126,228 acres. That is how many acres of drilling U.S. President Biden approved in his first 19 months in office, the lowest of any president in history.
Voters in Chile rejected a new socially progressive constitution in a special election. The proposal was voted down by 62% of voters, according to Chile Electoral Service.
The constitution was supported by President Gabriel Boric, who is considered a leftist. Even in urban areas where Boric had support during last year’s election rejected the proposal, indicating that his popularity and influence has waned.
The proposed constitution was considered one of the most progressive in the world. It would have broadened environmental protection, mandated gender parity, dismantled private water companies and made them public and given more rights to indigienous people. But like most well intentioned progressive agendas, it went too far and even left-leaning voters worried about the power disruption. The current constitution is a free-market protection and voters worried about disrupting whatever free markets there are left in the world.
More than 12.2 million voters turned up for the election.
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