World’s largest sea crossing bridge completed, new credit score system to be rolled out in 2019, federal government to attempt to lower costs of Medicare drugs, and human ashes at the Happiest Place on Earth.
Here are the top newsworthy items from this past week as shared on our Facebook page.
- Elon Musk says his first Boring Company tunnel is almost done, and it’ll open to the public on Dec. 10. The tunnel originates at a property owned in Hawthorne by SpaceX, one of Musk’s other ventures, and runs about two miles under city streets. It is outfitted with electromagnetic pods that carry passengers at speeds up to 150 miles per hour.
From Fortune
- Chinese President Xi Jinping officially opened the world’s longest sea crossing bridge, nine years after construction first began. Including its access roads, the bridge spans 34 miles and connects Hong Kong to Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai, reducing travel time from 4 hours to just 30 minutes.
From BBC News
- Fair Isaac, creator of the widely used FICO credit score, plans to roll out a new system in early 2019 that factors in how consumers manage their checking, savings and money-market accounts. The new UltraFICO Score is designed to boost approvals for credit cards, personal loans and other debt by taking into account applicants’ cash-transaction history, which could indicate how likely they are to repay.
The Wall Street Journal
- Facebook and Apple have called on the US government to adopt tough EU-style data privacy laws, giving American citizens equivalent protections to those given to Europeans under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. They are challenging White House objections that European regulation is imposing red tape on American technology businesses.
From Financial Times
- President Trump said the federal government will launch a pilot to lower costs for some Medicare drugs by basing them on their costs in other countries.
From The Wall Street Journal
- American spy agencies learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s private iPhone calls. Trump typically relies on his cellphones when he does not want a call going through the White House switchboard and logged for senior aides to see. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure.
From The New York Times
- 387 women are running as Democrats for Congress, compared with 142 running as Republicans, according to data from Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics.
From Axios
- The US army stymied its own study of the Iraq War. The service’s chief ordered an unvarnished history in 2013, seeking to record the lessons of the conflict before memories faded. A draft was finished in 2016. It has yet to be published.
From The Wall Street Journal
- Current and former custodians at Disney parks say identifying and vacuuming up human ashes is a signature and secret part of working at the Happiest Place on Earth. Disney custodians say it happens about once a month.
From The Wall Street Journal
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