Growing wages, lower-than-expected tax returns, updates to US-China trade relations, colder-region nations benefiting from climate change, and a long awaited army publication on the war in Iraq.

Here are the top newsworthy items from this past week as shared on our Facebook page.

• Last year, wages grew by 3.2%, the biggest increase since 2009 and a full 1.2% higher than inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistic reported Friday. Inflation was just 1.9% for the year.

From Axios

• Last year’s tax reform spurred stronger-than-expected car sales by giving consumers more disposable income, but the payback will come this spring when many Americans could discover they’re not getting the tax refund they had expected.

From Axios

• China’s trade surplus with the U.S. hit a record last year, as robust American demand for Chinese goods undercut the Trump administration’s tariff offensive.

From The Wall Street Journal

• U.S. officials debate easing tariffs on Chinese imports.
  The action is seen as a way to calm markets and give Beijing an incentive to make deeper concessions in a trade battle that has rattled global economies.

From The Wall Street Journal

• Federal prosecutors are pursuing a criminal investigation of Huawei for allegedly stealing trade secrets from U.S. business partners, including technology used by T-Mobile to test smartphones.

From The Wall Street Journal

• Studies have found no link between immigration and crime. The Cato Institute, a libertarian research center, analyzed Texas data for 2015 and found that the rate of crime among undocumented immigrants was generally lower than among native-born Americans.

From The New York Times

• After reaching a record-breaking number of 14,542 migrant children in its custody last month, the Department of Health and Human Services has managed to release more than 3,500 children, according to data collected by the Associated Press from individual HHS migrant child shelters.

From Axios

• For the first time, Americans’ odds of dying from an accidental opioid overdose are higher than from a motor vehicle crash.

From USA TODAY

• The health-care industry is preparing for a new law that researchers say will mean more treatments for pediatric cancers, which are the leading cause of death from disease among children. The legislation, which requires pharmaceutical companies to test potential cancer drugs on children as well as adults, goes into effect in 2020.

From The Wall Street Journal

• Several colder-climate nations, including Russia, are set to benefit or already are benefiting from warmer temperatures, such as with better agricultural output, according to a 2018 U.N. report.

From Axios

• The Army published a long-awaited study of the U.S. war in Iraq. The two-volume study, written by a team of army officers, criticizes decisions of some of the service’s most senior officers and outlines some hard-learned lessons from the eight-year-long conflict.

From The Wall Street Journal

 

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