🐤 Fit for a king

🏦 Markets: It was a mixed day on Wall Street Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 fell by a fraction of a percent. The tech-centered Nasdaq Composite, however, made up for those losses with a 0.6% gain as investors bought up some undervalued shares in companies like Tesla.

As a result, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company enjoyed a 6% increase in its stock value.

Following some promising days last week, Independence Advisor Alliance’s Chris Zaccarelli noted: “The market, at least for 2023, seems a lot more optimistic than how we ended in 2022.”

🙌 Finally retired: A Maryland man who was still working as a Walmart cashier was able to give up his job this week after an outpouring of support on social media. Reports indicate that 82-year-old military veteran Warren Marion was the subject of a fundraiser that gained traction on TikTok and raised more than $108,000 in recent days. Business owner Rory McCarty shared a video he recorded with Marion last month and the post has since been viewed more than 3 million times. While this story highlights the sad reality that a growing number of elderly folks must continue working in order to make ends meet, it was a happy ending for Marion, who will now be able to pay off his home and travel to Florida to see his family. He celebrated the news, asserting: “All I can tell you is the good Lord has blessed me for what I did in my younger years.”

⛔ Banning plastic: With global pollution becoming an ever-increasing problem, governments around the world have begun cracking down on single-use plastics that are at the root of the issue. In the United Kingdom, a new ban has prohibited the use of plastic items including flatware, plates, trays, bowls, and other products meant to be discarded after one use. Other commonly trashed products including polystyrene cups and containers are also now off-limits. As British Environment Secretary Therese Coffey explained, it can take two centuries for a plastic fork to decompose, adding: “This new ban will have a huge impact to stop the pollution of billions of pieces of plastic and help to protect the natural environment for future generations.”

👧 Reopened case: A new Netflix documentary has convinced the Vatican to reopen the case of a teen who went missing four decades ago. A four-part series called “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi” chronicled the cold case involving the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican official in 1983. Alessandro Diddi, who was named head prosecutor by Pope Francis, vowed that his team would review all the relevant documents for a “360-degree job” designed to follow the facts wherever they lead. The disappearance has sparked speculation and conspiracies for decades, but the recent docuseries brought renewed attention to the story.

🗣️ Congressional complaint: A defiant George Santos was sworn into Congress this week despite acknowledging that he fabricated or embellished many of the details in his personal biography during the midterm campaign. Now, the New York Republican is facing an ethics complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission by the nonprofit group Campaign Legal Center. Specifically, the group is accusing him of improperly using campaign funds to pay for his apartment and other personal expenses. The complaint further asserts that he lied about where some of his campaign contributions came from.

When you think about spending eight months on an uninhabited island, you might imagine a picturesque tropical locale with fresh coconuts and crystal clear water, but Tom Hartwell’s recent experience is completely different — and he captured it all on film.

A subarctic adventure

Hartwell is an experienced wildlife cameraman who ventured off to South Africa’s Marion Island with just a skeleton crew and a mission to chronicle the life cycle of a specific species.

“So we follow king penguin all the way through from an egg all the way through to an adult, and it really is an incredible story that is told on a just unbelievably remote and epic island.”

Extreme social distancing

The cameraman and his team started their journey just as COVID-19 began its spread around the world. After spending eight months capturing footage and unparalleled access to the king penguin and other native species, the world he returned to afterward was considerably different than the one he left behind.

Hartwell acknowledged that it was tough being away from his loved ones for so long during the global pandemic, adding: “But no, it was just phenomenal. Just the most incredible place.

Now, Fox Nation is set to share his findings with the world in a new series called “A Year on Planet Earth.”

More than just penguins

The installment featuring Hartwell and his crew focuses on how animals survive and thrive even in the harshest frigid climates and features footage from dozens of locations on the island.

“We certainly saw some crazy stuff," he said. "With wildlife, I think all of us we find home, and we find friends within nature, and that's why we do this job. … There was never a dull moment.”

At this point, there’s no denying the increasing ubiquity of electric-powered vehicles on roads across the United States. And as states pursue plans to phase out gasoline-powered cars entirely over the next decade or so, it’s clear that we’ll be seeing a lot more EVs in the near future.

While there are concerns about how to find enough resources to create batteries for all of these vehicles, there’s a consensus that EVs are better for the environment than their internal combustion alternatives.

But while there are gas stations on just about every corner in many American cities, there is no such infrastructure available to rapidly charge electric vehicles — and that’s causing some upheaval in the industry.

What we’ll need

Many prospective EV customers don’t have a garage or carport from which they can conveniently charge their vehicles at home. Furthermore, the majority of residential setups do not allow for rapid charging. This all adds to the need for many more public charging stations in communities nationwide.

• Estimates suggest EVs could make up as much as 40% of all vehicles on the road by 2030.
• At the current rate, we’ll need more than 700,000 level 2 chargers and 70,000 level 3 chargers by 2025.
• By 2030, those numbers will increase to more than 2.13 million and 172,000, respectively.

How we’ll get there

It will require coordination by multiple sectors — but everyone seems to be taking it pretty seriously.

The Biden administration has allocated $5 billion for building fast charges along interstates and at least half a million stations in total by 2030.

Individual states are also investing in the process, including $2.9 billion by California to reach 250,000 public chargers by 2025.

Finally, the auto industry is working to create fast chargers throughout the country.

There has been a rise in the availability of medications and surgical remedies for adults at risk of obesity-related health problems in recent years. As the rate of obesity among U.S. kids continues trending upward, some experts have called for similar measures to be approved for those under the age of 18.

A troubling trend

Although our society is increasingly adopting a body-positivity movement that has gone a long way toward allowing people to feel comfortable in their own skin at any size, there are clearly some serious health risks associated with carrying a lot of excess weight. Even at a young age, it is possible for obesity to take a major toll.

Over the course of the past several decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has chronicled a staggering increase in the number of significantly overweight children:

• The rate of childhood obesity has tripled since the 1980s — and among adolescents, it has quadrupled over the same period.
• In the past 15 years, the childhood obesity rate has increased from 17% to 20%.
• Nearly 15 million kids are currently affected by obesity, which can increase the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, and mental health problems.

Worse yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation by rapidly increasing the number of children struggling with their weight.

New federal guidelines

In response to the current trajectory, the American Academy of Pediatrics has updated its guidance to include medications and even surgery for children ages 12 and up who are at serious risk of obesity-related health issues.

While experts still recommend starting with lifestyle changes and behavioral therapy, they say a combination of improved treatments and increased need has led to the push for early medical intervention if necessary.