Sausage Wars: No New Hope

Joe Biden is poised to wade into the so-called “sausage war” at this week’s G7 summit, where he is expected to warn Boris Johnson not to renege on the Northern Ireland Protocol when they meet for the first time.

Jake Sullivan, the President’s national security adviser, told the BBC that Biden has “deep concerns” that a UK-EU trade row could endanger peace in Northern Ireland and said that Biden will tell fellow G7 leaders that progress since the Good Friday Agreement must be protected.

Sullivan insisted he was not trying to “negotiate in public” or issue a warning to Johnson’s government, but merely stating “how the President feels about this issue”.

The comments come as the Brexit minister Lord Frost revealed there had been “no breakthroughs” with the EU after “frank and honest” discussions about the Northern Ireland impasse today.

The row has been prompted by disagreements over a potential animal health and food safety agreement, with the UK resisting Brussels’ calls to dynamically align with EU rules.

The current Protocol grace period allowing chilled meats produced in the mainland to be sent to Northern Ireland is set to expire on 30 June, but Johnson has threatened to extend it. In response, EU negotiator Maros Sefcovic threatened to retaliate “swiftly, firmly and resolutely” with a ban on selling sausages, as well as burgers and mince.

Sullivan has urged the UK and EU to “work out the specifics” and “find a way to proceed that works for both”. But for now, the beef continues.

Tax me if you can

It’s been common knowledge for quite a while that billionaires don’t pay a lot of tax. But a cache of leaked personal tax records has offered a glimpse of the true extent of avoidance at the very top.

The documents, seen by the investigative journalism group ProPublica, show that Jeff Bezos (net worth $185bn) paid no income tax in 2007 or 2011. Warren Buffet didn’t pay a cent to the Internal Revenue Service for three years on the trot. And Elon Musk paid no personal tax in 2018. The SpaceX founder responded to the site’s request for comment with a single sardonic question mark.

Yet there are big questions to be asked, not least of the inadequacy of the US tax code. The revelations will lead to even louder calls for reform.

ProPublica estimates that the wealthiest 25 people in the US paid an additional $13.6 billion in income taxes between 2014 and 2018, during which time their collective wealth increased by over $400bn, making their “true tax rate” a piddly 3.4 per cent.

Nothing illegal has yet emerged; the billionaires avoided tax, they didn’t evade it. The group is still combing through the IRS data to see how they managed it.  

The problem, as Senator Elizabeth Warren points out, is that the richest in society don’t make their fortunes through income like workaday joes, but through their assets.

As ProPublica writes, the leaks “demolish the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most.” 

Quantum leap

The science of quantum entanglement – an effect Einstein described as “spooky interactions at a distance” – has helped researchers to develop one of the world’s most powerful microscopes.

The major breakthrough involved a quantum trick with light which will allow cells to be scrutinised in unprecedented detail, paving the way for major advances in medical imaging.

Until now, high powered microscopes have worked by shining one or two bright beams of light onto objects. The more powerful the light source, the greater the detail. But there is a fundamental limit to the precision they can achieve: if the light gets too bright it will destroy a living cell.

Researchers at the University of Queensland have managed to overcome this limit by using quantum mechanics to pair off photons and “squeeze” light so as to avoid damaging cells just 10 nanometers thick.

UQ’s Professor Warwick Bowen said: “This breakthrough will spark all sorts of new technologies — from better navigation systems to better MRI machines, you name it.”

Mattie Brignal,
News Editor