May 12, 2022

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― Key Stories

Bring in the Dead Lobsters
Overview

• Thousands of lobsters have been found dead in England’s Yorkshire county
• Environmental campaigners are blaming chemicals for causing a mass lobster die-off in Yorkshire, which hosts Europe's top 3 lobster-catching sites
• The UK government has conducted testing but only found healthy samples
• It could take years for the lobster population to recover, a marine biologist and former fisherman told The Times of London. “There are a lot of boats already for sale,” he said, and people are “considering moving away to somewhere else”

Videogame Console Shortage
Overview

• Sony and Nintendo warned there will likely be shortages of their consoles until at least next March
• The companies say demand for their products is greater than supply, and they can't increase production because of the chip shortage
• “There’s no end in sight to the [chip] shortage at this point,” Nintendo’s president said. Sony’s CFO said the company will likely be able to sell just 80% of the PlayStation 5s it originally planned to
• Both companies are suffering from lockdowns in China, and say factory closures and shipping delays are making shortages worse

Overdose Deaths Hit Record
Overview

• The US recorded 108,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, an all-time record
• Over 80,000 of those deaths came from opioids, with fentanyl accounting for about 90% of those
• While fentanyl has driven overdose deaths in the Midwest and Northeast for years, it has become increasingly prevalent in the South and West. Fentanyl is also increasingly found in drugs that aren’t opiates, including knock-off prescription pills, meth, and cocaine
• In total, overdose deaths jumped 15% from 2020, after jumping 30% from 2019 to 2020

Emergency Flight School
Overview

• A passenger with no flying experience landed a small plane in Florida after the pilot became ill
• “I’ve got a serious situation here,” the man said in a recording. “My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane”
• An air traffic controller told him to “maintain wings level and try to follow the coast, either north or southbound.” Then another air traffic controller, who was a flight instructor, guided him to the ground
• After landing, the man left the plane and went to see his pregnant wife

See yesterday's results below the Wrap!

 Popcorn

Culture & Sports

• Former NL MVP Christian Yelich became the 6th player in MLB history to hit for 3 cycles in his career. All 3 of his cycles have come against the Reds
• Life is like a box of sequels: Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis and stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are reuniting for a new film
• Kim-itation hour: More of Marilyn Monroe's dresses will become available for sale this summer. The auction will include more Hollywood history

• A California nonprofit cleaned 25,000 pounds of trash out of Lake Tahoe. The scuba divers gathered the litter from the top 25 feet of the lake
• Bars behind bars: Young Thug's lyrics are being used against him in the RICO case that prosecutors have put forward against him, Gunna, & others
• Stop singing in the shower! Despite a severe ongoing drought, California water use was up 19% this March compared to March 2020
• Off to confession: A Catholic school in Philadelphia accidentally sold students faux Mother's Day roses that were really wrapped-up red thongs

― Roca Wrap

A Newsletter Exclusive

On March 19, 2017, Lee Ching-yu dropped her husband off at the airport in Taiwan. “He’d promised to call when he arrived in China,” Lee said, “but he didn’t.”

Ms. Lee’s husband, Lee Ming-che, arrived in China later that day. After crossing the border, a group of officers surrounded him, put a bag over his head, and took him to an unknown location. “That’s when I knew I was doomed,” he said.

***

In Taiwan, a democratic territory that governs itself separately from China, Mr. Lee managed a charity supporting political prisoners in China. While that made him an enemy of China, China had never imprisoned a Taiwanese citizen on political charges. He thought he was safe traveling there to visit friends. 

Ms. Lee heard nothing from Mr. Lee for 5 days, then called a press conference to announce his disappearance. Soon after, the Chinese government confirmed that they were investigating Ming-che for “harming [China’s] national security.” After 68 days, China charged him with “establishing an illegal organization and planning and implementing activities to subvert state power.” 

Ms. Lee had no means of reaching her husband, so she decided to travel to China. Just before her trip, she received a message from an unknown number asking to meet. The man presented an offer: He could arrange a private visit to China and a meeting between the couple; if she made a public visit, China would release a video of her husband confessing to various crimes. 

Ms. Lee refused: ”If I accepted his terms, I would have destroyed the dignity of my husband and of my country,” she said. Days later, her permit to travel to China was revoked, and soon after, Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to a range of anti-Chinese government crimes. 

He would spend the next 4.5 years in prison, while Ms. Lee spent them trying to save him. Her campaign took her around the world, where she held press conferences to generate awareness of her husband’s plight. She testified in the US Congress and addressed the UK parliament. She rebuffed repeated offers to compromise with China, saying doing so “would only hurt the people I know and I love.”

Last month, after more than 5 years in prison, Mr. Lee was released. He returned to Taiwan, where Covid restrictions limited he and his wife to talking through a glass barrier. 

“There was no such scene where we could hug and kiss each other,” Ms. Lee said at the press conference. “But I was looking at him through the glass, and spoke with him on the phone from 2 PM that day, for 16 hours.”

At a subsequent press conference, Mr. Lee described the imprisonment as “mental torture,” during which he wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone and his every movement was monitored. He called the prison a “slavery factory,” where he spent 12 hours a day making shoes, bags, and gloves. 

Even so, Ms. Lee’s campaigning improved his life: As she brought attention to his plight, he and his fellow inmates’ conditions grew better, including going from having 4 days off a year to 1 day off a week, and from never having hot water to having hot showers through winter. 

At the press conference, Ms. Lee explained: “I only hoped for Lee Ming-che to be able to come back like a man.”

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