By Walt Hickey

The Right Fine, I Guess, Stuff

Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology is a private higher ed institution that trains pilots and air traffic controllers, right by La Guardia airport. They’ve just cut a deal with their bondholders to get out of a technical default on their debt, specifically debt on a training building in Astoria. The deal they made means that Vaughn will need to increase its enrollment by about 6 percent, to 1,209 students in the fall, with freshmen enrollment hitting 360 students. Now, this is interesting, because it means that we’ve got a Police Academy meets The Right Stuff situation, where an institution under duress must accept students that otherwise they would not, leading to what I can only imagine as zany collegiate hijinks and a charming opportunity for a documentary series if I ever heard one.

Amanda Albright, Bloomberg

Owl

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has a dilemma on its hands, as the population of barred owls is crowding out the populations of endangered northern spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest. Their proposal is controversial: remove or kill 470,000 barred owls across California, Washington and Oregon over the next three decades. Critics say that it’s got little chance of succeeding, and that a single year in which the population of barred owls is unconstrained would fail to contain the issue. Human habitat destruction pushed the typically East Coast barred owls west, where they have outcompeted the slightly less aggressive local owl.

Clare Marie Schneider, NPR

Bees

The United States’ domesticated bee colonies have been booming, rising 31 percent since 2007 to 3,800,015 colonies, a million of which have been added in the past five years alone. They’re the fastest-growing “herd” of animals in the U.S., well faster than the next runner-up, ducks, which have hit 4,449,078 flocks and a growth rate of 12 percent since 2007. Lots of that is due to demand for almond pollination, which is responsible for $4 out of every $5 spent on bee pollination in the U.S. and is the main market for beekeepers to service.

Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post

New Year’s

A new poll from YouGov found that 70 percent of adults who made a New Year’s resolution said they have mostly or entirely stuck to them, with just 20 percent conceding that they have mostly or entirely given up on them. This stands against the perception that most people have, with 54 percent of respondents saying they assume that people have mostly or entirely given up on their resolution.

Jamie Ballard, YouGov

WWE

In the first quarter of the year, the WWE has seen ratings for their Smackdown program increase 15 percent in the 18 to 49 demographic to an average of 892,000 viewers per episode, as well as a 3 percent increase in the overall viewers per episode. Dwayne Johnson, the acclaimed film actor, has stepped aside from trodding the boards and has returned to his roots in the WWE, particularly appearing on Smackdown, so that 116,000 additional viewers? That’s him. That’s Dwayne.

Joe Otterson, Variety

Ponies

Macau is getting out of the horse racing business, with the final race at the Macau Jockey Club happening last Saturday after 44 years of operation, despite a contract renewal for 24.5 years in 2018. The average attendance last year had dwindled to 492 spectators, but the finale on Saturday drew a crowd of 3,000 to send it off. The racing operator was seeing betting turnover north of 9 billion patacas in the 2003-04 season, but as of last year that was down to 140 million patacas ($17.4 million). Indeed, the company has been operating at a loss of 2.5 billion patacas. This also brings an end to betting on animals in Macau period, as the greyhound racing stadium closed in 2018.

Grace Li and Peggy Ye, Nikkei Asia

Landfill

A new analysis published by Carbon Mapper that analyzed hundreds of garbage dumps found that landfills in the United States are emitting methane at levels at least 40 percent higher than previously reported, with leaks accounting for 90 percent of all measured methane emitted from landfills. The average release was 1.4 times the amount of methane as expected, and as much as 2.7 times in some situations. Landfills are already accounting for 14 percent of the emissions of the national total, and are the third-largest source of emissions period.

Sachi Mulkey, Grist

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