deconstruct

Baby boomers anticipate that 47% of pre-retirement earnings will be replaced by Social Security, according to results of an annual survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute. But the reality for someone making what the Social Security Administration considers the average wage in recent years, about $60,000, is more like 37%, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And the percentage drops as household income rises.

Alternate: https://archive.ph/Hx1PM

Malka Leifer, 56, must serve at least 11 years and six months of the sentence before she can be considered for early release. As soon as she is released from a Victoria state prison, she will likely be deported to her native Israel.

Leifer was principal of Melbourne’s ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School when she abused two teenage sisters between 2004 and 2007.

Alternate: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/sisters-not-powerless-anymore-as-malka-leifer-jailed-for-sexual-abuse/mzdj034zh

As a United States Navy plane circled overhead, two Philippine boats breached a Chinese coast guard blockade in a dangerous confrontation Tuesday in the disputed South China Sea to deliver food and other supplies to Filipino forces guarding a contested shoal.

Two Philippine coast guard vessels escorting the supply boats, however, were blocked by at least four Chinese coast guard ships for about five hours in the tense standoff near Second Thomas Shoal.

More than 1 in 4 car shoppers in Texas and Wyoming have committed to paying more than $1,000 a month, and experts say it is due to the high volume of large truck purchases in those states, according to a report by auto site Edmunds.

More than 1 in 5 shoppers in seven other states — Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Utah — are also forking over more than $1,000 for their vehicles each month.

Surovikin, former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, has not been seen in public since the mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in June.

All eight people who were stuck in a cable car dangling hundreds of metres above a ravine in Pakistan's north-west for many hours have now been rescued.

In a slow and dangerous operation, a military helicopter rescued one child, while teams on the ground recovered the rest of the group after dark.

They were helped to safety along a zip line, with a huge crowd on top of the hillside celebrating their rescue.

It’s one thing for Finland or Belgium (the Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang party heads the polls) to veer onto a far-right rail. When it begins to happen in Germany, however, it’s time to start plotting an escape route.

Over the past year, support for the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has nearly doubled to more than 20 percent in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, a record.

The party is now in second place, just five percentage points behind the center-right Christian Democrats. Over the summer, the AfD has also succeeded in widening its lead over the Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.

Rightwing PM Giorgia Meloni has demanded councils register only biological parents on birth certificates, leaving partners in legal limbo

The Nice Matin newspaper quoted unnamed insiders as saying that some restaurants in St-Tropez, a favoured summer haunt of celebrities and the international jet set for more than half a century, had taken to checking customers’ names against their database and refusing reservations if a previous visit was not felt to have resulted in a big enough bill – or tip.

An increasingly common technique was to say there was availability, but at a price. “They’ll say: ‘Sure, we have a table at €5,000. Is that OK?’” a customer said. Another cited a minimum spend of €1,500 a head.

Americans’ credit card balances rose briskly in the second quarter, hitting a sobering milestone of more than $1 trillion, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported this month. Credit cards are the most prevalent type of household debt, New York Fed researchers wrote in a blog post, and saw the biggest increase of all debt types. More than two-thirds of Americans had a credit card in the second quarter, up from 59 percent roughly a decade earlier, the researchers found. And, they noted, card balances were more than 16 percent higher in the second three months of this year compared with a year earlier.

Alternate: https://archive.ph/5bdz1 (NYT)

Alternate: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/credit-card-debt-hits-new-high/

Two gangs, “Yoda” and “DZ Mafia” are vying for control of the drugs market in the notorious northern neighbourhoods of France’s second biggest city.

Since the start of the year, 36 people have died in the gang war, according to an AFP news agency count, already five more than in all of 2022.

Water bombers flew low over Yellowknife as thick smoke blanketed the capital of the vast and sparsely populated Northwest Territories. Officials say the fire, which is moving slowly, is now 15 km (10 miles) northwest of the city and could reach the outskirts by Saturday if there is no rain.

Alternate: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66526554