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On Nov. 23, 1914, the Financial Times ran a piece about the wild success of British efforts to fund World War I.

War Loans were “oversubscribed,” the paper said; applications were “pouring in”; the public “has offered the Government every penny it asked for — and more.” The “amazing result” showed “how strong is the financial position of the British nation.”

On Aug. 8, 2017, the paper had a follow-up. A “clarification.”

“We are now happy to make clear that none of the above was true,” the FT wrote.

The announcement came after researchers at the Bank of England, poring over aged ledgers, exposed a 103-year-old cover-up.

It turns out the first British effort to fund-raise for the war by selling bonds was not, in fact, wildly successful. It was “a spectacular failure,” the researchers wrote on a blog for Bank of England employees.

The government wanted to raise £350 million, but brought in less than a third of that. Officials worried that revealing the shortfall would hurt future capital-raising efforts, and help Germany.

So instead of allowing the disappointing truth to come out, the Bank of England secretly funneled money to hide the gap.

The cover-up was uncovered by an employee at the bank’s archive, along with a PhD. student and two faculty members at the Queen Mary University of London. They describe what they found in the old ledgers:

“To cover its tracks, the Bank made advances to its chief cashier, Gordon Nairn, and his deputy, Ernest Harvey, who then purchased the securities in their own names with the bonds then held by the Bank of England on its balance sheet. To hide the fact that the Bank was forced to step in, the bonds were classified as holdings of ‘Other Securities’ in the Bank of England’s balance sheet rather than as holdings of Government Securities.”

John Maynard Keynes, the economist who famously advocated for public spending to stimulate economies during recession, knew about the deception, the researchers say. In a memo marked “Secret” he called it “a masterly manipulation,” while also warning that it was not sustainable in the long run.

But it wasn’t the last time the Bank of England drew on its own reserves to fund the war, the researchers write: “The long-held laissez-faire principles of the Liberal and Conservative parties were thus sacrificed to raise the capital upon which the War’s outcome depended.”

The shock of the failed bonds sale, and the subterfuge that followed, drew attention to the complexity of the national debt and contributed to the eventual transition of the Bank of England from privately owned to centrally owned, the researchers suggest.

The Financial Times, for its part, notes that the original “piece” looks more like an ad than an article, while acknowledging that the publication “played a role in convincing the public that the sale was a success.”

Along with its correction, the paper adds this note:

“The same edition of the paper also demonstrated a good understanding of the FT’s readership, noting with ‘interest’ and ‘encouragement’ that champagne production had not been affected by the Great War effort.”

For the record, all of NPR’s corrections can be found here.

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A task force is recommending changes that could loosen protections for the greater sage grouse, a Western bird species renowned for its elaborate mating dance.

The report comes out of a review by the Trump administration of a massive Obama-era conservation plan for the bird which is imperiled by loss of habitat.

The administration says the revisions are aimed at giving states more flexibility. But critics argue that the changes favor mining and petroleum companies and could hurt the bird’s long-term prospects.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ordered a review of current sage grouse management plans in June, saying he wanted to see improvement in the bird’s conservation while also taking into account “local economic growth and job creation.”

The review task force came back with a list of recommendations that could relax rules related to the sage grouse around mineral leasing areas and allow for more flexibility in grazing management. Noting President Trump’s executive order “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,” the task force’s review says: “A cooperative DOI and State effort can provide the flexibility for responsible economic growth and at the same time ensure conservation of [greater sage grouse] habitat.”

Zinke has ordered his agencies to being implementing the recommendations immediately.

Greater sage grouse, which live across 11 Western states, have seen their populations decline from the millions to fewer than 500,000.

In 2010, their numbers dipped to the point where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed that the bird warranted protections under the Endangered Species Act, but limited resources and higher priorities precluded it.

Still, the finding put a scare into natural resource-dependent Western states. A listing under the Endangered Species Act would have severely limited development on tens of millions of acres of Western land. One study estimated that $5.6 billion in economic output would be lost if the bird was listed.

As a result, a broad and unlikely coalition of biologists, ranchers, environmental groups, extractive industries, federal agencies and state and local governments worked feverishly to create a management plan for the bird that would preempt a listing.

Finalized in 2015, the Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Plan was lauded as unprecedented and as one of the most complex and comprehensive conservation efforts in U.S. history. Then-Interior Director Sally Jewell described it as a “truly historic moment – one that represents extraordinary collaboration across the American West.” Given the efforts and an evaluation of the bird’s population status, the FWS decided to not list the greater sage grouse.

Not everyone was happy though. Some environmental groups argued that the plans didn’t go far enough and that the bird needed protections under the Endangered Species Act to survive.

A few Western states – Nevada, Idaho and Utah – argued that the plan was too restrictive and that it would impede economic development. Some oil, gas and coal companies agreed.

With the Trump administration touting energy independence, pushing for increased energy development on federal lands, and rolling back many Obama-era environmental policies, many expected the sage grouse plan to be reviewed.

In a memo posted with the task force’s recommendations, Zinke wrote that he issued the review in response to “concerns” he had heard regarding the plan.

The American Petroleum Institute applauded his efforts in a press release on Monday.

“The record shows that energy development and sage grouse populations can successfully coexist,” said API Upstream Director Erik Milito. “And the industry has been a leader in working with state governments and agencies to preserve Western habitats, while continuing to meet the needs of America’s energy consumers.”

Environmental and conservation groups are lambasting the decision to revise the current sage grouse management plan, saying that it’s a sign that the Trump administration can’t say ‘no’ to mining and petroleum companies.

“Weakening these plans puts the grouse at grave risk of further population declines,” says Steve Holmer, Vice President of Policy at American Bird Conservancy.

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A decade ago, utility executives and policymakers dreamed of a clean energy future powered by a new generation of cheap, safe nuclear reactors. Projects to expand existing nuclear plants in South Carolina and Georgia were supposed to be the start of the “nuclear renaissance.”

But following the decision last week by two utilities to scrap the expansion at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina, that vision is in tatters. There’s now just one nuclear expansion project left in the country, its future is also uncertain.

That remaining project is an expansion at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in eastern Georgia. As recently as five years ago, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited Plant Vogtle and declared the project the start of “the resurgence of America’s nuclear industry” and a critical part of President Obama’s energy strategy.

The two new reactors at Plant Vogtle were the first next-generation reactors in the country, and some of the first new reactors to be built in the U.S. in three decades. After the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island in 1979, the U.S. nuclear industry went into hibernation for more than two decades.

But by the early 2000s, the Three Mile Island accident and the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl were distant memories, says Paul Murphy, managing director in the energy group at the law firm Gowling WLG. “On top of that, people were projecting significant growth in power demand,” he adds.

The earlier generation of nuclear power stations are also starting to reach the end of their lifespans and some are being shuttered.

Building a nuclear reactor is expensive and time-consuming but once it’s up and running, it offers cheap and reliable electricity without generating the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Recession, fracking, renewable energy

With encouragement from the federal government, utilities around the country began applying for permission to build new reactors. At Vogtle in Georgia and V.C. Summer in South Carolina, power companies got to work.

“I thought it was going to be a very good thing for the Southern economy,” says Marilyn Brown, a public policy professor at Georgia Tech and board member of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates three older nuclear power plants in Alabama and Tennessee.

Then there were setbacks. First came the global financial crisis, which flattened the demand for electricity. Then fracking flooded the market with cheap natural gas. Renewable energy — especially wind power — also got more competitive.

According to Brown, “that meant if you went back to reappraise the nuclear investments, they probably would not have been approved, or might not have been approved.”

Both the Georgia and South Carolina nuclear projects racked up billions of dollars in cost overruns and delays. Then earlier this year, Westinghouse, which was building the reactors in both states, went bankrupt, blaming high construction costs for its problems.

Finishing the plant in South Carolina without Westinghouse didn’t make financial sense for the South Carolina utilities, so they scrapped the project.

“Last kid on the block”

“Now Vogtle’s the last kid on the block,” says Stan Wise, the chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates local utility Georgia Power. The utility says it will propose later this month whether or not to complete the Vogtle expansion.

Wise says Georgia Power is in a better financial situation than the South Carolina utilities, since it has more ratepayers to support the project. Georgia Power’s customers have been paying for the new reactors in their monthly power bills since 2011.

“I’m still a proponent of nuclear,” says Wise. “I’m going to keep my powder dry in the coming weeks and months as we decide whether or not to continue this project.”

Marilyn Brown at Georgia Tech says she hopes the Plant Vogtle expansion is completed.

“I’m a person very concerned with climate change,” she says. “If these plants can’t be continued, then where would you build the next one? Is that the demise of the industry?”

But for now, Brown says the American nuclear renaissance appears to be stalled.

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Uber knowingly leased unsafe cars to its drivers in Singapore, The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday.

One of those cars, a recalled Honda Vezel with an Uber driver at the wheel, spouted flames from its dashboard in January, melting the car’s interior and cracking its windshield. The driver had just dropped off a passenger when he began smelling the smoke.

Uber had bought more than 1,000 of the defective cars, which were recalled by Honda in April 2016 due to an electrical component that can overheat and catch fire.

And though Uber knew the cars needed repairs to make them safe, the company continued to lease them to drivers unfixed, according to the Journal.

The newspaper says it reviewed internal Uber emails and documents, and interviewed people familiar with the company’s operations in Asia.

And those emails show executives knew the vehicles had been recalled, but didn’t want to take them off the roads. “Asking drivers to give up their keys with no suggested fix will send panic alarm bells to the mass market,” wrote Uber’s Singapore general manager in an email, the Journal reported.

Word of the fire apparently reached Uber’s executives in San Francisco shortly after the company’s insurer in Singapore said it wouldn’t cover the damage to the scorched Vezel due to the known recall.

When Uber launched in Singapore in early 2013, it marked the company’s first expansion into Asia.

It was a good market to enter: In addition to all the rain you might expect in a tropical climate with two monsoon seasons, owning a car in Singapore is extremely expensive. The government requires owners to buy a certificate of entitlement, which represents “a right to vehicle ownership and use of the limited road space for 10 years.” The certificates are released through competitive bidding, and recently they’ve fetched prices from $44,000 and up.

That kind of expense made it hard for Uber to find drivers, the Journal reports, and so the company created a unit, Lion City Rentals, that would lease cars to drivers. It represented a new approach for the company, which avoids owning assets.

Instead of buying cars from authorized Honda and Toyota dealers, the company reportedly began importing hundreds of used cars a month from small dealers in the “gray market”, where safety standards are hard to enforce. At least one of those dealers didn’t get the Vezels fixed before selling them to Uber. While Uber was aware of the problem and asked the dealer to hasten its repairs, the company continued to lease the defective vehicles to drivers without warning them of the safety issue.

Even after the fire, Uber told drivers that the Vezels needed “immediate precautionary servicing” — without mentioning the risk of fire and overheating.

In a statement to NPR, Uber says it took action, but “could have done more.”

“As soon as we learned of a Honda Vezel from the Lion City Rental fleet catching fire, we took swift action to fix the problem, in close coordination with Singapore’s Land Transport Authority as well as technical experts,” Uber said in the statement. “But we acknowledge we could have done more—and we have done so. We’ve introduced robust protocols and hired three dedicated experts in-house at LCR whose sole job is to ensure we are fully responsive to safety recalls. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve proactively responded to six vehicle recalls and will continue to do so to protect the safety of everyone who uses Uber.”

Uber lost nearly $3 billion in 2016 but is nevertheless is one of the largest privately held companies, valued at nearly $70 billion.

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Federal investigators say an Air Canada jet coming in for a landing in San Francisco last month came a lot closer than previously thought to hitting four other planes on a taxiway, in what aviation safety experts say could have been a horrible disaster.

The National Transportation Safety Board says Air Canada flight No. 759 was just 59 feet above the ground at its lowest point, flying over a United Airlines jetliner waiting to take off, before the Air Canada plane pulled up, circled around and then landed safely.

Investigators say both pilots on the Air Canada plane thought they were lined up to land on runway 28-Right at San Francisco International Airport on the night of July 7, and runway lights they saw to the left were from runway 28-Left. But 28L was closed and dark, its approach and runway lights turned off, except for a large, 20-foot wide, lighted flashing ‘X’ placed at the threshold; and the normal runway lights they said they saw to their left were actually from runway 28R.

So even though they were cleared to land on 28R, the plane wasn’t lined up to land on it at all.

“Where’s this guy going?” exclaims another pilot on the ground in a radio call to the air traffic control tower. “He’s on the taxiway!”

An air traffic controller tells the pilot of Air Canada 759 to go around and the pilot agrees to do so, when a United Airlines pilot chimes in, “United 1. Air Canada flew directly over us.”

The controller responds, “Yeah, I saw that, guys.”

The United Airlines plane, a Boeing 787 was the first plane waiting to take off after Air Canada’s landing, and the new NTSB report indicates the Air Canada plane, an Airbus A320, may have come within just a few dozen feet of colliding with the United jet.

According to Wednesday’s NTSB investigative update, “Both pilots said, in post-incident interviews, they believed the lighted runway on their left was 28L and that they were lined up for 28R. They also stated that they did not recall seeing aircraft on taxiway C but that something did not look right to them.”

Investigators have not yet determined why the pilots mistook the taxiway for the runway, but the report indicates the taxiway was lighted normally, with blue lights to distinguish it from white runway lights.

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Apple put investors at ease Tuesday with its quarterly report. Wall Street was expecting a slowdown in iPhone 7 sales. Instead, sales of the iPhone 7 were up 1.6 percent year over year.

Analysts thought that consumers would wait for the highly anticipated iPhone 8 before they upgraded. Apple is expected to make significant changes in its upcoming 10th anniversary edition — such as wireless charging and facial recognition software.

Apple also saw a rise in iPad and Mac sales, which were well ahead of overall industry sales of computers and tablets. In an earnings call CEO Tim Cook attributed it to upgrades in both lines. The iPad also has a lower-priced introductory model $329.00 and a higher end iPad Pro, for work. Cook also cited schools as a growing market for the product.

The company did well in services such as cloud storage, the app store and streaming music. Cook looked ahead and said that Apple will be releasing more original content through Apple music in the coming months. The company is trying to regain its dominance in music. While it’s iTunes store was once the leader, downloads are down and streaming service Spotify is dominant. Apple says its own streaming service is growing but it has not released numbers.

Cook addressed some political issues during the call. He was asked about Apple’s recent decision to comply with a Chinese government request to take VPN apps — basically software that hides communications from government and other sources — out of the app store in China. Cook said the company follows the law in countries where it sells products. Looking forward he suggested the Chinese would back away from the requirement because VPN’s are needed for innovation.

Cook was asked about President Trump’s push for Apple to build three new factories in the U.S. Cook did not respond directly, but he pointed to a $1 billion manufacturing fund. He said Apple has already put tens of millions of dollars into a Corning plant in Kentucky, which will make glass for Apple products.

Cook also talked excitedly about Apple’s investment in Augmented Reality. The most popular use so far was the game Pokémon Go, which had people running around looking for monsters projected onto the real world through the camera of their phone. Apple will add VR to its mobile operating system later this year and developers are working on new uses for consumers.

Lastly, Cook said the company is very interested in “autonomous systems” the kind behind self-driving cars and, Cook suggested, other areas as well.

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HBO says it has been hacked, and that the perpetrators have acquired some programming.

The premium cable channel won’t confirm what materials were acquired in the cyber breach. But the alleged perpetrators claim to have acquired text related to the popular — and famously spoiler-plagued — Game of Thrones.

Entertainment Weeklybroke the story:

“Hackers claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. So far, an upcoming episode of Ballers and Room 104 have apparently been put online. There is also written material that’s allegedly from next week’s fourth episode of Game of Thrones. More is promised to be ‘coming soon.’ “

It’s not clear if the hackers do actually have any Game of Thrones material, EW says.

NPR’s Eric Deggans reports:

” HBO is so secretive about spoilers involving its hit series Game of Thrones, journalists weren’t even given advance copies of new episodes before the new season began July 16.

“Now HBO has acknowledged that a ‘cyber incident’ resulted in stolen proprietary information, including some programming. … HBO says it is working with law enforcement and cybersecurity firms to investigate the breach.”

HBO has had material prematurely leaked online — including screeners, clips from overseas distributors and a Game of Thrones trailer, EW writes. But none of those incidents involved hacking.

“Hacking Hollywood can have significant repercussions,” The Associated Press notes. “Sony struggled in the aftermath of its huge hack in 2014, which leaked employee emails as well as films.”

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