One Sentence News / August 1, 2023
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Vietnam jails former officials and diplomats in mass bribery trial
Summary: Fifty-four government officials and business owners have been found guilty of bribery in a mass-trial in Vietnam, some of the defendants sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Context: The bribes in this case were related to so-called “rescue flights” that were booked for Vietnamese citizens overseas who couldn’t get back into the country using commercial flights because of quarantine restrictions; 25 state officials received bribes totaling about $7.4 million to basically add folks who didn’t want to deal with quarantine complications to the rescue flight list, allowing them to get back into the country without jumping through as many hoops and without paying official fees—so they used their position and power to enrich themselves, while denying the state those funds and potentially putting Vietnamese citizens at risk, as well, which is why the sentences in these cases are so punitive.
—Al Jazeera
West African leaders threaten military intervention following Niger coup
Summary: Representatives from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS bloc have given the leaders of a military coup that recently overthrew the Nigerian government seven days to reinstate the former government, after which point the bloc would “take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order.”
Context: Last week’s successful coup by a portion of Niger’s military has led to concerns that Russia might gain new influence in the country (the overthrown government having been closely aligned with the West), as it follows other recent coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in which that was the case; this move has also raised concerns locally about a potential wave of democratic government overthrows in the region, hence this threat from an alliance of local governments; there have been no formal negotiations between the current, military-led Nigerian government and ECOWAS, so far, and the general response from the wider world has been a truncation or cessation of outside aide, which could put the country in a precarious position in the relatively near-future if those monetary holes in its budget aren’t plugged.
—BBC News
Phoenix reaches 110 degrees for 30 days in a row, extending streak
Summary: Phoenix has once again recorded daytime high temperatures of greater than 110 degrees Fahrenheit (which is greater than 43.3 degrees Celsius), extending a local streak of such temperatures to more than 30 days.
Context: The previous record in the region was set in June of 1974, when Phoenix saw 18 days of 110 degrees or greater temperatures, and this time around the duration of the streak is a lot longer, the maximum temperatures are higher, hitting the hundred-teens on most days, and the nighttime temperatures have also been notable, generally hovering around the mid-90s—all of which is not normal, even for this generally quite hot part of the US, and these high-temperature records are of a kind with what we’re seeing elsewhere throughout the world right now, during what’s become the hottest recorded month in human history.
—azcentral
The degree to which SpaceX has changed the space launch industry cannot be overstated, but its satellite-internet sub-brand—Starlink—has been just as influential in some ways, allowing folks in rural, disconnected areas (even at the planet’s poles, in the open ocean, and on battlefields) to access communications and data networks, which has raised concerns within government and military circles that the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, may have too much unilateral control over what’s rapidly become vital security-related infrastructure.
—The New York Times
46.5%
Possible actual youth unemployment rate in China according to a Peking University Associate Professor named Zhang Dandan, who published an article on the matter earlier this month.
That’s a massive deviation from the official figure of 21.3% (which is also brutally high), and though 46.5% is the maximum posited by Dandan, the article (which was published in one of the most influential financial publications in China) has still served as a stinging rebuke to official government figures, and has consequently generated a lot of conversation and attracted a lot of attention.
—The East is Read
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