One Sentence News / July 19, 2023
Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Note: I’ll be taking the rest of the week off for a roadtrip (though there’ll still be some bonus visuals this weekend for paid subscribers)! I’ll talk to you again next Monday :)
EU Parliament passes nature law after political backlash
Summary: Last week, the European Parliament passed a law, 336 to 300, with 13 abstentions, that will require the restoration of degraded ecosystems throughout the bloc.
Context: This was a very hotly contested decision that irked many lawmakers who were already bristling over what they consider to be overreach on the part of EU governance, considering all the environment-related laws they’ve been passing, of late; that said, the basic tenets of a green agenda in the EU seem to be popular, despite all the pushback and concerns about negative impacts on the agricultural industry, among others; this decision will require that member nations restore natural conditions across a fifth of their land and sea by 2030 as part of a larger effort to reverse natural ecosystem decline, restore soil health, and reduce pollution and emissions levels.
—Reuters
Russia pulls out of the Black Sea grain deal
Summary: The Russian government has announced that it is ending its participation in an agreement that allowed ships carrying Ukrainian grain to safely exit via Black Sea ports.
Context: This decision is expected to increase global food prices and to cause shortages in poorer nations in particular, as global aid agencies are the primary customer of Ukrainian foodstuffs, with less-well-off African and Middle Eastern nations coming in second; Russian officials have complained about the agreement previously, and have said they might pull out of it unless deals could be struck that would allow them to export more of their own grain and fertilizer products—exports of which have been limited by post-invasion sanctions; grain prices have been wobbly following this announcement, and though Ukraine has managed to export some grain overland in recent months, the volume of overland exports is far smaller than what they can manage via the Black Sea.
—The New York Times
Iran’s ‘morality police’ return as authorities enforce hijab rule
Summary: The Iranian government has re-instituted patrols by their so-called “morality police,” following a period in which such patrols were limited due to protests sparked by the death of a young woman, apparently at the hands of these police.
Context: These pseudo-police officers basically patrol streets, looking for religious norm violations and issuing warnings to people—mostly women who aren’t wearing a hijab, or who aren’t wearing it properly, according to a given officer’s standards—before then bringing the justice system into it if their warnings aren’t heeded, which often means sending women to what’re called re-education facilities operated by these police; patrols are now returning to the streets, in force, about 10 months after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained by morality police officers over a dress code violation before then dying in their custody, and her death led to a period of massive and at times violent protests, and a widespread, popular dismissal of hijab-wearing—a trend the government has recently started to crack down on using surveillance cameras and fines.
—Al Jazeera
As of Monday, there were 880 wildfires burning across Canada, 580 of which were out of control; a total of 4,152 wildfires have burned about 10 million hectares (~25 million acres) of Canadian land this year, and about half of the 400-ish fires that started in British Columbia this past week were sparked by lightning strikes.
—Quartz
7.5%
Portion of the total Philippines economy reliant on business process outsourcing work (primarily via call centers and digital versions of the same).
About 1.6 million people do this sort of work in the country, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue, and those jobs (and that revenue) are newly threatened by generative AI tools that can do similar work at far lower costs.
—Rest of World
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