Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Nvidia eclipses Microsoft as world's most valuable company
Summary: Just a few days after passing Apple, chip-maker Nvidia also surpassed Microsoft’s market valuation, attaining a value of more than $3.3 trillion and becoming the most valuable publicly traded US company.
Context: Microsoft recently passed Apple as the most valuable publicly traded US company on the strength of its partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and it’s deployment of all sorts of AI-oriented tools across its product portfolio, but Nvidia has been on a tear this past year, surging in value from just over $1 trillion in July of 2023 to its current most-valuable status; Nvidia makes chips that were previously oriented toward gamers and other consumers that needed to do high-end graphics work, then by crypto-companies that wanted to mine Bitcoin and other such assets, but the same products turned out to be ideal for training AI systems, as well, hence this staggering valuation explosion as pretty much every tech company scrambles to get their own AI models trained and deployed.
—Reuters
Putin and Kim sign pact pledging mutual support against ‘aggression’
Summary: Russian President Putin has visited North Korea for the first time in decades, meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and solidifying the two countries’ relationship at a moment in which both nations are heavily sanctioned, globally.
Context: This visit served as an opportunity for the two countries to formalize a defense pledge, basically saying if the West, led by Europe and the US, messes with either of us, we’ll come to each others’ aid in various ways, while also demonstrating that they’ll continue to support each other in a general sense, North Korea providing ammunition, missiles, and other wartime necessities to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and Russia providing staples like food and medical supplies, which are often in short supply in North Korea; many Western governments are concerned that Russia is helping the North develop their weapons systems, including their nuclear and orbital capabilities, as part of this arrangement, though the true nature of this agreement is unknown, as the details haven’t been publicly divulged, and even the aforementioned swap of ammo and food and such is based on external intelligence reports, not announcements from those directly involved—so lots of unknowns remain.
—The New York Times
White House cancels meeting and scolds Netanyahu in protest over video
Summary: Following the release of a video by the Israeli government in which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu criticizes the US for withholding military aid, the US government has cancelled a high-level meeting with Israel related to Iran.
Context: The only military aid on its way to Israel from the US that has been withheld, as far as is publicly known, at least, has been a shipment of a type of bomb that would be devastating to civilians if used in Rafah, so this criticism, shared publicly in this way, is being seen as a slap in the face by a US administration that has continued to give Israel everything it has asked for, and then some, despite very public and potentially damaging criticisms from other world leaders, and its own constituents, at home; some White House officials have expressed bafflement about the withholding comment, saying they don’t know what Netanyahu is talking about, and while some have said the Iran meeting was cancelled to express anger at the comment, others have said the meeting was postponed due to a scheduling conflict; so there’s some fog of war related to this exchange, at the moment, but it does seem like the tension between Netanyahu and US President Biden is continuing to grow.
—Axios
Most Americans get the majority of their news from social media, these days, and the lion’s share of “news” content they’re shown by the algorithms on these platforms are commentary and funny posts related to current events, not actual journalism.
—Pew Research
1.8 million
Number of people living in El Fasher, the capital city of the Darfur region in Sudan.
This city is under threat from a paramilitary forces called the Rapid Support Forces, which has been fighting a civil war with the country’s military, each side of the conflict controlled by generals who toppled the previous government in a coup, then turned on each other in the aftermath.
El Fasher is encircled by the RSF, and international human rights organizations are warning that a massacre of the city’s residents could be impending.
—The New York Times
One Sentence News / June 20, 2024