Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Officials overseeing Indonesia capital city project resign, raising questions
Summary: Two of the people in charge of making Indonesia’s under-construction new capital, Nusantara, a reality have resigned and been temporarily replaced by the public works and housing minister, and the deputy agrarian minister, according to the Indonesian government.
Context: This project, which is expected to cost something like $32 billion, is meant to move the mechanisms of state from the country’s current capital, Jakarta, because Jakarta is overcrowded, plagued by immense traffic jams and ever-present pollution, is sinking, and regularly floods; the idea, then, is to move the government to Nusantara to help the state function, but also ease some of those issues in Jakarta; the two people who left were the head and deputy head of the project, though, and while the relocation of the first batch of 12,000 civil servants from Jakarta to Nusantara was planned for this September, they’ve apparently had trouble building enough infrastructure for even that many people, and the project has already been delayed twice amid concerns about a lack of private funding for the venture—so we’ll see on that.
—Reuters
Georgia’s divisive ‘foreign agents’ bill signed into law
Summary: Georgia’s legislature, which is controlled by the Georgian Dream party, voted to dismiss a veto by the country’s president earlier this week, officially signing the vetoed bill into law, despite widespread protests against it.
Context: The law in question is similar to a law in Russia that essentially allows the government to spy on and harass and even imprison anyone they like, as long as they say that person is a foreign agent, though on the surface it merely allows the government to look more closely at who backs nonprofits operating within their borders; a major concern for the protestors is that this law may make it more difficult for Georgia to someday join the EU, which is something the majority of the country hopes to do, and there are concerns that its passage might have been pushed by politicians under Russia’s sway in order to keep them from becoming more friendly with the West.
—France 24
Massive melon-size hail could be a Texas record
Summary: A piece of hail the size of a cantaloupe was recovered in Texas last weekend, measuring at least six inches in diameter and possibly setting a new all-time record for the state.
Context: This is notable in part because hail has been getting bigger and becoming more frequent across portions of the US, and that’s meant a lot more damage from storms that otherwise might roll through with little long-term economic impact; a recent wave of storms in Texas, though, resulted in what’s been called DVD-sized hail, which is a new casual unit of measurement for such things, and a week later, they got hit by melon-sized hail; none of which is great for the safety of people and animals on the ground, but it’s also pretty terrible for the burgeoning fields of solar panels across the state, and the cars, homes, and other pieces of shatterable and destroyable infrastructure in the impacted areas.
—The Washington Post
The world’s biggest social networks are scrambling to find new audiences to attract, as their valuations are partly based on their capacity for future growth, and some of the larger ones seem to have reached the ceiling of global potential customers for their current offerings.
—Sherwood News
$25,000
Announced prices for upcoming electric vehicles by Tesla, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.
That’s substantially lower than current average EV prices (which tend to be closer to $48,000) and closer to today’s used EV prices, and that of those sold overseas (China has multiple models for around that price and cheaper—though their EV industry, and connected industries like EV batteries, is heavily subsidized by the government).
—The New York Times
One Sentence News / June 7, 2024