NEED TO KNOW

Bills Coming Due

WORLD

Ghana is pressing the African Union (AU) to leverage the worldwide African diaspora to bolster the case for reparations for the trans-Atlantic trade in slaves, reported Yen, a Ghanaian news outlet. It is “important for the self-worth and self-confidence of descendants of enslaved people,” it added.

Late last year, the AU hosted a reparations summit where attendees from around the world agreed to establish a Global Reparation Fund to push for compensation for the descendants of the millions of Africans enslaved centuries ago during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

They aren’t the only people around the world who are talking seriously about reparations for slavery.

Portuguese lawmakers recently defeated a proposal by right-wing parties to charge President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa with treason for entertaining the idea of paying back the descendants of people torn from their homes, shackled in the dark holds of ships, and carried to plantations across the Atlantic Ocean. Much to the chagrin of those right-wing politicians, Sousa recently said he believed his country should address the “wrongs of the past,” wrote Reuters. Portuguese critics of such a plan say, however, it would be impossible to administer.

Portugal still doesn’t have an official reparations policy, however, according to the BBC.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has resisted apologizing for the country’s role in the slave trade, added Al Jazeera, even though King Charles III has agreed to a study of the monarchy’s already documented ties to the slave trade. Also, the Church of England has admitted that it had profited from enslavement and set aside a £100 million ($127.63 million) fund to address racial inequality. Meanwhile, activists have been working through civil society groups to change Sunak’s mind.

“It was important to me because I had to know who I was and how their barbaric trade of enslaved Africans shaped my life,” said Malik Al Nasir, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge who researched his own ties to slavery in Guyana in South America. “(They) also shaped the lives of many others across the Caribbean and in the UK, in the Americas and also in Africa.”

Sometimes, the arguments in favor of reparations can be about entire modern societies. For example, Haiti, where the first successful slave rebellion occurred in the early 19th century, had to repay France for more than a century to compensate slave owners for their losses, noted World Politics Review. These payments arguably robbed Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, of $21 billion that could have helped it enormously over that long period.

At other times, the target for reparations is outside of Europe or the United States. For example, in Brazil, the executive manager for institutional relations at the country’s national bank apologized in January at a forum on slavery’s legacy in his country, the Associated Press reported.

Brazil enslaved more people from Africa than any other country – nearly 5 million Africans were taken there, more than 12 times the number forcibly relocated to North America.

“Today’s Bank of Brazil asks Black people for forgiveness,” André Machado said to the mostly Black audience in Rio de Janeiro. “Directly or indirectly, all of Brazilian society should apologize to Black people for that sad moment in our history.”

Brazil – where more than half the population self-identifies as Black or biracial – has long resisted reckoning with its past. That reluctance has started loosening – for example, prosecutors have begun probing the Bank of Brazil, Latin America’s second-largest financial institution by assets, with $380 billion, for its historical links to the slave trade. Their investigation could yield a recommendation, an agreement or filing of legal action.

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, Barbados has been leading efforts for reparations through the regional bloc CARICOM’s committee on reparations. It’s pushing for negotiations with 10 European countries on reparations that would resemble a Marshall Plan, Time magazine wrote.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, is convinced reparations are necessary, recently calling for such payments to help address systemic racism and other issues dating back to the slavery era. “We call for reparatory justice frameworks to help overcome generations of exclusion and discrimination,” Guterres said.

Writing on a reparations proposal in California, the Wall Street Journal criticized the idea of such payments, saying the government agencies created by such a proposal would waste money and meddle in markets in ways that would likely backfire.

Proponents of reparations say, however, that it wouldn’t backfire for them.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

Pointillistic Terror

WORLD

Russian officials continue to blame the March 24 terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow on Ukraine, PBS News Hour wrote. But American intelligence officials say they told the Russians that the Islamic State terrorist group planned to carry out the massacre. Russian police have since arrested four men from Tajikistan who allegedly carried out the attack.

These developments highlight how the Islamic State, instead of disappearing after being routed in Syria and Iraq, is still a force in the world. A coalition of forces ousted the terror group about three years after it took control over massive swaths of those two countries in 2014 and tried to build a “caliphate.” But the Islamic State adapted and found new places to metastasize.

The Afghanistan-based Islamic State Khorasan, for example, has taken credit for the Moscow attack, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote. The group has deep roots in Tajikistan, an impoverished and deeply corrupt former Soviet republic whose leaders have turned to Russian, American, and Chinese help to combat terror – with little progress to show for it.

In the aftermath of the Moscow attack, wrote the UAE’s The National, Western Europe is bracing for more casualties, especially Sweden, the Netherlands and France: The latter has especially experienced smaller, “lone-wolf” attacks claimed by alleged members of Islamic State for years.

Now, analysts say, the Moscow attack is raising threat levels because it is likely going to attract more funds and recruits to the terror group. At the same time, Islamic State will probably launch more assaults to demonstrate that it is no longer a spent force, analyst Antonio Giustozzi of the UK’s Rusi think tank told the National.

“They realized that they are in terminal decline, they have no ‘caliphate,’ and an image problem of defeats and losses so they are trying to change the narrative … to show that ‘we are still relevant,’” he said.

After the defeat in Syria and Iraq, many Islamic State commanders began shoring up their presence in Africa and allying with terror groups already operating in countries such as Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

“They are exploiting the political instability and expanding their radius of influence, their operations and territorial control in the Sahel, with growing concerns for coastal West Africa,” Natalia Gherman, executive director of the United Nations’ Counter-Terrorism Office, told the Arab Weekly. “The African continent now accounts for almost half of terrorist acts worldwide, with central Sahel accounting for about 25 percent of such attacks.”

Part of the reason the group Islamic State-Sahel Province is “surging” in strength in the region, and controlling more territory than ever, is because of the security vacuum created by a drawdown of Western military assistance in the wake of military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and elsewhere, the Washington Post wrote. Meanwhile, its rival, al-Qaeda-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, ceded much of its territory to Islamic State. Now, Islamic State is in such firm control, it is turning away from terror attacks toward governance and education of the young.

Meanwhile, the terror group is also entrenched in parts of East Asia, especially in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, wrote the Hudson Institute: “Radical groups across Southeast Asia are likely to continue to exploit social, economic, and political disenfranchisement in their societies to appeal to new potential recruits.”

The Islamic State, at the same time, continues to operate in Iraq and Syria, seeing it as its most meaningful location, analysts say. Terrorists with the group recently killed a senior Iraqi militant leader, Abu Maria al-Qahtani, in a suicide bombing, Middle East Eye reported. Al-Qahtani was a leader in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former affiliate of al-Qaeda.

The Islamic State, furthermore, retains power in places like the Al-Hawl refugee camp in Syria near the Iraq border. The camp is a tent city, reported the Jerusalem Post, that houses 43,000 people. Around 40,000 are women and children who are family members of Islamic State militants.

“The ISIS system and way of ruling is implemented in the camp,” said Al-Hawl administrator Jihan Hanan, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. “They are openly carrying weapons in the camp. In the last week, they attacked a tent of the International Red Cross. They cover their faces and just go out and attack. They say that Al-Hawl is one of their bases and an important part of their infrastructure.”

And analysts add, orders for the attack on Moscow almost certainly came from Islamic State commanders currently taking refuge in Syria or Iraq.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

A Decisive New Year

WORLD

2024 is shaping up to be a pivotal year.

First, the new year will usher in some crucial elections, according to the Economist.

The United Kingdom, India, and the United States are slated to hold general elections that will determine the new leaders of the free world. In Russia, in contrast, when voters head to the polls, few expect anyone but incumbent Vladimir Putin to win – but no one knows how the ballot will affect how Russia prosecutes the war in Ukraine.

Other important votes will be rematches that pit reformers against the entrenched interests they defeated in the past. In Indonesia, for example, popular President Joko Widodo must step aside due to term limits, but he has vowed to make sure the country’s entrenched interests won’t secure sufficient power to reverse his policies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote.

In Mexico, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador similarly can’t run for reelection, but hopes his successor will win office to continue his progressive policies, the Americas Society/Council of the Americas noted.

In other countries, corruption is playing a big role in determining who will lead.

Pakistan’s former premier Imran Khan will run in parliamentary elections from prison, where he is being held on corruption charges that he denies, according to the Associated Press.

South African voters might choose to oust the African National Congress, the organization that helped end the country’s racist Apartheid regime in the 1990s, explained Al Jazeera. Conflicts between the Congress and former President Jacob Zuma, who resigned due to corruption allegations in 2018, could especially hurt the party on election day, added Semafor.

Other elections could have far-reaching consequences globally.

In Taiwan, leaders who advocate for closer relations with China will square off against those who believe Chinese officials, who view Taiwan as a breakaway republic, are a threat to the island, the Brookings Institution explained. Whoever wins will play an important role in deescalating or fanning tensions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, of course, doesn’t need to seek the support of his people. As the United States Institute for Peace detailed, he has concentrated power in his office in recent years by eliminating rivals and installing loyalists in key offices throughout the vast country.

Lastly, the fortunes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are uncertain as he prosecutes a war against Hamas – but also has come under withering criticism for the country’s lack of preparedness before the terror attacks of Oct. 7, CNN reported.

These politicians will be dealing with trends that they can’t control, wrote Chatham House, a British think tank. In addition to war in Ukraine, violence in the Middle East, tensions in the South China Sea and elsewhere, economic uncertainty, the rise of AI, climate change, and other non-political developments are likely to challenge world leaders.

Whether they rise to these challenges will determine if some of them win office again.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

2023 – a World in Flux

WORLD

Ukraine’s failure to reassert control of regions that Russia has seized since February 2022 (or 2014, counting the Crimean Peninsula) and the carnage of the war between Israel and Hamas, are continuing to dominate news headlines as 2023 comes to an end.

Concerning the Eastern European war, the sense is that Ukraine can’t forever go toe-to-toe with mighty Russia – unless Russia is far weaker than it seems at present.

The negative outlook recently forced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to repudiate reports that his former Soviet republic was losing. Instead, he was considering whether to draft another 500,000 troops into the Ukrainian armed forces, reported the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

As Zelenskyy lobbied American and European lawmakers for more vital military supplies – Ukraine stands no chance without Western aid, wrote Business Insider – he also floated a peace plan that required Russia to withdraw. Officials in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration called the plan “absurd,” noted CNBC.

In the Middle East, the attacks of Oct. 7 on Israel illustrated Hamas’s unforgivable disrespect for life. Since then, however, the news has shifted to the shocking devastation that Israeli forces have wrought in the Gaza Strip in reprisal. Hamas officials who run Gaza say Israeli strikes against the densely packed territory on the Mediterranean have claimed 20,000 lives, reported RTE, the Irish national broadcaster.

There was hope, however, for another reprieve. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh recently journeyed to Egypt for “intensive talks” on a new ceasefire, aid shipments, and hostage releases. Haniyeh resides in Qatar. He “typically wades publicly into diplomacy only when progress seems likely,” explained Reuters.

Other important stories at the end of the year reflect less intense but still important shifts in global politics, economics, and culture.

In Europe, the competition between left-leaning and far-right candidates for political office remains strong.

In Spain, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reached a controversial deal with Catalan separatists to retain his grip on government, confounding conservatives, wrote Al Jazeera. In Poland, former Prime Minister Donald Tusk won office again, kicking out the conservative ruling Law and Justice Party after eight years in power, reported the Guardian. Ironically, Tusk served as president of the European Council, whereas Law and Justice is skeptical of European institutions.

On the other hand, far-right populist, Geert Wilders, who opposes migration and has denounced Islam, could become the next prime minister of the Netherlands. In Austria, France, Germany, Hungary and Italy, the far right remains strong, too. In France, reported the Financial Times, traditional conservative parties have all but disappeared as new far-right parties have attracted legions of supporters.

Meanwhile, 2023 was difficult for China. Due to draconian Covid-19 lockdowns, crackdowns on the private sector, bankruptcies in the important real estate market, and other problems, the Chinese economy hit a rough patch in 2023, according to Foreign Policy.

As this bad news has worsened, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been accumulating more power domestically while asserting Chinese interests more vigorously abroad. According to ABC News, for example, Xi told President Joe Biden at a recent summit that China planned to reunify with Taiwan. Such an act could precipitate a war with the US and its allies.

Many hope now as we head into a new year that these trends cool down in 2024 as sane heads prevail.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

The Power in Numbers

WORLD

An economist from Goldman Sachs coined the term BRICS in 2001 as an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. As the Library of Congress described it, these developing countries were becoming more important to the global economic order at the time.

Twenty-two years later, the BRICS club is adding six new countries – Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. But the jury is still out on whether those members of BRICS other than China have gained standing worldwide.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t trying, though.

As Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor wrote, BRICS members are seeking to replace the US-dominated world order or at least increase their clout. From their perspective, they have little choice in the matter if they want to flourish.

The BRICS group’s agenda is not absurd, either, analysts added. Together, for instance, the 10 members’ gross domestic product surpasses that of the seven most advanced industrial democracies, noted geopolitical strategist Ian Bremmer in Nikkei Asia. The countries also have deeply interconnected economic and political links, added the New York Times.

However, some BRICS members – think Egypt and Saudi Arabia – also depend on the US economically and militarily. Furthermore, as CNBC reported, Russia has suffered mightily for challenging the West since invading Ukraine, suffering crippling sanctions and military setbacks due to American and European military support for the Ukrainians.

Debates within the BRICS group about dumping the American dollar for alternative currencies are representative of the hurdles that the organization faces. The widespread use of the US currency in world trade is a cornerstone of the world order. BRICS countries often use the greenback rather than their own currencies because dollars are more liquid than, say, the Ethiopian birr.

Doing so gives the US a strategic advantage worldwide, however. The US can print highly valuable dollars whenever it wants. The problem for BRICS members is that they are highly vulnerable to increases and decreases in the dollar’s value, interest rate hikes and cuts, and other policies with far-reaching consequences made in faraway Washington, DC.

India and the UAE recently decided to trade in Indian rupees rather than dollars to bypass this situation, for example, reported the Hindu.

It won’t be so easy to ditch the dollar, however, Al Jazeera warned. BRICS doesn’t have a single central bank nor do its members share legal or financial systems. Most importantly, it would be hard to create a new, widely used currency that isn’t tied to China, the largest BRICS economy. BRICS members don’t necessarily want to trade their dependence on the US for reliance on China.

Still, they are talking and thinking about it.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

Loose Lips

WORLD

Massachusetts Air National Guard Airman First Class Jack Teixeira was a Cyber Transport Systems journeyman, or an IT specialist. The 21-year-old now stands accused of making classified documents public since at least late February, potentially jeopardizing US national security, Reuters explained. He posted the secret info, incidentally, on a social media platform where video gamers and other virtual communities hang out.

The leaks were embarrassing to say the least. They detail, for example, how the Pentagon has concluded that Taiwan could not withstand a Chinese missile attack, reported NBC News. The disclosures also suggest that the US has been spying on Israel, Ukraine, and South Korea – all hotspots, obviously, where the US might unsurprisingly want high-quality intelligence.

Leaders in those countries were not amused. South Korean legislators called the revelations proof of a violation of their national sovereignty, Vice News wrote. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said he would request “appropriate measures” in light of the developments, added the Korean Herald, an English-language newspaper based in Seoul. The leak, incidentally, came just before President Joe Biden and the first lady were to host the South Korean president and his wife for a state visit. Needless to say, it was awkward.

Meanwhile, American officials have sought to calm their allies. Speaking at Ramstein Air Base in Germany recently, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin depicted the leaks as an attempt to divide the Western coalition backing Ukraine, reported the Associated Press. Many of the secret documents contained info on the war in Ukraine and deliveries of Western weapons to the Ukrainians.

The leaked documents describe how Ukraine’s air defenses are on the brink of collapse, for example, information that could undermine the resolve of its partners. At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not pleased. “It’s definitely a bad story,” he said. “It’s not profitable for us … It is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States.”

Meanwhile, the secret files also paint a bleak picture of Russia’s situation, according to the New York Times. Russian officials are, for example, fighting each other over casualty numbers, even as more wounded soldiers come back from the front.

The leaks also shone a light on other Russian hijinks around the globe. They suggest that Egypt, a nominal ally of the US, had been on the brink of selling weapons to Russia, as leaders in Moscow are shopping around the world for more munitions as the war drags on, the Washington Post noted. Egypt is a major recipient of American economic and military aid.

The Guardian compared Teixeira to the many famous leakers who have become hero whistleblowers or destructive traitors, depending on one’s point of view – ranging from Daniel Ellsberg uncovering dubious US policy in the Vietnam War to Edward Snowden exposing the US government’s extensive surveillance of telecommunications inside the US, and abroad.

Teixeira certainly won’t be the last of his kind.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

Victims of Success

WORLD

Author Elizabeth Gilbert embraces romance and finds a partner in Bali after a life journey that she chronicled to great fame in her 2006 memoir, “Eat Pray Love.” Now residents of the Indonesian island are fed up with the increasingly large numbers of tourists who have been inundating the magical isle in search of similar transformative experiences – or at least some fun.

Indonesian officials are considering a new tax on tourists with the goal of keeping out so-called bad elements and shifting Bali from a “low-end holiday destination to a quality tourism hub,” wrote Time Out magazine. The island’s governor has banned tourists from renting motorbikes, too. Balinese folks have complained of tourists driving recklessly, flouting immigration rules, committing indecent exposure, and disrespecting local culture, including religious events and customs, reported the Washington Post.

The proposed tax and other rules would not necessarily stop foreigners, on the other hand, from purchasing and owning properties or shares in resorts along Bali’s amazing beaches, the South China Morning Post added, illustrating how the tourism industry is and will remain vital to the local economy. For example, after potentially putting off tourists with a raft of new laws that ban adultery, cohabitation before marriage and apostasy, or renouncing one’s religion, officials made a point of telling CNN that these draconian laws would not apply to tourists.

Indonesia is not alone in wanting to control tourists. Bulgaria, where tourists flock to Black Sea beaches and Balkan ski slopes, the happening Spanish cities of Barcelona and Valencia, paradisiacal Thailand and a handful of others have also imposed fees on tourists, Euronews wrote.

Recently, officials in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam – the destination for 20 million tourists annually – released a statement saying that visitors coming to the city solely for sex and drugs were not welcome. As Politico explained, the marketing campaign included ads that said: “Coming to Amsterdam for a messy night + getting trashed = €140 fine + criminal record. Stay away.”

Meanwhile, tourists visiting the majestic city of Venice will now pay $10.50 for the pleasure under new rules to manage the millions of visitors who visit the Italian city every year, the New York Post reported. Officials in Hawaii wanted to charge tourists a fee to enter the state – but feared such a measure would run afoul of the US Constitution, noted the Associated Press. Instead, they might charge higher fees at state parks and trails to generate funding for environmental restoration and remediation efforts.

These locales are arguably victims of their own success. The question now is whether they will kill the golden goose that has paid them dividends many times over.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

Banking On It

WORLD

Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) recently told European Union leaders that the banking sector on the continent was strong, reported Bloomberg.

Yet on the same day Lagarde spoke, shares of Deutsche Bank plunged as traders worried that the massive German bank would default on its debts, wrote Market Insider. Similar fears fueled selloffs of shares of Switzerland’s UBS, France’s Societe Generale, and Germany’s Commerzbank.

These moves were happening as investors, economists, policymakers and others were trying to figure out the implications of the banking crisis that is now sweeping across the globe. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this month in the US, as well as the Swiss government’s sponsoring of UBS’s purchase of troubled financial institution Credit Suisse, have sent ripples of fear through markets that resemble the financial panic of 2008.

As a Bloomberg analysis argued, these changes reflect how the era of easy money is over. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, central banks reduced interest rates to zero and offered discounted capital to lenders to spur investment. They kept rates low through the coronavirus pandemic starting in 2020, when governments hiked spending to fill the vacuum that occurred when businesses closed and consumers stayed home during lockdowns.

Now, as older folks in Western countries retire, helping to trigger labor shortages, the Russian-Ukraine war causes energy and food prices to spike, and other negative factors emerge, inflation is in danger of spiraling out of control. Comedian Jon Stewart, who recently interviewed high-profile economist Larry Summers, also argued that corporate greed played a role in the trouble. Executives, he said, have taken advantage of inflation headlines to raise prices that yielded record fat profits that also stoke inflation.

Everyone is playing a waiting game to see if other banks fall as they grapple with costlier financing. Many hold bonds that are now worth far less than a year ago due to higher interest rates that have slashed their value, the Japan Times wrote.

In the meantime, central bankers worldwide have teamed up to make sure a steady flow of dollars continues throughout the global economy to prevent further shocks, Axios explained. Central banks like the Bank of England, the ECB, and the US Federal Reserve have been further raising interest rates to tackle inflation. As the Financial Times warned, however, these efforts arguably work at cross purposes. They are designed to cool down overheated economies – not necessarily a good approach when a banking crisis is unfolding.

Still, as Spanish newspaper El País noted, most financial authorities and analysts don’t believe the world is headed for another financial crisis. They say they will be able to contain the contagion because they have tools ready from previous crises.

Maybe they learned lessons. But as the Economist noted, some bankers obviously didn’t. Because they had no reason to.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

Lessons, Please

WORLD

Three years ago, people around the world began lockdowns that shuttered businesses, schools, government offices, and other institutions that had been the hallmarks of everyone’s lives. Now, after Covid vaccines and other measures have reduced – but not eliminated – fears surrounding the virus, the question is, what has the world learned from the pandemic?

Scientists believe Covid-19 first appeared at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China in late December 2019. While there are theories as to the origins of the virus, including zoonotic transmission and a lab leak, Chinese authorities have not shared much information beyond this point, however, reported Al Jazeera.

As Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently complained to the Australian Broadcasting Company, conspiracy theories about the virus’ origin are legion. But American authorities and others have contended that the virus was likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The murkiness surrounding the history of a public health and humanitarian disaster that unfolded before the world’s eyes – nearly seven million people have died from the virus worldwide, according to the World Health Organization – is one reason why global leaders need to assume another such crisis will occur again, argued International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva.

“What COVID and the (Russian-Ukraine) war taught us is we live in a more shock-prone world,” warned Georgieva at a CNBC event. “What the earthquake in Turkey and Syria taught us – think of the unthinkable.”

With that pessimism in mind, advocates including Nobel laureates, former heads of state, top scientists and others recently called for the world’s most affluent countries to make sure they can help the world’s poorest countries obtain sufficient quality vaccines to dispel the virus from their countries, Deutsche Welle reported.

Vaccine inequities resulted in 1.3 million preventable deaths worldwide, they said. “Nationalism and profiteering around vaccines resulted in a catastrophic moral and public health failure which denied equitable access to all,” New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Helen Clark told the Guardian.

Meanwhile, in China, where officials lifted their draconian zero-Covid policies late last year, the government is devoting $25 billion for “prevention and control” activities at the local level, wrote the South China Morning Post. The country seems to have put the pandemic behind it. Also, the US and China have loosened restrictions on traveling between the two countries, added CNN.

But nobody knows exactly how many Chinese people have died since stop-the-spread restrictions were repealed, the Atlantic magazine explained.

Indian officials don’t have that luxury. They are seeing an uptick in virus cases, raising questions about whether another populous country might now need to institute stricter measures to protect public health, noted the Economic Times.

Despite India and other hot spots for Covid, many believe the pandemic is behind us. What’s in front, meanwhile, are the lessons.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

NEED TO KNOW

Don’t Leave a Message

KENYA

Move over, quiet quitting. Employees who are sick and tired of bosses calling them after the end of the business day and at weekends are pushing for laws to maintain boundaries between work and non-work time.

In Kenya, for example, lawmakers have proposed a law that would grant workers the right to ignore their boss’s calls unless they are on the clock, reported CBS News. If workers respond while off duty, furthermore, they are entitled to compensation.

“Technology has led to employees being called late at midnight and yet some of them are non-essential staff,” Kenyan senator Samson Cherargei told the Star, a local newspaper. “Most of these issues have led to (the) breakdown of families and lack of quality time.”

An employer association, the Federation of Kenya Employers, said the proposal was an intrusion into the private sector that would make it harder for companies to hire workers and more difficult for officials to entice firms operating on the black market to become legitimate, wrote the Monitor, an Uganda-based newspaper.

Such debates are raging around the world. After France enacted a similar law in 2017, researchers said workers become more productive due to more leisure time, according to research cited in Quartz. German car giant Volkswagen even turns off its email servers after work ends, added National Public Radio. Others, however, say the so-called “right to disconnect” hamstrings those who want to work and earn more.

Remote working is also helping to drive the issue. Working from home or other non-office locations can increase workers’ “well-being and work engagement,” but only if they work regular hours, the World Economic Forum noted. Otherwise, work takes over one’s life and the benefits of remote work plummet.

Other dimensions of the issue complicate that story, however. Laws stipulating the right to disconnect really only apply to knowledge workers, argued Toronto Metropolitan University professional communication professor Ope Akanbi in the Conversation. Ambulance drivers, for example, work in person or they’re not working at all. Lawyers, doctors, media, marketing and other professionals easily blend work and life, on the other hand. The government won’t alter their situations. They need to figure out their own work-life balances.

Filipinos are now addressing those questions. Michael Tan, a columnist for the Philippines-based English-language newspaper the Inquirer, largely supported a right-to-disconnect bill now under consideration in the capital of Manila. But he noted that he wouldn’t want the law to prevent him from taking after-hours meetings with others in different time zones.

Whether one is a lawmaker or a middle manager, micromanaging the world’s workers is arguably folly.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!

Subscribe