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Dear Önder, It’s showtime! Dozens of world leaders are attending “high-level week” at the United Nations, and GZERO is in the building with them. Be sure to follow us on X and Instagram for up-to-the-minute reporting. Now, in today’s edition:
Enjoy! – The Daily crew  Top Israeli officials split over escalation with HezbollahHezbollah fired over 150 rockets into northern Israel early Sunday, striking as far south as Haifa, Israel’s largest port, prompting Israel to retaliate with dozens of airstrikes in Lebanon on Monday, as both sides got closer to a wider war after nearly a year of escalating cross-border exchanges. The violent exchange followed last week’s Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon and the detonation of thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies across the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to restore security in northern Israel, where tens of thousands of Israelis have been evacuated. “No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities,” he warned. Israel’s Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi said Sunday the military would do “whatever it takes to remove threats against Israel.” But Israel’s leadership is split on whether to escalate the conflict with a ground war. The head of the IDF’s Northern command is pressing for an incursion to create a “buffer zone,” while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Halevi have expressed doubts over expanding the war against Hezbollah, a more formidable foe than Hamas. Meanwhile, at a funeral Sunday for a Hezbollah commander killed last week in Beirut, deputy chief Naim Qassem warned of an “open-ended battle of reckoning." But Hezbollah too must tread carefully – any such battle would entail immense pain for a Lebanese population already struggling with a severe economic crisis.US bolsters pacific alliance amid China concernsIn his final months in office, US President Joe Biden is looking to bolster the China-wary alliance known as “The Quad,” which brings together the US, Australia, Japan, and India. This weekend he hosted Quad leaders at his home in Wilmington, Del. While the White House claimed the summit targeted no specific country, a joint statement condemned “coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea,” a clear shot at Beijing. And in a so-called “hot mic” moment, Biden commented that “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region.” Beijing, for its part, sees the Quad as a “threat and challenge to regional peace and security.” The Quad summit announced expanded collaboration in maritime patrols, disaster relief, cervical cancer vaccines, tech fellowships, and clean energy projects. The Quad hasn’t always been a top priority for its members – it lapsed almost entirely between 2008 and 2017. But when asked about the future of the group following the approaching departures of both Biden and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese predicted the Quad will endure, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated “The Quad is here to stay.” To underscore that, he offered to host the group’s next gathering in 2025. France gets a government - but how long will it last?A droite, s’il vous plaît! Three months after France’s snap election produced a hung parliament, President Emmanuel Macron finally unveiled a new government with a distinct rightward tilt. Led by conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier, the new 39-member cabinet includes 10 key figures from the establishment center-right Republican Party, including staunch conservative Bruno Retailleau as interior minister, overseeing immigration. Macron loyalist Sébastien Lecornu will remain defense minister, while Antoine Armand, a low-profile member of Macron’s centrist alliance, took finance. The only left-winger in the cabinet is independent Didier Migaud, the new justice minister. Given that the left-wing New Popular Front alliance won the most seats, Macron’s choices put the government on thin ice. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon dubbed it "a government of the general election losers" and the New Popular Front has threatened a no-confidence motion. That could come as early as October, when Barnier must submit the government’s 2025 budget plan. Barnier may need to draw support from right-wing parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. But that’s dicey too. Although National Rally has no government portfolios, it has enough votes to bring it down if it works with the left wing. Cooperating with archrivals might prove too high a hurdle, but we’re watching how Barnier navigates the dangerous waters. Sri Lankans reject the Old GuardSri Lankan election authorities announced Sunday that Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist, will become the island’s next president, in a rebuke of the political establishment. Outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe congratulated Dissanayake on Sunday and urged him to continue working toward Sri Lanka’s economic recovery after defaulting on its sovereign debts in 2022. The election was widely seen as a referendum on the austerity measures that Wickresmesinghe imposed as part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund. Although they brought down inflation and stabilized foreign exchange reserves, they also inflicted pain on ordinary Sri Lankans, who were swayed by Dissanayake’s campaign promises to renegotiate terms with the IMF. But Dissanayake will need to tread carefully as roughly $3 billion in IMF support is on the line. He also must find a way to kickstart a moribund economy, and here’s where geopolitics come into play. In recent years, Colombo has looked to China for major infrastructure investments, only to see revenues fall well short of expectations. Despite Sri Lanka losing ownership of a major Chinese-backed port, Dissanayake is expected to continue deepening ties with Beijing, even as the US backs its own Sri Lankan port project.
 How can technology and artificial intelligence be harnessed to support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and create a positive impact in the Global South? This question is top of mind for many gathering at the UN's 79th General Assembly in New York. Our livestream panel discussion, "Live from the United Nations: Securing Our Digital Future," will examine these key issues on Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 5:30 p.m. ET, broadcasting live from inside United Nations headquarters as the first day of high-level General Debate concludes. The discussion will be moderated by Folly Bah Thibault, a journalist and senior presenter for Al-Jazeera English, and will feature a distinguished panel including:
Watch live at gzeromedia.com/globalstage on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024 at 5:30 PM ET. Live from the United Nations: Securing Our Digital Future
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 “What kind of world would you like to live in?” asked Hello Kitty – yes, the cartoon cat – before a group of youth leaders gathered in the UN’s General Assembly hall on Friday. They were there to represent countries and causes at the Summit for the Future, a high-level meeting that culminated in the “grown-up” world leaders endorsing a 60-point Pact for the Future on Sunday. That pact, adopted by the UN’s 193 member states, includes everything from a compact on AI governance, to urging countries to supercharge their sustainability efforts, to pushing for Africa’s inclusion on the Security Council, to devising a global governance framework for preventing war in outer space. But a key part of the Pact is a “Declaration on Future Generations,” which promises to create “meaningful opportunities for young people to participate in the decisions that shape their lives, especially at the global level.” And that’s where the UN, it seems, has a problem. During the summit’s opening ceremony, Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged that the underrepresentation of young people at the UN was an issue that the institution is keen to address. As of 2022, only 3.7% of UN employees were under 30 years old. Guterres pledged to improve that, saying it is important to have young people “working [at the UN] daily, where the decisions are made, where ideas are born.” The UN, he said, is putting mechanisms in place to “ensure that in the [UN] decision-making process, there are moments where there is an active intervention of young people, not just their consultation.” But many young people felt that they should have been involved in the finalization of the Pact for the Future on Sunday, which they reported only involved UN stakeholders. “Almost none of the youth delegates were really engaged in the process" of endorsing the pact, said Ukraine’s Youth Delegate to the UN, Yuri Lomikovskyi, age 22. “A declaration on youth participation was made without youth participation.” He faulted the pact for repeating old initiatives and frameworks – like the Paris Agreement, the UN Charter, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights – without adding “mechanisms to actually make them happen, especially amidst modern challenges,” including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza wars, the climate emergency, and democratic backsliding around the world. Josh Oxby, 26, the youth Global Focal Point for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal on energy, expressed a similar concern about accountability. “It's all very well and good to commit to these ideas and to focus on meaningful engagement,” he said, “but the issue now is what can we do to hold it to account or challenge it in the future?” These views represent a broader feeling among the youth delegates. In a live poll conducted during the event, only 3% of the 669 youth participants said they felt they had direct power in shaping the Pact’s agenda, with several accusing the UN of “youth-washing.” The youth delegates said they felt valued, but only to a certain degree. “When there are young people in the room, we make the older generations think about their own families and kids, " says the UN’s youth development delegate Asma Rouabhia, 28, “but there is a feeling that because young people are not as experienced, we don’t really know what we are talking about.” “I might not have all the technical knowledge, but I have the personal passion,” she added. Rouabhia became an energy advocate because insufficient energy access in her native Tunisia caused her mother to nearly freeze while giving birth to her. The UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs, Felipe Paullier, says that while polls show that young people have outsized faith in multilateralism, the UN “risks losing them if it is not conscious about the changes it needs to make structurally, to increase youth participation.” “Fifty percent of the world’s population is under 30 years old,” says Paullier, “if [the UN] doesn’t make these changes, we are screwed.”
 United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned at last year’s General Assembly, “It’s reform or rupture.” But reforming the UN to meet the economic and political realities of today’s world, one dividing it further into coalitions and blocs, is no easy task. In an exclusive interview for GZERO World, Guterres sat with Ian Bremmer on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to discuss his vision for the future of the UN during his last term in office. Between ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the climate crisis threatening the lives of millions, a broken Security Council, and the growing power (and existential risk) of AI, there’s a lot to discuss. Can the UN adapt for the future? Can it show the world multilateralism still has a place amid all the fragmentation? Watch our exclusive interview to find out.
 45: Israeli soldiers on Sunday raided the office of Al Jazeera in Ramallah, the capital of the occupied West Bank, ordering it to close for at least 45 days. Israeli authorities said the facility was “being used to incite terror” without immediately supplying evidence. 31-32: Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party narrowly edged out the far-right Alternative for Germany in local elections in Brandenburg, the former east German state that surrounds Berlin. Exit polls show the SPD earning 31-32% of the vote to the AfD’s 29%-30%. The AfD has performed well in the former East, ringing up a historical victory in Thuringia earlier this month. 51: At least 51 people died in a gas explosion at a coal mine in Iran’s South Khorasan province on Saturday, and another 20 are injured. The proximate cause seems to have been a buildup of methane, which must be properly vented from coal mines. Rescue operations were underway Sunday to evacuate workers. 2600: The price of gold broke $2,600 per ounce on Friday for the first time, as investors continued to buy the metal as a hedge against rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, as well as concerns that Fed rate cuts could weaken the dollar. Other precious metals, including silver, platinum, and palladium, have all seen price declines in the last month. Analysts say gold’s run – up 27% on the year – may soon come to an end. 100: In other overpriced metal news, the Trump campaign has begun hawking $100 commemorative silver coins with the former president’s face on them. It’s Trump’s latest effort to grab more cash for the campaign, following Trump sneakers, Trump Bibles, Trump NFTs, Trump playing cards, and much more. In case you’re weighing, by the way, each of the $100 coins only contains only about $30 worth of silver.
This edition of GZERO Daily was produced by writers Riley Callanan, Tasha Kheiriddin, and Matthew Kendrick, and editor Alex Kliment. |
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