September 23, 2024
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The World Today
Israel, Hezbollah trade fire
Zelenskyy begins US tour
Sri Lanka elects a Marxist
German far right rises
The US-China debate
Biden’s last Quad
Chinese AI workarounds
Climate Week begins
France’s future floods
Bacteria in space
An American performance artist and composer’s latest interdisciplinary work mediates on the universe’s interconnectivity.
1
Hezbollah, Israel trade overnight strikes
Karamallah Daher/Reuters
Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel Sunday after a wave of Israeli strikes on Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon. The strikes followed last week’s explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies — blamed on Israel — that killed at least 39 and injured some 3,500 people. Israel appears to be giving Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group and Lebanon’s largest political force, an “implied ultimatum,” The Wall Street Journal wrote: “Make a deal to pull back from Israel’s northern border, or go to war.” Israel’s stated goal is returning displaced Israelis back home in the country’s north, but Washington is warning against war, with the White House national security adviser stressing there are “better ways” to return those citizens.
2
Zelenskyy goes to Pennsylvania
Zelenskyy meets members of the US Congress in Washington. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to visit a Pennsylvania munitions factory ahead of traveling to New York for the United Nations General Assembly this week. As Kyiv continues to pressure the US and other allies to authorize the use of Western long-range weapons to strike Russia, the Ukrainian leader will also meet with US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump. Zelenskyy’s visit to Pennsylvania comes as both Harris and Trump ramp up campaigning in the key swing state, with Harris hoping to capitalize on the state’s Polish American community’s “animosity toward Russia and on Trump’s hesitancy to back Ukraine,” The Associated Press reported.
3
Leftist elected Sri Lanka president
Sri Lanka elected a leftist president Sunday, as the country seeks to push past years of economic crisis. Anura Kumara Dissanayake ran an anti-corruption campaign that blamed the incumbents for the country’s civil unrest and first-ever debt default in 2022 — enough to persuade voters who may have been concerned by his Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna’s “violent past” of leading armed insurrections against the state, the BBC noted. “His ascension signals the depth of frustration among Sri Lankans with the ruling establishment,” Bloomberg wrote, adding that Dissanayake has pledged to renegotiate a 2023 International Monetary Fund $3 billion bailout that stipulated unpopular austerity measures and tax hikes, although doing so could put the country under further strain in the short-term.
4
Centrists fend off German far right
Karina Hessland/Reuters
Germany’s far right is set to gain seats in another state legislature but narrowly fall short of a win, exit polls showed Sunday. The Alternative für Deutschland has surged with its populist, anti-migrant stance, and the party’s predicted second-place finish in east German state Brandenburg follows its first statewide win earlier this month in nearby Thuringia. The results will come as a relief to the ruling center-left party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which is set to finish first. The election, though, was also seen as a lose-lose for Scholz: Local party leaders distanced themselves from the chancellor and didn’t campaign with him, and their victory could put pressure on Scholz to step back ahead of Germany’s 2025 federal elections.
5
How the China-US struggle may end
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
A hawkish stance toward China is a rare point of bipartisan agreement in the US, but divisions are starting to show as the latter’s presidential election approaches, Foreign Policy argued. While Republicans and Democrats are splintering on how to best counter China’s economic might and growing security threat, there is a grander debate, the outlet wrote: “what the end goal of U.S.-China competition should be, or whether the United States should even articulate one.” Some argue in favor of a regime change in Beijing, while others argue for a “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach. “With the possibility of a second Trump presidency on the horizon,” the outlet notes, “which breed of hawk is ascendant matters far beyond Washington.”
6
Biden strengthens Quad alliance
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
President Joe Biden hosted leaders from Australia, India, and Japan for the last Quad summit of his presidency in Delaware this weekend. The countries agreed to boost security cooperation, particularly in Asia’s key waterways. Biden stressed Quad was “here to stay,” as he aims “to institutionalize the body” before he leaves his role and before Japan and Australia hold elections next year, analysts told Nikkei Asia. Though the White House has insisted that China is “not the focus” of the alliance, the four leaders voiced collective concern over Beijing’s escalations in the Pacific region, while Biden was overheard saying Chinese President Xi Jinping was being aggressive in the region to “buy diplomatic space.”
7
Chinese startups work around chip bans
Chinese startups, banned from buying foreign-made chips needed to run artificial intelligence models, are devising ingenious workarounds — and Western firms are paying attention. After the US started blocking the sale of most semiconductor chips to China in 2022, Chinese firms have made software to make up for the lack of hardware, The Economist wrote. DeepSeek, for example, developed an AI that consists of many sub-networks, which each deal with discrete tasks, lowering its computation cost and making it faster. Other firms, meanwhile, are making small AIs for personal devices, like smartphones. US tech companies Meta, Nvidia, and Google are now trying similar approaches. “For Chinese firms, unlike those in the West, doing more with less is not optional. But this may be no bad thing.”
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Live Journalism
September 24, 2024 | New York City | Request Invitation
Seven-time All-Star, 2022-23 NBA Most Valuable Player, and current Philadelphia 76er Joel Embiid will join the stage at The Next 3 Billion summit — the premiere U.S. convening dedicated to unlocking one of the biggest social and economic opportunities of our time: connecting the unconnected.
8
NYC Climate Week kicks off
New York Climate Week is taking place this week adjacent to the United Nations General Assembly. Described as a “Burning Man for the climate geeks,” Climate Week has long been criticized in for generating more hot air than action, but its concurrence with UNGA means it is also considered a preview for the UN’s own climate conferences, a Council on Foreign Relations researcher noted, with the next, COP29, set for November in Azerbaijan: “The same questions gnawing at the COP process also loom over Climate Week: How much do these mass convenings truly accomplish?” Enthusiasm for global climate pledges is waning as the world braces for a potential second Trump term, a former Obama administration climate envoy told Newsweek.
9
France confronts future flood problem
Lou Benoist/AFP via Getty Images
A long-planned French housing development has been canceled over fears of climate-change-driven sea level rise. The huge Nouveau Bassin project would have transformed a strip of industrial wasteland in Caen, Normandy, into 2,300 homes and tens of thousands of square feet of office space. But in 2023, more than a decade after its conception, experts raised concerns that the region could see up to 3 feet of sea level rise by 2100, five times higher than earlier estimates. The development’s area is barely two feet above the water level of the canal which links it to the sea, and the planner in charge of the project told AFP that “If the sea rises by one meter, it will flood here every week.”
10
Bacteria adapt to life in space
NASA
Bacteria have adapted to life on board the International Space Station, evolving a distinct space microbiome. Bacteria go where humans go, and the ISS has been in space for 25 years. Scientists have monitored the station’s microbial ecosystem for a decade, and have found that the microbes have evolved methods to repair their DNA from the damage done by high radiation levels in space and proteins that help them survive in microgravity. Some of these genetic changes could make the bacteria more dangerous to humans, the scientists cautioned. “These microbes have found ways to live and possibly even thrive in space,” one researcher told New Scientist, “and understanding how they do this could have big benefits for space exploration and health.”
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Flagging
September 23:
French President Emmanuel Macron meets the country’s new cabinet at the presidential palace.
A solo exhibition of work by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama opens in London.
A Russian spacecraft carrying a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts is expected to land in Kazakhstan.
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Curio
Hartwig Art Foundation
Multidisciplinary artist Meredith Monk aims to reunite humanity with her latest immersive performance, The New York Times wrote. Titled Indra’s Net, Monk’s latest show — which first ran as virtual performances during the pandemic — employs “abstract vignettes… pairings of voices and instruments,” and “wordless vocalise.” The story is inspired by the Hindu and Buddhist tale of Indra, king of the gods, who stretches a net across the universe so that everything is connected. “We get tangled up in our heads so much,” Monk told the outlet, adding “I feel that when you see this ensemble onstage, you see an alternative way of thinking about human behavior.” The show opens at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory Monday.
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