During a G20 meeting on Afghanistan on Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a roughly $1 billion aid package to Afghanistan and neighboring countries taking in refugees.
Why it matters: The aid is intended to help avert a looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan but does not indicate a legitimization of the Taliban, the European Commission underscored in the press release.
The life of influential Cuban poet and writer José Lezama Lima, who was heralded by the Cuban Revolution only to be silenced later for homoerotic writings and critiques of the regime, is celebrated in a film premiering this Friday.
The big picture: The VOCES/PBS documentary “Letters to Eloisa” is told through the haunting letters written by Lezama to his sister in exile, narrated by Alfred Molina.
Music is considered an escape for many, but "El Sistema" — the popular name for the National Symphony of Youth and Children's Orchestras — offers any child in Venezuela the possibility of a career in music.
Why it matters: El Sistema is a free classical music education program started in the 1970s to ensure that music would no longer be "a monopoly of elites" but a "right for all the people."
China's new regulationlimiting children under 18 to just three hours of online games per week may be devastating for dedicated gamers, but gaming companies — and the advertisers that rely on them — will likely be fine if they can adapt.
Why it matters: China comprises about a quarter of the world's gaming market; the country's mobile gaming industry alone raked in more than $29 billion in 2020.
Whether it's Google's Project Dragonfly, Zoom's termination of U.S.-based Tiananmen memorials, or LinkedIn's growing censorship, former Google global news policy lead Jacob Helberg thinks there is a fatal flaw underlying attempts by U.S. companies to make it in China's market.
Key takeaway: “I don’t believe in one company, two systems, I don’t believe it's tenable," Helberg told Axios, riffing on Beijing's formulation of "one country, two systems" as a now-defunct model for integrating a liberal Hong Kong into an authoritarian China.
China, along with Russia, North Korea and Iran, is using commercial and dual-use technology to challenge democratic security and sovereignty, former Google global news policy lead Jacob Helberg argues in a new book.
Why it matters: It's a new type of hidden conflict that Helberg, who helped lead Google's internal efforts to fight global disinformation and state-backed foreign interference between 2016 and 2020, calls a "gray war."
After blocking the profiles of several U.S. journalists, including mine, from its China-based website, LinkedIn has repeatedly avoided answeringkey questions about the censorship.
Why it matters: LinkedIn has promised transparency to its users regarding its China operations.
The delay of the U.K.'s first coronavirus lockdown and the government's failure to prioritize social care is one of the country's worst "public health failures" and led to thousands of avoidable deaths, British lawmakers said in a report Tuesday.
Driving the news: The inquiry was aimed at discovering why the U.K. "did significantly worse in terms of covid deaths than many countries" in the early days of the pandemic, according to the the report, compiled by the Health and Social Care Committee.
The messiness of international politics is on full display this week in Washington, D.C., at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. That's inevitably going to make it harder for the storied institutions to help the world's poorest countries recover from the pandemic.
Why it matters: The IMF's leadership has never been weaker — managing director Kristalina Georgieva is weakened by scandal, while her #2, Trump nominee Geoffrey Okamoto, is generally regarded as inexperienced and otiose.
China Evergrande’s debt problems aren’t an anomaly. Signs of stress are piling up in China’s real estate development sector, and more companies are signaling they may not be able to pay back their debt.
Driving the news: Fellow builder Modern Land asked its bondholders if it could delay a bond payment by three months, and Sinic said it will likely default next week, Reuters reports.
Internet freedom around the world has dropped for the 11th consecutive year, according to an annual report from Freedom House, a non-profit focused on expanding freedom and democracy.
Why it matters: The findings suggest that a broader shift in power from tech companies to nation states over the past year has resulted in "a record-breaking crackdown" on freedom of expression online.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared while attending a weapons exhibition that the country had "invincible" defense capabilities as he accused the U.S. of being the source of regional tensions, state media reported Tuesday.
Why it matters: Kim said in a speech at Monday's event that the country was strengthening its weapons arsenal but didn't want a war, per the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
