June 15-16
- Tough times for cosmopolitanism
- Florida bans book banning books
- Young haystacker
- … and much more!
🎲 OUR WEEKLY NEWS QUIZ
What do you remember from the news this week?
1. What unlikely topic was Pope Francis invited to discuss at the G7 meeting in Italy?
2. Which Latin American country was rocked by protests over controversial economic reforms?
3. Switzerland rejected a court judgment that ordered it to do more about what?
4. What product did Denmark recall from shelves? Spicy noodles / Smelly cheese / Rotten anchovies / Bootleg vodka
[Answers at the bottom of this newsletter]
#️⃣ TRENDING
The European parliamentary elections inevitably became trending on TikTok in Italy this week. Young people are showing off the outfits they are going to vote in shortly thereafter, clearly hinting at their political leanings. Rainbow flags, printed T-shirts with anti-fascist sentences on them and boys in skirts populated the TikTok channel for about a week – “the vote is secret, but this is how I am going to the polls!”
🎭 5 CULTURE THINGS TO KNOW
• Uganda reclaims stolen artifacts from Cambridge University. Uganda has reclaimed 39 artifacts (including pots, headdresses and human remains) that were collected on its territory by British colonial administrators and anthropologists more than a century ago. The reclaiming process started in 2019, and is part of efforts to bring back to Uganda all the artifacts collected by the British Empire during its colonization of the African country, which lasted from 1894 until 1962.
• French singer and actress Françoise Hardy dies at 80. A cultural and fashion icon at home and abroad, she was a leading figure of France's yé-yé pop movement, albeit a reluctant superstar. Hardy, who died of cancer on June 11, will be remembered for hits like “Le temps de l’amour'' and “Tous les garçons et les filles,” which gained international fame, while her movie career included a role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin.
• Book banning book banned in Florida. Florida’s Indian River County school board voted this week to ban Ban This Book, after a parent in the community challenged it. The 2017 children’s book by Alan Gratz tells the story of a fourth-grader who sets up a library of banished books after finding out that her favorite book was banished, following — ironically — a challenge brought up by a parent in her county.
• BTS's Jin completes military service. Members of K-Pop band BTS are on track to finish their military service: Jin, BTS’s eldest member, wrapped up his 18-month military service, which he had started in December 2022. The perspective of Jin being reunited with fans sent shares of the band’s label HYBE up 1.01%. Men in South Korea are required to serve 18 to 21 months, either in the military or in civil service.
• Academy Museum to change exhibit about Jewish personalities in Hollywood amid criticism. The Los Angeles-based Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced it would make changes to its permanent exhibit dedicated to Jewish pioneers in the Hollywood film industry. This comes after a group called United Jewish Writers criticized the attribution of words such as “tyrant,” “womanizer” and “predator” to some of the personalities featured in the exhibition. In a letter signed by more than 300 Hollywood executives, the group acknowledged “the value in confronting Hollywood’s problematic past,” but dubbed this effort as “antisemitic” and a “double standard.”
✊ Make nationalism great again?
From Donald Trump to UK Eurosceptics and the Catalan independence movement, it's tough times for cosmopolitanism. Manuel Arias Maldonado looks at the concept of nationalism and the fact that it is “an uncomfortable object of analysis because it appeals to passion rather than reason,” the lecturer writes in Spanish online media outlet Ethic. The underlying issue behind nationalism is that as history has shown, love for one's nation can take an aggressive and even violent form.
Read the full story: Why The Roots Of Resurgent Nationalism Run So Deep — And Wide
🚨 A look inside the “worst prison in Italy”
Built more than a century ago to hold a maximum of 40 inmates, Canton Mombello, located in Brescia, east of Milan, now hosts a 150: This is the most overcrowded prison in Italy, with an overcapacity of 200%. These conditions have pushed 35 inmates to commit suicide this year alone. “There are too many of us,” explains an inmate to Donatella Stasio, in an article for Turin-based daily La Stampa. “It's like being locked in an elevator with so many people. In real life, the door opens at some point. But in prison, it never does.”
Read the full story: In Italy's Overcrowded Prisons, A Plague Of Inmate Suicide Has Begun To Spread
🛒 Local stores vs. big supermarkets vs. online shopping
Countless rural municipalities in France are struggling to keep their local grocery stores, which usually serve as the economic and social heartbeat of small towns, amid competition with big supermarkets and online shopping. Our consumption habits have changed in an increasingly globalized world, fueling even more isolation as these local venues are forced to shut down. “Is the battle to save these local stores some kind of expression of nostalgia of the past, or fear of a disconnected future,” Worldcrunch’s Anne-Sophie Goninet asks.
Read the full story: Brittany Postcard: Saving The Only Store In Town (With Amazon Just A Click Away)
🌾 BRIGHT IDEA
Mia De La Cruz, a young innovator from Dearborn, Michigan, has come up with the “Farmers Friend” — a process meant to lessen the strain of hay stacking for farmers. De La Cruz created and calibrated a haystack-grabbing machine working along three axes that not only allows for a more fluid and efficient stacking process, but also lessen the workload and man and woman power needed.
🐴 SMILE OF THE WEEK
Przewalski's wild horses have returned to Kazakhstan thanks to a decade-long program overseen by the Prague Zoo. Following the success of a similar initiative in Mongolia, there is hope that the current seven horses, together with another 40 to be soon reintroduced to Kazakh plains, will establish a thriving population of around 400 within five years. The horses’ return to their ancestral lands is worth celebrating, considering the species went extinct in the wild in the 1960s.
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⏩ LOOKING AHEAD
• The Summit on Peace in Ukraine begins today in Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland. Nearly 90 countries and organizations will attend the two-day conference, which aims to map out first steps toward peace in Ukraine, even though Russia won’t attend the summit.
• The European People’s Party (EPP) is due to appear before a Brussels court next week in a case that could force it to remove Ursula von der Leyen as their candidate for the European Commission presidency. The plaintiff argues that von der Leyen, who is seeking a second mandate, violated Charter of fundamental rights, several EU treaties and the commissioner code of conduct during her presidency, which would make her ineligible for the EU’s top job.
• Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha this weekend, which marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. It is the second major religious holiday after Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. On the first day of the celebration, those who can sacrifice an animal and share their meals with those in need.
⁉️ WHAT THE WORLD
From New Zealand’s “burp tax” to a Vatican stand up special, take a quick world tour of the internationally weird!
News quiz answers:
1. At the G7 hosted in Italy, world leaders turned to Pope Francis for his advice and opinion on Artificial Intelligence. After an AI-generated picture of him wearing a puffer coat went viral last year, the pope focused his intervention on how AI can be used to do good, in the first such summit to feature a pontiff as an invited participant.
2. Demonstrators in Buenos Aires, Argentina, threw petrol bombs and stones and set cars alight after the Senate approved President Javier Milei's controversial economic reform package. The reforms, aimed at reviving the country's dwindling economy, include declaring a state of economic emergency, cutting pensions and watering down labor rights.
3. Switzerland’s parliament has rejected a historic climate change ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. The country, which has failed to meet targets to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, had been urged by the Strasbourg-based Court to do more to avoid climate disasters.
4. Denmark has recalled three types of spicy instant ramen noodle products from a popular South Korean brand, claiming it to be too spicy and even at risk of “acute poisoning.” The product has been the focus of a social media challenge in which children and young people were daring each other to eat the highly spicy noodles, which posed a health hazard.
✍️ Newsletter by Worldcrunch
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