Flagship

Zelenskyy to attend G-7 in person

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will appear in person at the G-7 summit in Japan this weekend. The leaders of seven rich countries are in Hiroshima, and will discuss further Russia sanctions and supplying Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets: Zelenskyy will take the risk of international travel to influence those talks. It also demonstrates his confidence in his government’s stability in his absence, The New York Times reported. He will arrive in Japan late Saturday, after flying via Saudi Arabia to attend the Arab League summit in Jeddah. A new suite of G-7 sanctions are set to target, among other things, Russia’s lucrative diamond sector, one of the country’s few remaining export industries not yet touched by the restrictions.

Twitter and Google win terror cases

Silicon Valley won a huge legal victory after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that social media companies were not responsible for terrorist content on their platforms. Under U.S. law, digital platforms such as blogs, social media, or comment sections are not “publishers”: The New York Times is responsible for libel or death threats in its articles, but not in its comment threads. Two lawsuits challenged this idea, trying to blame Twitter and Google for content from the Islamic State terror group on their platforms. But the Supreme Court said that while “bad actors” like IS could misuse social media, “the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.”

Syria’s Assad joins Arab summit

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be welcomed at the Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia today for the first time in more than a decade. The dictator — who used chemical weapons and bombed civilian hospitals during a protracted civil war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced — has been rehabilitated in the Arab world, which previously stood alongside the U.S. and Europe in the belief that he should never be accepted. The White House has been muted on the subject, but a bipartisan bill in Congress seeks to bar any U.S. administration from recognizing Assad, and to tighten sanctions geared at Syria’s isolation, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reported.

Army-run airline to open in Mexico

Mexico approved the creation of a new passenger airline run by the country’s army. Since the start of President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s administration in 2018, Mexico’s armed forces have gained an unprecedented role in civilian life. Despite constitutional checks, they are now involved in everything from policing to building train lines and running the country’s ports. The Airline of the Mexican State, as the new carrier will be called, is the seventh army-owned company approved during López Obrador’s time in power. Before his presidency there were none. The government expects the airline to start operating by the end of the year.

China boom may be slowing

Signs are mounting that China’s economic recovery may be losing steam. The country saw faster-than-expected growth in the first quarter, buoying hopes that the world’s second-biggest economy could help the world ward off a slowdown or even a recession. But recent official data suggests China may have already released most of its pent-up demand after years of harsh COVID-19 restrictions. Lower-than-expected retail sales, shrinking imports, and worse-than-anticipated bank-loan data have added to worries. “As disappointment kicks in, we see a rising risk of downward spiral,” analysts from the investment bank Nomura said.

Amazon’s $13B India investment

Amazon Web Services, the internet giant’s cloud services arm, said it would invest $13 billion in India by the end of the decade. It is the latest cloud giant to expand in India, following Google and Microsoft, attracted by the country’s growing market but also driven by government efforts to store more data locally. India has pushed for increased Big Tech investments in recent years. The country cites its allure both as a market, with a young and increasingly wealthy population, and as a manufacturing hub, offering tax incentives to companies looking to diversify their supply chains away from China in particular.

S. Africa faces worst-ever blackouts

South Africa’s state power utility warned that the country faces its worst-ever power shortfall in the coming months. With winter looming, triggering increased demand, Eskom — grappling with rampant corruption, an aging fleet, and major plants going offline — said power may have to be cut for half a day at a time. The worsening crisis has huge impacts for Africa’s most industrialized economy, threatening growth as companies are forced to scale back production. It’s also affecting inflation as homes and businesses increase their use of expensive diesel generators to fill in the gap. “This is going to be a very difficult winter,” a senior Eskom official said.

Japan’s tech revival

After a decades-long lull in innovation, Japan’s tech scene is finally booming again. The shift, jolted by lockdowns which made many in Japan aware that their digital technology was due an overhaul, has led to a surge of venture capital to the country. Despite being the world’s third-largest economy, Japan has only six unicorns — privately held companies valued at more than $1 billion. That’s less than half as many as Brazil, and a tiny fraction of the U.S.’s more than 600. “There’s a big generational thing happening in Japan,” an entrepreneur in Tokyo told Rest of World. “But you have to find the right balance between old Japan and the new Japan emerging.”

Floating wind farms gather pace

A Dublin-based startup is building a pilot model of a huge floating wind farm. The open ocean is ideal for wind power: With no obstructive hills or buildings, the wind blows faster than on land or near the coast. The farm, planned for off the Portuguese coast, is also far from any NIMBY backlash. But these projects face major engineering challenges. Installing turbines in deep water, and then keeping them operating in heavy seas, is complicated. IEEE Spectrum reported that Gazelle Wind Power has designed a model with pivoting, stabilized arms to keep the turbine vertical. It is also much lighter than conventional models. Norway opened a floating wind farm last year, and the U.S. invested heavily in the technology, hoping to power 5 million homes with it by 2035.

Nadal to retire next season

Rafael Nadal will retire after the 2024 tennis season. The Spaniard withdrew injured from this year’s French Open, which he has won 14 times, winning 112 games, losing only three: “A level of dominance unmatched … in the long annals of a sport that dates to the 1800s,” noted Sky Sports. Nadal’s near-two-decade rivalry with Roger Federer, who retired last year, includes perhaps the greatest tennis match of all time, the 2006 Wimbledon final, eventually won by Federer after five epic sets and immortalized in a David Foster Wallace New York Times article on their contrasting styles — Federer’s “clinical artistry” and Nadal’s “passionate machismo.” Nadal, Federer, and Novak Djokovic have dominated 21st-century tennis, and no stars of comparable stature are yet to replace them.

• South Korean nurses go on strike after the country’s president vetoed a bill — opposed by doctors and nursing assistants — designed to improve nurses’ working conditions.
• Greece goes to the polls for a national election on Sunday.
• Pop legend Janet Jackson to auction off outfits from her music videos and shows on Sunday.

Mexico became the 17th country to include a non-binary choice on its passports. Launched on International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, the first passport was given to Ociel Baena, a non-binary electoral magistrate. The country’s foreign minister called it “a quantum leap” for non-binary people in Mexico. Critics noted, however, that the passport muddles the differences between gender and sex. “It’s counterproductive because it confuses the concepts and reinforces a stigma against our community,” a non-binary rights activist told Reuters.

A new strategy board game unpacks the historic fight to give women the right to vote. In the card-driven Votes for Women, players navigate the challenges of the U.S. suffrage movement between 1848-1920. They can compete as suffragists, campaigning to secure the ratification of the 19th Amendment, or the opposition, trying to prevent its passage. The makers hope to challenge the traditionally male-targeted historical games genre with this new offering, Washingtonian reported. Calling it one of the best new releases this year, Polygon said: “Votes for Women is a template for how historical strategy games should be presented to a modern audience hungry for new experiences at the table.”

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