Flagship

IMF urges China reinvention

China must prioritize consumer spending to revive its lagging economy, the head of the International Monetary Fund told Chinese officials and global business leaders Sunday. Kristalina Georgieva said Beijing should “reinvent itself,” finishing incomplete housing projects abandoned by developers and focusing fiscal policy on “boosting the spending power of individuals and families.” China has stopped short of aggressive stimulus measures, but an IMF analysis found that broad consumer-centric changes could add $3.5 trillion to the economy over the next 15 years. Georgieva’s remarks came at the start of the China Development Forum, during which Beijing hopes to lure foreign business after outside investment dropped last year.

Russia attack exposes vulnerabilities

The deadly attack on a Moscow concert venue on Friday exposed how Russia’s hyper-focus on the Ukraine war has undercut its security on other fronts, analysts said. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the violence, which killed more than 130 people, though Russian President Vladimir Putin linked Kyiv to the attack, without evidence, a charge both Ukraine and its allies including the United States rejected. Moscow has in recent years shifted its attention away from terror organizations like the Islamic State, the Financial Times noted, allowing the group to exploit “Russia’s wartime distractions, ethnic tensions and economic difficulties,” The Economist wrote. The attack “smashed through Putin’s efforts to present Russia as strong, united and resilient,” The Washington Post wrote.

Israel pressures Gaza hospitals

Israel reportedly besieged two hospitals in Gaza and continued carrying out military operations at a third. Israel has insisted its efforts are “precise,” and says hospitals in Gaza are used by Hamas militants as bases and hideouts. Palestinian health workers deny the latter claim and dispute Israel’s characterization of the former. The battles came as the head of the United Nations’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees said Israel was no longer approving the organization’s food convoys’ entry into northern Gaza, which he said would mean “the clock will tick faster towards famine & many more will die of hunger, dehydration + lack of shelter.”

The next wave of unmanned weapons

Senior U.S. military leaders observed the next generation of unmanned fighting vehicles and other warfighting technology at a demonstration in California. Along with aerial drones and augmented reality headsets, the demonstration included a robotic dog called Ghost and wheeled, autonomous vehicles with automatic weapons, intended for urban combat. Ambushes and lack of maneuvering space make urban environments dangerous, and the U.S. and its allies are keen to reduce their troops’ exposure to them. Demonstrating “robots that wouldn’t look out of place in what used to be considered futuristic sci-fi,” Gizmodo reported, is a reminder that “a Terminator-style future with autonomous land vehicles sporting high-powered weapons” may not be too far off.

Why we’re obsessed with the apocalypse

Western culture is increasingly doomerist and obsessed with the end of the world, the writer Dorian Lynskey argues in his upcoming book about, well, the end of the world. Every generation believes that theirs could be the last — “We love to talk about the death of this and the fall of that, and to boast that we are there to witness it,” Lynskey wrote in an excerpt published in The Guardian. The current lineup of apocalypse-related entertainment, he continued, is immense and reflects a collective angst that surpasses past sentiment. But while it’s hard to deny we live in a tumultuous time, Lynskey wrote, “We are not inclined to appreciate the bad things that have not happened to us.”

Green onions are political symbol in SK

The humble green onion has become a potent political symbol in South Korea of rising food prices and the perceived disconnect between the government and public. President Yoon Suk Yeol sparked a controversy at a grocery store when he vastly underestimated the price of green onions. Opposition politicians, hoping to defeat Yoon’s party in legislative elections next month and make him a lame-duck president, are now bringing green onions to rallies to portray the government as out of touch with voters. The government recently increased subsidies for green onion distributors — similar to India’s move to ban onion exports to lower domestic prices.

Sugar industry abuses have global reach

Coca-Cola and Pepsi sweeten their drinks with sugar produced in an Indian state where mills push girls into child marriages and women seek hysterectomies to avoid missing days of work, according to an investigation by The Fuller Project and The New York Times. The labor practices — which involve workers having to pay a fee if they miss work, even for a doctor’s appointment — are reportedly endemic in the state of Maharashtra. In one area, a government report found that one-fifth of 82,000 female sugar-cane workers had hysterectomies. “The abuses continue … because everyone says somebody else is responsible,” The Times wrote. Pepsi vowed to conduct an “assessment.”

Sen. Michael Bennet; Sen. Ron Wyden; Kevin Scott, CTO, Microsoft; John Waldron, President & COO, Goldman Sachs; Tom Lue, General Counsel, Google DeepMind; Nicolas Kazadi, Finance Minister, DR Congo and Jeetu Patel, EVP and General Manager, Security & Collaboration, Cisco have joined the world class line-up of global economic leaders for the 2024 World Economy Summit, taking place in Washington, D.C. on April 17-18. See all speakers and sessions, and RSVP here.

US homes not ready for climate change

The U.S. housing market has not kept up with climate change. As temperatures and sea levels have risen and rainfall patterns changed, previously dry areas have started to flood more regularly. But maps used to determine flood risk are outdated, and many U.S. states do not require property sellers to disclose those risks, the Financial Times reported. A government forecast predicted that the median insurance premium would have to double, and an analysis suggested that homes built in flood zones may be overvalued by $237 billion. Manville, New Jersey was flooded during 2016’s Hurricane Ida, and hundreds of homes have since been demolished, as it was deemed not cost-effective to build the flood defenses that would be required to protect them.

Chickenpox diagnoses often wrong

More than half of U.S. chickenpox diagnoses are wrong. The once-ubiquitous childhood disease is now fairly rare in the country: Vaccination, introduced in 1995, led to a 97% drop in cases, from 4 million to fewer than 150,000. The results of a new study show the effectiveness of vaccination — non-vaccinated people were correctly diagnosed 66% of the time, compared to 22% of vaccinated ones — but also the limitations of diagnosis by symptoms: Among the much reduced cases, 55% of patients test negative for the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox, with some instead having other viruses such as measles or herpes, infections such as scabies, or even insect bites.

Parrots, like toddlers, love games

Video games are improving the lives of bored parrots. In a paper entitled “No More Angry Birds,” researchers said that games made for licking the screen could keep pet birds entertained. “A lot of research on animals and technology is about trying to understand: What can animals do?” one of the paper’s authors told The New York Times. “And what I always try to do is reframe the question to: What can we do for them?” It’s not the first parrot tech the Interact Animal Lab has created; It also made a video-calling app for birds to call their avian friends, which helped some parrots learn to fly by watching others do it.

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March 25

• Donald Trump faces a deadline to post a multimillion-dollar bond in his New York fraud case.
• Chinese leader Xi Jinping meets Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to discuss their countries’ economic relationships, including on chip technology.
• Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, is celebrated, often by dancing, singing, and throwing colorful powders.

In many regions, younger people are happier than their elders, the 2024 Gallup World Happiness Report suggests. The study — which asks people in over 140 countries to rate their lives on a scale of one to 10 — found that life satisfaction in most countries begins dropping gradually from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. Over the last 15 years, sentiments among people aged 15 to 24 generally rose globally, but the trends varied by region. North America and South Asia were two regions that saw youth sentiment fall.

A new girl group is the first of its kind from India to break through globally in two decades. Following the rise of K-pop and J-pop, the world’s most populous country is hoping to turn pop music into its next soft-power cultural export. The four-member group W.i.S.H. racked up millions of views on their debut video and already had “tons of fan pages” within days, one of the members told the BBC. “And that’s when we realized how much India really wanted this.” Solo acts from India have reached global audiences in recent years: Punjabi star Diljit Dosanjh performed at Coachella, sang with Ed Sheeran, and collaborated with American rapper Saweetie.

• Electricity is a bull market for the first time in decades.
• Justice Dept. lawsuit aims to take a bite out of Apple’s prices.
• The GOP slowly builds a post-Dobbs abortion platform.