Flagship

A ‘path’ but no ‘timetable’ for Kyiv

NATO will give Ukraine a “clear and positive” signal on its future membership at the bloc’s annual summit, the alliance’s secretary-general said. His remarks came after the U.S. national security adviser said Kyiv would get a “path” but not a “timetable” to eventually joining the alliance. Tensions have emerged within the bloc between a U.S.-led group and Eastern Europe over whether and how Ukraine will join. Ultimately, Washington’s view will likely win out, and not just because of its economic and military clout: “Behind the formal American objections lies a concern that any commitment to fast-track Ukraine into NATO could prolong the war, and introduce dangerous complications into a future peace settlement,” Gideon Rachman wrote in the Financial Times.

Turkey, meanwhile, lifted its block on Sweden joining NATO. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a last-minute demand that Turkey’s long-dormant EU accession talks be accelerated. Brussels did not agree, but appeared to make some concessions, a deal that may end up harming Erdogan in the long run. “Having seen how Erdogan behaves in one exclusive club, the Europeans are hardly likely to welcome him to another,” Bobby Ghosh wrote in Bloomberg.

Meta’s Threads hits 100M users

Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival, reached 100 million users in its first five days. That makes it the fastest-growing website in history: ChatGPT, the previous record holder, took two months to get there. Early reviews are broadly positive, although the lack of desktop support or direct messaging annoys some. Meta leveraged the huge size of its Instagram platform to bring users in, representing a “conundrum” for monopolies regulators, The New York Times reported. On the one hand, it challenges Twitter’s dominance: On the other, is it doing so “by offering a better product, or by using the advantages of scale to unfairly crush Twitter?” The EU is also concerned about how Meta handles users’ information.

Prigozhin met Putin after putsch

The Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin days after the former led a failed mutiny against the latter. The BBC’s Russia correspondent noted that Putin accused Wagner of “treachery,” that Russian pilots were killed, and that Russia’s state media is still working to discredit Prigozhin — highlighting his “criminal past” — suggesting that the meeting “was no ‘kiss and make up.’” Yet Prigozhin remains free. What Prigozhin has over Putin is unclear. Perhaps unrelatedly, Reuters reported that during the mutiny, Wagner troops drove to a nuclear weapons base in Russia, although it seems none of the small nuclear weapons apparently stored there were taken.

Foxconn withdraws from $19B India deal

Foxconn, the giant Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, withdrew from a $19.5 billion plan to build a semiconductor factory in India. It signed a deal with the Indian conglomerate Vedanta, but declared Monday that it would not go ahead. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to set India up as a global hub for chipmaking, taking advantage of Western countries’ keenness to reduce their reliance on China. But the plan has been “slow to take off,” reported Reuters, hitting obstacles getting other partners on board. New Delhi says other investors will come, but Foxconn, which builds most of the world’s iPhones, was a big name, and the decision is a blow to Modi’s plans.

Africa’s costly flights slow growth

The high cost of flights within Africa is holding back the continent’s economic growth. The BBC reported that flights within Africa are “more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world,” with it often being cheaper to fly to other continents than within Africa. A flight from Berlin to Turkey might cost $150 and take three hours, whereas a flight of similar distance, from Kinshasa to Lagos, could cost $500 and take 20 hours, with at least one change. It makes doing business within Africa expensive and difficult. Africa’s poor road and rail networks increase the burden, because air is key for cargo too. Industry analysts said that increasing connectivity and lowering prices could create 150,000 jobs.

Salvadoran leader up for reelection

El Salvador’s wildly popular and hugely divisive President Nayib Bukele was nominated as a candidate for 2024 presidential elections despite a constitutional ban on consecutive terms. Bukele has orchestrated a massive crackdown on gangs that has resulted in an estimated 2% of the Salvadoran population being imprisoned, a campaign that rights groups have sharply criticized. Yet it has also resulted in him surging in opinion polls — he is the overwhelming favorite in the elections, if he indeed runs — and becoming a role model across Latin America.

Beijing opens bomb shelters against heat

Chinese cities have opened up their air raid shelters to let citizens seek shelter from ongoing heat waves. Temperatures in Beijing breached 95 degrees Fahrenheit on all but two days this month, and at least two people have died of heat stroke. Many cities in China built bomb shelters in the mid-20th century, and have opened them to the public. The U.S.’s Southwest is also experiencing record temperatures, with Phoenix, Arizona, expected to see 18 days of 110-degree heat in a row, caused by a “heat dome” of high pressure over the region. Meanwhile, a study released Monday found that heat waves contributed to 61,000 deaths in Europe in 2022.

Cash no longer king in Japan

Japan is moving away from coins. A tradition of giving children piggy banks to teach them about savings drove a decades-long rise in the country’s coin stock. Parents often give any ¥500 ($3.50) coins they have to their offspring, and when the piggy bank is full, they transfer the money to a bank account, the Financial Times reported. But the pandemic-era emphasis on contactless payments — 36% of transactions were cash-free in 2022, up from 15% in 2013 — and a new bank charge of ¥1,100 on transactions with lots of coins have changed attitudes. Newly high inflation has also driven a wider change in attitudes to savings. As a result, the number of coins in circulation has fallen for the first time since 1970.

Amazon kicks off Prime Day promotion

Amazon launched its ninth annual Prime Day sale. The made-up shopping holiday was initially inspired by the Chinese retailer Alibaba’s Singles’ Day promotion and is now adhered to by other U.S. retailers competing with Amazon. Prime Day helps businesses thin out their inventory ahead of the autumn shopping season and drives spikes in overall retail sales — by 116% versus an average day in the U.S., one analyst told Axios. Amazon isn’t just using Prime Day to sell products, though: It particularly wants to drive sign-ups for Prime in the 25 countries where it runs the promotion. Users of the subscription service not only provide recurring high-margin revenue, they also spend far more per year on Amazon than non-Prime users.

The disappearance of classic video games

Nearly nine out of every 10 video games ever made are unavailable to consumers. A study by the Video Game History Foundation found that 87% of classic games are “critically endangered,” existing only on ancient disks requiring out-of-date hardware. Video games from the 1990s and 2000s are less likely to be available than 100-year-old silent films. It’s as though “the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment,” the VGHF said. Libraries and archives of old, out-of-production games should exist, it argued, but the video game industry has consistently lobbied to prevent relaxing copyright laws to allow them.

• Paraguay’s president-elect, Santiago Pena, will arrive in Taiwan for a four-day visit.
• Executives from Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, and Twitter appear before an Australian parliamentary committee on foreign interference through social media.
• The Centre, a debut novel by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi about a Pakistani translator in London and a mysterious language school, is published.

The number of U.S. moviegoers who have booked tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day. The two very different films — a “giddy, fizzy sugar rush” and “a grimdark three-hour history lesson about the man responsible for creating nuclear holocaust” respectively, according to Vox — might not seem obvious partners, but they open on the same day, and “Barbenheimer” has become a thing. The two movies’ titular stars, Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy, are among those doing the double-header. The AMC cinema chain announced that it had sold 20,000 double-bill tickets, although it’s not clear how that compares to other major double releases.

Japanese graphic arts have gone on display at a new exhibition in London. Works of fine art, commercial illustration, and counterculture by 60 artists are featured in WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts. The show also celebrates the underground concept of heta-uma, which translates as “bad-good” and refers to something that appears bad but is actually good upon closer inspection. The first proponents of this genre in the 1970s and 1980s “challenged contemporary notions of what was ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’, the definition of art itself and the hierarchy of the art world,” Japan House London’s director of programming told designboom magazine.

• Iran is on a hacking spree. The reason why may be ominous.
• Independent Russian journalists are working from exile in Latvia, trying their best to cover the war in Ukraine and get information out through Telegram and YouTube.
• Battles against mask and vaccine mandates made Ron DeSantis a Republican star. But he’s losing ground in the presidential race as America moves on from COVID.