Flagship

Democrats buoyant as convention opens

Democrats open their pre-election convention in a buoyant mood, with US Vice President Kamala Harris riding a wave of momentum. A raft of polls show her either closing in on or overtaking Republican contender Donald Trump since replacing President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket a month ago. Biden today delivers a farewell speech in which he will attempt to cement his legacy and win what Politico called “a hero’s goodbye.” The Democrats are not lacking for challenges, though: Tens of thousands plan to march on the convention demanding the US withdraw support for Israel over the Gaza war, and the party faces a “grueling and narrow path” to maintain its Senate majority, The Washington Post noted.

How governments use AI

Russia and Iran have both sought to use artificial intelligence to propagate disinformation ahead of the US election, tech giants Meta and OpenAI said. Neither campaign was particularly successful, but Moscow’s and Tehran’s efforts point both to the growing global focus on November’s vote as well as experimentation with generative AI to disrupt rivals’ politics: OpenAI previously said China and Israel also sought to do so. Yet not all uses of AI in government have been malign: Britain this month said it would spend about $40 million to use AI to improve public services including combating public-transport delays and cutting health-service wait times while Indonesia is using an AI-based mobile app to help fishermen find their daily catch.

Central banks in spotlight

Investors are this week looking to comments by global central bankers at the US Federal Reserve’s annual get-together in Jackson Hole. Traders are betting the Fed will lower rates at its September meeting, though the size of the cut and the number of reductions that follow remain in question: Markets expect policymakers will lower the US’ benchmark rate by between 0.75 and 1 percentage point by year-end. Other central banks are also in the spotlight. China’s is due to meet on Tuesday as the country struggles with languid economic growth, while some major investors are projecting further interest rate hikes in Japan, where an increase last month triggered global market turmoil.

Kyiv and Moscow both push further

Ukraine and Russia appeared to make progress in their dueling offensives into each other’s territory. Kyiv said it had destroyed a second major Russian bridge as part of its lightning push into the Kursk region, an assault Ukraine’s leader has said is designed to create a buffer zone against further Russian aggression. Moscow, meanwhile, closed in on securing a Ukrainian town, a key step towards controlling the entirety of the Donetsk region that it illegally annexed but parts of which are still held by Kyiv’s forces. That both countries are seeking to execute major offensives concurrently is unusual, the former Australian general Mick Ryan noted: “One side or the other will have to make a difficult choice.”

South China Sea tensions heighten

Chinese and Philippine vessels collided in disputed waters, undermining what had been a brief and fragile truce. The two countries have for months sparred over territory within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, which Beijing claims as its own. Analysts point to the region as a potential flashpoint between the US and China: Singapore’s prime minister said this weekend that the “intensifying rivalry” between the two powers was his city-state’s biggest concern. Even as the US has sought to help Ukraine fight Russia and grappled with its support for Israel over the Gaza war, Washington has sought to maintain focus on Asia, easing the way last week for increased defense cooperation with the UK and Australia.

Race to stop polio outbreak in Gaza

Authorities in Gaza recorded the territory’s first polio case in 25 years, prompting aid groups to call for a ramp up of vaccination efforts to prevent a full-blown outbreak. Disease — including skin rashes and scabies — has spread across Gaza as Palestinians have been forced into tented camps where pools of open sewage abound amid a collapse of sanitation 10 months into the war. Aid groups are gearing up to vaccinate more than 600,000 children against polio in the coming weeks, although UN agencies have said a minimum seven-day military pause is needed to carry out the plan. Hopes for a ceasefire are languishing, however, with Israel and Hamas trading blame during negotiations.

Mali’s worsening hardships

Four years after the military ousted Mali’s then-president, many say economic hardships have worsened across the country amid constant power cuts that have decimated business. Meanwhile, a spreading jihadist insurgency, which the coup leaders vowed to crack down on when they gained power, has worsened the security situation in the country. Russia’s increased influence in the region — where it offers a regime survival package in exchange for economic concessions — has further weakened democracy and rule of law. “The short- and medium-term prospect for democratization of the Sahel seems exceedingly dim,” an expert wrote for the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

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Venezuela’s global rallies

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans protested in cities worldwide demanding recognition of the opposition candidate’s victory in last month’s disputed presidential vote. Demonstrations in countries as far away as South Korea and Madagascar underlined the mass exodus of Venezuelans in recent years, as economic collapse and increased political repression have forced almost a quarter of the country’s population to flee. María Corina Machado — the opposition leader, who has gone into hiding after being threatened with arrest — called on demonstrators to keep up protests, saying change would come through domestic rather than foreign pressure. “They’re trying to scare us, to divide us, to paralyze us, to demoralize us, but they can’t,” Machado wrote on X.

Italy sports success spurs debate

Italy’s gold medal in women’s volleyball at the Paris Olympics has sparked a heated debate in the country over who should have the right to citizenship, setting off a row within the government. Far-right members of the coalition have claimed that the team’s Black athletes do not “represent the vast majority of Italians” based on their skin color. Although Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has not weighed in, center-right members of her coalition have hit back at the racist sentiment, with some praising the team’s ethnic diversity. Italy’s demographic crisis has brought “new impetus” for the fast-tracking of children’s citizenship, the Financial Times said, although such proposals have yet to gain traction.

India’s anime market grows

The world’s biggest anime-streaming platform is expanding its push into the world’s most populous nation. Crunchyroll is opening a second office in India, has hired Bollywood actors as brand ambassadors, and co-sponsors every Comic-Con held in the country. It is also dubbing many of its shows into Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. Overall subscriber numbers are small, but the market is growing fast and projects to top $5 billion annually in India within a decade. Crunchyroll’s history — beginning as an illegal hosting service before being acquired by Sony — mirrors the behavior of Indian fans, one of whom told Rest of World he and his friends followed anime by “sailing the high seas and being absolute online pirates.”

• Former US Congressman George Santos makes a court appearance, while Sen. Bob Menendez faces a deadline to file a motion to overturn a guilty verdict in his corruption trial.
• The US and South Korea kick off joint military drills.
• London Zoo holds its annual weigh-in of every animal on its grounds.

Do as I say

Why isn’t most advice followed? The reasons are multiple: Those offering it may be wrong, they may not have crucial context, their advice may only make sense with their own lived experience, they may be sufficiently different that their advice might not apply to the person they are offering it to, or perhaps the advice is simply too hard to follow. As a result, advice, typically, is ignored, the anonymous writer behind Dynomight notes.

So what can those asking for advice, and those offering it, do? The former group may want to consider the number of people offering them the same, or similar, advice, as indicative of whether it is needed, whereas the latter group should have “realistic expectations,” Dynomight notes. “Most advice isn’t followed.”

Failed confinement

20th century feminism benefited hugely from thinkers and activists including Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, but they were far from alone: Among those whose contributions to the movement have not received due consideration is Raden Adjeng Kartini, a woman who hails from what is now Indonesia. Kartini had a privileged upbringing, the daughter of a progressive local official in the archipelago’s Dutch colonial government, but was nevertheless subject to the local tradition of being confined to the home while going through puberty. So she turned to books.

Kartini wrote prolifically about “the power of education to uplift Javanese society, particularly women,” the researcher Alice Evans writes in her newsletter, The Great Gender Divergence. And her years-long confinement only served to strengthen her beliefs, rather than dull them. “I am told that I must modestly (hypocritically) cast down my eyes,” Kartini wrote. “I will not do that; I will look men, as well as women, straight in the eyes, not cast down my own before them.”

Book smart

For many, the world of books is a place to discover new ideas, travel the world, learn about new people and their lives. For some, the place where books can be found is itself an escape. The author and journalist Samanth Subramanian relates the stories of two people he has met who live in libraries, having dedicated their lives solely to the act of reading.

One, a student of English literature in India, decided to focus on reading “the canon” of the language’s greatest books and authors, and eventually convinced a librarian to let him spend the night inside the repository of writing. “The man told me this story to illustrate how, given the sparseness of his school education, he had to catch up with this extreme measure,” Subramanian writes. “But I, starved for time like many others these days, had in my mind an opposite reaction. What bliss to be able to devote yourself in this manner to reading!”

Sing Sing. The film, out now in the United States and soon elsewhere, is a true story of a theater troupe in New York’s famous Sing Sing detention facility, charting how music helped those in prison deal with their difficulties. With a cast that is made up largely of former inmates, the film “is a moving testament to the rehabilitative power of art in prisons,” Harper’s Bazaar said. Watch the trailer on YouTube.

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