Your Monday briefing
New lessons about the global economy
After five years of major disruptions – a pandemic, war in Europe, US-China tensions, inflation – the global economic outlook has deteriorated. And as the dust settles, many long-held assumptions about the global economy are now being questioned.
The economic conventions favored by policymakers for three decades, including the unfailing superiority of open markets, liberalized trade and maximum efficiency, failed to ensure that healthcare workers had the equipment they needed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Neither could they prevent military conflicts in Ukraine, nor extreme weather events around the world.
Policy makers are now trying to secure supply chains and prioritize trusted partners for trade relationships, even if that is somewhat less efficient. But what comes next, as elements of the earlier economic orthodoxy are abandoned, is unclear.
Analysis: “Almost all the economic forces that have driven progress and prosperity over the past three decades are fading,” the World Bank recently warned. “The result could be a lost decade in the making – not just for some countries or regions as has happened in the past – but for the whole world.”
Who blew up the Kakhovka Dam?
On June 6, a major dam in a Ukrainian war zone collapsed, flooding the region, displacing thousands of people and causing chaos. Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the collapse, but there are indications that the dam was crippled by an explosion caused by the side that controls it: Russia.
The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine was visibly scarred from fighting in the months leading up to the breach, suggesting it had fallen victim to the accumulated damage. Russia has used that hypothesis to deny responsibility.
But experts said, given satellite and seismic detections of explosions in the area, the most likely cause of the collapse was an explosive charge placed in the maintenance passageway that runs through the concrete heart of the structure. Because the dam was built during Soviet times, Moscow had every page of the engineering drawings and knew where it was.
Caveat: Engineers warned that a full survey of the dam would be needed to determine the precise sequence of events that led to its destruction. Erosion from water flowing through the gates could have caused a failure, but engineers called that unlikely.
risks: The dam’s destruction jeopardized the main water source for cooling the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. A top UN official said the plant had only had water for “a few months” and authorities there had begun taking steps to replenish supplies.
In other news: Ukraine made its first territorial gains in the southern Zaporizhzhia region since the start of the counter-offensive, a local Russian official and military bloggers said yesterday.
Uganda is reeling from a terrorist attack
A Friday night attack at a private boarding school near Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo killed 37 of the school’s 63 students, raising fears of resurgent militant activity in a historically troubled region. It was Uganda’s deadliest terrorist act in years.
The attackers, members of an Islamist militant group, shot the school’s security guard before entering the dormitories, attacking students and hurling firebombs inside. As the militants fled the city into the dense forests of Congo, they killed three other people, including a woman in her 60s, bringing the death toll to 41.
The relentless attack demonstrated the reach and continued strength of the Allied Democratic Forces, an insurgent group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Analysis: “Attacking a school is probably part of a desire to recruit,” said Richard Moncrieff, the project director for the region at the International Crisis Group, “but it also has a shock value that appeals to the group’s wider jihadist audience.”
THE LAST NEWS
Around the world
Families in Indonesia thought they were sending their sons to a rehab facility run by a powerful local official. Those who stayed there say it was a brutal human slavery operation.
Lives lived
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the government documents that became known as the Pentagon Papers to The Times, has died at the age of 92.
SPORTS NEWS FROM ATHLETICS
From Liverpool to delivery driver: The Athletic joined a former Liverpool goalkeeper as he made his rounds as a delivery boy – a job that fuels his passion to get back into the game.
Playing football with Usain Bolt: The former striker of Leeds United and Scotland Ross McCormac opens on a checkered career.
Jim Ratcliffe’s ownership of OGC Nice: Ratcliffe, who has made a bid for Manchester United, saw it the struggle of the French football club while he was in charge.
Egypt is collaborating with a Dutch museum
A new exhibition in the Netherlands explores how black musicians like Beyoncé, Tina Turner, Nas and others draw inspiration and pride from the idea that ancient Egypt was an African culture. The show is set up as a helpful correction to centuries of cultural effacement of Africans.
But what sounds powerful in the US and thought-provoking in the Netherlands is anathema to the Egyptian government and many of its citizens, who have flooded the museum’s Facebook and Google pages with complaints – sometimes racist – about what they see. as Western appropriation of their history.