Is it fair, Olympians and NCAA athletes have said for years, that they are the only ones not profiting from the years they’ve spent honing their skills? That is now changing.

• Gaza aid route: Egypt and the United States agree to send humanitarian aid to the United Nations in Gaza via Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing until legal mechanisms are established to reopen the Rafah border crossing from the Palestinian side.
• World court on Israel: Judges at the top United Nations court order Israel to halt its military assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in a landmark emergency ruling in South Africa’s case that accuses Israel of genocide. 
• North Korea spy satellite? South Korea’s military says it has detected signs that North Korea is preparing to launch its second military satellite into space. 
• Remembering Srebrenica: The United Nations approves a resolution establishing July 11 as an annual day to commemorate the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks by Bosnian Serbs. 
• Remorse over protest response: The head of the University of California, Los Angeles tells a House panel that the school should have been ready to immediately remove an encampment of pro-Palestinian activists that became the site of a violent clash in April.

Read these news briefs.

After Taiwan recently elected a pro-independence president, China launched aggressive military exercises. Now, pro-democracy protesters in Taiwan are responding with their own show of force. 

The move by three European countries to recognize Palestinian statehood may not immediately facilitate diplomacy seeking lasting Mideast peace. But the nations maintain that it’s a matter of moral urgency.

Long before the war in Gaza erupted, Monitor reporters covering the West Bank found a remarkable story of self-sufficiency in Farkha, a village frustrated by inattentive local governance. The war has brought new threats, so our reporters returned.

Election denialism remains a hot story. That’s more because of a fraud narrative that’s been stoked than because of anything that evidence shows – or that voters (or many politicians) actually believe. A senior Washington reporter probed the disconnect, and then joined our podcast to explain.

“Reading Rainbow” remains a touchstone for generations of American children. But as a new documentary shows, it – and host LeVar Burton – means so much more than nostalgia.

Every year, wealthy nations provide billions of dollars to poorer countries to build better services and infrastructure. Less that 2% of that money goes straight to the communities it is supposed to benefit, according to the British-based tracking organization Development Initiatives Poverty Research. Now more donors want to increase that direct funding to ensure that projects better reflect local priorities and improve accountability. Two new programs in Rwanda and Sierra Leone provide good examples.

Launched at the Education World Forum in London this week, the new approach is targeted at providing better access to early education for rural girls and children with disabilities. Both groups were particularly set back by the recent pandemic. The big experiment is this: The roughly $30 million in new donor money will be conditioned on achieving specific results, rather than fueling the usual practice of largely unaccountable spending based on good intentions.

A local community will need to develop its own strategy, tap its own resources (such as local businesses), and achieve its education goals. If it does, it will be reimbursed. The results must be independently confirmed.

This requires a high level of honesty and selflessness, advocates say, enabling more trust between foreign funders and local actors. “Accountability to the program participants is the most critical part of any results-based funding project,” noted a Center for Effective Philanthropy blog post.

This new model of tying aid to outcomes is partly driven by a strain on international resources as a result of wars and catastrophes. It might even be used for postwar reconstruction in Ukraine as a way to curb corruption.

A year ago, the governments of Ghana and Britain partnered to launch the world’s largest such project. It set aside $30 million to spur communities accounting for 600 primary schools in the West African country to promote teacher excellence and draw back 70,000 primary school students whose educations were disrupted by the pandemic.

The new initiatives in Rwanda and Sierra Leone pool funding from the countries’ governments, the Lego Foundation, and the Education Outcomes Fund. They mark, as Ghana’s education minister, Yaw Osei Adutwum, described the project in his country, a “watershed moment” in the way international partners help poorer countries serve their citizens better through local accountability.