2024
October
18
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

October 18, 2024
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

We usually talk about our own stories in this space, and appropriately so. But today, I stumbled upon this podcast as I was scanning the Morning Dispatch newsletter: “Country Over Self.” The synopsis says, “Country Over Self and Country Over Party have always been cornerstones of the American Presidency.”

Sometimes, it can seem that seeking mutual humanity and our higher natures can be a lonely place in today’s media landscape. But it’s not. The podcast was a welcome reminder to look for the good all around. It’s out there to be found.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

After a harrowing year of war in Gaza and the Middle East, the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar rekindled hopes for a grand U.S.-led plan to move the region into a more peaceful era. But many obstacles, Israeli and Palestinian, remain.

Today’s news briefs

• Election interference case: The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 case unseals a heavily redacted trove of documents, some 1,900 pages collected by special counsel Jack Smith’s team, that provides a glimpse into evidence prosecutors will present if the case goes to trial. 
• Mass shooting indictment: A grand jury in Georgia indicts a father and son in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder on Sept. 4.
• Texas transgender case: The state is suing a Dallas doctor, alleging she provided hormones to more than 20 minors in violation of a ban that took effect last year. The case is one of the first instances of a state enforcing such a ban.
 North Korea sends troops to Russia: South Korea’s spy agency says North Korea has dispatched troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.
• Texas execution halted: Robert Roberson would have become the first person in the United States put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

Read these news briefs. 

Alex Brandon/AP
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk listens as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is throwing himself – and his money – into a last-minute effort to boost the Trump campaign’s ground game. But get-out-the-vote efforts aren’t the rocket science he’s used to.

Justin Tang/The Canadian Press/AP
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (center); Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions, and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc (left); and Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly (right) participate in a news conference on the investigation related to violent criminal activity occurring in Canada with connections to India, Oct. 14, 2024.

The breakdown in India-Canada ties highlights a growing trend of transnational repression by India and other nations – and could force Western allies into a difficult balancing act in Asia.

SOURCE:

Freedom House

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Marco Bello/Reuters
Fire & Rescue members descend toward the Broad River following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Bat Cave, North Carolina, Sept. 30, 2024. While most rescues are locally executed, FEMA often plays a role in coordinating or funding the efforts, as the federal agency charged with overseeing disaster relief.

Effective deployment of the nation’s emergency resources depends on the goodwill of public officials, responders, and citizens. That goodwill is being tested now, as is the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s agility, in North Carolina.

Q&A

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

In a society riven by division, it can take courage to reach out to people who hold different views. We asked an expert on conflict transformation for tips.

In Pictures

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
HOPPY DAYS ARE HERE: A 12-foot-tall White Rabbit made from plants greets visitors to “Wonderland: Curious Nature,” an exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden based on Lewis Carroll’s books.

Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” has delighted children since the Victorian era. Some of his beloved characters are in larger-than-life form at this topiary exhibit in New York.


The Monitor's View

AP
A woman walks down a staircase outside a shopping mall in Shanghai, China, Oct. 12.

For China’s annual blowout sales event on Nov. 11, when Singles’ Day is observed, the e-commerce giant JD.com decided this year to enlist a famous female stand-up comedian, Yang Li, for its marketing campaign. After all, young single women have become a powerful force for equality in Chinese society. They are also big shoppers in what is now the world’s largest online shopping event. The date, 11/11, called “bare sticks day,” was chosen three decades ago by a group of university students as a reason for celebration. The four digits symbolize singlehood.

The selection of Yang Li did not go well. The comedian is widely known for a one-line question about men: “Why are they so mediocre but still so confident?” The uproar on social media pushed JD.com to apologize on Friday for promoting her.

But the fracas only helped highlight a grassroots movement among young women with good incomes who see marriage as too costly or cannot find men who share their values. Many are also challenging government pressure for them to become wives and mothers – and reverse China’s population decline. They are also quietly claiming a personal freedom by touting their solo consumerist lifestyles.

The women find that “a new sense of economic liberty helps to define themselves and their place in Chinese society,” wrote two scholars, Chih-Ling Liu and Robert Kozinets, in a 2020 essay in The Conversation. “Single professional Chinese women are changing how others see them not through protest or activism – but through their economic power.”

Many of the women make video blogs for the social media site Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book”) to show off their “refined” lifestyle. They are creating an individual identity in a society where the Communist Party increasingly does not see a person’s private life as private and whose ruling Politburo has no women among its 24 members.

“These women frame singledom as freedom,” wrote Guo Jia, a researcher at the University of Sydney, for the website Sixth Tone. One study of the vloggers finds the women are narrating their “choice of living a single life as an autonomous and empowering decision.”

China’s e-commerce giants certainly know who these frequent shoppers are. And for this year’s Singles’ Day, they once again are trying anything to win them over. Even in a repressive state, freedom to define one’s identity finds a way.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Glimpsing that our real home is within divine Love brings healing.


Viewfinder

Borja Suarez/Reuters
A man with an astronomical laser points out the comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, known as “the comet of the century,” in Pico de las Nieves on the island of Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain, on Oct. 17. Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is the brightest comet seen on Earth since Hale-Bopp in 1997. In the Northern Hemisphere, it is visible when looking above the western horizon just after sunset.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us this week. Among the stories we’re working on for next week are a look at how ready Israel is for a cease-fire and a three-part series on Sudan – bringing you a rare, in-depth portrait of a crisis that the world has largely overlooked.

More issues

2024
October
18
Friday

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