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Hungary Closes Border, Australia Gets New PM, Hologram Whitney

Hungary Closes Border, Australia Gets New PM, Hologram Whitney

HUNGARY CLOSES BORDER TO REFUGEES

Photo: Geovien So/ZUMA

Things are only becoming more difficult for refugees fleeing war in the Middle East. After Germany closed its border Sunday, Austria dispatched its military to control the influx of refugees and several other countries imposed stricter security checks at their borders. And starting today, tough limits on refugees are being enforced in Hungary, where the primary EU crossing point from Serbia has been sealed.

  • Hungarian police, backed by soldiers, closed the border at midnight and prevented any refugees from crossing, Reuters reports.
  • "The measure is in place due to the situation that has developed on the Serbian side, as border controls are not being provided," said Laszlo Balazs, a Hungarian border police official. Balazs added that the border could reopened if the situation changed.
  • The 28 EU member states failed to reach an agreement during an emergency summit in Brussels last night for distributing 120,000 asylum seekers, France Inter reports.
VERBATIM

"I'll never come back to politics . Unless there are a million people demonstrating outside my home," former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said during a recent meeting with bloggers, France Info reports. But he launched his Twitter account in June by writing, " Jack is back ."


NEW PM SWORN IN DOWN UNDER

Malcolm Turnbull was sworn in as Australia's new Prime Minister today, one day after he and the Liberal Party ousted Tony Abbott in a leadership challenge, The Australian reports. Turnbull, Abbott's former communications minister, becomes Australia's 29th prime minister. In Australia , a politician can attempt to take the leadership of his party by requesting a " spill " vote. This caps a tumultuous period in Australian politics with five prime ministers in just five years. In his first "Question Time" in parliament, Turnbull said today that he won't change the governing coalition's tough and controversial policies on same-sex marriage and climate change, according to ABC . Read more in our Extra! feature .


ON THIS DAY


The collapse of financial services company Lehman Brothers seven years ago today represented the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. That and more in your daily shot of history .


DAY THREE OF EAST JERUSALEM VIOLENCE

Palestinians and Israeli soldiers clashed for a third consecutive day at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque today. According to Le Monde , young Palestinians occupied the mosque, considered the third holiest site in Islam, to prevent Jewish visitors from accessing and praying at the site revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount. Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Al Jazeera quoted Suleiman Ahmad, the president of Jerusalem's Affairs Department, as saying that at least 17 Palestinians had been injured. The Jerusalem Post said five Israeli police officers had been wounded in the clashes and that security forces had secured the site to receive visitors after several suspects were arrested.


WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO

The subject of the constitution is all the rage in Japan nowadays, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues his efforts to rid the document of its pacifist provisions. And Japanese women are challenging his three-year-old government with "constitution cafes" and street protests, Philippe Pons writes for Le Monde . "The meetings in Maioka form part of a growing trend of initiatives launched by Japanese women since Abe came to power three years ago," he writes. "Across the country, women are meeting in cafes and restaurants to learn about the constitution and debate the politics surrounding its revision. ‘This movement of political consciousness was born after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011,' says attorney Keiko Ota. ‘Like me, many mothers worried about the health of their children, and we slowly realized all the lies the government was telling us. Revising the constitution to allow Japan to become a full-fledged military power is another issue that worries mothers. This is why they try to understand what's going on. They're asking why Shinzo Abe blindly follows the Americans and wonder if military service will become mandatory.'"

Read the full article, Japanese Women v. Shinzo Abe .


N. KOREA RESTARTS NUCLEAR REACTOR

North Korea's main nuclear reactor, located in the Yongbyon complex, has been restarted and is working to improve the "quality and quantity" of the country's nuclear weapons, which could be used against the U.S. at "any time," the state-run KCNA agency quotes the North Korean atomic agency director as saying. "If the U.S. and other hostile forces persistently seek their reckless hostile policy," Reuters quoted him as saying, North Korea "is fully ready to cope with them with nuclear weapons any time." This comes one day after the country also threatened to launch "satellites" that are believed to be covers for long-range missile tests, despite North Korea claiming its aim is "peaceful."


MY GRAND-PÈRE'S WORLD



RUSSIA PROPOSED SYRIAN DEAL, WEST DECLINED

In 2012, Russia proposed a Syrian peace deal that included President Bashar al-Assad stepping down, but the U.S., the UK and France failed to seize on the proposal, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari told the The Guardian in an exclusive interview. Ahtisaari, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was involved in back-channel discussions, said the Western countries were convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall and ignored the deal. Officially, Russia has consistently backed Assad during the four-year war, insisting his removal couldn't be part of a peace deal.


WHITNEY HOUSTON HOLOGRAM

U.S. entertainment company Hologram USA is working to develop a Whitney Houston hologram, the BBC reports. It could be touring the world as early as next year.

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Ideas

Look At This Crap! The "Enshittification" Theory Of Why The Internet Is Broken

The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.

A person holding their smartphone

Gilles Lambert/ ZUMA
Manuel Ligero

-Analysis-

The universe tends toward chaos. Ultimately, everything degenerates. These immutable laws are even more true of the Internet .

In the case of media platforms, everything you once thought was a good service will, sooner or later, disgust you. This trend has been given a name: enshittification . The term was coined by Canadian blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the inevitable drift of technological giants toward... well.

The explanation is in line with the most basic tenets of Marxism. All digital companies have investors (essentially the bourgeoisie, people who don't perform any work and take the lion's share of the profits), and these investors want to see the percentage of their gains grow year after year. This pushes companies to make decisions that affect the service they provide to their customers. Although they don't do it unwillingly, quite the opposite.

For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here .

Annoying customers is just another part of the business plan. Look at Netflix , for example. The streaming giant has long been riddling how to monetize shared Netflix accounts. Option 1: adding a premium option to its regular price. Next, it asked for verification through text messages. After that, it considered raising the total subscription price. It also mulled adding advertising to the mix, and so on. These endless maneuvers irritated its audience, even as the company has been unable to decide which way it wants to go. So, slowly but surely, we see it drifting toward enshittification.

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