Flash floods have triggered evacuations on Russia’s Black Sea coast where this woman was looking for dry ground.
👋 Pialli!*
Welcome to Monday, where the Kremlin confirms Wagner leader Prigozhin met with Putin after the failed mutiny, Joe Biden is in the UK ahead of the NATO Summit in Vilnius and major flooding has been reported from New Delhi to New York, Spain to Japan to Russia. Meanwhile, in Argentine daily Clarín, Jasmine Bazan asks if memes are subjected to copyright laws.
[*Nahuatl, Mexico]
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🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Prigozhin met Putin after rebellion, says Kremlin: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin five days after the mercenaries' insurrection. In the three hour meeting on 29 June, Wagner commanders supposedly affirmed that their soldiers would continue to fight for Putin.
• Biden in UK: U.S. President Joe Biden has arrived in the UK for meetings with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, before heading to Windsor to discuss climate finance and meet with King Charles for the first time since the monarch was crowned. The talks with Sunak were set to include the post-Brexit Northern Ireland peace process, as well as the war in Ukraine, particularly the question of sending cluster munitions to Ukraine and Kyiv’s NATO membership ahead of Tuesday’s alliance summit in Lithuania. Biden said on Sunday that it was premature for Ukraine to join NATO now.
• Swedish and Turkish leaders meet ahead of NATO summit: Sweden's Prime Minister will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a last-ditch attempt to bridge a diplomatic impasse over Stockholm’s NATO membership. Erdogan has voiced his frustration with Sweden's so called ‘failure’ to deal with suspected Kurdish militants as promised, as Western countries worry about the Kremlin's divisionary influence. Hungary and Turkey are the only two countries standing in the way of the unanimous ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership ahead of tomorrow's Summit.
• Amidst rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, Germany to take part in Australian drills: For the first time, Germany will be sending troops to Australia to join the international Talisman Sabre drills, showing a shift of focus onto the Indo-Pacific. Up to 240 German soldiers will join training in jungle warfare and landing operations with some 30,000 service members from 12 other nations, including the U.S., South Korea and France. In recent years, Germany’s military presence in the Indo-Pacific has grown, balancing its security and economic interests with its most important trading partner, China.
• Stabbing attack at Chinese kindergarten kills six: A 25-year-old man has been detained over a knife attack on a kindergarten in southern China that killed a teacher, two parents and three children. Despite a low rate of violent crime due to strict gun laws and tight security, attacks on schoolchildren have been a problem for many years in China.
• Hundreds gone missing off Canary Islands: At least 300 people traveling in migrant boats from Senegal to Spain's Canary Islands have disappeared, launching a search by rescuers. Two vessels have been missing for 15 days, carrying 65 and up to 60 passengers respectively. A third with about 200 people aboard has now also gone missing. Aid group Walking Borders raised the alarm, highlighting that many children are on board.
• 100 million users join new Threads app: In the latest installment of the Musk vs. Zuckerberg saga, new data has revealed that the Threads social media app, which aims to rival Twitter, has signed up more than 100 million users in less than five days. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s new app seems to be capitalizing on Elon Musk’s controversial and chaotic changes to Twitter which have alienated some users. Meta claims to be creating a "saner, kinder place" than Twitter, despite the groups history of privacy violations — which have made the app unavailable in Europe due to the EU's data legislation.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
The Dutch daily De Volkskrant dedicates its front page to the collapse of the Dutch four-party coalition government after 18 months in power. Following the opposition of the minority Christian Union party to the measures proposed by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on immigration, the deep ideological divisions between the four parties caused the coalition to collapse just a few months before the elections. After that, Mark Rutte declared he would not run for a fifth term in office and would leave politics following the elections.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
36.8%
Egypt’s annual inflation rate has reached 36.8% in June — setting a record high as the country is battling price hikes and a depreciating currency. Food and beverages prices rose by 64.9% last month over the same time last year, data from the Central Agency for Mobilization and Statistics shows. The most populous Arab country is the world’s largest wheat importer, particularly from Russia and Ukraine.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Who owns that meme? The answer is all over the internet
In Argentine daily Clarín, Jasmine Bazan takes a look into how copyright laws may or may not be applicable to memes, which normally use an existing image without any consent. The question is a reminder of how the Internet has changed the basics of communication and commerce.
⚖️ Argentine public law specialist and law professor Gustavo Arballo cites two parts to the ownership issue: the creator of the meme and those sharing them. In principle, he says, memes are within the provisions of the Argentine Law 11.723 (governing intellectual property), for using material already subject to property rights (a company logo, for example). Reuse of such material "should have the permission of the original rights holder. As habitually this does not happen, [the owners] can oppose its spread and take legal action," if they see harm being done to their interests.
🇪🇸 Argentina, he says, currently had no regulations on the use and modification of existing works for artistic, humorous or satirical purposes. Spain in contrast has introduced a (2021) Pastiche law to regulate the online manipulation of images as memes do. The law allows one to take elements of an artist's work and modify or combine them without the author's authorization, "provided there is no risk of confusion with, or harm being done to the original work or provisions."
📣 Meme, as a word, precedes the internet. Coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins, it relates to imitation and repetition as mechanisms for spreading a concept in a community. Tomás Balmaceda, a young philosopher interested in how science and ideas interact, describes memes as "perfect vehicles to summarize ideas and complex points of view, with the ability to convey different, even contradictory, voices and perspectives."
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📣 VERBATIM
“We believe that the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive.”
— U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that her just completed visit to Beijing markS a step forward for the stability of U.S.-China relations. Following four days of talks with China, Yellen admitted that the two countries still had significant disagreements, but that a channel of communication had been established and that the recent years of strained ties could begin to be mended.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• From Bulgaria To Turkey, Zelensky Tries To Secure NATO's Eastern Flank — KOMMERSANT
• “How Do The French Feel?" — Director Alice Diop's Vision Of A Nation Torn In Two — GAZETA WYBORCZA
• The Extreme Highs And Lows Of The Parenting Rollercoaster — RECALCULATING
✍️ Newsletter by Yannick Champion-Osselin, Marine Béguin, Valeria Berghinz and Anne-Sophie Goninet
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