One Sentence News / May 15, 2024

One Sentence News

Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Georgia students walk out, PM passes 'foreign agent' bill

Summary: Hundreds of university students in the Georgian capital city, Tblisi, walked out of classes in solidarity with the thousands of protestors who have been taking to the streets almost every night for a month in opposition to a bill that will ostensibly allow the government to clamp down on foreign NGOs, while also making eventual accession to the European Union more difficult or impossible; despite that opposition, Georgia’s parliament voted the law through yesterday.

Context: The governing Georgian Dream party has argued that they need to know who’s behind NGOs operating in the country, and that this legislation would give them a better idea of who’s funding what, which in turn would help them flag potential interference by Western powers; opponents of this law have argued that it’s a clone of a Russian law that allows them to basically label anyone they don’t like a foreign operative, which in turn allows the ruling party to jail their political opponents and anyone else who makes trouble for them; the Georgian Dream party has thus been accused to attempting to stall or prevent Georgia’s joining the EU in favor of better relations with Russia, while the vast majority of the country supports more alignment with Europe; Georgia’s president is expected to veto the law, though parliament can override that veto with another vote.

—Reuters

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US energy panel approves rule to expand transmission of renewable power

Summary: After two years of development, US federal energy regulators approved a rule that’s meant to help boost the country’s power grid by streamlining aspects of the infrastructure deployment and upgrade progress, while also changing how costs are divvied-out to involved states.

Context: This is a big rule—about 1,300 pages long—so there are a lot of specifics and niche situations addressed, but in essence it’s meant to simplify existing rules and folkways in the energy infrastructure space that have incentivized energy companies to not expand and invest in new poles, cables, and the like, while also leaving a lot of existing power infrastructure un-upgraded, despite the huge amount of new power generation that’s been coming online, and which is scheduled to come online in the next decade; this is generally being seen as a big deal, but there’s still ample room for it to be challenged in court, most likely by energy companies that don’t want to make these investments or risk losing their regional monopolies, and state legislators who oppose the deployment of new renewable energy power production.

—The Associated Press

China to start $138 billion bond sale to boost economy

Summary: Beginning this Friday, China’s government will begin selling 1 trillion yuan, which is about $138 billion US dollars, in long-term bonds as part of an ongoing effort to boost its economy at a tricky moment.

Context: China’s economy has faced several years of less-than-impressive numbers, in part because of how regional governments have been spending and how much debt they’ve been taking on, in part because of normal ebbs in productivity and population figures, and in part because of how dependent the economy had become on real estate, an industry that in recent years has suffered from all sorts of collapses and scandals; this debt is ultra-long-term, with more than half of it maturing in 30 years, about a third of it in 20 years, and around a tenth in 50 years, according to a report by Bloomberg, which hasn’t been confirmed by the Chinese government; word of this sale has been well received by investors, in part because it’s thought the People’s Bank of China will loosen regulations on banks alongside this bond sale, and some analysts believe this sale could add as much as a full percent to China’s GDP.

—Bloomberg

A recent survey by Generation Lab supports the assertion that, though Gaza-related protests at universities around the US have been dominating headlines, Israel’s invasion of Gaza is a priority of relatively few students, and the majority are more concerned about healthcare and economic issues.

—Axios

$1 billion

Amount of reelection campaign contributions former President (and now candidate) Trump asked for at a fundraising dinner with top oil executives last month.

In exchange, he offered to allow for more oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Alaskan Arctic, to reduce car pollution regulations, and to pause natural gas export permits that have limited oil companies’ ability to export as much gas overseas as they would prefer—alongside a general promise to do a complete U-turn on climate-related policies and legislation passed by the Biden administration.

—The Guardian

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