India’s Reliance Industries (RIL), a fossil fuel giant, is moving into renewables, with company chairman Mukesh Ambani announcing an Rs75,000 crore ($10 billion) investment plan on June 24. India’s solar industry, through Reliance, is making a huge bet on competing with China, while the Indian firm’s move into the sector could even signal the end of the oil era.

In India, industry experts believe that Reliance’s announcement has firmly pushed the renewable sector into the spotlight. “It’s very encouraging to see how big corporates in India are making commitments and channeling investment into the clean energy space,” says Vibhuti Garg, energy economist at the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Garg further suggested that Reliance’s announcement will also encourage other companies to invest in the sector, and take the new energy route seriously.

Reliance’s renewables announcement sent shockwaves through the energy industry, just like the company’s aggressive move into mobile internet with its Jio platform and devices in 2016. Jio now dominates the market, and now has ambitious 5G plans. Reliance is hoping that its renewables strategy will lead to similar dominance.

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India’s vaccine baron Adar Poonawalla is finally back in the country after leaving in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis.

On May 1, Poonawalla, the CEO of India’s largest vaccine maker Serum Institute of India, told The Times of London newspaper that he was going to be living in the UK for “an extended time.” He said he was pushed into the situation because of a grave threat to his life.

Today, Poonawalla tweeted a picture from SII’s vaccine facility in the city of Pune in Maharashtra. A company source confirmed that Poonawalla returned to India a few days ago.

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In less than a month, India’s street dogs face an unprecedented crisis.

Starting July 14, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is levying a temporary suspension on imports of dogs from “high-risk” countries like India over a concern that rabies, which has been eliminated in the US since 2007, will make a comeback. “This suspension will protect the health and safety of imported dogs by preventing importations of dogs inadequately vaccinated against rabies and will protect the public’s health against the reintroduction of dog rabies,” the agency said.

The concern is valid: Rabies is fatal in both humans and animal. There is no cure for the disease once symptoms appear. And India, with the highest case count of rabies in the world, is among the biggest threats. But the CDC policy could make the rabies situation in India, where 20,000 people die of the disease each year, far worse.

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In the year since Beijing enacted its draconian national security law just an hour before July 1, 2020, authorities in Hong Kong have arrested, detained, censored, raided, banned, and persecuted. But this crackdown on the protest movement and civil society at large has not happened in a vacuum. It has been accompanied and enabled by the construction of a massive national security complex, restructuring the sociopolitical landscape and rewriting fundamental rules of engagement.

Here’s the thing to remember when assessing Hong Kong. A new security structure now sits atop existing institutions, in many cases directly altering the institutions’ original functions and imposing a new priority upon them: upholding national security, as defined by Beijing.

 "It's inevitable that they will keep expanding [national security] activities, because it's the logic of bureaucracy." 

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The Philippines is awash in yellow as it mourns the death of former president Benigno Aquino III. Known widely by his nicknames “Noynoy” and “PNoy,” Aquino passed away in his sleep on June 24 due to renal failure, according to his sister Aurora. He was 61.

The yellow ribbons on Filipino Facebook feeds and yellow flowers on the lawn of the Aquino residence in Manila evoke the campaign color of the Philippines’ preeminent pro-democracy clan. Aquino was the only son of Benigno and Cory Aquino. His father’s assassination was the impetus for the 1986 People Power Revolution that led to the ouster of longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies. His mother Corazon succeeded Marcos and became Asia’s first female president that same year.

Beningo Aquino III served as president from 2010 to 2016 and governed with the maxim called “Straight Path” (“Daang Matuwid” in Filipino), alluding to his plan to steer the country away from the systemic corruption that had re-emerged in the country at that time.

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The apocalyptic scenes of hundreds of corpses floating in India’s Ganga river in May created global headlines. While the world was shocked, officials from Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, insisted that funeral rites on the river have been prevalent for several years.

But the bodies kept coming, as families of Covid-19 victims—without enough money to perform the last rites—kept abandoning corpses of loved ones at the river’s bank, instead of cremating them. Despite apparent state government indifference, a solution was needed.

Funerals need wood

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This month has been a significant one for Africa’s animation industry, as major content platforms in the US announced they are picking up four productions by local cartoon creators.

First came the news early in the month that Cartoon Network has commissioned a full series for Garbage Boy and Trash Can, based on a pilot by Nigerian animator Ridwan Moshood, to premiere next year. Then last week, Disney+ announced that an original 10-part collection of original films titled Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire by animators from six African countries will debut on the streaming service, also next year.

And the same week, at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market, the The Walt Disney Company announced picking up two African animations: Kiff, by South African creators Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal, to premiere in 2023 on the Disney Channel, and Kiya and the Kimoja Heroes, by South African artists Kelly Dillon and Marc Dey, to debut on Disney Junior and Disney + in 2023.

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The burden of extra childcare on families during the Covid-19 pandemic has been enormous.

Children around the world required a collective 615 billion extra hours of care as they were left home from school—a conservative estimate that assumed children would otherwise only be in school for five hours, according to a study published today by the Center for Global Development, an organization researching economic policies to reduce poverty. Most of this unpaid work was taken on by parents, and disproportionately by women, who provide 75% of childcare work in developing countries, and over 65% in wealthy ones.

On average, this means women between the ages of 15 and 64 around the world worked an average 173 unpaid extra hours, adding more than a month of full-time work to their schedule. For men, the estimated burden was much lower, at 59 hours.

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If ever there was an event to discourage vacationers from booking cruises, it should have been the Covid-19 pandemic. Passengers got sick, ships were stranded, and the industry stumbled badly in its response.

Yet despite a bruising 14 months, industry leader Carnival is feeling buoyant (sorry). While the company is still losing billions—it’s burning through $500 million a month so far this year—bookings for 2022 are ahead of 2019’s bookings, Carnival executives said on a conference call with analysts and investors today. And its not just discounting: Pricing for 2022 cruises is higher than for 2019 as well.

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand out there and we feel very good about our overall position,”  David Bernstein, Carnival’s CFO, said on the call.

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