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One Sentence News / Nov 17, 2021

Colin Wright
Colin Wright
@colinismyname
The news simply summarized / November 17, 2021
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Two explosions rock Uganda’s capital, Kampala, killing three
Summary: A pair of suicide bombings coordinated by Islamic State have killed at least three civilians alongside three suicide bombers in the Ugandan capital city, Kampala.
Context: A third bombing was reportedly foiled by police who pursued and disarmed another would-be bomber, and the two successful blasts were triggered near a police station and on a street near the country’s parliamentary building; at least 33 people are being treated for explosion-related injuries at the city’s main hospital, five of them were critically injured in the blasts.
—The Associated Press
German regulator puts brake on Nord Stream 2 in fresh blow to gas pipeline
Summary: European gas prices jumped nearly 11% on the news that German regulators are holding up certification for Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline, saying the pipeline’s owner’s lack a German subsidiary company capable of securing an operating license.
Context: The development of this pipeline has been diplomatically fraught as it may provide Russia additional leverage over Europe, but this certification will reportedly require the pipeline operators in Germany adhere to German law, so while it’s looking less likely it will be operational by the first half of 2022 (potentially keeping gas prices in the EU higher than usual for a while) it’s also likely EU and US leaders will be more comfortable with the situation once it is operational.
—Reuters
Activision workers plan walkout to force CEO’s removal
Summary: Following a report in The Wall Street Journal about how video game giant Activision Blizzard has handled sexual harassment complaints, employees are planning a walkout today, calling for the CEO’s resignation.
Context: The Journal based its piece on internal documents indicating CEO Bobby Kotick not only knew about several sexual harassment and abuse complaints, but actively shielded those doing the harassing and abusing while misleading the company’s board about what he knew of these complaints; he also reportedly threatened to kill his assistant via voicemail; the company has called the Journal’s piece “misleading.”
—Bloomberg
——
A new report by McKinsey indicates that global wealth has tripled over the past two decades, and China has taken almost 1/3 of that growth due in part to its housing boom: something like 68% of global net worth is stored in real estate.
—Bloomberg
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50%
Amount of global traffic for the Facebook Messenger voice function originating in Cambodia in 2018, according to the company’s internal data.
The company wasn’t able to figure out why this relatively small country was racking up so much voice message time, but a subsequent investigation determined this usage is related to the local Khmer language and how ill-supported it tends to be on smartphone keyboards.
Unicode added Khmer script to their library in the early 2000s, but phone-based keyboards made using the language tedious, and the better keyboards that came along later weren’t pre-installed on phones.
Thus, voice messages became the “texting” default in Cambodia and Facebook’s free app became one of the main means of sending such notes.
—Rest of World
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Colin Wright
Colin Wright @colinismyname

One Sentence News is concise, politically unbiased, and focused on delivering information and understanding in a non-frantic, stress-free way.

Each issue features three curated news stories with a one sentence summary and one sentence of context apiece.

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