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Key stories for the week, brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the Red Folder team.
Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.
Publishing since January 2024.
International Stories
4 key international stories for the week:
1) The Unlikely Rise of Claudia Sheinbaum Lindsey Zhao
On October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum was officially sworn in as Mexico’s next president. But while the leftist politician, climate scientist, and feminist may have been the handpicked successor of the previous Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, her path to nationwide fame wasn’t always charted out for her. But will her record-breaking successes translate to real policy change for the people of Mexico?
First, she had to overcome the longstanding barrier of sexism in Mexican politics, recently making history as the first female president Mexico has ever seen in its 200+ year history. A female president, many hope, will bring about the change that previous male presidents failed to do-- lift up women despite systemic discrimination. In Mexico, for every 100 pesos a man earns, a woman is paid 65 pesos for the same work. Beyond the wage gap, domestic violence and crimes against women are terrifyingly common, where an average of 10 girls and women are murdered every day. President Sheinbaum has been an outspoken advocate against gender violence and discrimination. In her first two days in office, she announced a package of reforms that attempt to broaden women’s rights in the country, including a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for equal work. The plan involves modifying six articles of the Constitution and seven secondary laws. In recent elections, Mexico has also seen higher gender parity in Congress, installing the first female governor of the Central Bank and the first female leader of the Supreme Court, and Mexico’s first women’s minister. On gender, Sheinbaum is undoubtedly taking concrete action.
Even as her mentor, former President AMLO, pushed an image of himself as growing up from humble origins and being like any other working class Mexican. President Sheinbaum’s beginnings were slightly different. The daughter of a biology professor and a chemical engineer, even her Jewish identity made her rare among a country where 78% of the population is Roman Catholic. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on thermodynamics, and initially tried to make a career as an academic, before later turning to politics. Nevertheless, she’s continued to advance AMLO’s wildly popular social and political programs, like reforming the government bank to make it easier for government money to get to the people, defending the state oil company, and pushing back against outsized US influence in Mexican affairs. As the mayor of Mexico City, the largest city in North America, she expanded police powers, increased safety, electrified city buses, added cable cars for public transportation, and tried to make the city greener. She’s likely to continue these policies, but on a larger scale, as president.
As a climate scientist, she has already pushed for ambitious energy policies, promising to have 45% renewable energy generation by 2030. She also wants to mandate a first-ever oil production limit of 1.8 million barrels a day, the average level of production Mexico saw in 2023. This is a considerable break from her mentor, who often gave subsidies for and was a strong supporter of fossil fuel companies.
However, she’s been relatively quiet on the issue of drug cartels. From what little she has said about her plans for combating cartel violence in the country, we can likely assume that she’s going to continue AMLO’s ‘Hugs, not Bullets’ policy. While she did cut homicide rates in Mexico City nearly in half during her presidency by installing more security cameras around the city and arming police officers better, those policies may not work on a nationwide scale.
President Sheinbaum is, in many ways, different from her mentor, former president AMLO. In many other ways, she’s promised to continue his legacy. Over the next six years of her presidency, experts are likely watching closely to see which side of her appears more influential.
Read more here:
2) Injustice, Abuse, and Apathy: India’s Femicide Crisis Justin Palazzolo
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected over a decade ago he promised to build a new “shining India” to progress a developing country into one of the world’s premier nations. 10 years later, for women, that new “shining India” is nowhere to be found.
Just 2 days ago, Modi’s parliament formally opposed a bid to criminalize marital rape, justifying its stance by stating that “consent is implied by marriage”, an attitude reflective of a country where 32% of married women have reported physical and sexual abuse from their husbands.
Despite the BJP presiding over explosive economic growth, criticism has dialed in on the treatment of women within the BJP-led India. The BJP has long been accused of completely neglecting violence against women and doing little to prevent it or punish perpetrators responsible for it.
A clear example of this situation revolves around dowry deaths. The tradition of the bride’s family paying money, gold, or livestock to the groom’s family as a ‘dowry’ was outlawed in 1961. However, under the BJP, enforcement has been non-existent outside of major cities. In rural areas, dowries were paid in 95 percent of marriages. Troublingly, if the bride’s family fails to pay the dowry, or if the payment is perceived as ‘cheap’, the groom's family might harass, bully, assault, and in some cases murder the bride.
In 2021, approximately one dowry death happened every 77 minutes according to police, these numbers are likely far worse considering most rural courts pass off dowry deaths as suicides or “kitchen accidents”, with a significant number of dowry murders involving kerosene and brides often being burned alive.
The situation ultimately serves as an indictment of the BJP’s handling of the issue, with the ban on dowries being non-existent in areas where they are most commonly used, and with any sort of federal scrutiny on courts that aid in concealing these murders being absent since Modi’s election a decade ago.
Overall, the BJP has presided over institutions that have permitted an exponential rise in gender violence. In 2012, police reported an estimated 25,000 rape cases, by 2022, that figure had swelled to 31,000. Rampant sexist rhetoric in the BJP bears blame; Vikram Saini, a legislative member of the BJP, stated that party workers “should rejoice” because “they [could] now marry the white-skinned women of Kashmir” following the BJP’s new provisions on the contested region.
The rhetoric used by the BJP serves to objectify women and perpetuate the cycle of violence in which Indian women find themselves in. However, India’s justice system is posing itself as an even larger barrier to progress. Crimes against women are rarely reported to the police, since police rarely investigate the few cases they do receive. Furthermore, even if a case is developed courts often fail in delivering justice. Abuses aren’t recognized as “cognizable offenses” in many domestic cases, leaving victims in danger and perpetrators unpunished. A decade of BJP rule has watched the Indian justice system backslide into apathy.
The consequences of not having accountability regarding gender violence have become both brazen and public. On August 9th, 2024, a 31-year-old doctor was sexually assaulted and killed in one of India’s oldest hospitals. Thousands of protestors took to the streets after news broke that the police purposely delayed the investigation, only detaining a couple of individuals.
This case is a microcosm of the exact problem facing women in India. Accountability has disappeared in Modi’s India with the BJP proving itself both complicit and inept when it comes to tackling sexual violence. These public attacks in hospitals, buses, and public streets are increasing because there is no fear of prosecution or justice.
The Indian parliament’s justification for not prosecuting marital rape offers a perfect insight into the unequal reality facing women in India. Penalizing men for assault would cause “serious disturbances in the institution of marriage”.
Yet somehow assaults and dowry murders don't.
Read More Here:
3) China’s Long Awaited Economic Fall Roshan Shivnani
Over the last couple of decades, China has become the world’s fastest-growing economy. Yet, China is for the first time in a while experiencing a true economic downturn. In July of this year, Chinese official data revealed that GDP growth was falling behind the government’s target of about five percent. As a result, both the government and its people have been hoping to root out the economic problems in the country and finally bring an end to them.
One of the easiest directions to point towards China's economic decline is its falling property sector. Property development has long been a key driver of wealth creation in China, representing around 20% of its GDP. Yet this sector has now fallen victim to a flash flood of selling, with a whopping 60% reduction in home sales. This is a result of a multitude of problems like overleveraging, oversupply, and declining demand, causing a domino effect of defaults, unfinished projects, and plummeting property prices. Large developers like Evergrande have found themselves unable to meet debt obligations, sparking widespread panic. This has provoked the Chinese government to start increasing action by reducing down payments, lowering mortgage rates, and easing purchase requirements. Still, with the constant decline of housing sales and vacant houses across the country, it’s clear China will need to more effectively address the property issues in the country to regain its economic footing.
China’s escalating debt crisis is another major factor exacerbating the country’s economic woes. The nation has accumulated enormous levels of debt—both public and private—over the years, as local governments, corporations, and individuals borrowed heavily to fuel growth. Ultimately, China's gross national debt is over 300 percent of GDP. The central government now faces a mounting challenge in managing this debt load, as slowing economic growth has made it harder for borrowers to repay their obligations. Additionally, the shadow banking system, which operates outside formal regulatory frameworks, has further complicated efforts to bring debt under control. Shadow banking in China has grown rapidly since 2010 and is estimated to account for 26–29% of the country's GDP. However, a lack of regulation has sparked concerns about corrupt practices occurring in the Chinese market, further lowering market sentiment. This debt crisis ultimately means that China can’t use the same aggressive investment it’s used to spark things like investment until it can effectively wipe out the looming debt of the nation.
Read More Here:
4) France CATCH-ing Strays: The Worsening Caribbean Gun Crisis Lindsey Zhao & Robert Zhang
Fueled by an influential and gargantuan gun industry, the United States is widely recognized as the world’s gun violence hotspot. However, the firearms manufactured within the U.S.’ borders often end up outside them, with countries in the Caribbean in particular having long contended with extensive illegal trafficking of American guns.
Caribbean countries have long struggled to get the United States to take action to curb gun trafficking. More than half of the region’s homicides each year are committed with a firearm, and countless weapons are smuggled from the US by traffickers to fuel destabilization in Jamaica and Haiti. Indeed, Haitian gangs’ weapon source of choice is the United States-- a .50-caliber sniper rifle that sells for $10,000 in the United States can fetch $80,000 in Haiti, and more than 80% of the weapons seized there can be traced back to the US. Jamaica’s homicide rate is among the highest in the world, with 53.3 people per 100,000 killed every year. Every month, roughly 200 guns are smuggled from the US into Jamaica.
Surprisingly, the guns don’t stop their journey there. Guns are also being trafficked from the Caribbean into… you guessed it: France.
Well, not exactly.
France owns two territories in the Caribbean- Martinique and Guadeloupe. A January 2024 report by the French Interior Ministry found that Guadeloupe and Martinique homicide rates were nearly 9 and 6 times that of mainland France’s homicide rates, a concerning statistic that highlights how France’s strict gun laws have failed in light of illegal arms trafficking in the Caribbean.
Given that France is one of America’s closest American allies, America has begun to take action. Recently, a coalition of 14 attorney generals, including New York AG Letitia James, banded together to back the Caribbean Arms Trafficking Causes Harm (CATCH) Act, a bill introduced earlier this year in Congress that would help curb illicit arms trafficking from the United States to the Caribbean. It would increase resource availability for US port inspectors and empower the ATF to further its prosecution of weapons traffickers.
A crisis that started in America spread down south to the Caribbean, further destabilizing an already struggling region. Now that France is officially involved, it seems apparent that America is now more committed to taking concrete action. If this bill passes the increasingly polarized Congress, it may finally result in real change.
Read more here:
The Red Folder is brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the News Brief Team:
Paul Robinson
Boyana Nikolova
Sasha Morel
Roshan Shivnani
Rowan Seipp
Anthony Babu
Daniel Song
Rohan Dash
Charlie Hui
Justin Palazzolo
Ruhaan Sood
Evelyn Ding
Robert Zhang
Sahana Srikanth
Meera Menon
Andy Choy
Max Guo
Christina Yang
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