G20 summit starts
The G20 summit was expected to get started in Buenos Aires on Friday. BBC news publishes a short, introductory video about what this means. UK prime minister Theresa May will raise the matter of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the situation in Yemen with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, says The Guardian. US president Donald Trump cancelled his planned meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Russia’s seizure of Ukraine ships, reports euronews. Meanwhile German chancellor Angela Merkel’s plane made an emergency landing in Cologne, en route to Argentina, because of a technical problem, writes NDTV.
Deutsche Bank raid
German police raided the offices of Deutsche Bank on Thursday in relation to a money laundering investigation connected to the Panama Papers, The Guardian reports. 170 anti-corruption officials searched 6 offices around Frankfurt. Deutsche Bank said it was “anxious to clarify all suspicions.” Reuters examines the reasons Deutsche Bank could bounce bank after the raid. The Panama Papers were published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2016 and included over 10 million leaked documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca related to off-shore dealings. This 2016 article from The Guardian lays out the scandal.
Italy toughens stance on asylum seekers
Italy’s lower house of parliament has approved new security measures which will limit protection of legitimate asylum seekers, euronews reports. The decree toughens security measures to prevent terrorist attacks. It means asylum would no longer be granted on humanitarian grounds, thus excluding cases like homosexuals fleeing persecution. Refugees would see their protection withdrawn if they are convicted of a crime and the duration for which displaced people are kept in detention centres has been increased to 180 days.
Warning signs
High temperatures across the planet look set to make 2018 the fourth-hottest year on record, Aljazeera reports, citing a UN report to reign-in man-made global warming. The 20 warmest years on record were in the last 22 years, it writes. The report comes ahead of the COP24 climate summit in Poland next week. Politico reflects on what has, or rather hasn’t, been achieved since the 2015 Paris agreement.
Reggae music on Unesco list
The UN has added Jamaica’s distinctive reggae music to its list of international cultural treasures worthy of protection and promotion. Unesco was quoted by The Guardian saying the music’s role “as a vehicle for social commentary, a cathartic practice and a means for praising God” hadn’t changed since it emerged in the Caribbean in the late 1960s. You can brush up on your reggae knowledge by listening to this curated playlist of reggae hits.
All the light
Astronomers have put a number on all of the light from all of the stars that ever existed, The Guardian reports. In total, the astronomers estimate, stars have radiated 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons.