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Today’s 3-by-3 travels across a landmark same-sex ruling in South Korea, an unprecedented global Internet outage, an anti-woke movement in corporate America, and more. Let’s fly!

Politics

• Dominican bill threatens women’s rights

A bill in the Dominican Republic expected to receive final approval soon would maintain the country’s ban on abortion without exceptions, preserving a criminalization system in which women who have an abortion can be imprisoned for up to 2 years and doctors who conduct one can face up to 20 years. As feminist activists protest against the policy in one of Latin America’s most socially restrictive and religious nations, asking that exceptions for a mother’s life, rape, incest, and fetal malformation be made legal, the new bill also aims to reduce penalties for sexual violence within marriage and render sexual orientation unprotected from discrimination — endangering women physically and endangering the LGBTQ+ community legally. President Luis Abinader campaigned on decriminalization in May but changed his tune after winning the election, abandoning any commitment to the abortion exceptions that he had made to women’s organizations.

• DOJ sues housing provider for abusing migrant children

The Justice Department has found that the nation’s largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children has committed several offenses of sexual abuse and harassment for at least 8 years, with employees of Southwest Key Programs soliciting nude pictures or sex and inappropriately touching young children in their care — threatening the children and their families with violence if they reported the abuse. Southwest Key has been a prominent government contractor since 2014 when the migration of unaccompanied children migration increased considerably and during the Trump administration’s separation of families in 2017, providing shelter for children after Border Patrol makes arrests and before Health and Human Services can safely release them to relatives. Operating 29 child migrant shelters across Texas, Arizona, and California with a total capacity of over 6,300 and receiving $3 billion in federal contracts since 2015, Southwest Key is responsible for at least 100 reports of sexual abuse or harassment.

• South Korea’s top court delivers a win for same-sex couples

After two years of legal challenges and appeals, the South Korean Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex couples are legally entitled to the same health insurance benefits as heterosexual couples — a landmark decision in a country where same-sex marriages are still not legally recognized. Although this ruling marks the first formal recognition of a same-sex union in the fight for marriage equality and will likely create greater visibility for the LGBTQ+ community in South Korea, a 2023 Pew Research Center poll indicated that 56% of South Koreans were opposed to same-sex marriage. Beyond the government, the country’s public is still notably conservative on social issues compared to other developed nations — with religious groups strongly resisting LGBTQ+ legislation over the years and most recently protesting outside of the Supreme Court with a "Same-sex families are nonsense” banner.

Business

• Global technology outage exposes Internet fragility

Global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike issued a faulty software update this morning that disabled computers running Microsoft Windows, causing a worldwide technology failure across major U.S. airlines, banks from India to Germany, medical booking systems in the U.K., government agencies in the United Arab Emirates, and many more — comprising one of the world’s largest synchronous outages ever. The incident was not a security issue or cyberattack but rather a devastating accident, prompting many experts to worry about evident vulnerabilities when the entire world runs the same software. CrowdStrike quickly issued a reboot notice that allowed many companies and trading markets to resume functional operations, but the inability of protective IT systems to prevent this crisis remains a critical issue for Internet infrastructure.

• South Africa aims to improve infrastructure with $1B loan

Transnet (South Africa’s state-owned rail and ports company) will receive a $1 billion loan from the African Development Bank, fully guaranteed by the South African government to begin a $8.1 billion revitalization of the nation’s lagging infrastructure. Even as Africa’s most industrialized nation, failing railways and ports have hindered its export market, foreign business investment, and overall economic progress. The loan announcement comes just as President Cyril Ramaphosa begins a new parliamentary term with a coalition government (recently formed after his African National Congress lost its 30-year majority), prioritizing economic stimulation and job growth to increase public approval and restore confidence in his leadership.

• China’s Community Party prioritizes technological power

China’s governing Community Party concluded a 4-day meeting on Thursday, aiming to revitalize the nation’s weak job market, lagging property industry, and overall slowing economy — closely resembling influential Party meetings in the late 1970s that first opened China to foreign investment and began its manufacturing dominance. The meeting’s outcomes support President Xi Jinping’s commitment to technology and domestic production, endorsing increased investment in Chinese companies to develop cutting-edge computer chips and artificial intelligence at a time when access to U.S. technology has become limited. Xi’s “Made in China 2025” initiative to shift China’s production focus from toys and furniture to high-tech products such as electric vehicles and home appliances has successfully decreased the Western advancement gap, but these goods have so far been more successful in foreign exporting than domestic consumption.

Culture

• John Deere moves away from diversity and inclusion

Farm equipment leader John Deere is the latest large U.S. company to abandon diversity and inclusion initiatives, announcing it will terminate “social or cultural awareness” events and ensure “socially-motivated” messages do not appear in its training materials. The announcement represents a broader conservative movement against wokeness, diversity-oriented roles, and climate efforts that has even inspired Target and Bud Light boycotts due to their LGBTQ+ marketing — with conservative activists now aiming at other companies that have traditionally conservative customers. Tennessee-based company Tractor Supply ended corporate diversity efforts a few weeks ago by aggressively pledging to eliminate every DEI role in its organization, heavily criticized by the Human Rights Campaign and National Black Farmers Association as a disappointing decision amid a national far-right awakening.

• Paris prepares for Olympics with anti-terrorism perimeter

With the Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony set for July 26, Paris’s business owners, locals, and tourists were surprised yesterday by a nearly 4-mile barrier along the River Seine — restricting entry to those who had known to apply for a QR code pass in advance. Paris has experienced deadly extremist attacks in recent years, including the November 2015 events which killed 130 people, and the city has recruited around 45,000 police and 10,000 soldiers to prevent any such outcomes at this year’s Olympics. Anyone in the area must fill out an online form and pass a vetting process to be granted an access code, taking a few days to verify the applicant is not a security threat.

• New Netflix strategies drive subscriber growth

After losing almost 1 million subscribers in the spring of 2022, Netflix is on an encouraging road back with 8 million subscribers added from April to June of this year, marking the sixth consecutive quarter that subscriber gains have increased from the previous year. The recovery is largely attributed to 2022 strategies that blocked password sharing (a common practice among family and friends using one account across households) and introduced commercials for the first time in the platform’s history (offered on a lower-priced subscription tier) — together generating around 55 million more paying customers. The commitment to profit margins has resulted in fewer original Netflix productions compared to the past decade, but a retained quality is evident in the platform’s industry-leading 107 Emmy nominations this year.

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