A highly-anticipated summit between the US and North Korea was thrown onto shaky ground yesterday after a change in rhetoric from Kim Jong-un
Hello, this is Anna breaking down Thursday's top stories and best reads for you.
Today's headlines
Trump ready for Kim
Donald Trump said he will still meet the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, at a summit next month, despite a statement from Pyongyang yesterday that said the isolated nation was not interested in discussing ‘one-sided’ demands that it relinquishes its nuclear weapons, the White House said on Wednesday.
Fighting a cultural war
Former White House senior strategist and Breitbart News stalwart Steve Bannon and billionaire Robert Mercer sought Cambridge Analytica’s political advert targeting technology as part of an ‘arsenal of weapons to fight a culture war’, whistleblower Christopher Wylie has said. ‘Steve Bannon believes that politics is downstream from culture. They were seeking out companies to build an arsenal of weapons to fight a culture war,’ Wylie told the Senate judiciary committee.
City life
Two-thirds of people in the world will be living in cities by 2050, mostly concentrated in India, China and Nigeria, according to United Nations predictions released on Wednesday. The world’s rural population will peak in a few years then decline by 2050, according to the report by the UN’s population division.
Harmful chemicals in the atmosphere
Use of banned chemicals which can cause holes in the ozone layer are on the rise, according to a new report, but no one knows who is to blame. A search is being carried out to identify and stop the mysterious source of the emissions, which scientists believe are coming from somewhere in east Asia. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, used to be common in refrigerators, aerosol cans and dry cleaning chemicals, but they were banned under the Montreal Protocol of 1987, after it was discovered they contributed to the creation of a giant hole in the ozone layer which forms over Antarctica each September.
Ebola outbreak
The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo has spread from the countryside into a city, prompting fears that the disease will be very hard to control. Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga confirmed a case in Mbandaka, a city of a million people about 130km (80 miles). The city is a major transportation hub with routes to the capital Kinshasa. 42 people have now been infected and 23 people have died.
What we like
Must-read
Do repentant sexists have a place in our cultural future? Linda Martín Alcoff thinks so. Read why in her op-ed for The New York Times.
Spotlight
The Guardian’s feature about a champion boxer in the UK facing deportation is essential reading.
Culture
A Kenyan lesbian romance film - which was banned in its country of origin - is making waves at Cannes. Rafiki is set to be an international cult hit. Here, Dazed dives into the film.