Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Google loses antitrust case brought by Epic Games

Summary: Tech giant Google lost a court case brought by Fortnite-maker Epic Games in 2020 related to its requirement that app developers use Google’s Android app store payment system, which in turn requires that those developers pay Google a percentage of what they make, which many developers consider to be an exorbitant fee.

Context: This ruling will almost certainly be appealed by Google, so there’s a chance it could be drawn out quite a lot longer, and could eventually go in another direction, but this is just one of many antitrust cases Google is facing right now, so this ruling, even if it turns out to be temporary, could influence those other cases; this is also notable because Apple has faced the same criticism for the fees it charges app-makers on its own app store—so the reliable income both companies currently make from their respective app stores might not be long for this world, and that in turn could upend the app-world status quo, allowing app stores run by other companies to start showing up on smartphones and other mobile devices in the next few years.

—The Wall Street Journal

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Amsterdam cuts speed limits 40% to improve road safety

Summary: The Dutch capital city Amsterdam has dropped the automobile speed limit throughout the entire city from 50kph to 30kph (which is about 31mph down to less than 19mph) in order to improve road safety.

Context: Research has shown that reducing the speed limit in cities in this way tends to reduce the number of serious car-related accidents by up to 30%, while also significantly reducing traffic-related noise and the overall number of cars on city roads, helping with traffic and pollution; similar efforts in other European cities, including Brussels, Madrid, and Paris have been successful in that they achieved those aforementioned goals, and they were generally well-received by citizens, especially after issues related to the initial rollout were worked out.

—Bloomberg

Five African countries have anthrax outbreaks, with 20 deaths reported

Summary: The World Health Organization has announced that five African countries in the eastern and southern parts of the continent—Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—are experiencing anthrax outbreaks, with more than 1,100 suspected cases and 20 deaths tallied in 2023.

Context: These countries tend to see seasonal outbreaks of the bacterial infection every year, but this is the worst it’s been in some time, as they seldom see this many human infections, and definitely not this many human deaths (it’s usually limited to livestock); human-to-human spread of anthrax is rare, but outbreaks are still possible because of how the bacteria naturally sticks around in the soil, and because of how it can be spread between animals, and then to humans who consume the meat of infected animals—as was the case in one recent outbreak in which 26 people in Zambia are suspected to have contracted anthrax by eating the meat of a contaminated hippo.

—Reuters

Following a year in which a record-high number of people have illegally entered the US via its southern border with Mexico, the government is building a “virtual wall” along that border, aiming to improve automated surveillance using towers with high-tech equipment, the collected footage aggregated and parsed by AI systems—reducing the number of people required to keep tabs on things (which is important at a moment in which the US Customs and Border protection service is experiencing staffing shortages).

—Axios

$46.4 billion

Funding the United Nations says it needs for 2024 in order to provide humanitarian services to about 300 million people around the world.

That includes people in military hot spots like the Gaza Strip, but also those suffering from the impacts of drought, famine, and long-term economic issues in places like Sudan, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia.

This is less than the $56.7 billion requested for 2023 in part because the UN only received about 35% of that sum: one of the worst funding results in the UN’s recent history.

—France 24

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