One Sentence News / March 15, 2024

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

European Commission recommends opening EU membership talks with Bosnia

Summary: Earlier this week, the European Commission recommended opening EU membership talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Context: This is just an early step on the way to possible, eventual accession into the bloc, and the Commission noted that there’s still a good deal of work left to do, including handling local ethnic rivalries and secession threats, but the EU is looking to expand—for economic and defense reasons—and this recommendation is meant to recognize the work the Bosnian government has already done, passing all sorts of laws that have brought it more closely into line with EU standards for things like human rights, corruption, and migration.

—Reuters

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Thai election authorities seek to dissolve poll-winning Move Forward Party

Summary: The Thai election commission has said that it will ask the country’s constitutional court to disband the Move Forward Party, which took the majority of votes in last year’s election, and which—among other progressive policies—has said it intends to change strict laws against insulting the country’s royal family.

Context: In January, the court found that the Move Forward Party’s plans to change these laws violates the Thai constitution, and if the commission’s efforts to dissolve the party are successful, that could result in a ban on its leaders from being involved in politics for a decade; the heads of the party have said they don’t intend to overthrow the Thai system, which is democratic but places the monarch as the head of state, and they’ve said they’ll prove their innocence in court; the forerunner of the Move Forward Party, the Future Forward Party, was dissolved in 2020 due to financial issues.

—Al Jazeera

Milei gives himself salary raise, backtracks after social media clashes

Summary: The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, has been criticized for approving a 48% raise for himself and his cabinet while overseeing dramatic cuts of government spending across the country and its agencies.

Context: Milei claims that the raise was implemented by his predecessor and applied automatically, but his critics say that he approved the raise in February; Milei has said he will overturn this decree, though this is likely to continue to be a topic of conversation in Argentina, as the country continues to suffer staggering levels of inflation, and because child poverty levels recently hit 57% according to the UN Children’s Fund, those levels on track to hit 70% the first quarter of 2024 unless something changes.

—Buenos Aires Herald

The effects were unevenly distributed (as tends to be the case with such things), but the US officially experienced its warmest-ever winter (on record), due to the impacts of climate change and the El Niño phenomena.

—Axios

$1.2 billion

Low-end valuation of Michael Jackson’s music catalog, based on a new deal for Sony Music Group to buy half of the late performer’s publishing and recoded masters catalog.

Higher-end valuations are hovering around $1.5 billion, but in either case, this represents the largest ever valuations of a performer’s music assets (though the band Queen is seeking about $1.2 billion, which would put it in the same range).

—Billboard

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