Hi Global Recap readers,

After I nervously hit the “publish” button each day, I turn into a data detective. I scrutinize the analytics of each newsletter religiously to decipher your preferences (the click frequency on specific stories suggests this).

🫠 At times, the findings leave me scratching my head, while sometimes my intuition gets a big ego boost.

✅ Don’t get me wrong - I’m not nudging you to click links. This is just a little “behind the scenes” for those who wonder how I write this newsletter every day.

Here’s what’s up around the world: 👇

📈 Top News

💸 China’s Property Crisis Worsens as Another Developer Suspends. China’s real estate is sinking faster than the Titanic, it seems. Sino Ocean, a major real estate firm, has halted payments on its offshore bonds, citing liquidity problems and sales slump. The company joins Country Garden, the largest homebuilder, in facing debt restructuring.

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🇺🇦 Zelensky to Visit U.S. Amid Aid Debate. Ukrainian President Zelensky is expected to meet with President Biden next week as he attends the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Zelenskyy’s U.S. visit is more than just a diplomatic courtesy. It’s a high-stakes mission as Congress mulls over a whopping $24 billion aid package for Ukraine.

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🇰🇷 South Korea to Rebuild Ukraine After War. Korea’s land minister and business tycoons ink a deal with Ukraine’s president, promising to rebuild the war-torn nation once Russia retreats.

From public transport to smart cities, airports to sewage systems, dams to railways - Korea’s got Ukraine covered. Need money? Korea’s also got that sorted with a loan of $2.3 billion over the long term.

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🌎 Climate Activists Demand Fossil Fuel Ban Worldwide. The Fridays for Future movement is back with a vengeance, staging a weekend of coordinated protests in hundreds of cities around the globe. Their demand: End the use of fossil fuels and a transition to renewable energy sources.

The movement was started by Greta Thunberg back in 2018.

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🌊 Italian Island Drowns in Migrants. The small Italian island of Lampedusa is drowning in 7,000 migrants who arrived in just two days, triggering a humanitarian emergency. The UN and the mayor beg for help to move them elsewhere.

The majority are escaping political chaos and natural disasters in Tunisia and Libya. The migrants have already overshadowed the island’s population. Some have even clashed with the police and occupied the pier.

Its mayor declared a state of emergency.

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✍️ In-Depth

European Union
EU Hits TikTok with Huge Privacy Fine

👎 TikTok Gets Slapped. The EU regulator slapped a huge fine on the social media giant for violating children’s privacy rights.

🇪🇺 EU Data Watchdog’s Verdict: TikTok broke the EU's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) rules by mishandling children’s data. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees TikTok across the EU, said the app failed on a number of fronts.

• It set child users’ accounts to public by default,

• It allowed public comments on those accounts,

• It did not check whether an adult paired with a child user was a parent or guardian, and

• It did not properly consider the risks posed to under-13s.

💰 How Much Did It Cost Them? TikTok has to pay €345 million ($368 million) for its breaches. It is the biggest fine to date that TikTok has received from regulators. It is also the second-largest GDPR fine ever imposed, after Meta’s €1.2bn ($1.28bn) penalty in May.

🙅‍♂️ TikTok’s Response. The app said, it:

It also claimed that the regulator’s criticisms were focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago and that it had made changes to them well before the investigation began.