From a Bird to Doge

Hello again, Global Recap readers! Have you noticed a “dog logo” in place of Twitter's iconic blue bird on your Twitter feed? Well, you have Elon Musk to thank/blame. This logo represents Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency created as a joke in 2013 based on the popular Doge meme featuring a shiba-inu.

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, promised to change the logo to a doge after a Twitter user suggested it in March 2022.

On April 3rd, when the logo change was made, many thought it was a late April Fool's prank, but it's still there today.

The update caused Dogecoin's price to soar by 30% in just over 30 minutes and added around $4 billion to its market value. 📈

My Youtube Story

I am sure you guys already know this, but this newsletter was started on the back of my YouTube channel, Business Basics. I started my channel in 2018 and over the years I have been able to grow it to 700,000 subs.

Best of all, I didn’t have to show my face in any videos and I was still able to convince you guys that what I was sharing in my videos was worth listening too (Thank you for listening).

I am sure some of you guys are similar to me, where you value privacy but you also wanna start a YouTube channel and share your story. This is why I launched, Youtube Basics Academy, where I share all the lessons I have learned over the past 4 years growing a faceless channel and hopefully these can help you speed up your youtube journey.

As thank you for reading the newsletter, if you are interested in buying the Youtube Basics Academy, be sure to use the code “NEWSLETTER” for $100 OFF.

Top News of This Week

• Macron visits China to convince Xi Jinping to “bring Russia to its senses,” but reportedly fails to make meaningful progress.

• Zelenskyy is awarded Poland’s highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle, during his first formal visit to Poland since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

• For the third time in six years, China declares standardized Chinese names for several areas of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

• The US pledges another $2.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

• The Philippines government announces the locations of 4 more military bases the US military can access despite China's opposition. 3 of them are close to Taiwan.

• Finland’s left-wing prime minister Sanna Marin concedes defeat in the parliamentary election to a center-right opposition leader Petteri Orpo.

• Finland finally becomes the 31st member of NATO.

McCarthy's Defiant Response to China's Threats

What happened: On Wednesday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California to show their democratic solidarity in the face of China's threats. The meeting also included Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, a member of Democratic leadership, and the leaders of the new select committee on China.

The significance: This is the first time a Taiwanese President has met a US House Speaker on US soil, and McCarthy is the only person in the US presidential line of succession to have met a Taiwanese President on US soil.

US strategy: Although the US does not officially recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state, it operates a de facto embassy in Taipei called The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). The AIT is accorded full protection from the United States Marine Corps, just like all US embassies worldwide. This is often called a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

China’s response: China sent warships to the waters around Taiwan on Thursday. It is yet unclear if this is the retaliation it was warning the US about. Historically speaking, when then-House-Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, Beijing launched extensive military drills around Taiwan and suspended several lines of communication with Washington. This precedence is raising concerns about possible aggressive and destabilizing actions in response to Tsai's meeting with McCarthy.

The Chinese Communist Party has long claimed Taiwan as its own, despite never having controlled it. The party has vowed to take the island by force if necessary.