China
"But who wants to have three kids? Young people could have two kids at most. The fundamental issue is living costs are too high and life pressures are too huge."
China today announced it would allow couples to have up to three children. This is big news there. For decades, China maintained its infamous one-child policy to keep a lid on exploding population growth. Now, Beijing has the opposite problem. Birth rates are declining. It scrapped the one-child policy in 2016 and allowed couples to have two children. It clearly hasn’t had the desired effect, leading to today’s announcement. Rights groups denounced the move, saying that, as with the previous two policies, a government should have no right to interfere with the family planning of its citizens.
More from BBC here.
Europe
It’s been called “Fortress Europe” before and now the EU is going to prove even harder for refugees and migrants to enter with the advent of so-called digital barriers. Greek border police, for example, are using a “sound cannon” to blast noise as loud as a jet engine over the Turkish border. AI tech is being used to seek out suspicious movement. And the EU has spent a staggering $3.7 billion on research into security tech since the Mediterranean refugee crisis in 2015 - 2016.
More from the Associated Press here.
Indian-administered Kashmir
Aasif Sultan, a journalist from Indian-administered Kashmir, has now been in prison for 1,000 days on what rights groups say are trumped up charges.
More from Al Jazeera here.