Mali coup; Google's $260 million fine; India COVID recovery

In today’s episode, we will revisit Mali’s political crisis in light of the World Bank pausing payments, look at changes Google has agreed upon after its 200 Million Euro fine, and examine India’s COVID situation in light of states reopening.
Today on The Leaders' Brief -
  • The World Bank has announced it had temporarily paused payments to operations in Mali after the military orchestrated the second coup in less than a year. The West African nation has been in a political crisis since August, last year. President Boubacar Keita was removed from power by the country’s military who received strong support from the country's civilians but drew international criticism, inviting several sanctions. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), for the second time, suspended Mali, freezing all aid passing through its borders. 

  • US tech giant Google announced it would make a series of changes to its advertising technology after being fined 220 Million Euros ($268 million) in France for abusing its ‘dominant position in online advertising. An investigation by the French Competition Authority found that Google gave preferential treatment to its DFP advertising server, which allows publishers of sites and applications to sell their advertising space and its SSP AdX listing platform. 

  • India, which till a few months ago had become the COVID epicentre in the world averaging over 400,000 daily cases, appears to have finally contained the Delta variant. While the country still recorded over 90,000 cases and 2,000 deaths yesterday, a rapid vaccination drive, one of the biggest in the world, is gradually allowing Indian cities to open up. It should be noted that since the end of April a second COVID wave had crippled the Indian economy as several states had to impose strict lockdown measures to cut the COVID chain. According to data released last month the lockdowns had seen India’s factory output fall significantly. 

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