Global Headlines Express | Greek Wildfires Kill 74; The Economist on Netflix's Backing of Stand-up Comedy

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What the Agenda-Setters Are Talking About

The Economist: Netflix Is Building a Second Golden Age of Stand-up Comedy

Every summer the Canadian city of Montreal hosts the world's biggest comedy festival, Just for Laughs. Founded in 1983, it has now run for 35 years and draws some 1,600 comedy shows and 2 million visitors a year.

At last year's festival, the veteran comedian Andy Kindler cracked a delighted joke: "Netflix is going to put out a comedy special every week. It's really exciting, because we get to watch America get sick of stand-up comedy all over again."

Netflix has been putting out comedy specials since 2013, but the number shot up last year. The platform now carries more than 170 of them. Netflix has also signed an agreement with Sirius XM Holdings, The Wall Street Journal reports, to build a comedy radio channel together.

All this attention to stand-up has left people wondering: will Netflix bring America a new golden age of the form?

Stand-up had its first American golden age 40 years ago. Between 1978 and 1988 the country had more than 300 comedy clubs. Alongside big shoulder pads and big hair, laughter was itself a major cultural commodity.

Television then began pouring out comedy shows, a stretch that carried comedians such as Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen and Roseanne Barr to the peaks of their careers.

In 1992 the comedian Rita Rudner joked: "There are too many comedians now! When a kid tells his parents he wants to be a lawyer, the parents say, well, first learn how to be a comedian."

Chasing the quick money, TV channels put out comedy of wildly uneven quality, wore audiences down, and turned the boom into a bubble that burst.

Last year Netflix signed Jerry Seinfeld for two comedy specials and the talk show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The deal is reportedly worth as much as $100 million, about what HBO spends on a season of Game of Thrones. Netflix has also signed Amy Schumer, Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle, among others, to deals worth between $13 million and $60 million.

Netflix looks to be staging the 1980s comedy boom again. HBO, which has made plenty of comedy in the past, has held back, because streaming has never accounted for more than 1% of its viewing. Last year HBO programming chief Casey Bloys publicly accused Netflix of having no track record of success in comedy and of pushing prices up until rivals were forced out of the market.

At the end of last month Netflix announced nearly half of its comedy slate for this fall. It also plans something nobody has tried: recording Just for Laughs live this year and posting it on the platform at the same time. If that works, Netflix could take the entire comedy market and become its clear leader. If it fails, the whole thing will be a joke.

The 24-Hour News Makers

Heat-Driven Wildfires Kill 74 and Injure 172 in Athens, Greece.

On the afternoon of the 23rd, Greek time, the capital, Athens, was struck by wildfires of a severity not seen in a decade, killing 74 people and injuring 172; in some areas the fires burned on into the 24th. The last time Greece faced fires this bad was in August 2007.

Mati, a well-known seaside resort village, was almost entirely burned out. Evangelos Bournous, mayor of the town of Rafina, said more than 1,000 houses and 3,000 cars had been destroyed.

The fires came out of days of extreme heat. Since June, forest fires set off by lightning had been reported all over Greece, and winds of up to 100 kilometers an hour in Athens in recent days sent the flames beyond control.

Residents described the scene to CNN: the fire reached the seaside village so fast that they had no choice but to jump into the sea. According to Reuters, rescue teams pulled 696 people from the shore and 19 from the water. The local fire service also confirmed that 25 residents could not get out in time and died as they fled.

Nikos Stavrinidis, one of the survivors from the coast, told The Guardian, "It is truly terrible to watch someone next to you drown and be able to do nothing," and said he and his friends floated in the sea for nearly two hours before rescuers reached them.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared three days of national mourning: "There are no words left to describe what we feel. This country is going through a tragedy. Today Greece begins three days of mourning in memory of those who died."

What Else Happened in the World

Japan's government plans to extend the summer holiday. After days of punishing heat, the heatstroke death toll has reached 65. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, "Record-breaking heat continues across Japan, and emergency measures to protect students and their health have become an important issue." The government is discussing extending the summer holiday and shortening the winter one. In South Korea, also battered by the heat, President Moon Jae-in said publicly that the sustained heat wave would be classified as a national-level severe disaster.

Facebook has set up a Chinese subsidiary in Hangzhou. Chinese business registration records show that Facebook had just established a subsidiary in Hangzhou's Xihu district called Facebook Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., with registered capital of $30 million and Facebook executive Zhang Jingmei as legal representative. But according to The New York Times, the registration was deleted on Tuesday night — a sign that Facebook's position in China remains tangled and unclear.

Japan has set a target of electrifying all passenger cars by 2050. Japanese carmakers will aim for every new passenger car they sell at home and abroad to be an "electrified vehicle" — an electric vehicle (EV), a hybrid or another car driven by an electric motor.

South Korean prosecutors have appealed the ruling that the money Park Geun-hye took was not a bribe. On July 20 the Seoul Central District Court handed down its first-instance verdict in the case of former President Park Geun-hye, who took special activity funds from the National Intelligence Service and interfered in the nomination process of the Saenuri Party (now the Liberty Korea Party). Prosecutors, unhappy with the ruling, have appealed.

A poll shows more than half of Americans think Putin has leaked confidential information about Trump. Shortly after the Trump-Putin summit ended, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing 51% of Americans believe Putin has leaked information about Trump and 39% believe he has not.

The BRICS summit will be held in South Africa from July 25 to 27. This is the 10th meeting of the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Philani Mthembu, director of the South African think tank the Institute for Global Dialogue, told Deutsche Welle that South Africa has lost diplomatic ground over the past few years. That does not mean it will drift away from traditional partners such as the European Union and the United States. "South Africa understands," he said, "that to solve its own problems it has to make better use of its foreign relations."

The East Asian Youth Games have been called off. After a citizens' campaign in Taiwan gathered signatures for a referendum on renaming Taiwan's team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the East Asian Olympic Committee (EAOC), under its Chinese chairman Liu Peng, voted to cancel the games. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the United States supports Taiwan's participation in international organizations and called on "all parties to engage in productive dialogue and avoid actions that would raise tensions or create instability." Tsai Ing-wen wrote on Facebook: "I support the Taichung city government and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee 100 percent in arguing the case on its merits, under the contract, and appealing to the end."

Someone Said

"They don't have children, which is to say they have no 'productivity.' Is it really right to spend tax money on that?"

— Mio Sugita, a Liberal Democratic Party member of Japan's House of Representatives.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, LDP House of Representatives member Mio Sugita wrote an article for the Japanese magazine Shincho 45 containing discriminatory remarks about same-sex couples: "They don't have children, which is to say they have no 'productivity.' Is it really right to spend tax money on that?" Once the remarks spread on social media, they drew protests from many users. Shunsuke Takei, a former parliamentary vice-minister for foreign affairs, replied on Twitter: "Whipping up base feeling is not politics. It is pure hatred."

LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai offered his view: "People hold different political positions, and they also live in different ways."

You Might Also Be Interested In

3,500 French students sign a petition against their school tracking where they are

A private Catholic school in Paris recently said students would have to carry Bluetooth trackers so it could be sure they were attending class. The French outlet BFMTV reports that the device allows a quick check of whether a student is present, in place of the old verbal roll call. The policy takes effect in September; students who lose the tracker or forget to bring it will be fined 10 euros.

A student named Louise started a petition on Twitter in protest. It has now been signed by more than 3,500 students.

Ivanka Trump is preparing to shut down her namesake fashion brand

Since Trump became president, Ivanka Trump's namesake fashion brand has run in a "limited" way to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. A year ago she separated from the brand and entered the White House as a senior adviser to the president. Two people familiar with the matter told CNN that Ivanka Trump sees no sense in keeping the company running if she is not going back to it.

In a public statement, Ivanka Trump said she had never expected the brand to succeed, and that because she is now serving as an adviser in Washington she does not know when she will return to the company. She added that she would focus on her work in Washington, which makes the decision a fair one for the company and its partners.

Ivanka Trump founded the brand in 2014 and sales climbed during the 2016 presidential campaign, but it has been a target for Trump's opponents ever since.

On This Day in History

July 25, 1894: The First Sino-Japanese War breaks out.

July 25, 1917: Nippon Kogaku K.K., today's Nikon, is founded.

July 25, 1957: The French National Assembly votes to grant Tunisia independence.

July 25, 1978: Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, is born in Britain.

July 25, 1984: Beijing Tianqiao Department Store Co., Ltd., the first joint-stock company in the People's Republic of China, is established.

July 25, 2004: Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France for the sixth year running.

Cover image by VASSILIS PSOMAS / IC Photo