"New history written" in Syria

… plus curiosities from the Arctic, Japanese finance, and more

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Thank you for reading. Now, onto the good stuff!

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Here’s what’s on deck this week: 

🇸🇾 Syria’s historic shift — and a pivotal moment in the Middle East

🤳 TikTok in election crosshairs

🏔️ The world’s “refrigerator” is no longer a carbon sink

A record-breaking tour, Syria makes history, TikTok gets banned, and Japan ranks low. // Source: Canva, Wikimedia Commons

$10 million — The total bounty on the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who has been considered a terrorist by the U.S. government since 2013. On Sunday, al-Jolani and his rebel group overtook Damascus and toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad, forcing Assad to flee to Russia and putting a spectacular end to a 13-year civil war and six decades of autocratic rule.

Last night, Middle East Eye reported the U.S. government is discussing the possibility of removing the bounty, due to HTS’s weekend victory and the newfound need “to rethink how it [the U.S. government] engages with the former al-Qaeda affiliate.” Indeed, attitudes may well be shifting: On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden called HTS’s Damascus takeover “a fundamental act of justice,” while qualifying the statement by adding, “some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.” In The Cover Story this week, I round up what Middle East experts have been saying about this crucial chapter in Syria’s history as the country transitions its new government.

39 days — The amount of time the Chinese internet technology company ByteDance has to sell its social media app TikTok, lest it face a ban in the United States, per a unanimous Friday ruling by judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. On Monday, TikTok asked a federal court to temporarily freeze the ruling, likely in efforts to buy time until U.S. president-elect Donald Trump takes office in the hope the Republican leader would rescue the app from having to sell to a U.S. owner.

Romania blames Russia and TikTok for election misinformation, leading to the country canceling its presidential election on Sunday. Its constitutional court has ordered a redo of the entire election, including the first round of voting that already occurred in late November. The court’s decision stems from claims that TikTok broke Romanian regulations, and Russian-managed bots were partially responsible for spreading the campaign message of ultranationalist presidential candidate Calin Georgescu on the ByteDance-owned app.

118th place — Japan’s ranking out of 146 total countries for gender equality, per a World Economic Forum report released this year, making it the lowest-ranking country in this category among the “G7” industrialized nations. This week, I spoke with a former finance professional-turned financial literacy coach, Mayumi Ando, who tells me one way for women to tip the scales in their favor is to be financially literate, a skill often underrepresented among women in the country. Ando has been teaching financial literacy classes to empower Japanese women — particularly women who are divorced or single mothers. This year, she has released a Japanese-language book, If you have any knowledge of money, you will see the world in all its glory!, published by Japan’s Nikkei Media press. She tells me, “Your life is for yourself. And if you have more knowledge about finance, you have more power to decide what you want to do.”