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Fasten your seatbelts and get ready to make change and get groovin’, because you’re in for one heck of a ride. 

You heard it here first, we’ve just announced the 2022 Global Citizen Festival, a worldwide campaign calling on world leaders to End Extreme Poverty NOW with twin events in New York City’s Central Park, presented by Citi and Cisco, and Black Star Square in Accra, Ghana, presented by Harith General Partners.

With two stages in these international cultural capitals, Global Citizen Festival will take place on Saturday, Sept. 24, with global broadcasts and livestreams airing worldwide on YouTube, Twitter, Amazon Music, the Amazon Music channel on Twitch, Apple Music, and the Apple TV app, as well as ABC, ABC News Live, HeartRadio, Hulu, FX, Veeps, Albavision, Canal+, Bis, Nine Network (9Now), TimesLive, and more. Save that date and stay tuned for more information about how you can tune in and get involved from wherever you are!

Hosted by actor, producer, author, and Global Citizen Ambassador Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Global Citizen Festival: NYC will see performances from Metallica, Charlie Puth, Jonas Brothers, MÅNESKIN, Mariah Carey, Mickey Guyton, Rosalía, Angélique Kidjo, and Billy Porter. 

Amber Ruffin, Antoni Porowski, Bill Nye, Chris Redd, Conne Britton, Jay Shetty, Katie Couric, Katie Holmes, Misty Copeland, Rachel Brosnahan, Scott Evans, Tamron Hall, and Van Jones will be joining as presenters. 

In Ghana, to mark the 65th anniversary of Ghana’s independence and the 20th anniversary of the African Union, Accra’s iconic Black Star Square will see live performances from Usher, SZA, Stormzy, Gyakie, Sarkodie, Stonebwoy, TEMS, and Uncle Waffles.

Global Citizen Festival: Accra will be hosted by award-winning actor, playwright, and activist Danai Gurira, with Berla Mundi, Joselyn Dumas, Michaela Coel, Nomzamo Mbatha, and Sabrina Dhowre Elba joining as presenters. Find out more about Global Citizen Festival: Accra and how you can get involved here.

From heavy-metal heroes and R&B trailblazers to change-making activists and world leaders, this year’s Global Citizen Festival campaign is part of Global Citizen’s overarching “End Extreme Poverty NOW”, our campaign on a mission to do exactly what it says on the tin. Learn more about the priority objectives for the campaign here. 

We know that’s a tall order, so how do we plan on making it a reality? By calling on world leaders, major corporations, and philanthropic foundations to take to our festival stages and announce new commitments to End Extreme Poverty NOW, including: to deploy financing; take climate action; empower women and girls through critical investments in education, sexual and reproductive health, and economic empowerment; and mitigate a global food system meltdown. 

Ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in September, and the G20 Summit and COP27 in November, we’re calling on world leaders to step up and invest $600 million into the future of women and girls, close the annual $10 billion climate financing shortfall, deliver $500 million to help farmers in Africa respond to the global food crisis, and provide urgent relief from crushing debts — all to End Extreme Poverty NOW.

Metal fans and pop aficionados alike joined together to take action to end extreme poverty and see their favorite artists alongside world leaders at Global Citizen Festival: Accra and Global Citizen Festival: NYC on Sept. 24. 

The 10th anniversary of the Global Citizen Festival delivered stacked lineups in both cities, with celebrations that echoed calls for the international community to step up to build a more equitable and sustainable world for girls, for the planet, to create change. 

Metallica, Charlie Puth, Jonas Brothers, MÅNESKIN, Mariah Carey, Mickey Guyton, Rosalía, Angélique Kidjo, and Billy Porter performed in Central Park while Usher, SZA, Stormzy, Gyakie, Sarkodie, Stonebwoy, TEMS, and Uncle Waffles took over Black Star Square. 

The artists supported the global campaign to empower girls, close the climate finance gap, and alleviate the global food crisis, culminating in more than $2.4 billion announced. More than US$800 million was announced to end extreme poverty NOW and the European Commission and Canada pledged US$1.6 billion as part of the seventh replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria on Sept. 21, in addition to the announcement of five companies signing on to the UN-led Race to Zero initiative to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

More than US$440 million was earmarked exclusively to initiatives to end extreme poverty on the African continent, with the remainder intended to reach people around the world, including across Africa.

In no particular order, check out our favorite music moments that helped ring in these major policy commitments across continents. 

With corruption scandals rife in Spain, the spread of false rumors is eroding people’s trust in their government. Can anything be done to restore la confianza?

Begoña Gómez, the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, was born a man by the name of Begoño. Some 500 kilos of gold were once found in her house on the Canary Islands. She is now being blackmailed with material stolen from her mobile phone while she was on a trip to Morocco. Oh, and she headed a drug-trafficking cartel.

If you believe even some of these stories as a Spaniard, you’d think your country had gone insane. You’d think you were being ruled by a class of deceiving drug traffickers. Lies, or rather disinformation, are nothing new in Spain, but in recent years they have been forming increasingly coherent narratives of an alternative reality.

They are often a fantasy that sometimes does brush up against reality: last June, several higher-ranking members of the governing party Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), or Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, were forced to step down due to a corruption case. Private messages emerged in which they talked about large sums of money and escort services.

The case was particularly painful for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who came into power fighting corruption.

In 2018, as leader of the opposition, he called a vote of no confidence involving then Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. That government fell, and since then Sánchez has led consecutive governments, on a promise to finally eradicate the systemic corruption that plagues Spain.

“This [latest corruption case] is confirming the narrative that all politicians lie, all politicians steal, all politicians are there for their personal gain,” said Alba Tobella, director of Catalan fact-checking platform Verificat. “Every case of corruption serves to further reinforce this idea.”

A flood of falsehoods

Through their website and social media, Verificat checks the accuracy of news spread over the internet. They noticed that from the moment Sánchez came into power, institutions on the right have tried hard to discredit him.

“Anything that can be used to delegitimize Pedro Sánchez will be used against him,” Tobella said. “Any failure in Spain is directly linked to Pedro Sánchez.”

These disinformation campaigns were particularly evident during the 2017 referendum for independence of Catalonia, when falsehoods from both sides were widespread. That period was one of the reasons Verificat was founded.

Another surge of false information swept through the country in 2024, following the flooding disaster in the Valencia area in which at least 229 people died. At the time, misinformation spread among the local population quickly, because people felt the government had failed to protect them.

What is new though, Tobella said, is that hoaxes are becoming increasingly complex and nuanced. She notes a normalization of these alternative realities, which some people are completely immersed in.

“It’s like a complete disconnection of the audience from the truth, as well as a lack of interest in seeking the facts,” she said.

Can national sovereignty be dismissed when a superpower claims a sphere of influence? Can U.S. economic interests in Venezuela be considered national security?

The recent United States military incursion into Venezuela and abduction and subsequent arrest of its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in New York is a major geopolitical event. Like all major geopolitical events, it has several components — historical, legal, political and moral.

And like all major geopolitical events, it has very different points of view. There is no grandiose “Truth” about what happened. There are many truths and points of view.

What can be said is that on 3 January 2026, the United States military carried out strikes on Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Cilia Flores. The two were then flown to the United States where they were arrested and charged with issues related to narcoterrorism.

The United States’ intervention in a Latin American country has historical precedents as well as current foreign policy implications.

Under President James Monroe, the United States declared in 1823 that it was opposed to any outside colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Now known as the Monroe Doctrine, it established what political scientists refer to as a “sphere of influence”; No foreign country could establish control of a country in the United States-dominated Western Hemisphere.

(This was indeed one of the central issues in the 13-day October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States established a blockade outside Cuba to stop the installation of Soviet missiles on the island.)

The Trump Corollary

In the latest U.S. official security strategy document — National Security Strategy 2025 — the Monroe Doctrine was presented in what has been labelled “The Trump Corollary.” In it, the government said that defending territory and the Western Hemisphere were central tasks of U.S. foreign policy and national interest. The document clearly stated that activities by extra-hemispheric powers would be considered serious threats to U.S. security.

As such, the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine is the justification of the military action in Venezuela based on stopping Russian and Chinese influence in Venezuela. In addition, it can be seen as the justification for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, resume control of the Panama Canal and stop narcotics and illegal migrants coming into the United States from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

But the Corollary and Doctrine are mere national strategic statements. Are they legally justified? The U.S. military operation in Venezuela has been highly criticized by international lawyers as well as United Nations officials. The United Nations Charter, of which the United States is a signatory, clearly forbids the use of force by one country against another country except in the case of self-defense and imminent threat.

In an interview with New Yorker magazine reporter Isaac Chotiner on 3 January, Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway noted that when the UN Charter was written 80 years ago, it included a critical prohibition on the use of force by states. “States are not allowed to decide on their own that they want to use force against other states,” she told Chotiner. “It was meant to reinforce this relatively new idea at the time that states couldn’t just go to war whenever they wanted to.”

Hathaway said that in the pre-UN Charter world, you could use force if you felt like drug trafficking was hurting you and come up with legal justification that that was the case. “But the whole point of the UN Charter was basically to say, ‘We’re not going to go to war for those reasons anymore’,” she said.

Navigating when and how to use AI in the work world depends on where you work. For many organizations, it is a love-hate relationship

Can you use artificial intelligence in your career without worrying that the robot will replace you? Should you worry that you might lose your job if you use AI too much? That’s what people all over the world wonder as some employers embrace AI apps and tools while others don’t allow it.

I asked four News Decoder alumni to tell us how they navigate the tricky world of AI in jobs. I also posed the questions to Jane Barrett, the head of AI Strategy at the Reuters international news agency, where I spent much of my journalistic career. Their answers might prove helpful to young people who recently joined the workforce or are about to do so.

Alexandra Gray-Harkins, a senior marketing professional, said her company strongly encourages her to use an internal AI tool to write emails, outline content and marketing campaigns and support administrative tasks like writing performance reviews and job descriptions. “As a marketer, I use many AI tools in my day-to-day work and I work on larger strategic AI initiatives,” she said. “I also attend regular AI training.”

But St. John’s University, where she is also a doctoral candidate in Multi-Sector Communication, discourages her from using AI because her dissertation must be an original research paper.

Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman, who coordinates climate research and innovation at the International Rescue Committee, said that every workplace she has been in since ChatGPT was released has allowed the use of generative AI tools.

“I think there is still a general sense of trust that if these tools are used, they’re being used ethically and closely monitored for accuracy,” she said. “I’ve even been encouraged to use the tool to improve efficiency in a sector that’s facing increasing demand and a diminishing workforce.”But even when people are encouraged to use AI, that use comes with restrictions and these restrictions will differ from workplace to workplace.

Rules for use

At Reuters, Barrett said, there is a set of AI principles that all journalists must follow and a corporate policy that covers the use of AI for all use of data and tools throughout the organization.

“We have a rule that no visuals may be created or edited using generative AI as news photos must show reality as it happened in front of the camera,” she said. “All the tools we are creating and approving for wider use are based on taking source material, creating content or analysis from that and, crucially, checking the veracity before publishing. Everything must keep to our tone and standards.”

At Reuters, all reporters and photojournalists are accountable for everything they publish, Barrett said. “If we find that there has been irresponsible use of AI, there is a chain of custody through our editing systems which means we can track back to where the AI was used badly,” she said.

Reuters is trying to stay ahead of the game in a world that is rapidly incorporating AI into just about everything. But not all organizations have the resources to keep up.

For many of the people Savannah Jenkins works with, AI is viewed as a direct threat to their business. Jenkins is a communications manager at Onja, a social enterprise in Madagascar that trains underprivileged youth to become software developers. “It’s one of the world’s poorest nations and the jobs these students land after the program allow them to support their families and extricate themselves from poverty,” Jenkins said. “AI is a direct threat to entry-level coders and the enterprise is having to adapt to this threat.”

Still, she acknowledged that overall, it is generally accepted that AI is here to stay and that it can benefit even small organizations. “As a comms professional working in the nonprofit space, there are a lot of tools that can help small, under-resourced teams do more, especially around content development,” she said. “For example, the AI-powered tools in Canva allow smaller outfits to deliver highquality graphics.”

An AI future in flux

The bottom line is that we are in an experimental period where a very new technology is still being developed and tried out in different ways that are new and untested.

This creates all kinds of worries for people like Barrett.

“I worry that somebody will steal a lead on us,” she said. “Another publisher, a competitor and, most likely, one of the AI companies coming up with a whizz-bang AI-driven news service or product that damages our business, our industry and democracy of well-informed people.”

She also worries that someone will use a tool that has not properly been tested and inadvertently divulge information from Reuters that shouldn’t go out to the public.

Her worries aren’t confined to internal use at Reuters. “I also worry about people getting into arguments or obsessive conversations with AI tools,” she said. “There is increasing proof that the sycophancy and attempts to keep users engaged with the chatbots can be very bad for you.”