2018
May
09
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

May 09, 2018
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Amelia Newcomb
Senior editor

The glitz and glam of an event like Monday’s Met Gala in New York, known as “fashion’s biggest night out,” are hard to ignore, even for a fashion know-nothing like me. But what really turned my head was a recent announcement by one of its hosts. As Donatella Versace told 1843 magazine: “Fur? I am out of that. I don’t want to kill animals to make fashion. It doesn’t feel right.”

Other designers share the sentiment. Gucci, for example, maker of the fur-lined loafer, announced late last year that its 2018 spring line would be fur-free for the first time.

Many consumers had already reached that conclusion, of course; pressure has been growing on the fur industry for years. Millennials are tipping the scales with their market clout and interest in ethical consumption. Consumers can easily track which brands measure up to their ethical standards. Technology is helping propel the shift, with new forms of faux fur getting the ultimate seal of approval from designers such as Stella McCartney and vegan leather rising in prominence.

When ground-level momentum and high-end sensibilities, ethics and good business, meet, it feels as though it’s a tipping point. As Gucci’s CEO put it, fur now feels “a little bit outdated.

Now to our five stories, starting with insights on a likely summit between US President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The breakthrough today: the release of three US citizens imprisoned in North Korea.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Alex Brandon/AP
Gina Haspel, President Trump's pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency, is sworn in during a confirmation hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee May 9 on Capitol Hill in Washington.
SOURCE:

IMS Health, Vector One, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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Jacob Turcotte and Karen Norris/Staff

Difference-maker

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Michael Ioffe, a student at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., has started what he dubs 'the first text message college course.' It's a daily dose of entrepreneurship education, an attempt to boil down the key lessons of a semester-long course into four weeks of daily texts.

The Monitor's View

Reuters
In a May 8 ceremony at the White House, President Donald Trump holds up a signed proclamation declaring his intention to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
People in St. Petersburg, Russia, carry portraits of their ancestors, participants in World War II, as they celebrate on May 9 the 73rd anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Some 1 million people walked in a march called the 'Immortal Regiment.'
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for spending time with us today. Looking ahead, we're working on a story about a conundrum facing California cities: How is it possible to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to solve a problem – homelessness – and wind up with little to show for it? 

More issues

2018
May
09
Wednesday
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