What's Going On Around The World Today

HERE ARE THE TOP STORIES

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to announce a plan today to cut greenhouse gas emissions with a cap-and-trade system starting in 2017.

This means that China — the world’s biggest polluter — will create a limit to the amount of carbon that can be emitted every year (that’s the “cap” part). Under the system, companies can buy and sell allowances to pollute (that’s the “trade” part and ideally, the less you pollute, the less you pay).

“Western economists have long backed the idea [of a cap-and-trade system] as a market-driven way to push industry to cleaner forms of energy by making polluting energy more expensive,” the New York Times reports. China will also help fund poorer countries' efforts to reduce emissions.

The announcement is part of an effort by China and the U.S. to “use their leverage internationally to tackle climate change and to pressure other nations to do the same,” the Times writes. President Obama and Xi, who is in the U.S. this week, will highlight their efforts to “forge an accord in Paris in December that commits every country to curbing its emissions,” the Times writes.

And a little extra.

Controversial topics will dominate the rest of today’s meeting between Xi and Obama, “including cyberattacks on American companies and government agencies, China's increasingly aggressive reclamation of islands and atolls in disputed areas of the South China Sea, and Xi's clampdown on dissidents and lawyers in China,” the New York Times writes.

Pope Francis urged lawmakers to take action on climate change, fight economic inequality, and welcome immigrants during his historic address to both houses of U.S. Congress yesterday.

“The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes,” Francis said during his hour-long speech, the first papal address to a joint meeting of Congress. He also urged the lawmakers to work to “avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity,” and to abolish the death penalty, the Wall Street Journal writes.

The progressive nature of the pope’s speech pleased Democrats, “while Republicans largely focused on the majesty of the event and played down policy implications,” the New York Times writes.

But for all the fanfare and standing ovations, Francis's speech might not make actual political waves. “There are limits to any pope's ability to move an entrenched political system, and there was little sign that he had done so here,” the Times writes.

And a little extra.

Today Pope Francis is addressing the largest ever gathering of presidents and prime ministers at the United Nations headquarters in New York, ahead of a global summit meeting, the New York Times writes. Francis arrived in New York yesterday and was welcomed by massive crowds.

The pontiff isn’t the only special guest at the annual U.N. meeting. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making her first appearance in seven years, it’s the first time Xi Jinping is attending since becoming Chinese president in 2013, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hasn’t been in a decade, is expected to make a speech Monday morning.

WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON

President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin will have their first formal meeting in more than two years.

Obama plans to “press Mr. Putin to live up to a ceasefire in Ukraine and test his intentions in Syria, where he has recently dispatched combat jets, tanks and other military equipment,” the New York Times writes. Here are six things that explain Russia’s military intervention in Syria.

The last time the two met formally was in June 2013. That fall, Obama canceled a summit meeting with Putin after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was granted asylum in Russia.

What’s next?

Putin and Obama are scheduled to meet in New York City on Monday, where both will attend the United Nations General Assembly. The two haven’t officially spoken since before Russia annexed Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine, the Times writes.

Putin also chatted with British pop icon Elton John. After Russian pranksters called John last week pretending to be the Russian president, the ~real~ Putin called the pop star this week. John had called out Putin for Russia’s horrible record on LGBT rights.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

If they build it, will we come? Meet the tech entrepreneurs who are trying to take back the porn industry.

Porn has long been a driving force in tech and internet innovation, but the industry now finds itself in unprecedented danger thanks to piracy and free “tube” sites.

“A casual observer would probably assume that the internet has been great for porn; in one sense, it has been. Never before have so many people had the immediate access to this much adult content,” BuzzFeed News' Charlie Warzel writes.

To insiders, however, the relationship between porn and the internet is fraught. “The adult industry is credited — quietly — with frequently building and shaping new technologies, and technology has long been credited with creating the porn juggernaut,” Warzel writes.

“But if porn helped to conceive and nurture the modern internet, the internet has turned its back on porn. Major internet companies like Instagram and Tumblr have hidden adult content from internal search, and Google has removed porn while de-prioritizing adult sites in its search algorithms.”

JustFab: A billion dollar startup with a dark past.

Founders Adam Goldenberg and Don Ressler have spent more than a decade running sketchy online marketing schemes. Still, they've made it big in Silicon Valley, raising more than $300 million in funding.

“Since at least 2004, consumers have accused the men's business of exploiting their credit card information and sticking them with unwanted charges — complaints that are stacking up at JustFab and Fabletics,” BuzzFeed News' Sapna Maheshwari writes.

Quick things to know:

• Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has ordered a safety review after Thursday’s stampede during the annual Islamic Hajj pilgrimage that killed at least 717 people and injured another 863. (BBC News) Witnesses blamed Saudi officials for the disaster. (The Guardian)

• Volkswagen is expected to announce Porsche CEO Matthias Mueller as its new chief executive officer after former boss Martin Winterkorn resigned over an emissions scandal. (The Guardian)

• More than 55,000 refugees and migrants have entered European Union member state Croatia since last Wednesday, Croatian police say. (Associated Press)

• Four Seattle students were killed after a “Ride The Ducks” tour crashed into a bus. (BuzzFeed News)

• Texas is making its own execution drugs and has sold them to at least one other American state that allows the death penalty, an Oklahoma inmate alleges. (BuzzFeed News)

• A charity that Republican presidential nominee hopeful Carly Fiorina chairs donated $18,000 in goods to a group that provides financial assistance to women seeking abortions. (BuzzFeed News)

• Meet Jazz Jennings, the most famous transgender kid in the U.S. She’s best known as the star of reality television show I am Jazz. (BuzzFeed News)

• How a British teenager used the digital black market to plan a school shooting. Today, he was sentenced to life in prison. (BuzzFeed News)

• The theme song to the new James Bond film Spectre — Sam Smith’s Writing’s on the Wall — was released. Spectre’s coming out around late October, depending on what country you’re in. (BBC News)

• Get ready for Sunday's rare supermoon total lunar eclipse. This supermoon total eclipse hasn't happened since 1982 and won't happen again until 2033. (Mashable)

• When you do everything right, but society hates you for it: that’s called Anne Hathaway Syndrome. (BuzzFeed)

WEEKEND READS

Our special guest this week is Rega Jha, editor of BuzzFeed India, sharing some of her favorite stories recently.

To the delight, I'm sure, of poetry fanatics everywhere, David Orr lays out in The Paris Review how deeply misinterpreted Robert Frost's “The Road Less Taken” is. “It may be the best example in all of American culture of a wolf in sheep's clothing,” he writes, going on to break down – like Orange Is The New Black did last year – the two vastly different ways the poem is interpreted and which interpretation – if either – gets to claim correctness.

Readers of The Atlantic will remember Anne Marie Slaughter's 2012 proclamation that “Women Still Can't Have It All.” In it, she explained over thousands of words that her high-powered career and her obligations to her family would more or less always be at odds. Now, three years later, the same magazine has published her husband's side of the same story. In “Why I Put My Wife's Career First,” Andrew Moravcsik walks us through his decision – as a husband, a father, and a professional – to assume the role of “lead parent” in their home, allowing Slaughter the amount of time and bandwidth granted by default to men, to put her career first.

And in Pitchfork, Jayson Greene cheerleads poignantly for perhaps the most pivotal and most underrated album of the decade, 808s and Heartbreak, going on to make an argument for the perpetually misunderstood pop enigma Kanye West as a thought leader, an innovator, and the music industry's angst-ridden game-changer.

Happy Friday

Polar bears have dreams too. And this one wants to be an astronaut. “She practices by wearing her special Bucket Helmet everywhere she goes. It is perfect for dangerous space missions,” BuzzFeed’s Elana Wahl writes. Throughout the day, the polar bear takes her bucket helmet on and off as she pleases. Go get ‘em, lil’ space bear! Follow your dreams.

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This letter was edited and brought to you by Claire Moses and Millie Tran. You can always reach us here.