Texas’s Arctic Blast, Facebook’s Australia Gambit: Weekend Reads

Skiing down a road in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 18

Photographer: Thomas Ryan Allison/Bloomberg

It was a week few Texans will forget: power outages caused by an Arctic blast left millions of people without heat and some with no clean water. It also sparked a wide debate over who was to blame for the failure of the energy-rich state’s electricity infrastructure.

Leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations held their first, virtual, meeting of the year, with Joe Biden’s debut on the world stage as U.S. president buoying efforts to reset the transatlantic relationship after the era of Donald Trump.

In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Facebook has re-engaged with the government after escalating tensions saw the social media company disable a raft of pages in the country including some related to official Covid-19 vaccine information and charities.

Dig deeper into these and other topics with the latest edition of Weekend Reads.

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