Our daily journey around the world

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia unleashed one of its biggest airstrikes against Ukraine since the war began. Ukraine’s military claimed it shot down all six Kinzhal hypersonic missiles fired by Moscow in its attack, which began around 3 am local time yesterday morning. Russia had previously claimed its Kinzhal missile, which reaches speeds of up to 7,000 miles per hour, couldn’t be destroyed by any existing air defense system in the world…. which may be why Moscow denied yesterday that its Kinzhal missiles were shot down, instead saying one had successfully destroyed a US-supplied Patriot air defense system. US officials later confirmed that Ukraine did indeed down six Kinzhal missiles, and a Patriot system was damaged – not destroyed – in Russia’s overnight attack.

🇨🇳🇮🇷🇷🇺 Individuals associated with the Chinese, Iranian, and Russian governments have been accused of stealing US tech. In a series of five cases announced yesterday by the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors accused half-a-dozen people of illegally transferring US trade secrets and sensitive technologies to businesses and governments in China, Russia, and Iran. In one case, the DOJ said a Chinese citizen and former Apple employee stole thousands of internal documents pertaining to the tech giant’s self-driving vehicle, then brought the documents with him to his new job at a China-based autonomous vehicle competitor.

🇹🇼 Taiwan’s government approved a new amendment granting full adoption rights to married same-sex couples. Taiwan first legalized gay marriage in 2019, becoming the first – and to this day only – Asian country to do so. But prior to yesterday’s legislative change, all same-sex married couples within the country could only adopt children who were related to one of the partners, a policy some lawmakers and critics argued disincentivized such couples from getting married in the first place (since the restriction didn’t apply to single people).