Ukraine’s Military Shakeup & A Missing 200-Foot Structure
February 9, 2024
Hello, readers – happy Friday! Today, we’re talking about Zelensky firing his top commander, a very hot month, Bolsonaro’s attempted coup, Greek protests, the Supreme Court’s thoughts on Trump being on the Colorado ballot, Biden’s classified documents case, and a missing radio tower.
Here’s some good news to hold you over through the weekend: a pod of orcas that was trapped in the ice off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island, has escaped safely. Also, Edie Ceccarelli, the oldest person in the U.S., celebrated her 116th birthday this week, and the town of Willits, where she lives, organized a parade in her honor. Finally, nearly 300 churches in Florida have launched Black history lessons for their communities in recent months. In response to laws that have limited how history is taught in schools in the state, Black church leaders are inviting community members, regardless of their religion, to come learn for free.
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday. – John Wayne
Zelensky Sends Zaluzhnyi Packing
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed Ukraine’s top commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, marking the most significant change for the army in the nearly two years it’s been at war with Russia. Ukraine’s counteroffensive has stalled in recent weeks, and Russia is intensifying its attacks, leaving Zelensky in a tough spot. Zaluzhnyi’s replacement will be Oleksandr Syrskyi, who has served as the Commander of Ukrainian Land Forces for five years.
Zaluzhnyi said the war had reached a stalemate in an interview in The Economist magazine in November, which brought the simmering tensions between the two men onto the international stage. Zaluzhnyi – who was appointed army chief by Zelensky in July 2021 – was offered a new position by the president, but he turned it down, according to a source.
The U.S. Senate is considering a $95 billion package with aid for Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan), but it’s unclear how far that will get with current Congressional…what’s a nice way to say “incompetence”? Ukraine is facing ammunition and manpower shortages, with no idea if or when aid is coming. Zaluzhnyi had reportedly suggested up to half a million draftees were required, which Zelensky wasn’t willing to approve.
A Hot Topic
2024 has already set a new heat record for the warmest January ever observed, according to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service Copernicus. Last month had a global average air temperature of 13.14 degrees Celsius, or 55.65 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 1.66 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director, said in a news release, “Not only is it the warmest January on record but we have also just experienced a 12-month period of more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial reference period.” Just a few weeks ago, Copernicus revealed that 2023 was the hottest year on record.
A 2018 U.N. report said the risks of extreme consequences of climate change would be much higher if global warming exceeded the 1.5-degree threshold, but scientists say we would need multiple years of that level of global warming to consider it a permanent state of being – in other words, there’s still time to get things under control.
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The Cost Of Coup-ing Business
- Police carried out 33 searches and four arrests across Brazil on Thursday morning as they rounded up people involved in the attempted coup that tried – and, of course, failed – to keep former President Jair Bolsonaro in power. Police went to Bolsonaro’s holiday home on the south coast of Rio de Janeiro and gave him 24 hours to hand over his passport.
- Soon after, police seized the passport at the headquarters of Bolsonaro’s Liberal party in Brasília. Bolsonaro was told he couldn’t talk to any of the other suspects – the four arrests were of his former aides, while Bolsonaro’s running mate in the 2022 election, Gen. Walter Braga Netto, and the president of the Liberal party, Valdemar Costa Neto, were also targeted.
- According to the police, the group spread disinformation about fraud in the 2022 elections before the vote took place “as a way of making a military intervention viable and legitimate.” Bolsonaro lamented, “I left the government more than a year ago and continue to suffer from relentless persecution.”
Too Cool To Pay For School
- Greece’s government wants to allow overseas universities, which would charge a fee but operate like nonprofits, to set up branches in the country. As a result, about 15,000 protesters gathered outside the main building of the University of Athens to protest the possibility of for-profit universities, chanting “hands off education” and draping a banner that read “Their Profits or Our Education.”
- A vote is expected at the end of the month. Student protest groups have organized multiple demonstrations in cities across Greece, occupying university buildings and forcing classes and exams to be held online. Opponents of the idea say it could undermine public universities and threaten free higher education down the line.
Additional World News
- US drone strike kills Iran-backed militia leader in Baghdad (BBC)
- Russian anti-war election candidate barred from running against Putin (CNN)
- Azerbaijan election: President Ilham Aliyev wins vote criticised by monitors (BBC)
- India to replace military personnel in Maldives with civilians after president demanded they leave (ABC)
- Blinken ends latest Mideast mission after new Israeli snub of proposed Gaza cease-fire plan (AP)
- A volcano in Iceland is erupting for the third time since December, spewing lava into the sky (NBC)
The Bench Contemplates The Ballot
- Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Colorado’s attempt to keep former President Trump off the ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. During the two hours of arguments, it became fairly clear that the justices don’t think the state can keep him off the ballot.
- Despite the court’s deep divide between liberals and conservatives, they all seemed relatively united on the argument that a state shouldn’t be able to decide who can run for president. None of the justices seemed concerned about whether Trump’s behavior leading up to and on January 6, 2021, constituted participation in an insurrection.
- Chief Justice John Roberts said that the “whole point” of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power after the Civil War in an attempt to bring Confederate states under control, so giving the power back to the states wouldn’t make any sense. “I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” Justice Elena Kagan said.
What’s Up, Docs?
- The Justice Department revealed that President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, but no criminal charges are warranted. Special Counsel Ben Hur said that most of the documents were retained by “mistake.”
- Part of the report centers on Biden’s handling of classified documents about Afghanistan, including materials documenting his opposition to sending troops to the country. As vice president, and then as president when the records were actually found, “he had the authority to keep classified documents at his home,” according to Hur.
Additional USA Reads
- The Supreme Court seems poised to reject efforts to kick Trump off the ballot over the Capitol riot (AP)
- Speaker Mike Johnson reverses course and will not endorse Matt Rosendale for Senate in Montana after blowback (CNN)
- Democrat Suozzi holds slim lead in race for George Santos’ New York House seat (Politico)
- Biden mixes up Germany’s Angela Merkel with late Helmut Kohl (Reuters)
- 4.0 magnitude earthquake recorded about 100 miles off Florida coast in Atlantic Ocean (ABC)
- US Senate panel votes to boost FAA staffing, rejects hiking pilot retirement age (Reuters)
- Special counsel has finished Biden classified docs probe — but has rebuffed witness requests to review report (ABC)
Tune In To This Story
- Have you ever wondered if you could pull off a heist? How about a heist involving a 200-foot-tall radio tower? WJLX, a station in Jasper, Alabama, was ordered to go off air by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after someone – or, more likely, a group of someones – absconded with the station’s AM tower last week.
- WJLX’s general manager, Brett Elmore, said a landscaping crew that regularly manages the area surrounding the tower called him to report the missing structure. “They called me and said the tower was gone. And I said, ‘What do you mean, the tower is gone?’” Elmore said.
- Replacing the tower could cost the station anywhere between $100,000 to $150,000, which is “more money than we have”, Elmore said. “This is a huge loss. People have reached out and asked how they can help, but I don’t know how you can help unless you have a 200ft tower and an AM transmitter.” You heard the man – cough up your towers, folks!
Additional Reads
- Sleepy polar bear that dug out a bed in sea ice to nap wins prestigious wildlife photography award (CBS)
- South Korea’s president calls handbag scandal ‘political maneuvering’ by his critics (NPR)
- Words on mysterious scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius eruption deciphered for first time after 2,000 years (CBS)
- The Bucket List Family: How to travel the world with three kids (CNN)
- How Earth Might Have Turned Into a Snowball (NYT, $)
- Al Franken to play senator in Netflix comedic drama about the White House (Guardian)
- Scientists drilled an ice core from Antarctica and were alarmed by what they found (CNN)