Flagship

Yet another record-hot month

Last month was the world’s warmest February on record, setting a new global temperature high for the ninth straight month. The European Earth Observation Agency said the global average temperature in February was 1.77 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. December, January, and February all saw record heat from northern Siberia to South America and Australia, with unusually wet or dry conditions in different regions: The Mediterranean saw a shortage of rain, while western Europe got more than usual. A climate scientist told the Financial Times that the heat was “not really surprising” given warming trends, although the run of record-breaking temperatures will likely come to a halt over spring and summer as the El Niño climate phenomenon, which pushes warm water to the ocean surfaces, weakens and stops.

East Ukraine expects Russian advance

Residents of eastern Ukraine are bracing for a Russian advance. Moscow’s troops have progressed in the region — an advance facilitated by an unusually dry winter — as Kyiv has struggled to secure funding from the West and failed to approve a law that would lower the military conscription age to 25 down from 27. To slow Russian progress, Ukraine has turned to a new tactic: Digging in. This week, Kyiv announced that it would spend $800 million to construct trenches and fortifications. “On all the main fronts, we need to dig in, speed up the pace of construction,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “The priority is obvious.”

China slams US over sanctions

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said U.S. sanctions on China have reached a “bewildering level of unfathomable absurdity.” The sanctions have pushed Beijing to expand its trade in other regions, where it is finding some success: According to recently released data, Chinese trade with Russia rose by 7.1% in the first two months of the year, far above analysts’ forecast of a 1.9% increase. China’s investment in the Asia-Pacific region has risen sharply too, as Beijing tries to diversify its supply chains. According to a report co-published by Shanghai’s Fudan University, Chinese investment in the region totaled nearly $20 billion last year, up 37% from 2022, Nikkei reported.

Chinese citizen tech spying charges

A Chinese former Google engineer was charged with industrial espionage in California. Linwei Ding was on Google’s artificial intelligence supercomputer team, and prosecutors say he uploaded 500 files on the system’s “architecture and functionality” from his Google-issued laptop to a Beijing-based company. Despite the alleged intellectual property theft, an ongoing sore spot in the two countries’ relations, Beijing is looking to decouple its tech industry from the U.S. — a 2022 government directive, Document 79, requires state-owned industries to replace foreign software with Chinese tools by 2027. The Wall Street Journal reported that Document 79 is just part of a multi-year push, colloquially known as Delete America, by leader Xi Jinping to make China self-sufficient in tech as well as other sectors.

Israel boosts settlement plans

Israel approved plans for more than 3,400 new homes in settlements in the occupied West Bank. Although the settlements are considered illegal under international law, Israel has fast-tracked their development after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. Since then, Israeli settlers — once considered fringe but now commanding widespread support within the Israeli government — have been rapidly building illegal roads and outposts across the West Bank, a recent investigation by The Wall Street Journal showed. “A lot of doors have opened since the war began,” said the head of an organization that provides security to 80 settlers’ farms, up from 11 a decade ago.

Alabama protects IVF providers

Alabama’s governor signed a bill protecting in vitro fertilization services in the U.S. state. A state supreme court ruling last month declared that fertilized embryos were human beings, leading fertility clinics to halt services in fear that the destruction of frozen embryos during IVF procedures could lead to charges for wrongful death. The governor signed Republican-backed legislation exempting providers and patients for destruction or damage to embryos, but experts said the language was ambiguous: One legal professor told CNN that the law “does not nullify the Supreme Court’s analysis that says the law ought to treat embryos just like people,” and that she would be wary of advising a clinic to resume treatment.

NYC deploys troops to subway

The U.S. National Guard will be deployed on New York City subways as part of a crime crackdown. The 750 troopers, alongside state and transit police, will conduct bag checks at busy stations. The move comes after several high-profile violent assaults on the network: The state governor said subway users should not have to “worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon,” NBC News reported. New York is safer than it used to be — FBI statistics show a roughly 80% drop in homicides between 1990 and 2019 — but an uptick during the pandemic years has refocused attention on violent crime. The New York transit police’s chief of operations said that “reducing the fear of crime” is as important as “reducing crime itself.”

Egypt expands IMF bailout

Egypt expanded its bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund as Cairo looks to avert its worst economic recession in decades. The approval of the $8 billion loan — which amounts to roughly 2% of the country’s GDP — comes shortly after Cairo devalued the Egyptian pound by 40% and rapidly raised interest rates, both seen as requirements by the IMF. However, the main factor holding Egypt back, The Economist has argued, is the militarization of its economy. The country’s armed forces are involved in running everything from petrol stations to mineral water, making the economy uncompetitive. “No ordinary company can compete with an outfit that pays no tax or customs fees and which can throw its rivals in jail,” it wrote last year.

Mexico protesters break palace door

A group protesting the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico in 2014 broke down a door to the country’s presidential palace. The students — adults who were preparing to teach in Mexico’s public school system — went missing shortly after commandeering buses they planned on using to attend a march in Mexico City. What happened to them afterward is disputed, although evidence points to them being kidnapped by local police working on a drug cartel’s orders. Less disputed, however, is the attempt by successive governments — including the current one — to cover up the involvement of state authorities, a New Yorker piece by Alma Guillermoprieto, a Mexican journalist, suggests.

Starship sets third flight date

SpaceX’s Starship’s third test flight is tentatively scheduled for next week. The rocket, the most powerful ever flown, exploded on both its previous flights last year, but the second time reached space before its “rapid unscheduled assembly.” The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s investigation into the second flight ended last month, and SpaceX took several steps to correct problems noted. The FAA still needs to grant a license for Starship to take off again, but SpaceX seems confident: It carried out a practice fueling this week, and scheduled the launch livestream for 7:30 am ET, March 14. When it works, Starship will be capable of taking 165 tons into orbit each flight, and is scheduled to take astronauts to the moon on the Artemis missions in 2026.

• Brunei’s Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah meets with Japan’s Emperor Naruhito at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
• The annual Dubai Sugar Conference closes.
• ARA San Juan: The Submarine That Disappeared, an Argentine documentary series, drops on Netflix.

The number of COVID-19 vaccinations one German man apparently received over three years. The unnamed 62-year-old suffered no apparent ill effects, according to a study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, although disappointingly despite his “hypervaccinated” status his immune response to the virus was “only slightly elevated.” The man is described as having had the many, many jabs for “private reasons,” but earlier reporting suggested that he had been doing it for the frankly ironic purpose of selling vaccination cards to people who did not want to get vaccinated themselves.

A British musician became the first sitar player to win a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Jasdeep Singh Degun was named best instrumentalist at the prestigious classical music ceremony. His work Orpheus, a reworking of Monteverdi’s Orfeo combining Indian and Western classical music, was also nominated for a composition award. Degun got his break when it turned out one of the musicians on his first album, Anomaly, played tennis with former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel: Gabriel liked the album so much he signed him to his label.

• After Big Oil’s waves of consolidations, Big Solar could be next.
• Nikki Haley suspends presidential campaign.
• U.S. braces for foreign interference in 2024 election.