Talking Points
- Taiwan's Tsai Ing-wen staged an unlikely comeback
- The Duke and Duchess of Sussex opted for the quiet life
- The Commons passed Boris Johnson's withdrawal bill
- 2019 was revealed to be the second-hottest year on record
- Venezuela's Juan Guaido tried to rekindle anti-Maduro protests
- Carlos Ghosn protested his innocence from the safety of Beirut
- Controversial Chinese AI powerhouse Megvii filed its IPO
- Sonos sued Google over alleged tech infringement
- Boeing released some very frank internal messages
- Scientists found an enormous 'star nursery' in the Milky Way
Deep Dive
Last week the vaunted Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated at the behest of the American president. Iran's response was a salvo of surface-to-surface missiles fired at US positions in Iraq. Then, hours later on January 8, a Ukrainian International Airlines 737-800 speared into the ground south-west of Tehran; its fireball lighting up the early-morning winter darkness .
Intelligence tests
All that is known with certainty is that the 178 passengers and crew of UIA Flight 752 perished minutes after their flight took off. The coverage of how they died revealed a shortcoming in the news reportage – more on that later. First, what we knew, or thought we knew. On Thursday morning, the news reports ran in one direction: one of the plane's CFM56 engines had overheated and possibly exploded. This story was girded by testimony from American, Canadian and European security officials . The plane turned back towards Imam Khomeini International Airport but fell short. Yet another tragic air accident in a country that suffered deadly crashes in each of the previous years, and yet more bad news for Boeing.
But by nightfall the story had shape-shifted: now Western intelligence agencies were 'confident' that an anti-aircraft missile had downed Flight 752. Widely-circulated footage shows an interceptor racing up from the ground and the tell-tale flash of a detonation. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fronted the cameras to say this was the "possible and probable cause" behind the deaths of many of his constituents. Similar sentiments were echoed by his counterparts south of the border, and across the Atlantic .
78 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, seven Afghans, four Britons and three Germans are dead. Their diversity makes it hard to ascertain who would have sanctioned the potential missile-strike (naturally, both Iran and America have blamed each other). This leaves open the possibility that it was either a rogue action, or a mistake. But even if it was the latter, it certainly wasn't an accident that occurred in a vacuum. It is no small thing to be at the front in a conflict between an international empire and a regional power. Conflict begets tension. Tension begets mistakes.
As always, there is a sad rhythm to history. The Persian Gulf was also on a hair-trigger in 1988 when the guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes blasted Iran Air Flight 655 out of the sky, killing all 290 people on board.
The fog of war
Few tragedies focus attention quite like a plane crash. There may well be 8,000-20,000 aircraft aloft at any given time, but every crash pierces the veneer of safety and lends credence to the primal fear that maybe our bipedal species is simply not meant to fly.
The economic logic of commercial air transport requires that each flight ferries scores, if not hundreds of people. The physical logic of aeronautics guarantees that when a passenger jet goes down, it doesn't leave much behind. And the illogic of advertising-funded 'free' news dictates that tragedies at scale demand consistent and uninterrupted coverage. Sadly, these ingredients mix to create a toxic cocktail of what is known (very little, until black boxes are recovered) and what is desired to be known (everything, immediately).
What follows therefore, in normal circumstances, is a great deal of speculation. And these are hardly normal circumstances. Which is why, while a fact base is still being assembled, the narrative is being driven by various national authorities. In the middle of a potential international conflict this becomes highly problematic because each party is seeking to influence the news-cycle. And that's to say nothing of the other constant in war (reporting, or otherwise): human error.
It is a huge ask for newsrooms to walk the tightrope of reporting during what may be the gestation period of an international conflict. They are, in a sense, flying blind over enemy terrain of their own. High stakes demand balanced reporting – a task bedevilled by those seeking to shape the narrative for partisan ends. The best newspapers toil away in the fog of war; the worst become stenographers for intelligence outfits or government officials.
In times like these, the best thing you can do is to read widely and stay incredulous.
Worldlywise
Sexual violence in the headlines
On Monday an unsteady Harvey Weinstein hobbled into a New York court with the aid of a walking frame. If it was an attempt to soften the glares of his detractors it failed miserably: many took it to be a cynical sprinkling of Hollywood magic. If he is found guilty of the most serious charge there – predatory sexual assault – the fallen media mogul may face life imprisonment. And just hours after the opening of that case, Log Angeles authorities charged him with new counts of rape and sexual assault in an unrelated case. He most certainly deserves to face the music, and publicly, but there is a growing concern that all the media attention centred on Weinstein has allowed other predators named by the #MeToo movement to escape closer scrutiny. Indeed, after hundreds of credible allegations it is galling that so few have been charged .
And in Britain this week two stories galvanised public interest. The first was simple: Britain's most-prolific rapist was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the sexual assault and rape of 48 men. It's believed that Reynhard Sinaga may have had up to 195 victims over several years by luring drunk men to his apartment, drugging them and assaulting them. The other case is less clear-cut. The 19-year-old woman at the centre of the Cyprus rape case was released from Cypriot custody this week and flown into London. The unnamed woman has spent 5 months in detention on the Mediterranean island after recanting a gang-rape accusation that she levelled at a group of Israeli tourists last year. She argues that she was coerced to drop the case during an intensive seven-hour interrogation by police in which she did not have access to a lawyer.
The reality is that justice continues to prove an elusive goal for the vast majority rape victims around the world.
A message from the World Bank
The language of economists, treasurers and central bankers is dry by design, with only the occasional flourish of personality. One of their most cherished flourishes is the 'Goldilocks zone': a point in time when the level of economic growth and rate of inflation is c'est parfait. This phenomenon is presently well out of reach. So much so, in fact, that the most we can apparently hope for is a 'synchronised recovery'. Given how sluggish the global economy is, that seems a rather low bar. And even that seems unlikely now.
In what is becoming a t roubling habit, the World Bank has again downgraded its global growth forecast (that makes it four in a row ). The slowdown is being led by the world's richest countries – US growth is expected to decelerate to a modest 1.8% this year. At the same time, the World Bank has once against voiced alarm over the ever-broadening (and deepening) pool of corporate debt around the world. It is not just limited to the quick hands of the developed world: emerging and developing economies have a debt ratio of 170% of GDP . Just the kind of news we need to start off the year!
The Best of Times
Fair-feathered, not fair-weathered
The African grey parrot isn't just easy on the eye: it's a good bird. In the moral sense. A new study published this week argues that these delightful, plucky creatures regularly display altruistic behaviour – a trait thought to be restricted to higher primates, pachyderms and few other species. African grey parrots will help their neighbours (even of another avian species!) just for the sake of it. It's simultaneously warming and somewhat alarming that these handsome birds are selfless in a way that so few humans are.
Sorry, Saint George
On the other hand, dangerous beasts like bears, wolves and eagles are being reintroduced to Britain for the opposite reason: so that they'll eat other subjects of the animal kingdom. This story on rewilding the UK is well worth your time.
The Worst of Times
Crossing to Australia
An inconvenient booth
The battle between Japanese convenience store franchisee Mitoshi Matsumoto and his 7-Eleven overlords was this week decided in favour of Goliath. Matsumoto has become something of a celebrity in the famously over-worked country for insisting on closing his store on New Years's Day. 7-Eleven, which stipulates that all stores must be open 24 hours per day and 365 days a year, has stripped him of his franchise and refused to stock his store. Just one fascinating and bizarre skirmish in the campaign to relax that country's exacting working conditions.
Weekend Reading
Quote of the week
"The remainder of the eye appeared to be in excellent health, indicating exceptional vision potential for the rest of Leslie's life."
– Veterinarians at San Diego Zoo report that they'd successfully performed cataract surgery on a western lowland gorilla named Leslie.
Headline of the week
''Scientists give cuttlefish 3D glasses and shrimp films for vision study" – The Guardian .
Special mention
In a departure from our regular tongue-in-cheek programming, we are giving our highly-coveted special mention to a purveyor, rather than subject, of the news: that most august journal Financial Times. Their piece on the imminent collapse of fisheries and communities in the Mekong Delta is just superb. Tight, cogent, pressing. We hope you'll be moved by this moment of sincerity before we return to normal transmission next week (possibly awarding the special mention to whoever deleted the Epstein prison security tapes ).
Some choice long-reads
- Businessweek finds the meeting point of science and prophecy
- Rolling Stone reports from the frontline of the US primaries
- The Outline gets a whiff of a secret at the heart of Oxbridge
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Tom Wharton
