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Overnight News Digest January 22, 2023 [1]

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Date: 2023-01-22

NPR

Biden is getting a new chief of staff. Jeff Zients will replace Ron Klain

President Biden has selected Jeff Zients as his next chief of staff, choosing his former COVID-19 response coordinator to take over from Ron Klain, who is preparing to leave the White House sometime after the State of Union address on Feb. 7. The transition comes after two years where the administration notched some significant legislative wins, but ahead of two years of looming investigations from Congress and a special counsel. The news of the shift came on a weekend rocked by the extraordinary revelation that the FBI had spent more than 12 hours going through Biden's personal belongings in his Wilmington, Del. home, finding more classified documents. A special counsel probe into the classified documents found in Biden's personal files — some from his years as vice president, others dating back to his time as a senator — is one of the immediate challenges that will face the White House as Zients takes over.

Peru has closed off Machu Picchu due to growing anti-government protests

Glad they did this. I’ve been there twice; it must be kept safe.

LIMA, Peru — Peru indefinitely shut the famed ancient ruins of Machu Picchu on Saturday in the latest sign that anti-government protests that began last month are increasingly engulfing the South American country. The Culture Ministry said it had closed the country's most famous tourist attraction as well as the Inca Trail leading up to the site "to protect the safety of tourists and the population in general." There were 417 visitors stuck at Machu Picchu and unable to get out, more than 300 of them foreigners, Tourism Minister Luis Fernando Helguero said at a news conference. The closure of the Incan citadel that dates to the 15th century and is often referred to as one of the new seven wonders of the world comes as protesters have descended on Lima, many of them traveling to the capital from remote Andean regions, to demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte.

NPR

Russia has amassed a shadow fleet to ship its oil around sanctions

Before Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Europe was by far the largest customer for the oil sales that give Moscow its wealth, even bigger than Russia's domestic market. But since European countries banned most Russian oil imports last year, Russia has had to sell more of it to other places such as China and India. Yet Russia faces a dilemma. It can't pipe its oil to those places like it did to Europe, and its own tanker fleet can't carry it all. It needs more ships. But the United States and its allies also imposed restrictions to prevent tankers and shipping services from transporting Russian oil, unless it's sold at or under $60 per barrel. Right now, Russia's flagship brand of oil, Urals, sells below that price. But that could change. So Russia would have to turn to a fleet of tankers willing to get around the sanctions to move its crude to farther locations in Asia or elsewhere. It's known in the oil industry as a "shadow fleet."

The Guardian

Burkina Faso: 66 women and children freed after kidnap by armed assailants

Sixty-six women and children kidnapped by armed assailants in northern Burkina Faso last week have been freed, it has been reported. The mass kidnapping was unprecedented in Burkina Faso, which is facing a violent Islamist insurgency that spread from neighbouring Mali in 2015. On 12 and 13 January, armed men seized the women and their children while they were scouring the bush for fruit and leaves outside two villages in the district of Arbinda, in the Sahel region’s Soum province. Security forces staged a rescue operation and found 27 adult women and 39 babies, children and young girls in the adjacent Centre-North province. On Friday, the national broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTP) reported the group had been freed.

The Guardian

Climate crisis and neglect threaten Spain’s saffron crop

A sharp wind shunts clouds across the low and endless skies of La Mancha as Carlos Fernández stoops to pluck the last mauve flowers of the season from the cold earth. Their petals, which stain his index finger and thumb blue, enclose an almost weightless prize whose crimson threads are treasured in Spain and across the world. But despite the prices his crop fetches, and the weighty comparisons those prices inevitably invite, the life of a saffron grower is not without its trials, travails and frustrations. As well as the back-breaking picking and the painstaking sorting, there is the foreign competition, the unpredictable yields, the increasingly evident effects of the climate emergency and, on this particular day, the infuriating discovery that a gang of thieves with head-torches descended on his fields overnight and made off with some of the flowers. And then there are the dreaded words – “oro rojo”. “Calling it ‘red gold’ damages our saffron because it makes it sound like something that’s expensive,” says Fernández, the president of the regulatory council of La Mancha’s Protected Designation of Origin saffron label.

Al Jazeera

UN envoy says ‘progress’ made on Afghan women’s rights

A UN delegation, which held talks with senior Taliban officials in Afghanistan, has made headway on women’s rights, the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told Al Jazeera on Saturday, cautioning that much remains to be achieved. The high-level meeting earlier this week comes amid widespread criticism of the governing Taliban for banning women from universities and NGOs last month. Millions of high school girls have already been confined to their homes as schools remain shut. The Taliban has gone back on its promises of women’s rights and media freedom since they stormed to power in August 2021 after the West-backed government collapsed. “There has been some progress. Some exemptions have been made to the edicts that have covered the health sector,” Mohammed, who led the delegation, said, referring to the resumption of work by three NGOs last week. “I think that’s because the international community, and particularly the partners who are funding this were able to show the implications and the impact of the woman-to-woman services, particularly childbirth,” she added.

Reuters

Zelenskiy promises to swiftly confront Ukraine corruption

LVIV, Ukraine, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that corruption, the country's chronic problem cast into the background by the war against Russia, would not be tolerated and promised forthcoming key decisions on uprooting it this week. Zelenskiy's pledge came amidst allegations of senior-level corruption, including a report of dubious practices in military procurement despite officials promoting national unity to confront the invasion. "I want this to be clear: there will be no return to what used to be in the past, to the way various people close to state institutions or those who spent their entire lives chasing a chair used to live," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. Ukraine has had a long history of rampant corruption and shaky governance, with Transparency International ranking the country's corruption at 122 of 180 countries, not much better than Russia in 2021.

Deutsche Welle

Germany to join Mediterranean hydrogen pipeline project

Germany will join a new hydrogen pipeline project between Spain, Portugal and France, according to the Franco-German declaration on Sunday's 60th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty. The project, called H2Med, will connect Portugal and Spain with France and now Germany to supply about 10% of the European Union's hydrogen demand by 2030. The pipeline under the Mediterranean Sea will carry green hydrogen, made from water via electrolysis using renewable energy. The Spanish government estimates H2Med will be able to supply some two million metric tons of hydrogen annually. It comes as Europe scrambles to reduce dependence on Russian energy and shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

Washington Post

Covid, flu, RSV declining in hospitals as ‘tripledemic’ threat fades

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