👋 Ke aal aee!*
Welcome to Friday, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urges EU leaders to step up military support, a mass power outage puts London’s Heathrow at a standstill, and get ready to bat for today’s quiz question about cricket. Meanwhile, for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, Adrian Karpeta takes us to a very unique library: the only one in the world to be set up in a disused coal mine.
[*Dogri, Jammu and Kashmir, India]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“The Ramadan massacre” headlines Internazionale after Israel resumed massive attacks on Gaza this week. The Italian weekly featured a grim photograph of a Gazan woman holding the body of a child in a bloodied cloth. UNICEF estimates that at least 200 children have been killed since Israel restarted its war on the besieged Palestinian enclave this week.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Zelensky pushes EU leaders for more weapons, to keep pressure on Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged EU leaders to maintain pressure on Russia by stepping up weapons supplies. This comes as both Ukrainian and Russian officials prepare for a new round of peace talks with the U.S. next week. Addressing an EU summit on Thursday, Zelensky also criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for “making unnecessary demands” while also failing to uphold an agreement Russia reportedly made with the U.S. to stop attacks on energy infrastructure. “Despite Putin's words about allegedly being ready to stop the attacks — nothing has changed,” Zelensky said. Read more about Europe’s leverage with Russia in this analysis translated from French by Worldcrunch: Tempting As It Sounds, Seizing Russian Assets Is A Bad Idea
• Israel’s cabinet votes to fire head of intelligence service. Israel’s cabinet voted Friday to oust Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had lost confidence in him. This came after three days of protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with opponents of the move joining those demonstrating against the resumption of violence in Gaza. Bar’s ousting also came after months of tension with the Prime Minister’s office over an investigation into corruption and possible bribes of staff, which Netanyahu dismissed as politically motivated.
• Europe’s biggest airport closed Friday due to electrical fire. London’s Heathrow Airport announced it would be closed all of Friday due to a power outage linked to an electrical fire at a nearby electrical substation. The outage, which is disrupting more than 1,300 flights at Heathrow, also knocked out power to more than 60,000 customers, with nearly 5,000 still without power on Friday morning. Heathrow is the UK’s biggest airport hub, with nearly 84 million passengers passing through the airport in 2024.
• Sudanese military expels RSF from presidential palace. The Sudanese military said it has retaken the Republican Palace in the capital Khartoum after losing control of the government building to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) two years ago. The win for the national forces is a huge symbolic victory in Sudan’s civil war, but likely doesn’t mean an end to the conflict with the RSF controlling swaths of land in the country’s western Darfur region and elsewhere. For more, we offer this article from Al-Manassa: Sudan War, Why Permanent Partition Is Now A Very Real Scenario.
• Trump moves to eliminate U.S. Department of Education. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday commanding the education secretary to begin dismantling the country’s national department of education. The decree seems to circumvent the need for Congress to decide on the department’s dissolution, but fulfills a campaign promise for Trump, who has said he wants to “send education back to the states.” State and local governments provide 90% of the funding for most school districts, but the bulk of the U.S. Department of Education’s funding goes toward federal grants and loans that fund things like high-poverty school districts and education costs for students with disabilities.
• Canadian PM to dissolve parliament, set new election date. Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to dissolve parliament on Sunday and set a date for new parliamentary elections according to multiple government sources. The elections would likely be held in late April. The country’s Conservative party has widely been expected to win. But the Liberal party — which Carney became leader of when Justin Trudeau resigned — has seen its polls improve since Trump imposed steep tariffs on the United States’ northern neighbor and has repeatedly said he wants to turn the country into a 51st American state. Read more about Mark Carney’s position on Trump in this analysis translated from Italian by Worldcrunch: Polite But Firm — Mark Carney Helps Teach The World How To Say "No" To Trump
• News Quiz! India’s head cricket organization lifted a ban on what for players ahead of the upcoming Indian Premier League?
A. Using metal bats instead of wooden ones
B. Eating samosas to refuel during the match
C. Using spit to shine cricket balls
D. Streaking as a team to celebrate a victory
[Answer below]
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
9,000
Glaciers around the world are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UNESCO report released on Friday. The 9,000 gigatons of ice lost from glaciers since 1975 are roughly equivalent to "an ice block the size of Germany with the thickness of 25 meters," Michael Zemp, director of the Switzerland-based World Glacier Monitoring Service, said during a press conference announcing the report in Geneva. The UN warns that retreating glaciers threaten the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world. Read more about melting glaciers here.
📹 ON THIS DAY VIDEO — 4 HISTORY-MAKING EVENTS, IN 57 SECONDS
➡️ Watch the video: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
💸 While Europeans may see seizing Russian assets as a financial and moral boost, they should resist the idea to avoid a triple boomerang effect.
— LES ECHOS
😵💫 Small doses of psychedelic drugs are said to make parents more engaged and even childlike in their enthusiasm. Is this reckless nonsense, or a parenting breakthrough?
— DIE ZEIT
📚 In a Polish region known for its strong, centuries-long ties to the mining industry, areas once dedicated to coal are now being transformed into cultural hubs. Among these is a disused mine in the town of Pszów, which has now been transformed into a library.
— GAZETA WYBORCZA
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📣 VERBATIM
“He has really put Greenland on the map once again.”
— Ivik Knudsen-Ostermann, operator of the Greenland Cruises company that runs boat tours, told Reuters he noted a significant surge in tourism after U.S. President Donald Trump put the island in the global spotlight. Trump's comments about annexing the territory, coupled with the opening of a new international airport in the capital Nuuk in November, have boosted arrivals, with more tourists expected over the summer. Greenland is hoping the new airport will bolster its tourism and mining industries to diversify the economy, which is currently reliant on fishing for 95% of its exports. More about the topic here: The Greenland Paradox: Rich In Resources, Frozen In Poverty.
✍️ Newsletter by Jacob Shropshire & Cécilia Laurent-Monpetit
Let us know what’s happening in your corner of the world!
Quiz Answer: C. Indian cricket’s governing body said it was reversing a ban on using saliva to shine cricket balls ahead of the upcoming Indian Premier League. Players often use spit or sweat to polish one side of a ball to make it swing in the air when thrown, but the practice was banned in 2020 on fears that it could cause accidental transmission of COVID-19. The International Cricket Council made the rule permanent in 2022, but at least in Indian cricket matches, the practice is back.