👋 Ello!*
Welcome to Monday, where Iran has denied any role in the drone attack that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan, China’s real estate giant Evergrande is ordered to liquidate, and the Mona Lisa gets souped up by climate activists. Meanwhile, Italian daily La Stampa unveils the darker side of Marco Polo’s travels.
[*Jamaican Patois]
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Turin-based sports daily Tuttosport sends a big front-page “THANKS!” to Italy’s rising tennis star Jannik Sinner, after the 22-year-old won the Australian Open. Sinner recovered from two sets down to beat Russia’s Daniil Medvedev and claim his maiden Grand Slam title in a thrilling final.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Iran denies involvement in deadly attack on U.S. base in Jordan, Biden vows response: Iran has denied it was involved in the drone attack that killed three U.S. troops and injured 34 at an outpost in Jordan, near the Syria border, marking the first time U.S. service members have been killed by enemy fire in the Middle East since the start of the Gaza war. U.S. President Joe Biden blamed Iran-backed militant groups for the attack, saying the country “shall respond.” Here’s a piece from Persian-language Kayhan-London on Iran’s careful balancing act since the Gaza war began.
• Farmer protests converge on Paris, government to push for EU law changes: French farmers have vowed to launch an indefinite “siege” of Paris beginning Monday, blocking major highways out of the capital city, as the French government said it would push to ease European Union environmental regulations on fallow farmland this week. Protesters are demanding better working conditions and less red tape and stringent environmental regulations.
• Ex PM narrowly wins first round of Finland presidential election: Conservative former prime minister Alexander Stubb emerged as the winner of the first round of Finland’s presidential election with 27.2% of the vote, followed by ex-foreign minister Pekka Haavisto of the Green Party at 25.8%. Finland’s far-right party underperformed. The top two candidates will meet in the second round on February 11.
• Evergrande to liquidate: A Hong Kong court ordered the liquidation of China Evergrande Group, property giant and world's most indebted developer, with more than $300 billion of total liabilities. The debt-laden firm defaulted two years ago and has failed to come up with a plan to restructure since then. Evergrande has been the poster child of China's real estate crisis and more widely, an example of China's crumbling financial markets.
• ECOWAS surprise withdrawals: Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso announced their immediate withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in a joint statement on Sunday. The three military-led West African nations accuse the regional bloc of being under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, becoming a threat to its members, failing to support their fight against “terrorism and insecurity,” while imposing “illegal, illegitimate, inhumane and irresponsible sanctions.” The 15-nation body of ECOWAS, created in 1975, said it had not been notified but claimed it remained “committed to finding a negotiated solution to the political impasse.”
• Protests in Mexico City as bullfighting resumes: Animal rights activists protested outside the world’s largest bullring in Mexico City on Sunday, as bullfights resumed following a nearly two-year hiatus after an earlier suspension was revoked by the country’s Supreme Court. While Mexico has hosted bullfights since the 16th century, the practice has become under intensified criticism in recent years. Read more on the debate surrounding traditional rites based on animal suffering around the world in this Worldcrunch article.
• Japan Moon lander Slim comes back to life: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said it re-established contact with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft, sent to the Moon on Jan. 20. The spacecraft had to be turned off a few hours after it landed, as its solar cells, pointed away from the sun, could not recharge its battery. A change in lighting conditions has made it possible for the lander to resume operations.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
€36.82 million
Five people, including two Ukrainian ministry of defense officials have been charged with stealing almost $40 million meant to buy weapons for the war with Russia. According to intelligence collected by Ukraine’s security service, the investigation dates back from 2022 when officials signed a contract for 100,000 mortar shells worth 1.5 billion hryvnias (€36.45 million) with Ukrainian arms company Lviv Arsenal. But the ammunition was never delivered and the funds were instead diverted to accounts in Ukraine and the Balkans. The investigation comes as part of Ukraine’s crackdown on corruption, intended to facilitate its access to European membership. The accused face up to 12 years in jail.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
A new translation unveils the dark side of the travels of Marco Polo
A spurious happy ending and a focus on the marvels of the exotic East characterize our understanding of The Travels of Marco Polo, the book about the 13th-century Italian explorer. But in Turin-based daily La Stampa, the Italian writer who worked on the book's latest translation reveals how focused on war, profit and money the explorer was — and how translators sugarcoated the work through the centuries.
💬 I love languages both for their lexicon than for their structure, for the way they order words in a precise sequence. The notion that a translated text should not "feel" translated, but on the contrary it should turn out as if it had been written in the target language in the first place, is useful for those who translate a lot and work with books of wide circulation. When dealing with refined and rare texts, in my opinion, it is necessary to aim for a more radical approach.
✍️ And here we come to Marco Polo's Il Milione (The Million), which I have recently translated into modern Italian. Il Milione is a text that is indeed marvelous (in the literal sense of the word) and that justifies the exhilarating and smooth rereadings or transpositions that insist on exoticism, on the titanic figure of Kublai Khan and the astonishing imperial palace of Shangdu. But at the same time it is also a book shot through with a pragmatism, a brutality that is absolutely concrete, in which pages and pages are devoted to trade, money, and war.
💰 As this harsh, ironclad side of Il Milione came to light, my translation took on burnished tones, moving as far apart from the other available modern Italian translations, which willingly yield to the one-sided image of Il Milione as a soft, precious silk cloth embroidered with legends. And while the beauty and finesse of the artifacts are omnipresent in the text, the truth is that the original Marco Polo never tires of mentioning these objects' economic value, price, and the lavish earnings they guarantee.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📣 VERBATIM
“It's the collective punishment of 5.6 million Palestinian refugees.”
— The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini shared his disbelief after the decision by several Western countries to cut aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency, in the wake of 12 UNRWA staff members being accused of involvement in Hamas’ Oct. attack on Israel. Lazzarini urged for “continuity” in providing relief to Palestinian refugees, as famine looms in the war-torn area — a plea echoed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said although UN employees involved in acts of “terror” will be held accountable, “the tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA [...] should not be penalized”.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Tunnels, Landlines, Handwritten Notes: How Hamas Communication Evades Detection — WORLDCRUNCH
• Russia Is Quietly Launching A Nationwide Video Surveillance System, China-Style — AGENTS MEDIA
• Music As "Beautiful Object" — Why The Vinyl Resurgence Is So Strong In France — LES ECHOS
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet, Agnese Tonghini and Laure Gautherin
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