👋 Talofa!*
Welcome to Friday, where Donald Trump orders ICC sanctions, more earthquakes hit Santorini and Lunar New Year revelers put a Chinese spin on the traditional snowman. Meanwhile, for French economic daily Les Echos, Bruna Basini takes us on a ride to Luxembourg, the unexpected Mecca of luxury cars.
[*Samoan]
💡 SPOTLIGHT
Why GPS is getting less reliable — and may force us back to old-school maps
In Cyprus, people can run on water and swim through airports — at least according to their electronic devices.
A jogger from the city of Larnaka reported on the social network Reddit that his Garmin watch suddenly located him in Lebanon after his run. According to his smartwatch, a swimmer who was bathing in the sea off Cyprus swam across the Beirut airport. Cypriot delivery services and taxis are temporarily unable to reach their destinations. Dating apps suddenly seem to suggest Cypriots should start long-distance relationships.
This is sometimes funny, often annoying and rarely dangerous. The culprits for this mess are jammers in Israel or Syria that manipulate the Global Positioning System (GPS) for strategic reasons. Yet when you are a pilot responsible for an aircraft, things can get a little scary.
Experts distinguish between jamming and spoofing. Jamming involves transmitting signals on the GPS frequency that are so strong that the receivers in aircraft and on the ground stop working.
"We've seen this for years when approaching Seoul," says Niklas Ahrens from the European Cockpit Association, a trade union that represents pilots. The airport is just 35 kilometers from North Korea. "You can be relatively sure that you won't have GPS available when approaching."
Ahrens regularly flies an Airbus 330 or 340 around the world as a co-pilot for a major airline. If the GPS fails, he lands with the help of radio beacons on the ground and the air traffic controllers, who locate the aircraft using radar and maintain radio contact.
Because Russian airspace is closed to them, they have to detour over the southern Black Sea, where they are within range of the jammers. The disorientation of the local population and civil air traffic — even in their own country — is accepted as collateral damage. In Moscow, you can no longer rely on navigation apps. Rental bikes and scooters regularly stop working. [...]
— Read the full article by Max Rauner for Die Zeit, translated from German by Worldcrunch.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Mourners in Turkey commemorated the two-year anniversary of the earthquakes that killed more than 53,000 people. “4:17 a.m., everyone was awake” headlines Istanbul-based daily Hürriyet, referencing the time the deadly earthquake struck, as the front page shows photos of hundreds of people gathered at a ceremony in the early morning hours.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Trump imposes sanctions on International Criminal Court. U.S. President Donald Trump authorized economic and travel sanctions targeting people who work on International Criminal Court investigations of U.S. citizens or U.S. allies such as Israel. ICC condemned the sanctions on Friday and called on its 125 member states to support its staff.
• U.S. Secretary of State to visit Israel and Arab states next week. This will mark Marco Rubio’s first trip to the Middle East after a widely condemned proposal by President Donald Trump to displace Palestinians in Gaza. Rubio will travel to the Munich Security Conference and to Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia from February 13-18. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the Middle East here.
• Ukraine offers humanitarian corridor for Russian civilians trapped in seized border areas. Kyiv accused Russia of ignoring its own citizens while the Kremlin has so far remained silent on the offer. Meanwhile, three people were killed in a Russian guided bomb attack on Ukraine's northeastern region of Sumy, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.
• State of emergency over Santorini quakes. Several more earthquakes have struck waters around the Greek island of Santorini just hours after authorities there declared a state of emergency. The island has been rocked by seismic activity this week with thousands of earthquakes recorded since Sunday, prompting the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents and workers.
• India cuts key interest rate for first time since 2020. This move comes as officials try to reverse slowing economic growth in the world’s most populous country. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Friday that it had lowered the repo rate, which the central bank lends to commercial banks, by 0.25 percent to 6.25 percent.
• Canal in suburb of Argentina's capital Buenos Aires turns bright red. Pictures and videos show the intensely coloured water flowing into an estuary, the Rio de la Plata, which borders an ecological reserve. Local media reports suggest the colour may have been caused by the dumping of textile dye, or by chemical waste from a nearby depot.
• News Quiz! "Ne Zha 2," a Chinese animated film, has become the country’s highest-grossing movie ever, raking in a whopping $796.32 million. What is the only Hollywood movie in China's top 10 box office earners of all time?
A. Avatar
B. Avengers: Endgame
C. Titanic
D. Caddyshack
[Answer below]
💬 LEXICON
La Négresse
A French court ordered the beachside resort city of Biarritz to rename a neighborhood known up until now as “La Négresse” after more than five years of activists working towards the change. The name, which translates to “negro woman,” was ruled by the court to be outdated and offensive, even if the exact history of where the name came from is less clear. While the term négresse is considered archaic and derogatory in France, it isn’t as culturally taboo as the N-word in English.
📹 ON THIS DAY VIDEO — 4 HISTORY-MAKING EVENTS, IN 57 SECONDS
➡️ Watch the video: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
💵 With many of Gaza's banks and ATMs destroyed, Palestinians are turning to money brokers to obtain cash and paying commission fees of up to 30%.
— DARAJ
🛃 After waiting more than two years for a visa appointment at the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, Héctor Abad Faciolince's meeting was cancelled following the Jan. 26 spat over migrants between Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump. Nevermind, the Colombian novelist and essayist writes; in a world clearly run by idiots, we're better off staying at home.
— EL ESPECTADOR
🚗 Luxembourg is Europe's luxury car capital, boasting one high-end ride for every 13 residents. Luxembourgers’ love for high-powered engines remains strong, even as the crackdown on carbon emissions intensifies.
— LES ECHOS
👓 WORLDCRUNCH MAGAZINE
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📣 VERBATIM
“There should be no negotiations with such a government.”
— Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized negotiations with the U.S. after Donald Trump floated potential dealmaking when signing an executive order on Tuesday designed to put pressure on Iran. The supreme leader pointed to Trump’s first term, when he pulled out of the JCPOA, a deal that eased sanctions on Iran and came with Iran’s obligation to limit enrichment of uranium. “The Americans did not uphold their end of the deal,” said Khamenei.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
A woman snaps a photo of a dragon snow sculpture in Jilin City, northeast China, as Lunar New Year celebrations are still under way in the country and for most of the Asian diaspora. — Photo: Cfoto/DDP/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright & Jake Shropshire
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Quiz Answer: B. "Ne Zha 2," the animated film has surpassed "Avengers: Endgame" to become the top movie in China’s history and second highest-grossing movie in a single market worldwide. By Thursday night, the Chinese mythical animation had grossed over 6.22 billion yuan ($850 million) at the domestic box office, exceeding the Marvel film's earnings in North America.