Flagship

All eyes on Bolsonaro

Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro is the focus of questions following riots by his supporters at the country’s government institutions. Bolsonaro, who appears to have distanced himself from the violence, is in a Florida hospital with abdominal discomfort, complications from a 2018 injury when he was stabbed during a political rally. Yet it is unclear whether he will be allowed to stay in the U.S.: American and Brazilian legislators have called for him to be returned to his home country, accusing him of inciting insurrection. His immigration status — he reportedly entered the U.S. on a visa reserved for foreign leaders — may require him to leave within weeks.

The fallout from the attacks will be significant. The editor of Americas Quarterly noted that Brazil’s armed forces “remain sympathetic to Bolsonaro,” which could result in a “purge” of the military that may destabilize Brazilian politics further. The riots and their aftermath also mean that new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration will have less bandwidth to focus on pressing issues of Indigenous rights, widespread hunger, and continued police violence.

Pakistan’s climate warning

Donors pledged more than $9 billion to help Pakistan rebuild after massive floods last year. The disaster, which left at least 1,700 people dead and pushed nine million into poverty, dealt a hammer blow to Pakistan’s already teetering economy. This week the country, which faces the prospect of defaulting on its debt, held talks with the International Monetary Fund to restart a stalled bailout program. Pakistan may also offer a terrifying model of climate disasters to come. “We are all — increasingly — at the mercy of forces of nature that do not respect borders,” its prime minister wrote in The Guardian.

California storm kills 14

Heavy rain and floods in Southern California killed at least 14 people. A five-year-old boy is likely among them, swept away by the waters. A toddler was also killed by a falling tree. Around 100,000 people are without power and 90% of the population is under flood warnings. The town of Montecito, where celebrities including Prince Harry live, was ordered to evacuate. The rain is caused by a stream of damp air coming off the Pacific Ocean, while a low-pressure cyclone created powerful winds. Remarkably, much of the state remains under drought warnings, despite the brutal rains.

Ozone success gives climate hope

The hole in the ozone layer is healing, according to the United Nations. The thin layer of ozone — a form of oxygen — in the high atmosphere absorbs solar radiation and protects life. But in the 1980s scientists noticed that chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) damaged it, causing a hole over the Southern Hemisphere. In 1989, an international agreement was made to ban CFCs. Since then the hole has steadily shrunk. It’s expected to close over populated areas by 2040, and over polar regions a few years later. The success “shows us what can and must be done” to slow climate change, a U.N. official said.

Biden hands over secret documents

Classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered in his private office. Biden’s lawyers said a dozen or so papers, including some top-secret files, were found and returned to the National Archives late last year. It’s awkward for Biden, who criticized former President Donald Trump over 325 classified documents found in Trump’s Florida home. The new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the latest announcement showed investigations into Trump were “political,” while Trump called for the FBI to raid Biden’s “many homes.” A key difference: Trump’s lawyers only gave up the documents when they were forced to by a court order.

Macron’s pension reform battle

France’s Parliament will vote on a law to raise the retirement age from 62. President Emmanuel Macron promised reform in his re-election campaign. The details are so far unknown. The move is unpopular, and street protests and strikes are expected, although in France that just means it’s a Tuesday. The decision can’t be avoided, Bloomberg columnist Lionel Laurent argued. France, like all rich nations, is aging, and its working population struggles to support its retirees. At least France has a safety net: In many east Asian countries, many older citizens feel no choice but to keep working, The New York Times reports.

Nigeria clamps down on cash

Nigeria’s government implemented a limit on cash withdrawals. Nigerians will be allowed to withdraw a maximum of $44 per week. Fewer than 50% of adults in the country have a bank account, and Nigeria lacks digital payments infrastructure. The official goal of the policy is to introduce new currency notes. However, as Semafor’s Africa Managing Editor Alexis Akwagyiram reported, many believe that the real aim is to reduce the amount of cash in circulation ahead of the Feb. 25 presidential election, because past elections have been notorious for vote buying.

— Sign up for Semafor’s Africa newsletter here.

Beijing bars South Koreans

China stopped issuing visas for South Korean visitors in retaliation for Seoul barring Chinese tourists over COVID-19 concerns. The tit-for-tat move — South Korea has banned Chinese tourists from entering until the end of the month — is the latest in the worsening diplomatic fallout from China’s reopening after years of zero-COVID lockdowns. The two countries have long seen poor ties spill into travel restrictions: Whereas nearly 60% of all tourists arriving in South Korea in mid-2016 were from mainland China, that figure dropped to less than 20% the following year, after South Korea agreed to deploy U.S. THAAD missile defense systems that Beijing saw as targeting China.

Luxury defies economic gloom

Demand for luxury cars is up, despite widespread concerns over a coming recession. Rolls-Royce, which sells cars for an average of $500,000, reported record sales. Ferrari, meanwhile, is also set for its best-ever sales. This despite high levels of inflation across much of the West, sanctions on Russia, and lockdowns in China — the latter two of which are traditionally strong markets for luxury cars. According to the latest World Inequality Report, wealth inequality has increased sharply since the onset of the pandemic, with the richest 10% now owning 76% of the wealth.

Harry’s book hits the stores

Prince Harry’s book Spare comes out today. The contents were widely leaked after a translated copy hit Spanish bookshelves last week, but it was still one of the “biggest pre-order titles for a decade,” according to the British bookseller Waterstones. The book reveals two Harrys, says The Times’s review: A loud scandal-magnet “who drinks, smokes weed, wears inappropriate fancy dress [and] never reads a book,” and a “sensitive if dim nature-mystic” who sings to seals. But it’s mainly a “400-page therapy session”: Harry despises the press, who he thinks killed his mother, but also craves their attention.

Monkey Island pirate’s last voyage

Earl Boen, who voiced the pirate LeChuck in the Monkey Island video game series, died. Boen was a respected actor, appearing in three Terminator movies. But for geeks of a certain age, he’ll be best remembered for playing a villainous undead pirate captain. The Monkey Island series pioneered the genre of point-and-click adventures, and its slapstick and surrealist dialogue showed that games could be funny and well-scripted too. Boen was in five editions, starting with 1997’s The Curse of Monkey Island, the first in the series on CD-ROM and thus to have space for animated cutscenes, a musical score — and voice acting.

• The U.K. government is set to introduce a divisive anti-strike bill to Parliament.
• A Romanian court is expected to rule on a challenge by online influencer Andrew Tate against his arrest warrant pending a human trafficking and rape investigation.
• The Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, broadcast live on U.S. TV networks NBC and Peacock from 8 p.m. ET.

Over a million Russians are living with HIV. That’s about 1.5% of adults, by far the highest per-capita rate in Europe. It shows in the death statistics: Russians are about six times as likely as U.S. citizens, and 40 times more likely than Britons, to die of AIDS. Moscow claims the epidemic peaked back in 1999, but this was false, the Russian outlet The Insider reported. Its failings were political.

Russia rejected Western harm-reduction ideas, like providing clean needles for addicts or promoting condoms. In the late 1990s, as antiretroviral therapies became available, Russia’s public health system refused to prescribe it to “drug users, homeless people, and inmates,” some of the most at-risk groups. Instead, it promoted celibacy — saying “safe sex is a myth” — and claimed condoms do not protect against infection. The policies created an epidemic.

A recipe for curios

A fellow collector of curios shared her secrets for curating a cabinet of curiosities. Over 30 years, Emma Hawkins built a trove of treasures that went on sale this week at Sotheby’s. Her finds include hand-blown glass eyeballs, lanterns from London’s historic Smithfield Market, and an egg from a great auk — a flightless, penguin-like bird that went extinct in the mid-19th century. “There needs to be something personal,” Hawkins said in a video. “Then you need to have something that’s extinct, then something pre-contact… something modern. And I think you’ve got to have something playful amongst all of these things — you can’t be too serious.” We quite agree.

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