Flagship

Kyiv reshuffle amid graft probe

Several top Ukrainian officials resigned ahead of an expected government reshuffle amid a crackdown on corruption. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a key aide of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Simonenko, and Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, are among those who quit following reports of illicit payments and over-inflated military contracts. Zelenskyy is planning a wider reshuffle, Ukrainska Pravda wrote, with the governors of Sumy, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions also expected to resign. Ukraine has a longstanding political corruption problem: Zelenskyy, a former actor and political outsider, was elected in 2019 on an anti-corruption platform.

Turkey threatens Sweden NATO bid

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sweden should not expect Ankara’s support for its NATO membership bid. Sweden applied to join the military alliance last year, but as new entrants must be approved by all members, Turkey can block the candidacy. Tensions flared after anti-Turkey protests, where an anti-immigrant politician burned a copy of the Quran, were held in Stockholm over the weekend. Turkey had already previously dragged its feet on supporting Stockholm’s NATO bid, citing the Nordic country’s support of Kurdish groups that Ankara considers to be terrorist organizations as the reason.

Lula’s ‘genocide’ accusation

The Brazilian government airlifted 16 starving people from the Yanomami indigenous tribe to hospital. During a visit to Roraima, the northern state where the Yanomami live, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, of “genocide” against the indigenous group, saying he was “shocked” by what he found. Hundreds of Yanomami have died of malnutrition and water pollution caused by mining and logging in their region of the Amazon. During a three-year stretch of Bolsonaro’s presidency, an area of the Amazon roughly the size of Belgium was cut down, a 52% increase compared to the previous period.

More Big Tech layoffs

The music streaming service Spotify will cut 6% of its workforce, about 600 staff, the latest tech giant to announce layoffs this year. Google’s parent company Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Salesforce also announced cuts this month, totalling nearly 49,000 workers so far this year by Semafor’s count. The end of cheap money is driving the cuts, David Streitfeld wrote in The New York Times. Salesforce borrowed $10 billion at near-zero interest rates to buy the office tool Slack in 2020. But interest rates are up, debt servicing is expensive, and Silicon Valley’s hire-first-decide-what-to-do-with-them-later policies left companies with bloated workforces. Tech is still investing, though: Microsoft confirmed it would invest billions in the artificial intelligence company OpenAI.

Dr ChatGPT, MBA

The artificial intelligence ChatGPT passed both a prestigious MBA exam and the U.S. medical licensing exam. It was not perfect: In Wharton’s MBA exam, it made “horrible” math mistakes, a researcher told the Financial Times, and some answers in the med exam were vague. But a future in which AIs help doctors make decisions — and in which students use AIs to write their essays — is closer. Google, unnerved by ChatGPT’s threat to its decades-long dominance, has brought its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, back to the office to discuss ways of fighting back, The New York Times reports.

Africa-China trade hits record high

Africa-China trade reached a record $282 billion in 2022. Soaring commodity prices meant that exports of copper, crude oil, iron ore, and cobalt fetched much higher sums than in previous years, and new deals drove imports of agricultural goods, the South China Morning Post reported. Trade disputes with Canberra also helped as Beijing swapped some Australian products for African ones, and dropped export duty on products in several African countries. Meanwhile, China’s overseas loans fell from nearly $100 billion in 2016 to just $10.5 billion in 2020-21, according to the China Global South Project, signaling a change in its approach to development financing.

India snaps up cheap Russian oil

India is buying 33 times as much Russian oil now than this time last year. Western sanctions and price caps mean Russia can sell its oil to far fewer places than before. That means remaining buyers can offer lower prices due to lack of competition. India, the world’s third-largest crude-oil importer, is likely getting an “attractive discount” as a result, an analyst told Bloomberg. It’s good news for India, which gets cheap energy, but also a sign that sanctions are working. Russia is bargaining from weakness and forced to sell cheap now that Europe has proved less reliant on its exports than it hoped.

Ethiopian Church at risk of schism

The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church called on bishops around the world to convene in Addis Ababa to prevent a possible schism. The urgent meeting comes after a group of bishops in the Oromia region announced a rival decision-making body, a move Patriarch Abune Mathias condemned as illegal, reported Borkena. It’s the Church’s second recent division: In 1991, when Ethiopia’s communist government fell, the then Patriarch fled to the United States and set up a rival church. The two were only unified in 2018. The Ethiopian Church, one of the few pre-colonial Christian churches in Africa, dates back to the fourth century, and has about 40 million followers worldwide.

US plans yearly COVID shots

The United States is planning annual COVID-19 vaccine boosters. At the moment, adults are offered two doses and a later booster. But the Food and Drug Administration has now proposed that all healthy adults receive one dose a year, updated annually for new variants like the influenza vaccine. The FDA hopes it will simplify the vaccine regime and lead to fewer errors. The West is increasingly treating COVID-19 like an endemic respiratory virus, as while it is much more prevalent than flu in the region, for vaccinated adults it is no more dangerous to catch.

Juventus at it again

Shares in the Italian football club Juventus fell after it was sanctioned for alleged false accounting. The club was docked 15 points, dropping to ninth in the league, and will probably miss out on lucrative European competition next season. It allegedly overstated its players’ values. European soccer’s “financial fair play” regulations prevent clubs from spending more than 70% of revenue on players, so buffing the balance sheet allows greater outlay. Other European clubs that have bent those rules in recent years will look on nervously. Juventus, Italy’s most successful club, was stripped of league titles in 2006 for bribing referees.

Fewer stars but more light

The number of stars visible to the naked eye fell drastically. The night sky grew brighter by 10% annually between 2011 and 2022, according to a citizen science study published in the journal Science, due to artificial lighting on Earth below. In some places visible stars fell by two thirds. It’s a shame for astronomers, but the shift is also a sign that lighting costs have fallen amazingly. Running a 3W LED light 10 hours a day for an entire year costs about $4. Combined with economic growth, these lower prices mean better-lit streets and fewer people turning off lights to save money. It is a pity about the stars, though.

• A court hearing in Georgia, U.S., will determine whether to make public the final report from a special grand jury investigating alleged election interference by Donald Trump.
• Jacinda Ardern gave her final speech as New Zealand’s prime minister at an annual Maori celebration. She leaves the role tomorrow.
• Nominations for the 2023 Oscars will be announced in a global livestream starting at 8.30 a.m. ET.

Japan’s itako mediums are at risk of dying out. These spiritual women, who are traditionally blind, are known for their practice of summoning the dead to share messages with the living, and often take on a counseling role in their communities. Learning to be an itako requires guidance, and women new to the practice take on mentorships that can last for years. While the practice flourished in decades past, there are now just a smattering of recognized itako in Japan, with many dying or aging out of the role, Nippon reports.

One practitioner, Nakamura Take, is now in her 90s. Meanwhile, Matsuda Hiroko, described as “the last itako,” is in her 50s, but is not training mentees. At least one organization is working to preserve the craft, but journalist Shinohara Tadashi thinks that while it is likely there will be self-described itako in the future, the traditional art could soon be lost.

A new Book of the Dead scroll

Archeologists revealed a papyrus scroll discovered near Cairo last year contains texts from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. The book, a modern term for the collection of spells believed to guide the deceased safely into the afterlife, were often tailored for high-status Egyptians, inscribed onto rolls of papyrus, and placed in tombs. These latest spells were found inside one of the 250 painted wooden sarcophagi, or coffins, containing complete mummies, Ars Technica reported. The scroll, dubbed the Waziri papyrus, measures 16 meters and its hieroglyphic script is now being translated into Arabic.

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