Nigeria elects a president, and people are angry
Plus, scary poisonings in Iran and a cool archaeology discovery in Iraq
Thanks everyone for the support for the special issue I published last week. It was one of the most read issues I ever published and generated a few new subscriptions. Clearly, it was a sign that I need to pursue similar articles in the future.
It’s always humbling when a piece of writing receives positive feedback.
A6 continues to plug along, and the bursts of support (and sharing with friends or via social media 😛) help motivate me to keep writing.
Today is a regular issue, and the world continues to move along.
The stories that are too big to ignore (but we will anyway)
🇺🇸 Antony Blinken and Sergey Lavrov meet
😷 Hong Kong ditches mask mandate
A6 - Where the world happens
Nigeria has a new president, and accusations of fraud
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a 70-year-old representative from Nigeria’s current ruling party, was elected to be the country’s next president.
However, the Labour Party, which had gained momentum behind Peter Obi and his popularity among young people, said they believed the election was rigged. Obi had been leading the polls in the run-up to the election.
Unfortunately, the election was poorly run, which resulted in a loss of trust from supporters of the losing candidates.
In the week before the election, the Nigerian government decided to change the design of the currency, creating a cash shortage that caused significant chaos. Election officials believe this cash shortage contributed to a low turnout rate (26 percent) because people didn’t have any money to travel to their home states to vote.
On election day, the voting was marred by technical failures, and it took days for Nigerians to even learn the results.
That being said, if we give the voting the benefit of the doubt, the results are within the realm of reasonable outcomes. Tinubu, who was once the mayor of Lagos, essentially tied Obi in the southern Christian part of the country. In the northern Muslim areas, Tinubu lost closely to Atiku Abubakar, while Obi was thoroughly dominated.
In some ways, the election was a classic example of rank-choice voting, whereby everyone’s second-favorite candidate slides in for the victory.
That being said, keep an eye out for further developments in Nigeria, as the accusations of voter tampering will not go away in the coming days. On Thursday, six states dropped their plans to annul the election results.
What is going on with Bao Fan?
One of the hottest names in Chinese finance went missing about two weeks ago. He is clearly involved with the authorities in some manner, but it is hard to know if Bao was detained, has simply been forced into pseudo-house arrest, or is acting as a witness.
His company, China Renaissance Holdings, said Bao is “cooperating in an investigation being carried out by certain authorities in the People’s Republic of China.” However, it did not provide details of his whereabouts.
Bao’s disappearance sent shivers through the Chinese finance industry that was hoping 2023 would be sunnier than a rough 2022.
The speculation is that Bao has been caught up in a corruption investigation into Cong Lin, the former president of China Renaissance Holdings.
Random disappearances of high-profile characters are relatively common in China.
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, is the most famous recent example, and the temporary disappearance of actress Fan Bingbing in 2018 showed that even China’s most famous people could suddenly disappear.
China’s finance industry might be in for a rough ride in the coming months. Bao’s disappearance tempered many hopes that Beijing would remove its thumb from the industry, and President Xi Jinping vowed “forceful” reforms of the industry in the coming year.
Greece’s deadliest train crash
At least 57 people died and 48 remain in the hospital after a commuter train collided with a passenger train in northern Greece, the country’s deadliest rail crash.
While the government said it would pursue a full investigation, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the accident was “mainly due to a tragic human error.”
A minister at the transport agency resigned following the crash and police arrested a station manager in the aftermath. The station manager was arrested because an audio recording caught him telling one of the trains to “pass the red signal” moments before the crash.
The trains appeared not to have had much time to slow down, having crashed into each other at speeds topping 100 mph (160 kph). Reuters reported that the signaling software had crashed earlier in the day, meaning it had to be done manually.
The passenger train was carrying a large contingent of young people returning home from Carnival celebrations in southern Greece.
Alarming gas poisonings in Iran
A series of poisonings in Iran that appear to be targeting schoolgirls has fuelled both anger and concern in the country. Nobody has died in the attacks, but hundreds of girls have had to go to the hospital as a precaution, with some staying for a few days of observation.
The attacks have occurred over the last few months, and some hit the same school multiple times. The problem has been exacerbated by a poor response from school officials, who often said the girls had overreacted.
The poison attacks seem to be aerosol, based on reports of the girls smelling a strange odor and eyewitness accounts of unidentified objects being thrown onto school grounds.
The problem recently gained more attention in Iran after a minister acknowledged that the attacks were deliberate and designed to dissuade girls from attending school. The poisonings have drawn similar comparisons to attacks in Afghanistan, also aimed at stopping girls from going to school.
The poisonings come amid the backdrop of widespread social dissent in which Iranians have been protesting the treatment of women in the country.
Even 5,000 years ago, people were keen to go out
One fun fact I learned during my previous job was that some of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of humanity resulted from people’s pursuit of alcohol.
In China, the phenomenon of competitive feasts meant anyone who figured out how to brew a specific drink gained prestige, and the recipe became a valuable commodity. Slowly, the trade of booze brought together disparate communities and would sow the beginnings of what we would later call the earliest days of Chinese civilization.
In Iraq, archaeologists discovered a full-blown tavern that they estimated to be 5,000 years old. The pub contained an ancient refrigeration system, a restaurant-style oven, benches for diners and about 150 bowls. The building was described as a tavern because it appeared to be a place where people went to both eat and drink.
The project itself is also kind of cool, as it is focussed on learning more about the very first human cities, which were first built in southern Iraq after a crop surplus allowed for some people to move beyond subsistence economics.
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