Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Long-lost mammal rediscovered in remote Indonesia mountains

Summary: A species of egg-laying mammal, the echidna, has been rediscovered in the mountains of Indonesia after 60 years.

Context: The last time this species was officially recorded in scientific literature was in 1961, and though echidnas—which have spines like hedgehogs, snouts like anteaters, and feet like moles—are also found in Australia and New Guinea, this one, called Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna after the British naturalist David Attenborough, has featured prominently in local traditions, and was thought, until this rediscovery, to have gone extinct.

—Reuters

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Poland’s election winners sign a coalition pact but won’t get to govern just yet

Summary: The leaders of Poland’s opposition parties have signed a coalition agreement, mapping out their plans to restore the rule of law and build stronger relationships with the country’s neighbors, but while they collectively brought in the largest number of votes in last month’s election, the incumbent Law and Justice party, which received more votes than any other individual party, will have the chance to form a government, first.

Context: That effort by the Law and Justice party is expected to fail, at which point the self-defined “democratic opposition” group will put their candidate for prime minister, Donald Tusk, into office; Poland has shifted hard to the right under the Law and Justice party, becoming more authoritarian (according to the EU) and hobbling the country’s checks and balances so that more power is centralized with their party; the current government will have two weeks to attempt to form a coalition before that new, ostensibly less-authoritarian government, is allowed to take control.

—The Associated Press

Major pro-Palestinian march staged in London as police ramp up security

Summary: An estimated 300,000 people took to the streets to protest Britain’s support of Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip over the weekend, leading to clashes with anti-Palestinian counter-protestors.

Context: This is of a kind with other protests that have popped up in major cities around the world, though this one was especially large, marking one of the biggest protests in the UK in recent years; more than 120 people were arrested—primarily counter-protestors who were drunk and attacking both protestors and police—and it’s also worth noting that these protests are occurring in the context of a huge amount of international pushback against Israel’s ongoing attack on Gaza, which followed a sneak-attack against Israel by the militant group that governs Gaza, Hamas, and a wave of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim violence around the world.

—The New York Times

NFT marketplace OpenSea is laying off about half its staff amidst an ongoing collapse of the NFT market and a wave of lawsuits related to scams across the industry.

—Chartr

50,000

Estimated number of homes that will be powered by a floating solar plant in Indonesia, the largest such plant in Southeast Asia, weighing in at around 2.5 square kilometers (or just shy of a square mile) in area.

This is part of a larger effort by the Indonesian government to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 (or 2050 if they get more foreign aid), and floating solar panels have some benefits over those on land, including providing shade for the body of water where they’re deployed, reducing evaporation and keeping it cooler.

—Interesting Engineering

Trust Click

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