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

Fiery right-wing populist Javier Milei wins Argentina’s presidency and promises ‘drastic’ changes

Summary: Far-right outsider candidate Javier Milei has won Argentina’s presidential runoff election in a landslide, defeating the more conventional, continuity candidate nearly 56% to just over 44%.

Context: That’s a staggering victory for someone who has promised to essentially gut the government, kill-off the peso in favor of adopting the US dollar, and who has been embroiled in controversy for years; the degree to which Milei will be able to do what he’s promised to do is still an open question, but this victory—and the size of that victory—is being seen as a pretty clear indication that the Argentine voting population is fed up with the existing political and economic status quo in the country, which has, among other things, led to persistent incredibly high levels of inflation, rising poverty levels, and ever-increasing levels of government debt.

(More on Milei and what was at stake in this election in this recent Let’s Know Things episode: Argentina Election)

—The Associated Press

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Liberian leader George Weah hailed for his sportsmanship after accepting defeat

Summary: The outgoing President of Liberia, George Weah, has conceded defeat to his rival, the now-incoming President Joseph Boakai, easing concerns that the country might face a power-struggle in the wake of a tight election.

Context: Liberia has a history of fairly brutal and recent politics-tied conflict, so there were concerns that this election, the first since 2018, could trigger violence; this peaceful transfer of power, though, is being lauded both for the clarity it grants everyone involved and for the trend it continues and example it sets in a region that has otherwise been partially defined, in recent years, by military coups and instability.

—BBC News

Mike Johnson to release 40,000 hours of January 6 footage

Summary: Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced last week that tens of thousands of hours of footage from the January 6, 2021 Capital Building incursion will be released to the public.

Context: Far-right House Representatives have been demanding this footage be released for a while, and this is being seen as a nod to them as the Speaker attempts to keep the different wings of his party in sufficient lockstep to move other priorities forward, following inter-party disagreements about his recent stopgap spending bill; some Representatives and security professionals have said this footage could present a security risk, calling its release an attempt to politicize the event in question, but others—those who favor its release—have said that the 5%-ish of the footage that’s considered to be a major security risk will be withheld, and that those who are being charged for breaking into the Capitol deserve to have access to footage that could help them defend themselves in court.

—Axios

Recent analysis from Oxfam and other research groups indicate that—mostly because they have things like yachts, private jets, and mansions (though also investments in highly emitting business endeavors)—twelve of the world’s wealthiest people produce more emissions than about 2.1 million average homes each year (which is about 17 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions).

—The Guardian

280 million

Approximate number of electric two- and three-wheeled vehicles on global roads in 2022 (bikes, mopeds, etc).

That far surpasses the just-over 20 million electric four-wheeled vehicles and around 1.3 million commercial EVs (buses, delivery vans, etc) that are in use, at the moment.

And because the majority of trips people take across much of the world (often using cars) are short, these smaller electric vehicles are estimated to be savings folks a bunch of money, but also reducing global oil demand by something like 1%, according to Bloomberg estimates.

—The Conversation

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