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

More than 230 convicted in Italy's maxi-trial against 'Ndrangheta mafia

Summary: On Monday, an Italian court convicted more than 230 of more than 330 suspected ‘Ndrangheta mafia members and their associates who were standing trial for charges ranging from drug trafficking to theft.

Context: Among this group were a pair of mob bosses who received 30-year sentences and a well-known lawyer and former politician who was sentenced to 11-years in prison; the ‘Ndrangheta is generally considered to be the most powerful mafia in Italy, and while this trial won’t severely hamper the group’s current efforts, the last mafia trial of this scale in 1986 marked a downward turning point in the Cosa Nostra’s influence, and prosecutors hope this case will do the same—though these rulings can be appealed twice before being fully locked in, so there’s a chance that some or all of them will be changed before they’re put into effect.

—Reuters

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Marketing leaders urge X CEO Linda Yaccarino to resign

Summary: Following a seemingly antisemitic on-platform response by X owner Elon Musk, and a report from liberal advocacy group Media Matters that showed ads from major corporations being displayed next to neo-Nazi and white nationalist content on the network, the company, which was formerly called Twitter, has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, and the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, has reportedly been encouraged by ad-world allies to resign to save her reputation.

Context: Yaccarino has reportedly told those allies that she would be sticking around, and the lawsuit against Media Matters has been called, by several outside analysts, frivolous and face-saving—an effort to make it look like X is the victim of some kind of ideologically motivated smear-campaign, essentially; all of which underlines a difficult moment for X, as some of the company’s largest advertisers, including IBM, Disney, and Comcast have put their ad-buys with the company on hold, potentially representing a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for a company that by some reports has already been hemorrhaging money.

—Axios

Malawi's President Chakwera bans himself and his cabinet from foreign travel

Summary: The President of Malawi, Lazarus Chakwera, has announced a suspension on foreign travel for himself and his government following a massive devaluation of the country’s currency.

Context: This ban on foreign travel by government officials is meant to help the country save money at a precarious economic moment, and it’s notable because this is an unusual type of austerity, mostly impacting the upper-echelons of the country’s power structure, rather than those lower-down; the IMF approved a $174 million line of credit for Malawi following the recent announcement of a 44% devaluation of its currency, the kwacha—a devaluation that may have been a requirement of securing that credit.

—BBC News

Argentina’s newly elected president Javier Milei has said he wants to do away with the peso and transition to the US dollar, but questions remain about whether the country has enough resources (valued in pesos) to buy a sufficient number of dollars for that transition, as inflation has made pesos fairly worthless for the purpose of purchasing foreign currencies.

—Axios

1.17 degrees C

Margin by which global average temperatures were above the 1991-2020 average last Friday, marking a new (and to many climate scientists, worrying) record.

That means those averages were 2.06 degrees C above the pre-industrial period we usually use for marking such things (the period from roughly 1850 to 1990), which is a milestone our climate efforts are meant to help us avoid (we’re still trying to avoid a 1.5 degrees C increase above those levels, but 2 degrees is increasingly being seen as a more realistic target, since we haven’t moved fast enough across a variety of emissions metrics).

This was just a quick upward blip and is probably not a new trend (fortunately), but the climate science community is marking it because it shows how even getting close to these temperature ceilings can leave us prone to periodically popping up above them, which can result in some pretty scary consequences.

—The Washington Post

Trust Click

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