'Parental Fury'

What You Need To Know

Today’s posts that caught my eye:

1. I guess it’s not the Covid: The WSJ reports that “people are going out again, but not to the office… An average of 33% of the workforce returned to the office during the first week of February... Meanwhile, the return rate to movie theaters in the first week of February was 58% of what it was before the pandemic. Restaurants were nearly three-quarters as full as they were before Covid-19, and air travel had recovered to about 80%. Attendance at National Basketball Association games was 93% of what it was in February 2020.” Tl;dr: We choose fun over work.

2. Feels like the ante has been upped in Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the first Canadian leader to invoke the federal Emergencies Act.

3. Record gas prices reach nearly $5 a gallon in Los Angeles, Orange counties. Meanwhile, a piece on the incredible rising rate of UK gas prices is reported in liters and British Pounds. So how bad is it? In the last year, prices there have risen more than 23%.

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The World

The tone of the Ukraine crisis shifted as Russia’s top diplomat endorsed more talks to resolve its standoff with the West, and Ukrainian officials hinted at offering concessions to avert war. Still, U.S. officials said that Russian forces near Ukraine had grown to 105 battalion tactical groups, up from 83 groups earlier this month. Russia has also moved about 500 combat aircraft within range of Ukraine and has 40 combat ships in the Black Sea, said U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports. However, in a carefully choreographed scene broadcast on Russian television, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told President Vladimir Putin that the West was ignoring the Kremlin’s core security demands, but that Moscow should continue negotiations. “I believe that our possibilities are far from exhausted,” Lavrov said, referring to Russia’s negotiations with the West. “I would propose continuing and intensifying them.” Putin responded ambiguously: “Good.” (New York Times, Wall Street Journal)

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed German support for Ukraine after meeting for several hours with the country's President Vodolymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. "Germany stands close by your side," Scholz said. Scholz has held firm on Germany's opposition to sending lethal weaponry to Ukraine amid a massive Russian troop buildup. Scholz also announced new loan of €150 million ($170 million) to Kyiv. Today Scholz is heading to Moscow for talks with Putin. (Deutsche Welle)

• Diplomacy with Russia can still save Ukraine, insists UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Meanwhile, Canada will send lethal weapons, $500-million loan to Ukraine as it girds for possible war. (The Times, Globe and Mail)

• US closing embassy in Kyiv and moving remaining diplomats to western Ukraine amid fears of Russian invasion. (CNN)

• Only 30% of Ukrainians want President Zelenskyy to run for a second term, according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, and just 23% say they would vote for him. (Associated Press)

• Inside the White House preparations for a Russian invasion: As fears grow of potential Russian aggression against Ukraine, a “Tiger Team” led by the White House is quietly gaming out how the U.S. would respond to a range of jarring scenarios, from a limited show of force to a full-scale, mass-casualty invasion. The White House team has staged two multihour tabletop exercises — including one with Cabinet officials — to bring the scenarios to life and assembled a playbook that outlines an array of swift potential responses, starting with Day One and extending through the first two weeks of an envisioned Russian invasion. The effort, senior administration officials said, has not only helped them anticipate possible complications, but has also prompted them to take actions ahead of time, such as exposing Russian information warfare before it’s carried out to blunt its propaganda power. (Washington Post)

The U.S. issued a blanket warning on potential of destructive Russian hacks. The defense agency said it was not responding to any specific threats but acting as a general precaution that conflict with Russia could lead to cyberattacks. Meanwhile, students, academics and electronics hobbyists are using homemade drones and motion-sensing cameras to patrol the Ukrainian border for signs of Russian military build-up and aggression. They say they have also struck at Russian targets with adapted Soviet missiles. The intelligence this group gathers is fed into a custom software package that it helped develop for the country’s military. (NBC News, New Scientist)

• Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Kremlin critic, is to go on trial today on embezzlement charges that could keep him locked up until 2032. Navalny, 45, will appear at a special court hearing inside the prison near Moscow where he is serving a two-and- a-half-year sentence on fraud charges that he says were trumped up to stifle his opposition to President Putin. Maria Pevchikh, one of Navalny’s key allies, said that Putin was hoping that the stand-off in Ukraine would divert international attention from the new case. (The Times)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the first Canadian leader to invoke the federal Emergencies Act, to try to bring an end to the ongoing trucker convoy protests paralyzing Ottawa and border blockades. Once a declaration of a public order emergency is issued, it is considered in effect, and unless the declaration is revoked by Parliament or extended, it will expire after 30 days. (CTV News)

In a first for an Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett took off for a 24-hour visit to Bahrain early on Monday evening. Bennett is slated to meet Bahrain’s ruler, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and the country’s crown prince and prime minister, Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa. Meanwhile, Israel “swoons” as Egypt’s Sissi gave Minister Elharrar a special summit welcome. The Egyptian leader personally greeted wheelchair-bound energy minister at the opening of Egyptian Petroleum Show in Cairo, as Bennett tweeted, “President al-Sisi, you’ve touched us all.” (Times of Israel)

Barak Ravid @BarakRavid

This is a MUST WATCH video: Egyptian President al-Sisi arrives at the international energy conference in Cairo. He walks from one side of the room to the other side in order to welcome the Israeli minister of energy Karin Elharar. Truly amazing

Looking to Latin America, China is building a $8 billion nuclear power plant in Argentina. Located near Lima, the Atucha III plant will use China’s proprietary Hualong One design. There has been opposition raised in both American concerns about ties with Beijng and from environmentalists. It will be Argentina’s fourth nuclear facility and will have an initial life of 60 years. (South China Morning Post)

French spirits maker Pernod Ricard has asked top executives from its Hong Kong office to relocate temporarily outside the city as Beijing prepares to play a greater role in the Asian financial hub’s response to its Omicron coronavirus wave. Pernod Ricard’s move comes as global businesses review the operational risk of staying in Hong Kong, with the city increasingly shut off from the outside world to battle a surge in cases. The company’s senior staff based in Hong Kong have been asked by management to work elsewhere in order to continue to serve the Asian markets they operate in and be able to visit its Paris headquarters. (Financial Times)

• New Zealand’s prime minister warned that the country is entering a new phase of its pandemic response that is “like nothing we’ve experienced to date”, as case numbers begin to explode. Virus-free for much of the pandemic, New Zealand is now reporting near-daily record case numbers. (The Guardian)

• California school mask mandate will remain in place through Feb. 28. (Los Angeles Times)

A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds just 35% of voters want Donald Trump to run again for president. Among just Republicans, 69% want him to run while 31% don’t want him to run. (Political Wire)

Texas Republican incumbents in statewide office have significant leads in their upcoming primary races en route to reelection, and Democrats are still struggling to boost public recognition of their candidates beyond the top of the ticket. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton are head and shoulders above their competition in the Republican primaries. On the Democratic side, Beto O’Rourke was the choice for governor of 93% of the polled voters who said they would vote in the Democratic primary. In a hypothetical matchup right now between O’Rourke and Abbott, the poll found that Abbott would win the race for the governor’s mansion 47%-37%. (Texas Tribune)

• Texas patients are rushing to get abortions before the state’s six-week limit. Clinics are struggling to keep up. With Texas’s strict abortion ban still in effect, patients have been forced to wait weeks for an appointment — disqualifying many who otherwise would have been able to access abortion. (Washington Post)

Parental fury propels San Francisco school board ouster: Even in this progressive beacon of a city, liberal San Francisco parents have their limits. Today voters here are poised to oust three school board leaders who focused on symbolic liberal moves — most famously, the renaming of 44 schools — as classrooms stayed shut longer than most cities during the first year of the pandemic. “It’s not about renaming, itself,” said recall organizer Autumn Looijen. “It’s about renaming while the house is on fire.” (Politico)

The drought in the western U.S. could last until 2030: After a brutally hot and dry 2021, the region is now in the worst "megadrought" in 1,200 years. Climate change is to blame. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows that Earth’s warming climate has made the western drought about 40 percent more severe, making it the region’s driest stretch since A.D. 800. (National Geographic)