Good morning.
Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin did not appear to reach a breakthrough in five hours of talks at the Kremlin on Monday evening aimed at fending off a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Macron is due to travel to Kyiv on Tuesday where he will hold talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He said he planned to brief Putin on the results of the discussions in a phone call.
“Right now the tension is increasing and the risk of destabilisation is increasing,” Macron said, according to a simultaneous translation of his remarks after the talks. “Neither Russia nor the Europeans want chaos or instability when nations have already suffered from the [coronavirus] epidemic. So we need to agree on concrete measures.”
Is Russia still moving troops to the Ukraine border? It certainly looks like it. A recent trip by the Guardian to the Voronezh and Kursk regions in Russia found a hive of barely hidden military activity as Russian troops continued to position themselves for a potential assault on Ukraine.
What have Nord Stream 2 and gas got to do with the Ukraine standoff? Gas is not just a source of energy, sometimes it is a political weapon. As western countries weigh possible sanctions against Russia for an invasion of Ukraine, the future of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline hangs in the balance.
How Canadian truckers’ anti-vaccine protest was steered by neo-Nazis and QAnon
Thousands of demonstrators have occupied Canada’s capital for days and say they plan on staying as long as it takes to thwart the country’s vaccine requirements.
The brazen occupation of Ottawa is the result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world. It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers.
The so-called “freedom convoy” – which departed for Ottawa on 23 January – was the brainchild of James Bauder, an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed the QAnon movement and called Covid-19 “the biggest political scam in history”. Bauder’s group, Canada Unity, contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada’s constitution, the Nuremberg Code and a host of other international conventions.
Are neo-Nazis and QAnon really involved? Since protesters have arrived in Ottawa, the extreme elements of the protest have been visible: neo-Nazi and Confederate flags were seen flying, and QAnon logos were emblazoned on trucks.
Supreme court lets Alabama use maps decried as biased against Black voters
Alabama does not have to redraw its congressional map for the 2022 elections, the US supreme court ruled on Monday, a win for Republicans that will leave in place a plan that has been described as a textbook example of discrimination against Black voters in the US.
The court ruling boosts the party’s chances of holding six of the state’s seven seats in the House of Representatives.
The court’s action, by five votes against four, means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature that contains one majority-Black district, represented by a Black Democrat, in a state in which more than a quarter of the population is Black. The chief justice, John Roberts, joined with the court’s three liberal justices in dissenting from the ruling.
A three-judge lower court, including two judges appointed by Donald Trump, had ruled that the state had likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters by not creating a second district in which they made up a majority, or close to it.
What did the ruling say? Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, part of the conservative majority, said a lower court acted too close to the 2022 election cycle.
So does this mean the state may still have violated the Voting Rights Act? Kavanaugh said he had not reached a conclusion on the larger question in the case but cited a legal principle saying that courts should not change election rules close to an election.
In other news …
With his second executive action, Virginia’s new governor, Glenn Youngkin, made masks in schools optional, causing uproar among educators and parents. A Virginia judge has blocked Youngkin’s order, allowing school districts to continue to enforce mask mandates, but there is still turmoil.
An employee at a Home Depot in Arizona has scammed the company out of hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2018 by swapping cash from registers with fake $100 bills, according to a criminal complaint. Adrian Jean Pineda allegedly siphoned $387,500 over four years.
Germany has been left fuming after a night of ski jumping mayhem at the Winter Olympics. A series of disqualifications for the favourites meant the world champions failed to make the final. “This is a parody, but I am not laughing,” said Germany’s head of Nordic events, Horst Hüttel.
Chimpanzees have invented a creative method for treating injuries: catching insects and applying them directly to the open wound. Scientists observed this behaviour in chimpanzees in Gabon, noticing that the apes use insects to treat not only their own wounds but also those of their peers.
Stat of the day: BP’s annual profits reached an eight-year high of $12.8bn
BP’s annual profits reached an eight-year high of $12.8bn in 2021 as it benefited from a surge in energy prices, prompting renewed calls in the UK for a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies to relieve the financial pressure on households facing a sharp rise in bills. Natural gas and electricity prices have soared since last summer because of tight gas supplies and rising demand as economies bounced back from the pandemic, and the standoff between Russia and Ukraine pushed gas prices higher.
Don’t miss this: Arrested Development’s Will Arnett on divorce, fatherhood and friendship
After years of playing insecure braggarts, Will Arnett is taking on a new challenge – as the star of the improvised celebrity cop show Murderville. The actor was one of the breakout stars of Arrested Development, going from a complete unknown to being cast in movie comedies such as Blades of Glory and Hot Rod, playing characters not a million miles from Gob. “I like characters who are really cocky and really dumb. That always seems to be a really great cocktail for me,” he says. He talks to Hadley Freeman about his “weird” period, his split with Amy Poehler, and having a baby in his 50s.
Climate check: what are PFAS and what risk do they pose?
PFAS are a family of thousands of human-made substances – nicknamed “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment – that have been widely used since the 1940s in a huge range of everyday consumer products and industrial processes. The devastating impacts of PFOA was first exposed by US lawyer Rob Bilott who has been fighting for decades on behalf of people exposed to the chemicals. But what risk do they actually pose?
Last Thing: Las Vegas casino tracks down tourist who won $229,000 without knowing
A tourist from Arizona won $229,000 on a Las Vegas slot machine but walked away unaware of his windfall owing to an error in the machine. It took nearly three weeks for gaming board agents to track him down and enrich him. On 8 January, Robert Taylor hit a jackpot on a slot machine at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino on the Vegas strip. But the “slot machine experienced a malfunction that prevented Mr Taylor and casino personnel from realizing that a progressive jackpot had been won”, the Nevada Gaming Control Board said.
Sign up
First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.
Get in touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com
