A Missing Plane, Southwest Airlines, & Elephants Have Names
June 11, 2024
Hello, readers – happy Tuesday! Today, we’ll be talking about a missing plane in Malawi, more potential Hollywood strikes, a ceasefire deal, a peace summit, Southwest Airlines, January 6 rioters running for office, and elephants having names.
Want answers? We’ve got you covered: DP 6/3 Quiz Answers. Hats off to Rob, who scored a perfect 10 on last week’s quiz. Check back next week for another chance to test your current affairs acumen!
“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Missing In Malawi
This is certainly a troubling trend. Just a few weeks after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, another world leader’s aircraft has gone missing. The plane carrying Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima, former first lady Shanil Dzimbiri (the ex-wife of former President Bakili Muluzi), and eight others went missing yesterday morning, according to President Lazarus Chakwera. The group was traveling to attend the funeral of a former government minister.
The plane left the southern African nation’s capital, Lilongwe, at 9:17 a.m. and had been expected to land 45 minutes later at Mzuzu International Airport. Air traffic control told it to not attempt a landing and to turn around because of bad weather and poor visibility, soon after which contact with the plane was lost. Mzuzu is located in a hilly, forested area dominated by the Viphya mountain range, which has vast plantations of pine trees. Soldiers were searching the area as of writing, but nothing had been discovered yet. President Chakwera said they had tracked the last known position of the plane to a 10-kilometer (6-mile) radius.
Hot Strike Summer Strikes Again (Maybe)
You may remember that last year, writers and actors went on strike for about four months as they attempted to negotiate with major Hollywood studios on residuals, AI protections, and more. Despite those strikes coming to an end, the movie and TV industries remain under significant strain, with studios and streamers buying and producing fewer projects – the projects that are getting made are often being made outside of California, leaving the once-sparkling Tinseltown with fewer job opportunities.
Yesterday, Hollywood Basic Crafts and Teamsters Local 399 (which includes drivers, dispatchers, Department of Transportation (DOT) administrators, animal trainers, wranglers, mechanics, and location managers) began negotiations with major studios. The negotiations between Hollywood’s leading crew unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will culminate by the end of July, when the current contracts expire.
“There’s always a reason to strike,” Lindsay Dougherty, Teamsters Local 399 principal officer and chairperson of the Hollywood Basic Crafts, said ahead of Monday’s negotiations. But, she adds, “I don’t anticipate that the studios will be giving us that reason.” “Some of these proposals we have made for 50 plus years so this fight was always going to happen, but now the fight is different because our members have suffered such financial hardship in the last year from not working – and at the hands of the studios,” Dougherty said.
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Hammering Out A Deal With Hamas
- It’s been over eight months after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and calls for a ceasefire have reached a fever pitch. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his eighth trip to the Middle East since the conflict began yesterday and urged top Israeli officials on Monday to accept and implement a plan for postwar Gaza.
- Blinken’s trip came just a few hours after the United Nations Security Council passed a U.S.-drafted ceasefire deal. The hope was that it would put added pressure on Hamas to accept the deal – Hamas said it was ready to work with mediators in indirect negotiations with Israel to implement the deal, but also indicated that its goal of a “fully sovereign” Palestinian state would not be going away.
- If this current ceasefire deal falls through, two current senior U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials revealed that the White House is considering negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of five Americans being held hostage in Gaza. Israel would not be involved in those conversations.
The RSVPs Are Rolling In
- Switzerland President Viola Amherd announced yesterday that nearly 90 countries and organizations have confirmed that they’ll be attending the Swiss-hosted Ukraine peace summit over the weekend. Unsurprisingly (and a bit disappointingly – imagine the drama), Russia will not be on the guest list. They were not invited but said they wouldn’t have gone anyway (very Real Housewives of them).
- It’s been over two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Amherd said of the summit, “This is about the basis of humanitarian aid provided by Switzerland, based on fostering peace (and) to provide a platform to initiate a dialogue.” About 160 invitations have been sent out, but Amherd said it was not a “disappointment” for the Swiss government that fewer than 100 have agreed to join.
More Mixed Nuts
- Ukraine says deep drone strike destroys rare Russian Su-57 stealth fighter (CNN)
- At least 9 dead after suspected militants in Kashmir fire at Hindu pilgrims, sending bus into gorge (ABC)
- North Korea leader’s sister warns of new response against South Korean loudspeakers, leaflets (Reuters)
- Complex coalition talks loom in Belgium after Flemish nationalist parties win federal election (AP)
- Australia’s prime minister condemns vandalism of U.S. Consulate over war in Gaza (NPR)
An Airline Lifeline
- Elliott Investment Management announced yesterday that it has taken a $1.9 billion stake in Southwest Airlines. Southwest’s stock gained more than 6% in trading after the news broke. In Elliott’s letter to the board, the group pointed out that Southwest’s share price is down more than 50% from early 2021 and was trading at a price lower than its pre-pandemic price in 2020.
- The airline only flies the Boeing 737 jet, which has left Southwest in a bit of a lurch, not to mention the now-infamous meltdown during holiday travel in 2022 that resulted in 16,700 canceled flights between December 21 and 29 that year. That disaster cost more than $1 billion in passenger compensation, paychecks, and lost ticket revenue, plus a $140 million fine by the Department of Transportation.
We’re Coup, Right?
- It was bound to happen, but it still comes as a bit of a shock – a few January 6 rioters are running for office. Judges, juries, and Americans at large are all still determining whether or not those who helped to overtake the Capitol three years ago have earned (or can earn) the country’s forgiveness for their actions.
- Elias Irizarry, for example, is running for the House of Representatives in South Carolina. He has expressed remorse for his participation in the insurrection, but previously noted on his website that he was prosecuted for engaging in “nonviolent activities” at the Capitol – proof that he has “always stood for the conservative movement.” The mention of January 6 is now gone from his site.
- Meanwhile, Chuck Hand, who is running as a Republican candidate to represent Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District, isn’t toning down his firebrand personality at all. He walked out of Sunday’s debate after saying, “This race is very simple. It’s either 8th District money or 2nd District heart. The choice is yours. It’s the dollar versus the change. Now this is where I get back in my truck and head back to southwest Georgia because I got two races to win.”
More Nuts In America
- Marquette University President Michael Lovell dies in Rome (ABC)
- Trump complains about his teleprompters at a scorching Las Vegas rally (AP)
- Liberal Judge Susan Crawford enters race for Wisconsin Supreme Court with majority at stake (AP)
- Biden supporters mostly back him in 2024 election because they oppose Trump, poll finds (Guardian)
- DNC invests $2M in 11 non-battleground state parties, targeting down-ballot races (ABC)
We Need To Talk About The Elephant In The Room (And He Has A Name Now)
- You know that old rumor that elephants have good memories? Well, it would seem that’s pretty spot on. According to a new study in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, elephants might have names…kind of. Wild elephants make distinctive rumbling noises when addressing different fellow elephants.
- There was a study done in the past that found that bottlenose dolphins “will imitate a signature whistle in order to get their attention, so effectively calling them by name,” says Mickey Pardo, a biologist at Cornell University. Pardo said that he was curious to see if elephants, which are known to be vocal mimics, do something similar.
- Pardo and some colleagues analyzed recordings of 469 rumbling calls that wild African elephants had made to each other in Kenya between 1986 and 2022. They used machine learning to see if the rumbles contained identifying information that their model could learn to use to accurately predict which elephant was being addressed. The computer was able to identify the correct elephant recipient 27.5% of the time, which is much better than it performed during a control analysis that fed it random data, says Pardo. The real question is, do mom elephants use their child’s full rumble then they’re in trouble?
More Loose Nuts
- 4 injured as bull escapes arena and charges into spectators at Oregon rodeo (NBC)
- Teen survives Florida shark attack but loses hand and leg: ‘I made it’ (Guardian)
- Video shows stranded kite surfer using rocks to spell out ‘HELP’ on California beach (NBC)
- The world’s largest fungus collection may unlock the mysteries of carbon capture (Ars Technica)
- How did a sudden reduction in shipping pollution inadvertently stoke global warming? (LAT, $)
