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Biden plans a seaport in Gaza as aid flows back into the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency. Plus: Re-examining the mystery of the missing Malaysian airliner, 10 years on.
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Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP
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1. Biden’s State of the Union
At tonight’s annual State of the Union, President Joe Biden is expected to announce the United States’ plan to build a temporary port and pier on the coastline of the Gaza Strip in order to get aid into the besieged enclave.
Defense officials say the project could take more than 30 to 60 days and hundreds or thousands of American troops to complete — though their work would be done exclusively offshore, due to a U.S. mandate that no military personnel go on the ground inside Gaza.
The expected announcement comes as Biden faces increasing pressure to rein in Israel’s U.S.-funded bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Read Blue Marble’s story on how much money the U.S. has given to Israel, including its military.
Biden will appear before lawmakers and their guests, including 17 relatives of American hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks and a Palestinian woman who has lost 35 family members in the conflict.
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2. Governments will resume funding UN Palestinian aid agency
In late January, 16 countries, including the U.S., had paused funding to the agency. The suspension of funds came after Israel alleged some of the agency’s employees were involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage.
Of the 12 employees implicated, 10 were fired and two confirmed dead by the aid organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Related: Earlier this week, Israel said that 450 of UNRWA’s employees are militants without providing evidence, according to the Associated Press.
UNRWA is the largest humanitarian agency in the Gaza Strip and employs some 13,000 people.
Now, amid widespread starvation in Gaza — including children dying in hospitals from malnutrition and dehydration — countries are unfreezing their funding to UNRWA or pledging additional money:
- A source within the Canadian government said this week that officials had received an interim report from the U.N. into Israel’s allegations, and that, based on that information, Ottawa was now comfortable resuming funding. On Thursday, however, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government had not yet made a decision on the funding but that it would be based on the goal of protecting civilians.
- The European Union on Friday announced a new wave of funding, after having spent most of February deliberating on whether to officially pause funds. On Wednesday, the EU’s humanitarian aid commissioner, Janez Lenarcic, visited a refugee camp in Ramallah and said how “vital and important” the work of UNRWA was.
- Spain, which had not paused its funding, pledged an additional $21.88 million to UNRWA on Thursday.
- Both Qatar and Iraq — neither of which had suspended funding — pledged an extra $25 million to the agency on Wednesday.
The Norwegian foreign minister said he thinks many countries will unfreeze their pledged donations to UNRWA, because they realize they “cannot punish the whole Palestinian society.”
See Blue Marble’s slideshow on UNRWA and its funders.
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3. Re-searching for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time
Ten years ago this Friday, Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and the 239 people on board vanished.
The Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur on a red-eye flight on March 8, 2014, headed toward Beijing, but veered off-course and flew south for several hours before disappearing from radar contact.
A massive, 52-day, $150 million hunt for the plane ensued, with searchers combing more than 46,000 square miles of the Indian Ocean floor. But after finding nothing but scattered debris, the search was called off nearly three years in. The mission was picked back up by an American company, Ocean Infinity, in January 2018, then called off again.
Now, Ocean Infinity says it wants another shot, this time using autonomous drones. The company approached Malaysian officials with “new information and credible evidence,” and the officials said they’re “ready to discuss” another search.
Several theories sprang up around the airliner’s mysterious disappearance 10 years ago: The plane ran out of fuel. The plane was hijacked. The pilots tried to make an emergency sea landing. One of the pilots “went rogue.”
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In other news
- More than 100 students aged 8 to 15 years old and one teacher were kidnapped in northwestern Nigeria on Thursday. The incident is not thought to be related to an abduction that became public on Wednesday — a group of mostly women who are feared to have been taken by Boko Haram. [The Washington Post]
- A U.S. court of appeals ruled on Tuesday that five tech giants, including Apple and Google, did not “knowingly” benefit from child labor for cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [ABC]
- An ex-software engineer for Google was arrested on Wednesday on charges of stealing more than 500 confidential files related to AI while secretly employed by two Chinese companies. Apparently he was uploading massive files to his personal Google account. [Ars Technica]
- You had me at “renegade nun”: Somehow I’m just now hearing that Cate Blanchett has a new movie coming out this summer. She’ll play said nun in “The New Boy,” set in 1940s Australia, opposite gifted young newcomer Aswan Reid, who plays an Aboriginal orphan with supernatural powers. [BBC]
- Please do not publish my unpublished manuscript when I die … unless you think it’s really, really good. The sons of the late Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez are publishing their father’s last novel this month — “En Agosto Nos Vemos,” or “Until August” — even though he told them to rip it up. [NPR]
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Say that again
“You take something that wasn’t worth anything and add value to it just by picking it up,” said Lasse Andersen, a regular of Reuse, a material exchange center in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city.
At Reuse, people can drop off all kinds of objects they no longer need — furniture, appliances, electronics — and pick up something they do need. All for free. [Reasons to be Cheerful]
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‘Why do we have to make a statement about everything?’
Writer Mónica Guzmán explains why we perform, rather than explore, our perspectives online.
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What we’re listening to
I would like someone to perform a study that will determine the most danceable music on Earth. Which among the hundreds of musical genres are people most likely to dance to?
I’m no scientist, but I have to imagine that cumbia would be high on that list.
I thought this last night while listening (for the first time) to “La Danza del Petrolero” by Los Mirlos from Peru.
It’s not scientific, but please listen and tell me if you aren’t moved.
—Laura Adamczyk, staff writer
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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