Researched by: Aarthi Ramnath, Anannya Parekh & Aakriti Anand
Our experiments with YouTube: A new format!
We’ve been trying different formats for our YouTube show. We recently tried a daily news wrap—which didn’t quite work with the platform—where discovery happens days later. So we’ve switched to a twice-weekly version—that’s more like a newsmagazine.
It’s a great option when you don’t have time to read us every day. You get a video version of our best stories twice a week. Do check it out and—most importantly—share it with your friends, fam, colleagues and more. It’s a great cost-free way to introduce someone to splainer—especially if they are text-averse. The latest edition is below.
NewsClick arrests: A big Supreme Court ruling
The context: In October, Delhi Police arrested NewsClick editor Prabir Purkayastha under the stringent anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The trigger: a New York Times story on a global Chinese misinformation network—that alleged NewsClick received funding from them. This Big Story has all the details.
What happened next: Purkayastha was hastily sent to police custody by a Delhi magistrate—but his lawyer was informed of this only 24 hours later. Also: The police did not explain the grounds for the arrest. An 8,000-page chargesheet—filed months later in March—accused him of funding terrorist activities, promoting Chinese propaganda, and instigating all sorts of unrest—including farmer and anti-CAA protests.
What happened now: The Supreme Court released Purkayastha from custody because you can’t arrest someone without giving them a reason: “Communication of grounds of arrest or detention in writing by the investigating agency or police was ‘sacrosanct and cannot be breached under any situation’.” Not doing so violates a person’s fundamental rights to certain “protections against arrest and detention.”
Why this matters: This is an extremely important ruling because UAPA offers very little protection to the accused. Evidence can be withheld for ‘national security’ purposes at the time of the arrest. And the person can be held for extended periods of time without a proper charge sheet or bail. In Purkayastha’s case, the Court indicated that the grounds for arrest in the FIR were nearly non-existent:
We may, however, briefly mention that the grounds of arrest as conveyed to the Advocate are more or less a narration of facts picked up from the FIR which in itself does not indicate any particular incident or event which gave rise to the alleged offences.
Indian Express has more on why this ruling matters. (The Hindu)
Assassination attempt on Slovak PM
Robert Fico has been critically injured after being shot five times in front of a cultural community centre in the capital. He is expected to survive. The suspect was caught on the spot—but his identity and motives remain unknown. FYI: Fico is a rightwing politician sympathetic to Moscow. Why this matters beyond Slovakia:
The shooting was the most serious attack on a European leader in decades, drawing shock and condemnation from Slovak officials and other European leaders and stoking fears that Europe’s increasingly polarized and venomous political debates had tipped into violence.
You can see the clip of the attempt below. (BBC News)
War on Gaza: A billion dollar handout
Oops, they did it again! First the White House paused shipments of bombs—to register its disapproval of Israel’s invasion of Rafah. Now that the IDF has taken Rafah, the Biden administration is planning to send a $1 billion shipment of military aid—which includes tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, and mortar rounds. Yup, Biden’s donors got mad when he talked tough with Tel Aviv. Washington to world: Our foreign policy is to not have one—especially in an election year. (Washington Post, paywalled, BBC News)
In other Biden news: He has cut a deal with Donald Trump for two debates. One of them will be held in June to salvage his tanking poll numbers:
The early-debate gambit from Mr. Biden amounted to a public acknowledgment that he is trailing in his re-election bid, and a bet that an accelerated debate timeline will force voters to tune back into politics and confront the possibility of Mr. Trump returning to power.
The biggest risk: “An 81-year-old president onstage live for 90 minutes.” When he’s going up against the always incoherent Trump? Ah, such a good time to be a Democrat… or American, for that matter. (New York Times)
Fraud is killing academic publishing
Publishing company Wiley announced that it is closing 19 academic journals that have been publishing fake research—churned out by ‘paper mills’:
The sources of the fake science are “paper mills”—businesses or individuals that, for a price, will list a scientist as an author of a wholly or partially fabricated paper. The mill then submits the work, generally avoiding the most prestigious journals in favour of publications such as one-off special editions that might not undergo as thorough a review and where they have a better chance of getting bogus work published.
These mills have been traced to Russia, Iran, Latvia, China and India. They solicit clients on Telegram or Facebook—charging anywhere from $50 to $8,500. They are popular because scientists are under tremendous pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals—to be eligible for grants or promotions. FYI: Wiley has already retracted 11,300 papers and closed two journals in the past two years.
Why this matters: Fake studies have become the bane of top scientific journals— threatening academic publishing—which is a $30 billion industry—and scientific research as a whole. Wall Street Journal (splainer gift link) has more.
Good news for early cancer detection
According to a new study, scientists have found proteins in blood that can diagnose cancer at least seven years in advance:
[Scientists] compared the proteins of people who did and did not go on to be diagnosed with cancer and identified 618 proteins linked to 19 types of cancer.. The study… also found 107 proteins associated with cancers diagnosed more than seven years after the patient’s blood sample was collected and 182 proteins that were strongly associated with a cancer diagnosis within three years.
A second linked study looked at genetic data of 300,000 cancer cases—and found 40 blood proteins linked to the risk of getting nine types of cancer. Why this matters: altering these proteins could increase or decrease the chances of someone developing cancer. The Guardian has more on both studies.
In other health-related news: The first long-term data on the weight loss drug Wegovy shows that people on the drug lose an average of 10% of their weight after 65 weeks. More importantly, they maintain that weight loss for up to four years. That’s notable since most studies showed that the weight comes right back soon after stopping this new gen of semaglutide—based drugs. And that is one reason many people hesitate to get on meds that cost $1,300 for a 28-day supply. The other reason for stopping these drugs: debilitating side-effects that affect quality of life. (Quartz)
An important study on UK visas
The context: The graduate visa entitlement allows international students to work for two or three years after graduating in the UK. The Tory government has claimed it’s been abused—and used to steal jobs from citizens. Rishi Sunak has promised to get rid of it—as part of the wider crackdown on immigration.
What happened now: An independent review has concluded that there is zero evidence of “widespread abuse”—and firmly counsels against scrapping it:
The graduate route is a key part of the offer that we make to international students to come and study in the UK. The fees that these students pay helps universities to cover the losses they make in teaching British students and doing research. Without those students, many universities would need to shrink and less research would be done.
FYI: Indians accounted for more than 40% of these visas. (The Guardian)
Five things to see
One: Dating app Bumble is getting flak for billboard ads—which read: “You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer,” and “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun.” All of which triggered instant outrage–and forced the company to apologise for mocking people who do not have sex (which is quite a large portion of humanity, if you think about it). You can see one of the billboards from the Bumble fumble below. (Quartz)
Two: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will go to any length to express his support for Ukraine—including singing with a punk band in Kyiv. They belted out a cover of Neil Young’s 1989 song “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Aww, we can’t wait for his next gig in Tel Aviv. FYI: Blinken was a serious rock guitarist before he became a diplomat. You can see the performance below: (Washington Post, paywall, The Guardian)
Three: King Charles unveiled his official portrait as a monarch—the first since his coronation in 2022—at Buckingham Palace. The massive painting is more than eight feet high and six feet wide—and is very, very red. And there is a butterfly—all of which is allegedly symbolic, according to the painter Jonathan Yeo:
Though the butterfly was apparently the key piece of semiology — meant, Mr. Yeo told the BBC, to represent Charles’s metamorphosis from prince to sovereign and his longstanding love of the environment — it was the painting’s primary colour that almost instantaneously gave new meaning to the idea of “seeing red.” It was practically begging for interpretation.
Many, ofc, have interpreted it as the monarchy going up in flames. (Associated Press)
Four: In 2004, a pair of human skeletons “buried arm in arm” atop a horse skeleton were found in Austria—and were assumed to be remains of mediaeval lovers dating back to the 6th-7th century AD. However, new evidence—found using radiocarbon dating—shows that they are, in fact, mother and daughter. We were mainly struck by the tenderness of the artistic reconstruction. (Live Science)
Five: Whale-come back! Biologists have spotted giant blue-grey sei whales—which disappeared from Argentina's Patagonian coast about a 100 years ago. According to a biologist, they never went extinct:
They disappeared because they were hunted, they did not become extinct but were so reduced that no one saw them… They breed every 2 or 3 years and so it took almost 100 years for them to have appreciable numbers for people to realise they were there.
Reuters has the rest of this happy story.
