Macron Survives, UN Climate Report, and How to Unmask Liars

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Macron (Narrowly) Survives

A pension reform bill raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 in France was passed into law Monday after a no-confidence motion failed to pass the National Assembly. The vote was planned late last week after President Emmanuel Macron's chosen prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, used a procedural tactic to prematurely curtail debate on the bill. 

A total of 278 lawmakers voted in support of the no-confidence motion, nine shy of the 287 needed. Had it passed, the cabinet would have been forced to resign, and Macron's signature legislation would have been rejected. Opponents of the bill are reportedly planning to ask the Constitutional Council to weigh in on the law's constitutionality.

Many lawmakers called for Borne to step down after the vote, pointing to an eighth nationwide strike planned for Thursday. Thousands of protesters across the country demonstrated against the bill over the weekend, with at least 300 arrests amid clashes with police.

Final Oath Keepers Trial

Four associates of the antigovernment Oath Keepers militia group were found guilty yesterday of obstructing an official proceeding, among an array of other charges, for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol. Two others were found guilty of lesser charges of entering and remaining on restricted grounds.  

The verdicts mark the end of the third and final trial examining the role of the group's members in the Capitol storming. Unlike the first two sets of trials (see here and here), the most recent set of Oath Keepers members was not facing seditious conspiracy (see 101) charges—the most significant count to have been brought so far against those arrested in connection to the storming. See background on the Oath Keepers here.

Federal prosecutors have charged about 950 people across 48 states for participating in the Jan. 6 event. See a running list of charges here.

UN Climate Report

A United Nations report released yesterday warns Earth is on track to reach a critical global warming threshold within the next decade. Global average temperatures are predicted to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius increase above preindustrial levels targeted in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement sometime around the early 2030s, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

China and the US are the top two emitters of greenhouse gases (see graph)—China, in particular, has seen its emissions roughly triple since the year 2000. The report shows the planet has warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age and prompts industrialized nations to reduce emissions by 60% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels. Models suggest achieving net-zero emissions by midcentury may allow temperatures to stabilize at least a decade later. 

The next IPCC assessment report will be issued in 2027. See how the greenhouse effect works here and what an average increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius means for different parts of the world here.

Science & Technology

Business & Markets

Politics & World Affairs

In-Depth

> Pong, Atari, and the Bay Area

SFGATE | Charles Russo. Fifty years after the iconic video game Pong was created, dig into the history of how the San Francisco Bay Area played a lead role in mainstreaming video games. (Read) 

> Why Aren’t Black Boxes Better?

Afar | Barbara Peterson. Black boxes contain critical information about a plane’s last moments but can take months or years to recover after a crash. So, why are airlines slow to the idea of livestreaming data in real-time via a network of satellites? (Read)

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Historybook: Pocahontas is buried (1617); Martin Luther King Jr. leads third and ultimately successful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965); The US announces boycott of Summer Olympics in Moscow (1980); Twitter is founded (2006).