• Sudan descended into violence as rival armies waged war in the streets of the capital city of Khartoum. In what observers say is the culmination of a years-long power struggle between two generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo or “Hemedti” (“Little Mohamed”), the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Both played key roles in the counter-insurgency war against Darfur rebels that began in 2003, described as the first genocide of the 21st century, where ethnic cleansing and mass rape were used as weapons of war.
(“Could the Sudan Unrest Inflame the Horn of Africa,” Al-Jazeera, April 18, 2023; “Sudan Fighting: Why it Matters to Countries Worldwide,” BBC, April 19, 2023; “Sudan Crisis: Burhan and Hemedti—the Two Generals at the Heart of the Conflict,” BBC, April 17, 2023)
• After a historic 22 percent spike in 2021, the average annual bonus for Wall Street securities industry employees fell 26 percent in 2022. But the rate of increase in average Wall Street bonuses since the 2008 economic crash is still far higher than wage increases for ordinary workers, according to the Institute for Policy Studies analysis of comptroller and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
(“Wall Street Bonuses Decline but Still Dwarf Worker Pay Increases Since the 2008 Crash,” Inequality.org, March 30, 2023)
• The Biden administration’s promised clean energy transition is taking hold in rural Georgia. The energy start-up Plug Power is providing warehouses operated by Walmart and Amazon with forklifts run on hydrogen power. Plug Power, a leading developer of liquid hydrogen, credits Biden’s clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act with a “transformational impact” on the move toward green technologies.
(“The Irresistible Nation,” Economist, April 5, 2023)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Anna Manzo.
