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TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL story

China’s Xi targets top general in growing purge

What happened
China’s Ministry of Defense announced Saturday that the country’s top general, Zhang Youxia (pictured above), and another member of the Central Military Commission, Gen. Liu Zhenli, were being investigated over “grave violations of discipline and the law.” The Defense Ministry did not disclose the allegations against either general, but according to The Wall Street Journal, Zhang was accused of “leaking information about the country’s nuclear-weapons program to the U.S. and accepting bribes for official acts.”

Who said what
“Few if any Chinese officials placed publicly under investigation are later declared innocent,” said The New York Times, and Zhang’s “downfall” is the “most stunning escalation yet” in President Xi Jinping’s yearlong “purge of the People’s Liberation Army elite” to “root out what he has described as corruption and disloyalty.” Zhang “has long been seen as Xi’s closest military ally,” Reuters said, and he is “one of the few senior Chinese officers with combat experience, having taken part in the 1979 border conflict with Vietnam.”

“This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the total annihilation of the high command,” said Christopher Johnson, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who now heads the China Strategies Group consulting firm. Zhang, like Xi, is “one of China’s ‘princelings,’ as the descendants of revolutionary elders and high-ranking party officials are known,” the Journal said.

What next?
Xi “seems to have calculated that in the longer term, his shake-up of the military will make it less corrupt, more loyal and more effective in pursuing his goals,” the Times said. But rebuilding “these chains of command may take him five years or longer,” said Su Tzu-yun at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

TODAY’S WEATHER Story

Winter storm lashes much of US South, East Coast

What happened
A massive winter storm rolled across much of the U.S. over the weekend, hitting states from New Mexico to Maine with sleet, snow and freezing rain. “It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” National Weather Service meteorologist Allison Santorelli told The Associated Press. “We’re talking like a 2,000-mile spread.” She said about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning yesterday.

Who said what
The “colossal” storm’s “map of misery was vast and varied,” The Washington Post said, knocking out power to “more than a million customers,” prompting “widespread school cancellations” and causing “deaths in multiple states.” More than 11,000 flights were canceled from Boston to Dallas yesterday, and thousands more have been scrapped today.

Communities in upstate New York “saw record-breaking subzero temperatures” as low as minus 49 F, the AP said, while “freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South.” The power outages “hit hardest in Tennessee, where about 300,000 customers lost power,” mostly in Nashville, The Wall Street Journal said. The Nashville Electric Service said the outages could “span over days or longer.”

What next?
Much of the snowfall ended last night, “but frigid temperatures should keep things icy for the rest of the week,” the Journal said. “The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts,” Santorelli told CBS News.

It’s not all bad

Babies carried in cloth wraps treated with permethrin, an insect repellent, are two-thirds less likely to develop malaria, according to a study in Uganda. In the six-month trial, 200 mothers swaddled their infants in permethrin-treated wraps and 200 mothers used wraps dipped in water. There were 0.73 weekly malaria cases per 100 babies in the permethrin-treated group, compared to 2.14 in the water group. Permethrin has a “good safety profile” and has been applied to textiles for decades, said The Guardian.

Under the radar

Increasingly acidic oceans are harming sharks’ teeth

Growing acidity in the world’s oceans is changing the structure of sharks’ teeth, scientists investigating the “corrosive effects from acidification on the morphology of isolated shark teeth” reported in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. This weakening of the fearsome teeth of the apex predators could affect the broader marine ecosystem, too.

The average ocean pH is currently 8.1, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but seawater is expected to become more acidic over the coming centuries. The study kept blacktip reef shark teeth in a pair of water tanks for eight weeks. One tank had a pH of 8.1, while the other had a pH of 7.3, the expected acidity of the ocean by 2300. The teeth “exposed to the more acidic water became much more damaged, with cracks and holes, root corrosion and degradation to the structure of the tooth itself,” said The Associated Press.

Ocean acidification “can’t be disregarded as a threat facing sharks,” said study lead author Maximilian Baum, a marine biologist at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, to the AP. This dental stress “would add to sharks’ other problems, which include prey shortages caused by overfishing,” said The Guardian. Many shark species are able to replace lost teeth naturally, but increasing ocean acidity “could speed losses past replacement rates.”

The study “does have a few limitations,” said Smithsonian magazine. Most notably, the “repair process for teeth may be different in living species compared to in teeth that have fallen out.”

On this day

January 26, 1988

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “The Phantom of the Opera” opened on Broadway in New York City following its London premiere. Based on a 1910 novel of the same name, the play is widely considered one of the greatest musicals of all time. Its Broadway run ended in 2023 after a record 35 years.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Sickening lies’

“Outrage over fatal shoot,” as “Dems to block DHS funds; GOPers urge probe,” the New York Daily News says on Monday’s front page. “Trump’s playbook falters in response to Minnesota killing,” the Los Angeles Times says. “Calls grow for agents to leave Minn.,” says the Chicago Tribune. “‘Enough is enough,’” the Chicago Sun-Times says. “Minn. police barred from shooting evidence,” The Boston Globe says. “DOJ, FBI on sideline in shooting probe,” The Washington Post says. “‘Sickening lies’: Video, witnesses contradict officials’ Minnesota shooting claims,” the Miami Herald says. Minnesota governor “vows state ‘will have the last word’ on Pretti killing,” USA Today says. “Trump says killing is being reviewed,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Minneapolis in grip of fear, exhaustion and rage,” says The Minnesota Star Tribune. “Canadian deal on China’s cars may sting U.S.,” says The New York Times.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Snail mail

A shopkeeper in Libya recently received an order of Nokia mobile phones, nearly 16 years after purchasing them. Because of the country’s 2011 civil war and resulting trade complications, the phones were stranded in a warehouse, despite the sender and receiver being just a few miles apart in Tripoli. The box contained several different outdated models, said Gulf News, and in a viral, laughter-filled unboxing video, the store owner asked, “Are these phones or artifacts?”

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.