Morning Report - Iran war spreads across Middle East

TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL story

Pakistan’s ‘open war’ with Afghanistan heats up

What happened
Pakistan’s military yesterday escalated days of violent skirmishes with Afghanistan by launching airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, according to Afghan officials. After months of attacks inside Pakistan by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Pakistani Taliban, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said on Friday that his country’s “patience has now run out” and “it is open war” with Afghanistan for allegedly harboring the militants.

Who said what
Pakistan has repeatedly bombed Kabul, Kandahar and “dozens of small Afghan military bases, ammunition depots and outposts in recent days,” The New York Times said. But “targeting Bagram is different,” because it is the “most prized military asset” of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and its “key trophy” from retaking the country from the U.S. Afghanistan said it thwarted the attack.

On Friday, Afghanistan said it had launched strikes against military targets in Islamabad and Abbottabad, and “both sides claimed their strikes were retaliatory,” The Associated Press said. Pakistan says it has killed more than 330 Afghan forces since the long-simmering conflict intensified last week and Afghanistan says it has killed 110 Pakistani soldiers. Both sides have dismissed the other’s casualty figures as inflated.

What next?
The “latest phase of the conflict” between the former allies “is expected to continue flaring up and may escalate” further, the Times said in an analysis. Pakistan “has one of the largest militaries in Asia” and can “inflict major damage on cities in Afghanistan,” but the Afghan Taliban “honed guerrilla tactics over more than two decades of war with U.S. forces,” and its allied militias “are likely to target deeper in Pakistan’s territory with more attacks, including suicide bombings and assaults on security forces.”

TODAY’S CULTURE Story

‘Sinners’ takes top honors at SAG Actor Awards

What happened
“Sinners” won the top prize at last night’s Actor Awards, the final major awards show before the Oscars. Ryan Coogler’s Southern vampire drama won best ensemble and its star, Michael B. Jordan, won best male lead actor, in a surprise upset over Timothée Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”). Jessie Buckley won best female actor for “Hamnet,” Amy Madigan took best supporting female actor for “Weapons” and Sean Penn won best supporting male actor for “One Battle After Another.” Formerly called the SAG Awards, the Actors are awarded by the Screen Actors Guild.

Who said what
“I wasn’t expecting this at all,” said Jordan (pictured above) in his acceptance speech. Seth Rogan accepted the best lead female actor comedy award for Catherine O’Hara, his co-star in “The Studio,” who died in January. Harrison Ford teared up accepting a lifetime achievement award. “It is a little weird to be getting a lifetime achievement award at the half-point of my career,” joked the 83-year-old. Most nominees were honored for “their amazing work, while I’m here to receive a prize for being alive.”

The surprise victory for “Sinners” showed it “has a strong chance to win at the Oscars,” The Associated Press said. “One Battle After Another” has had an “almost unblemished run of awards” this season, but “actors make up the largest slice of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” so the Oscars race is headed for a “potential nail-biter finish.”

What next?
A win at the Actor Awards “can indicate who has momentum in a close Oscar matchup,” The New York Times said. But "few contenders falter at the Oscars when they have as formidable a portfolio as ‘One Battle After Another.’”

It’s not all bad

Giotto’s bell tower, a Renaissance landmark in Florence’s Piazza Duomo, is set for an $8.2 million restoration, its first full overhaul in more than 600 years. Over the next five years, technicians will clean marble surfaces and secure loose slabs while using phased scaffolding to keep the 280-foot tower visible. The project is part of a wider conservation effort that aims to preserve Florentine heritage while easing overtourism in the city’s historic center.

Under the radar

The Indian women sifting the web’s worst to train AI

India has long been a hub for outsourced IT support. And with the arrival of AI, a growing number of women workers are being pulled into a job with significant risks to their welfare.

As tech companies move to reap the benefits of using remote workers or employing people at a lower cost in smaller towns and rural areas, an increasing number of women are finding work as data annotators, said the BBC. They help “fine-tune” the behavior of AI models by labelling content as “helpful” and “natural-sounding” or flagging it as “wrong, rambling, robotic or offensive,” said Business Insider. Much of the content they must view is violent, abusive and disturbing.

Women “form half or more of this workforce,” said The Guardian. Annotator roles are “promoted aggressively online,” promising “easy” or “zero-investment” job opportunities that are flexible and require minimal skills or training. In reality, annotators are exposed to about 800 videos a day, many containing pornography, sexual assault, child abuse and graphic violence.

The world “sees cleaner feeds” as a result but remains largely blind to the women who must absorb the “trauma” so that the machines can learn what to block, said India Today. They are exposed to the internet’s “darkest material.”

Such exposure can lead to disrupted sleep patterns, distorted social relationships and a protective “emotional numbness” that’s “rarely acknowledged,” said the outlet. There’s “limited mental health support” for the workers, even though “images linger long after shifts end.” Often working remotely while balancing other aspects of life, these women are left “unseen, unheard and exhausted.”

On this day

March 2, 1995

Scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, announced the discovery of the top quark, a subatomic particle that physicists had sought for decades. It was the last of six quarks predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Fermilab, which also discovered the bottom quark in 1977, remains America’s top particle physics lab.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Battle rages, future hazy’

“U.S. troops killed as blasts jolt Mideast,” The New York Times says on Monday’s front page. “Retaliatory strikes widen war with Iran,” the San Francisco Chronicle says. “Battle rages, future hazy,” says the New York Daily News. “Trump risks alienating war-weary supporters,” The Washington Post says. “After denouncing U.S. intervention, Trump topples foreign leaders,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Lawmakers question basis for war,” the Los Angeles Times says. “Upcoming war powers vote unlikely to rein in Trump,” says the Miami Herald. “3 dead, 14 injured in Austin mass shooting,” the Austin American-Statesman says. “Shooting in Austin probed as possible terrorism” tied to Iran, says the Houston Chronicle.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Prancing king

The mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, long believed to have had “earthshaking footsteps,” actually “walked on tippy toes,” said The New York Times. By examining fossilized tracks and the lower leg anatomy of different T. rex skeletons, researchers reconstructed the dinosaur’s gait and found that it moved by rapidly swinging its legs, rather than taking big steps. “It would resemble being chased by an oversized bird,” said project lead Adrian Boeye, a student at Maine’s College of the Atlantic.

Morning Report was written and edited by Will Barker, 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.