Morning Report - Iran picks a new leader

TODAY’S MILITARY story

Video suggests US missile hit Iranian grade school

What happened
Video released yesterday adds to the evidence that a U.S. missile hit an Iranian elementary school for girls in the first wave of attacks. Iran said at least 175 people, including more than 160 children, were killed in the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyiba Primary School, located next to an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval base in the southern city of Minab.

Who said what
The video, published by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified as authentic by The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, shows a Tomahawk missile hitting near the school. “The U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles,” the Times said. The attack was “widely believed to be the deadliest for civilians in the weeklong conflict,” the Post said.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday he did not believe the U.S. was responsible. “In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” he told reporters. The video “appears to contradict” Trump, said investigative group Bellingcat. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon was “certainly investigating, but the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

What next?
Even before the new video, experts had “deduced from satellite image analysis that the school was likely struck during a quick succession of bombs dropped on an adjacent IRGC base,” The Associated Press said. Human Rights Watch said Saturday that the strike should be investigated as a war crime. The “prompt and thorough investigation” should include “if those responsible should have known that a school was there and that it would be full of children and their teachers before midday,” said Human Rights Watch’s Sophia Jones.

TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL Story

Nepal elects ex-rapper to lead post-revolt country

What happened
Voters in Nepal have handed a landslide victory to the recently formed Rastriya Swatantra (RSP), or National Independent Party, putting former rapper and Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah (pictured above) on track to be prime minister, according to partial results released yesterday. The election, held Thursday, was the first since youth-led protests toppled the Himalayan country’s previous government last year. Shah, 36, also unseated the ousted prime minister, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, in the 74-year-old’s longtime stronghold.

Who said what
Shah’s RSP party “crushed Nepal’s old guard,” winning at least 124 of 165 directly elected seats in the lower house of Parliament and 58 of the 110 seats allocated through proportional representation, the BBC said. The “landslide victory shows that the issues raised by Gen Z in last year’s protests — corruption, inequality and a revolving door of elite rules — has resonated across generations.” The election “took place while the wounds of the protests, which left nearly 80 people dead, were still fresh,” The Wall Street Journal said. Many Nepalese are hopeful that Shah, a civil engineer widely known as Balen, “could extend the success he had as mayor of Kathmandu to the rest of the country.”

The RSP “has marketed itself as technocratic and digitally fluent,” The New York Times said. The “average age of its candidates is decades younger than those of the big three parties” that have “controlled Nepali politics” for years.

What next?
Full election results are expected later this week. Changing Nepal “will require support from members of the National Assembly,” the Times said. The RSP “does not have a single seat” in that separately elected upper house, so “to succeed, the RSP will have to engage in the kind of deal-making” for which Shah “has so far shown sneering distaste.”

It’s not all bad

Endangered Persian leopards are mounting a comeback in Turkmenistan. A system of camera traps set up in the western part of the country recently captured footage of three breeding females in the Uly-Balkan mountain range, a “promising sign” that the leopards are “recolonizing ecosystems” where conservation efforts and increased habitat protections are in place, said Good News Network. Researchers believe that 60 to 80 Persian leopards live across Turkmenistan’s nature reserves, up from previous years.

Under the radar

Luxury cars are taking different roads with EVs

High-end automakers are taking varied routes when it comes to electric vehicles: Companies like Ferrari are all-in on EVs; others have a more muted approach. As the jostling continues, some automakers and analysts argue that the luxury car market might be the wrong platform for EVs.

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche are all experimenting. Ferrari has been pushing ahead at a rapid pace. The company “doesn’t have an EV on the market yet, but its first model, called Luce, is expected to be open for orders later this spring,” said CNBC. The Luce is expected to cost at least $500,000.

While Ferrari’s electrification is in motion, Lamborghini has “pulled the plug on plans” for its EV in the “face of collapsing demand among its well-heeled customers,” said The Times of London. Instead, the company will debut a hybrid model. The automaker admits this is a demand issue. The “acceptance curve” for EVs in Lamborghini’s market is “flattening and close to zero,” CEO Stephan Winkelmann said to The Times.

All companies that make EVs are evaluating the market in response to customer demand and spending power, as well as geopolitical factors like U.S. tariffs. For “luxury brands, which operate lower volumes and higher R&D costs,” Cox Automotive insight director Philip Nothard told Wired, the industry’s challenges are “even more pronounced.” But while luxury brands may be struggling with EVs, the “picture is very different for worldwide EV sales for brands not on the high-end,” said Wired. That EV market is booming.

On this day

March 9, 1959

The first Barbie doll was unveiled by Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler at the American Toy Fair in New York City. Since that debut, Barbie has become a cultural icon, with a variety of dolls representing different professions. Mattel said it sold about $1.2 billion worth of Barbies globally last year.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Oil squeeze’

“A week of battle punishes Iran, but no final goal is apparent,” The New York Times says on Monday’s front page. “A long-feared Gulf oil squeeze begins to hit the global economy,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Trump’s economy far from ‘roaring,’” the Los Angeles Times says. “Experts fear for rule of law in how U.S. has attacked Iran,” says USA Today. “Rallies decry war, ICE, more,” says The Mercury News. “Video of shooting in Texas casts doubt on ICE claims,” The Washington Post says. Whistleblower “expands on” how “ICE Academy ‘deficient, defective and broken,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says. “Prison guards discussed covering up Epstein’s death in custody, fellow inmate tells FBI,” says the Miami Herald.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Leveling down

Indian aerospace engineer Kiran Patil has created the world’s smallest arcade machine: a .98-inch-tall device that runs Space Invaders. The unit is less than half the size of a AA battery, with three tiny buttons to control the game. Patil, 24, has spent years experimenting with microelectronics; in 2019, he earned a Guinness World Record for smallest working drill. Patil told Guinness World Records he plans to keep building things that explore the “intersection of engineering, design and extreme miniaturization.”

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.