Hard Numbers: Commemorating Auschwitz liberation, South Korea’s Yoon indicted, Trump fires IGs, Germans protest far right, Rubio freezes US aid, Ancient statue trashed
80: Monday marks 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Dozens of survivors of the Nazi camp — where 960,000 Jews and 1.1 million people total were murdered — will be on hand for the commemoration alongside world leaders and royalty. The US Presidential Delegation includes Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Howard Lutnick, nominee for Secretary of Commerce, and Charles Kushner, father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
1: Impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol was indicted on Sunday, becoming the first sitting South Korean president formally charged while still in office. He faces charges of insurrection for briefly imposing martial law on Dec. 3. The indictment keeps Yoon in detention — something prosecutors decided to do after the court refused to extend Yoon’s arrest warrant.
18: Late Friday, the Trump White House fired 18 inspectors general, including IGs for the Defense Department, State Department, Health and Human Services Department, and the Department of Labor, sparing those at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. One of the fired IGs says he expects legal challenges to result, and, on Saturday, Democratic lawmakers decried the move as unlawful, expressing their “grave concern” in a letter to the president.
4,500: Protests erupted across Germany on Saturday in a “sea of light” rally against the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party ahead of the country’s general election on Feb. 23. The protests kicked off as the AfD launched its campaign, with party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla set to address an audience of 4,500 supporters in the central city of Halle. Billionaire Elon Musk again shared his support for AfD, appearing via video link at the event before Weidel’s speech.
60 billion: Sec. of State Marco Rubio ordered a freeze on US foreign aid on Friday, threatening what amounted to roughly $60 billion in 2023. While Rubio exempted emergency food programs, the move imperils aid used to support health, education, and development programs, as well as anti-corruption and security efforts. The full extent of the impact is still being assessed, and a review will be conducted over the next three months, resulting in Rubio making recommendations on future US foreign aid to President Donald Trump.
2,000: One man’s trash is indeed another man’s treasure. Archaeologists in Greece are analyzing a marble statue of a woman found in a garbage bag in Neoi Epivates, near the port city of Thessaloniki. The headless statue is believed to be more than 2,000 years old, dating from the Hellenistic era between 320 and 30 BCE. Once the evaluation is completed, the statue will be returned to the local antiquities authority for preservation and further study.