World roundup: March 10 2025

Stories from China, Ukraine, Canada, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

March 10, 241 BCE: A Roman fleet under Gaius Lutatius Catulus and Quintus Valerius Falto defeats a Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of the Aegates, just off the west coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians subsequently agreed to the Treaty of Lutatius, which ended the First Punic War by forcing Carthage to abandon Sicily and pay a war indemnity to Rome.

March 10, 1861: The Toucouleur Empire of Omar Saidou Tall conquers the city of Ségou, bringing an end to the already reeling Bamana Empire and consolidating much of West Africa (modern Guinea, Mali, and Senegal) under Omar Tall’s control. Although it was riding high at this point, the Toucouleur Empire’s further expansion was stymied by the Fula Massina Empire to the north, and by the 1890s it was swept aside by French colonization.

March 10, 1916: The British high commissioner for Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, pens the tenth and final letter in his exchange with Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Over the course of those ten letters the two men established the conditions under which Hussein would lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Britain later reneged on its promises to support the creation of a single “Arab Caliphate” ruled by Hussein.

INTERNATIONAL

Let’s get things off to a positive start this week with more fantastic climate news:

Global sea ice fell to a record low in February, scientists have said, a symptom of an atmosphere fouled by planet-heating pollutants.

The combined area of ice around the north and south poles hit a new daily minimum in early February and stayed below the previous record for the rest of the month, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.

“One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice,” said the C3S deputy director, Samantha Burgess. “The record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum.”

The agency found the area of sea ice hit its lowest monthly level for February in the Arctic, at 8% below average, and its fourth-lowest monthly level for February in the Antarctic, at 26% below average. Its satellite observations stretch back to the late 1970s and its historical observations to the middle of the 20th century.

White sea ice reflects solar radiation back into space, so its loss is both an effect of rising temperatures and a contributor to additional warming. These sorts of feedback loops are particularly damaging over the long term.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces organization reached agreement on Monday on a deal to resolve their grievances and eventually incorporate the SDF into the government’s security forces. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi signed the deal in Damascus. The deal will see the SDF’s administration of northeastern Syria folded into the government, bringing the region’s energy deposits, borders, etc. under central control. The process whereby the SDF’s fighters will be incorporated into Syrian security forces is unclear. The government had been looking to dissolve the SDF and incorporate those fighters individually, while Abdi and company were insisting that their units be incorporated wholesale. Whatever arrangement they worked out to bridge that divide hasn’t been made public yet as far as I can tell. The deal should have implications for the Turkish government’s prospective peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), though unless/until those peace talks actually get underway any assessment of those implications would be pure guesswork.