World roundup: March 19 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Haiti, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

March 19, 1220 (or thereabouts): Genghis Khan’s Mongolian army sacks the city of Samarkand.

March 19, 1279: A heavily outnumbered Mongol (Yuan) fleet defeats a Song Dynasty fleet at the Battle of Yamen, today in China’s Guangdong province. Despite the disparity in numbers, the Yuan were able to blockade the Song fleet in Yamen’s harbor until it ran out of food and water, and then once the Song were desperate enough to attack the Mongols engaged in a ruse to draw them into a trap. In the wake of the defeat, the young Song Emperor Zhao Bing committed suicide, bringing the Song Dynasty to an end and leaving China entirely in Mongolian hands.

March 19, 1962: French and Algerian forces begin a ceasefire under the newly agreed Évian Accords that would mark the end of the fighting in the Algerian War of Independence. The Accords laid out the terms of Algerian independence while preserving some French commercial and military interests, and were put to an April referendum in France and a July referendum in Algeria, winning approval in both countries.

INTERNATIONAL

A new report from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization finds that not only was 2024 the hottest year ever recorded, but that all ten of the hottest years ever recorded have occurred in the past decade. This may come as no surprise to anyone who’s lived through the past decade and stepped outside at least once or twice over that time, but the report goes on to say that, as the AP put it, “carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at an 800,000-year high.” Which means that the warming isn’t likely to stop anytime soon.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

Turkish authorities arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu along with dozens of other opposition politicians on Wednesday, days ahead of a primary within the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in which İmamoğlu was expected to be made the party’s nominee for Turkey’s 2028 presidential election. Ostensibly he’s wanted in connection with “corruption” and “terrorism” charges but this seems like the definition of a political arrest. It comes just one day after Istanbul University revoked İmamoğlu’s bachelor’s degree over an unspecified “obvious error.” If that revocation stands, then under Turkish law the lack of a college degree would itself bar İmamoğlu from serving as president.