2022
April
04
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 04, 2022
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Oksana Markarova became Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States just a year ago. Her job, an already challenging one amid rising concern about Russian aggression, soon took on monumental proportions. Russia invaded Ukraine – and Ambassador Markarova was charged with managing one of her country’s most crucial relationships.

But to hear her talk about her role in this pivotal moment is not to hear about its weight. “It is no longer work,” she told a group of Monitor writers and editors Saturday at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, where she was the Monitor’s guest. It is “everything” – a mission, and one in which she and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with whom she talks frequently, inspire each other. “He cheers us up,” she said, referring to embassy staff.

Ambassador Markarova (pronounced Mar-KAR-ova) has felt the war’s pressures on all fronts. In Washington, she is ubiquitous, meeting officials, doing interviews, rallying support. Her four daughters are in the U.S.; one is a new mother. The ambassador’s husband is in Ukraine, as are her in-laws. On a day when grim reports emerged about the destruction left by retreating Russian forces north of Kyiv, she told us her in-laws’ house had been destroyed.

The annual Gridiron dinner, hosted by journalists, brings together hundreds of prominent politicians, diplomats, and business leaders for good-natured political humor and skits. Ambassador Markarova gracefully navigated the many people eager to talk with her, be it about the war or her striking (Ukrainian) turquoise necklace. She received a standing ovation as the dinner began, and held her hand over her heart in appreciation. At a time of strain in many democracies, she heard Gridiron’s president remind the assembly of their shared belief in “the transcendental promise of this country,” and his exhortation to journalists to “keep telling the story of democracy.”

We hoped she felt a touch of the inspiration President Zelenskyy has offered his country. Amid deep global uncertainty, the importance of foundational values was front and center. So too was the club’s mission of good fellowship – and humor. So we were delighted that as she left, Ambassador Markarova told my colleague Linda Feldmann that she loved the evening: “It was the first time I’ve laughed” since the invasion.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Jose Luis Magana/AP/File
Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. A trial starts this week for a former Virginia police officer charged with storming the U.S. Capitol with a fellow officer, who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Jury selection began April 4, 2022, in the case against Thomas “T.J.” Robertson.

He was initially charged with the equivalent of trespassing, but T.J. Robertson has spent nine months in solitary confinement. His trial, scheduled to begin April 5, shows how the Jan. 6 Capitol assault reverberates among families and throughout America.

Graphic

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois listen as the House select committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol meets on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 19, 2021. The two Republican lawmakers are among those who were targeted by rising threats of violence against members of Congress during 2021.

Most death threats against members of Congress come from the political right. But in a shift amplified by Jan. 6 and the Trump impeachment, they’re as likely to target Republicans as Democrats.

SOURCE:

U.S. Capitol Police; Loadenthal, Michael, Athena Chapekis, Lauren Donahoe, Madison Weaver, Kathryn Blowers, “The Prosecution Project Dataset,” the Prosecution Project, 2021, "Threatening and targeting of public officials," https://theprosecutionproject.org/

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Points of Progress

What's going right

Our Points of Progress roundup highlights how it’s best not to limit our perception of how far a step aimed at progress in one context can ripple positively into another. 

Film

Netflix/AP
In the Netflix animated film “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” Stan (voiced when young by Milo Coy) is recruited for a NASA mission.

Besides offering an entertaining trip back to 1969 – the year of the first moon landing – the animated film “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood” prompts viewers to ponder how memories form and shape us.


The Monitor's View

GLOBE NEWSWIRE
Weibo Corporation, a Chinese social media platform, opened for trading on the NASDAQ stock market in 2014.

On Saturday, China seemed to adopt a set of values that has kept the global economy humming. Its top securities watchdog proposed to modify secrecy rules and grant foreign regulators access to the auditing reports of Chinese firms listed on overseas exchanges.

This could be a big win for more honesty and transparency in world stock markets. The ruling Communist Party has long forbidden Chinese firms from sharing sensitive information with foreign regulators, even at the expense of investors who want to assess the integrity of a firm’s financials and avoid fraud.

The party’s top-down control of commercial enterprises often forces it to demand secrecy. Major firms have party members as executives while the military has a strong hand in many high-tech firms. These are the kinds of secrets that Beijing wants to guard.

Yet more than 200 Chinese companies are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, giving them much-needed capital and an ability to compete as global players. They could soon face possible expulsion under a 2020 U.S. law aimed at ensuring foreign firms abide by the same accounting rules as publicly traded American companies.

This threat of delisting Chinese companies on U.S. exchanges could be the reason China is rethinking its model of opaqueness on audit access. Many countries have had to learn the hard way that honesty and openness are vital to a free market economy. The United States itself tightened its accounting standards two decades ago in the wake of two major companies, Enron and WorldCom, collapsing after being caught cooking their books.

Dozens of countries allow U.S. regulators to monitor the audits of their companies listed on U.S. exchanges. The values inherent in honest accounting lift a country’s capital markets in the eyes of international investors. “High-quality financial statements enable the investor to determine whether she should invest her money in a company and on what terms,” says Hester Peirce, a member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

China’s drive for global preeminence of its governing model keeps running into values at the heart of the international system. If it finally makes good on its proposal to allow foreign regulators to inspect audit reports of Chinese companies, it will recognize that values that sustain prosperity are not specific to a country but rather universal, helping all countries.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

© Anton Petrus/Moment/Getty Images

As we lift our viewpoint to a divinely inspired one – rather than giving in to the downward pull of discouragement or fear – we discover more of the true wholeness and freedom bestowed on us as God’s children.


A message of love

Marko Djurica/Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the media in Bucha, Ukraine, outside the capital, Kyiv, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, April 4, 2022. Now that Russian forces have retreated from Bucha, the extent of their attacks on civilians in areas near Kyiv is adding urgency to calls for an investigation of war crimes and increased sanctions against Russia.

A look ahead

Thanks for starting your week with us. Tomorrow, I hope you’ll check out our story on how numerous African nations are viewing the war in Ukraine. A pro-Russian leaning showed up in the fact that nearly half abstained or did not vote in the United Nations General Assembly vote condemning the invasion.

More issues

2022
April
04
Monday

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