• Romania rejects populist’s candidacy: Clashes broke out in Bucharest, the capital, after Romania’s electoral body rejected Calin Georgescu’s candidacy yesterday in the presidential election redo. The far-right populist won the first round of last year’s race before a top court annulled the election. It is not yet clear on what grounds his candidacy was rejected. Allegations had emerged last year of electoral violations and Russian interference, which Moscow denied. – The Associated Press
• U.S., Ukrainian officials to meet: Saudi Arabia is to host talks on Tuesday between the United States and Ukraine. The Saudi Foreign Ministry said the talks would take place in Jeddah, on the Red Sea. – AP
• American job growth: Employers added 151,000 jobs in the United States last month, but the outlook is cloudy amid trade disputes, federal workforce cuts, and promises of more deportation. The unemployment rate rose slightly from January, to 4.1%. Economists don’t expect federal layoffs to have an impact until the March jobs report. – AP
  • Related Monitor story: We looked at how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and job cuts are fueling Main Street uncertainty.
• Ruling on USAID-linked payment: A federal judge gave the Trump administration until today to speed up payment toward some of nearly $2 billion owed to partners of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department. Nonprofit groups and businesses had sued over the six-week funding freeze on all foreign assistance. – AP
• African crops report: Crops failed across southern Africa in the 2023-24 season after the worst drought in decades, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. – Reuters
  • Related Monitor story: Last year, we reported on how, at the Sahara’s edge, old habits are protecting crops.

President Donald Trump’s proposal to create a strategic reserve using the cryptocurrency bitcoin, discussed at a White House cryptocurrency summit March 7, represents a bold idea with a host of details to address. At its best, the move could be a breakthrough that gives the United States the lead in developing and establishing the next generation of money, extending the dollar’s premier status in a digital world, analysts say. But besides the cryptocurrency risk of boom-and-crash performance, there are legal and ethical concerns. And to get such a reserve to an appreciable size, Mr. Trump would need Congress to approve purchases.

China’s sluggish economy is denying its citizens the job opportunities they had been led to expect. Increasingly they are protesting, even using violence, to express grievances over such issues as unpaid wages, housing disputes, and confiscation of rural land. A tariff spat with the United States adds to economic headwinds. “China now is maybe joining the rest of the world, where optimism is much less pervasive than it was in earlier decades,” says Martin King Whyte, who has conducted decades of opinion surveys in China. “People are less likely to blame themselves if they are not doing well,” he says. Instead, they blame “the unfairness of society.”

As violent gangs claim more territory in Haiti, many residents say they doubt that a thinly staffed Kenya-led United Nations security force can reestablish order. “There are no offensive operations” against the gangs, says one man in Port-au-Prince, the capital. A few blocks away, another young man says he “feels safer” now that the Multinational Security Support mission is patrolling. At least he and his friends do not feel left alone, he says. Other residents have formed vigilante groups to protect their neighborhoods. A solution from within, says a human rights lawyer here, calls for targeting corruption. “Without that,” she says, “no intervention will succeed.”

The original “Eyes on the Prize” was a landmark documentary about the Civil Rights Movement. Phillip Agnew, co-founder of Dream Defenders and part of a new six-part sequel series on the streaming service Max, spoke to the Monitor about what the documentary means at this time of political upheaval. “It’s still a lot to reckon with,” says Mr. Agnew of the original show, “and it’s my hope that this [new] project does inspire people to research the accomplishments, the names, the organizing, the victories.”

It’s a windfall of goodwill: When communities are devastated, people step up in ways that align with their skills or interests. And in the past decade, more trained volunteers have joined official disaster responses. Their inclusion in response-planning can ease government coordination. After the Los Angeles wildfires, animal care workers came up big, rescuing, boarding, and returning home pets and farm animals alike. “Yes, you’re supporting animals,” says Sarah Kern, who helped with equine evacuation near her Topanga, California, home, “but you’re really supporting the people. ... They’re both important.”

The man likely to be Germany’s next chancellor has decided to smash a little history. Friedrich Merz announced that Germany would dramatically increase its spending on defense, and that it would significantly increase its deficit spending to do so.

Like much of Europe, Germany increasingly feels that the Trump administration’s apparent leanings toward Russia makes the United States an unreliable partner in defending European territory and values. Higher defense spending is in many ways a natural response, even if that means raising the debt.

But for Germany in particular, such a move marks an important moment in its freedom from a Nazi past.

The Third Reich came to power in part by taking advantage of the despair created by the rampant inflation of the 1920s. It then militarized the nation and started World War II. Ever since its defeat, these have been two cardinal points in the modern German mentality – extreme caution to be financially prudent and avoid military might.

Often, these have served Germany well. But the needs of this moment are demanding more. If the U.S. pulls back from its traditional role in Europe, it would leave a gap. As the continent’s essential centripetal force, Germany is needed to fill it. That means acting boldly.

What has enabled Germany to be ready for this step is its determination over decades to make amends for the past.

Immediately after World War II, many Germans were unrepentant about the Nazi era, surveys show. Some 83% felt Germany had been no more at fault than other nations. A third still considered Jews inferior. The change began only when West German political leaders dedicated themselves to reconciliation.

In the 1950s and ’60s, West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, helped forged a “special relationship” with the fledgling state of Israel. He reestablished ties with France. In 1970, Chancellor Willy Brandt remained kneeling on the wet ground for half a minute to lay a wreath at a memorial to a Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland.

The “cornerstone, perhaps the very definition, of German foreign policy after World War II became, progressively, reconciliation,” wrote Lily Gardner Feldman in her 2012 book, “Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation: From Enmity to Amity.”

In a 2015 interview with Johns Hopkins Magazine, she went further. “It’s an ongoing process and it never ends,” she said.

For 80 years, that contrition has allowed Germany to reinvent itself. Now, it is providing the moral foundation to perhaps do it again.