2019
December
10
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 10, 2019
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Laurent Belsie
Senior Economics Writer

On tap for today’s Monitor Daily: Answers from the new report on FBI’s Trump investigationstrains in NATO, college education and the search for meaning, language lessons from French Jews and Muslims, and emojis for West Africa.

But first, truly electrifying news. The Tennessee Aquarium has a display that uses an electric eel to light up a Christmas tree. The lights flicker when it sends out an extra big jolt. There have been other Christmas-lighting electric eels in the past from Tokyo and Vancouver to Sandy, Utah. But none of them has managed to garner the attention that Miguel Wattson is generating down in Chattanooga. Everyone is reporting on the eel, er, knifefish. Maybe it’s the name: Wattson is spelled W-A-T-T-S-O-N. Or maybe it’s because he roars. Sensors in the water monitor the eel’s electrical discharges and deliver the big ones to a set of speakers.

But I think the biggest reason for his popularity is because he tweets. Miguel isn’t the aquarium’s first animal on Twitter. Chattanooga Chuck did it for years around Groundhog Day. But eel tweets are particularly charged: like SKA-TOW and ZING!!!!!! Once in a while staffers will throw in a bad pun or weak joke, like “I’m not slippery; I’m frictionally challenged.” For the most part, though, Miguel keeps it real. And there’s something particularly soothing these days about a Twitter feed where the biggest zingers amount to BUZZ!!! and SKA-TOW!!!


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

The Explainer

Patterns

Tracing global connections

A deeper look

Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
People attend a national gathering to protest the rise of anti-Semitic attacks in the Place de la République in Paris on Feb. 19, 2019. The sign reads, "Antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism – not in our name."
@creativorian
For one year, Ivoirian graphic design student O’Plérou Grebet created a new emoji each day, all of them depicting daily life in West Africa – including cellphone kiosks (upper left) and hibiscus juice (upper right). Today, his collection of nearly 400 emojis is available via his app, Zouzoukwa.

The Monitor's View

AP
French President Emmanuel Macron, center, arrives with Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for talks in Paris, Dec. 9.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva/AP
From left, Minister of Education Li Andersson, Minister of Interior Maria Ohisalo, Prime Minister Sanna Marin, and Minister of Finance Katri Kulmuni during press conference of the new Finnish government in Helsinki on Dec. 10, 2019. Finland’s parliament chose Sanna Marin as the country's new prime minister, making the 34-year-old the world’s youngest sitting head of government.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

That’s a wrap for today. Join us tomorrow when we look at the implications of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal poised for a ratification vote in Congress.

More issues

2019
December
10
Tuesday
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