Vox Sentences: Rock us with your Iowa caucus

The primary season finally, finally begins; a horrific attack in Nigeria; Zika-related birth defects are officially an international emergency.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CAUCUSES???

RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty

• Here is where the Des Moines Register is tabulating results from tonight's Republican and Democratic caucuses in Iowa.

  [Des Moines Register]

• On the Democratic side — where caucus results likely won't be available until very late tonight — it's actually a race. The Des Moines Register poll has Hillary Clinton eking out a win over Bernie Sanders, but just barely.

  [Des Moines Register / Jennifer Jacobs]

• On the Republican side, where results will likely come in sooner, it looks pretty damn likely that Donald Trump will win, Ted Cruz will come in second, and Marco Rubio will come in third.

  [Des Moines Regieter / Jennifer Jacobs]

• The question of whether Republican candidates are "winning" in Iowa is much more complicated, however. It has to do with beating expectations. Andrew Prokop explains.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• The eleventh-hour scandal rocking the GOP race: Ted Cruz's attempt to exploit political science by sending flyers pressuring Iowans into voting.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• The eleventh-hour scandal causing tiny ripples in the Democratic race: rumors that the Microsoft tablets being used to tabulate caucus results will fix the race for Clinton.

  [Iowa Starting Line / Pat Rynard]

Boko Haram strikes again

Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

• Boko Haram killed 86 people in attacks Saturday on the Nigerian village of Dalori, and on 2 nearby refugee camps.

  [AP / Ismail Alfa and Haruna Umar]

• Eyewitnesses say they saw children burned alive.

  [USA Today / Jane Onyanga-Omara]

• Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has characterized the attacks as the terrorist group's reaction to military defeats that have cost it territory in northeastern Nigeria.

  [Daily Post (Nigeria) ]

• This makes sense. Boko Haram, like ISIS, adopted suicide attacks as a tactic last fall after it could no longer take entire towns by force.

  [New York Times / Dionne Searcey]

• The attacks over the weekend helped inspire countries (both within and outside Africa) at Monday's African Union summit to pledge $250 million to fight Boko Haram.

  [AFP]

Zika-related defects are a PHEIC. That means they're for real.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

• The World Health Organization has declared birth defects linked to the Zika virus to be a "public health emergency of international concern," or PHEIC.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• Declaring a PHEIC — which is disconcertingly pronounced "fake" — is extremely uncommon. This is only the fourth time the WHO has done it since 2007.

  [Fortune / Laura Lorenzetti]

• Crucially, the WHO label doesn't apply to the virus itself. It applies to the birth defect called microcephaly, which has been strongly linked to the virus in recent months.

  [Newsweek / Jessica Firger]

• To that end, the WHO supporting increased monitoring in countries where the virus has been spotted, to establish whether the link exists for sure.

  [Huffington Post / Ryan Grenoble, Anna Almendrala, and Erin Schumaker]

• The state of emergency doesn't require countries to do anything. But it can serve as a powerful political and economic signal that affected countries need financial support from the rest of the world.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• That's why it's a very good thing the WHO's response to Zika has been so much faster than its response to the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

  [International Business Times / Elizabeth Whitman]

MISCELLANEOUS

The case for killing every mosquito. [Slate / Daniel Engber]

• In 1974, 29-year-old Florida local morning-show host Christine Chubbuck shot herself in the head on live television. The footage is now lost, and a macabre internet subculture has spent decades trying to recover it.

  [NY Mag / Abraham Riesman]

• Remember Circuit City? Well, it's back, and run by someone with a shadowy and not-at-all-suspicious-sounding past.

  [BuzzFeed / Sapna Maheshwari]

• Vulture compiles 100 jokes that shaped American comedy, from vaudeville to Inside Amy Schumer.

  [NY Mag / Jesse David Fox]

• It's hard to read the tale of Yves Bouvier — a French art shipper who extracted close to $1 billion from a Russian oligarch — and not feel sympathy for the protagonist: a little-noticed, little-respected figure who shocked the art world by showing he was smarter than the rich collectors around whom it revolves.

  [New Yorker / Sam Knight]

VERBATIM

"Previously on Pretty Little Liars, the Liars returned from their lucrative, fresh-from-college careers to their hometown, the murder capital of the United States of America, the place where they grew up getting perpetually murdered while also standing trial for doing murders, during which visit one of their murderers was herself murdered, and also during which visit they became suspects once again for the murder of their murderer." [Autostraddle / Heather Hogan]

• "A huge vulture detained in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel has been returned home after UN peacekeepers intervened, Israeli officials said."

  [BBC]

• "The origin story of 'Dopesmoker' sounds like a light-bulb joke co-written by Nancy Reagan and Sisyphus: Three California stoners decide to write a song about how much they love marijuana, but they’re so high that it takes them four years."

  [NYT Mag / David Rees]

• "At least one transgender lesbian supports Carly Fiorina."

  [Huffington Post / Jennifer Bendery]

• "Before I had daughters — Stimothy and Atalanta are truly the apples of my eye — I would follow women into voting booths and knock their hands away from the lever whenever they tried to engage in the democratic process. Who knew having daughters would change all that? Not I."

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

WATCH THIS

The 2-minute guide to getting better sleep [YouTube / Johnny Harris]

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