Vox Sentences: Iraqi civilians finally get a chance to see where their Parliament is

Puerto Rico now dealing with pestilence as well as everything else; Iraq's protesters are out (of the Green Zone) but not down; I am Satoshi Nakamoto!

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Can Paul Ryan save Puerto Rico?

(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

• Puerto Rico's Government Development Bank defaulted on a $422 million debt payment today — the largest payment the debt-riddled island has missed so far.

  [Wall Street Journal / Nick Timiraos, Heather Gillers and Matt Wirz]

• The default pushes Puerto Rico's long-unfolding debt crisis (explained here by Vox's Matt Yglesias) into a new and more urgent phase.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has promised that Congress will take action to allow the island to restructure its debts before its next big round of payments is due in June. The bill could be Ryan's first big fight with House conservatives.

  [Wall Street Journal / Kristina Peterson and Nick Timiraos]

• In the meantime, Puerto Rico is scrambling to cut deals within the bounds of what's legally possible without congressional action — like a deal, announced today, to restructure $935 million of its debts with one group of creditors.

  [Reuters / Nick Brown and Daniel Bases]

• Oh yeah, and public health officials confirmed over the weekend that at least one Puerto Rican man has died from contracting the Zika virus on the island (the first death on US soil).

  [StatNews / Helen Branswell]

• It's hardly a wonder that the island lost a stunning 2 percent of its population to emigration (overwhelmingly to the mainland US) last year.

  [CNN / Jeffrey Acevedo]

• Since the exodus is concentrated in Florida, the island's suffering might end up keeping the state in the Democrats' column in the presidential election.

  [Washington Post / Mary Jordan]

Sadrday in the Green Zone

(Haider Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

• Over the weekend, protesters in Baghdad overran the Green Zone (the fortified neighborhood that once housed American operations, and now houses the Iraqi Parliament). A number of them stormed Parliament itself.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The storming of the Green Zone is the culmination of several weeks of protests by followers of Shiite cleric and politician Muqtada al-Sadr, protesting various failures of the current Iraqi government.

  [Vox / Jennifer Williams]

• The protesters were ultimately ordered out of the Green Zone, though some of them got the chance to look around a bit before they left. (If you think about it, it's really weird that Iraqi civilians still aren't allowed in the area where their Parliament is headquartered.)

  [Washington Post / Loveday Morris]

• Mark your calendar for Friday, though. That's when Sadr has promised that the protesters will be back — and will be calling for Iraq's president, prime minister, and Parliament speaker to resign.

  [CNN / Ashley Fantz and Merieme Arif]

• Needless to say, all of this somewhat complicates the United States' plan to fight ISIS in Iraq — a plan that sort of relies on having a stable Iraqi government to partner with.

  [Washington Post / Greg Jaffe]

Satoshi was inside us the whole time

(George Frey/Getty Images)

• Several years after Bitcoin became the world's most famous cryptocurrency, the identity of its founder — known as "Satoshi Nakamoto" — has still never been definitively established.

  [Motherboard / Alec Liu]

• Now, Australian programmer Craig Steven Wright is claiming he is Nakamoto. And, importantly, Gavin Andresen, the man who's been managing Bitcoin since 2011, is vouching for Wright.

  [Gavin Andresen]

• Wright was "outed" last December as Nakamoto by an anonymous programmer. But once the evidence supporting the claim was revealed to be manufactured, Bitcoin-watchers began to suspect that Wright was self-aggrandizingly "outing" himself.

  [Wired / Andy Greenberg and Gwern Branwen]

• And despite Andresen's claims, most analysts are still not convinced that Wright actually is Nakamoto (not least because he won't do the one very easy thing that would prove his identity).

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• Nakamoto's identity doesn't actually matter for the success of Bitcoin — which flourishes because it's so decentralized. In fact, it might be more fitting if no one ever really proves who Satoshi Nakamoto really is.

  [Fortune / Daniel Roberts]

MISCELLANEOUS

An Italian surgeon is planning on attempting the first human head transplant. It is set to cost $20 million, and he already has a volunteer. [Newsweek / Ross Kenneth Urken]

• A new study looks back at contestants on The Biggest Loser's 2009 season. Most have gained back weight.

  [NYT / Gina Kolata]

• You wouldn't know it from coverage of the Trump and Sanders campaigns, but Americans feel great about the economy — as good as they felt at Reagan's reelection.

  [Washington Post / John Sides]

• Psychiatrists don't like to talk in terms of "cures." But one new approach to treating phobias and fear disorders might prove to be an exception.

  [New Republic / Ben Crair]

• Anosmia — the inability to smell — may not sound like a big deal, but sufferers report feelings of deep isolation and an inability to connect romantically.

  [Nautilus / Ankur Paliwal]

VERBATIM

"I was supposed to take an exam at the Sorbonne before the invasion of the Germans, and they said we cannot have the exams here — the university will withdraw to Toulouse. Get to Toulouse and you can take your exam there. Except by then France had fallen." [Justus Rosenberg to NYT / Sarah Wildman]

• "Ask a science professor what she worries about. It won’t take long. She’ll look you in the eye and say one word: ‘Money.’"

  [Hope Jahren to National Geographic / Robert Krulwich]

• "The most advanced civilizations all tended to cultivate grain crops, like wheat and barley and corn. Less advanced societies tended to rely on root crops like potatoes, taro and manioc … The economists believe that grains crops transformed the politics of the societies that grew them, while tubers held them back. Call it the curse of the potato."

  [Washington Post / Jeff Guo]

• "Ghost World makes me wonder, for perhaps the first time, whether a film can be too personal an expression for its own good."

  [New York Observer / Andrew Sarris]

• "Women were more likely to disagree that consent for sex one time means all future sex is OK, too. Around 75% of women said one-time sex doesn’t mean consent for the future, and 64% of men agreed."

  [Teen Vogue / Brittney McNamara]

WATCH THIS

Vikings never wore horned helmets. Here's why people thought they did. [YouTube / Phil Edwards and Christophe Haubursin]

(Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images)

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