DATELINE Friday morning, March 31, 2023: The focus of my attention over the past few days for this particular column has been on climate finance, as that has been a hot topic in certain circles, especially with the upcoming World Bank spring meeting. That subject, however, has been trumped (see what I did there?), at least temporarily, by some late-breaking news that greeted me when I powered up my laptop this morning.

The first and arguably the more delightful of the two news items today was the disclosure that a grand jury in New York has voted to indict former US president Genghis Con on felony charges, in a case regarding the payment of hush money ahead of the 2016 election to a sex worker, in order to cover up activity that no civilized human would ever want to visualize. The exact charge or charges have not been explained in detail as of now — the indictment will have to go to a Federal magistrate to formalize that — but center on the fact that the hush money, which was used to reimburse the Rotten Orange's attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 the latter turned over to the aforementioned lady of the night, came from presidential campaign funds and was fraudulently recorded as a campaign expense.