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IMPORTANT
| | | | | Poisoned Chalice | Long Road Ahead for Britain’s New PM To no one’s surprise, Liz Truss won the Conservative Party leadership contest Monday and she’ll travel to Balmoral, Scotland, today to be officially appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth. But there won’t be time to appreciate the views on her 1,000-mile round trip. Inflation hit double digits in July, the pound is at a 37-year low against the dollar and household bills are set to jump by 80% in October. It’s been widely rumored that she’s planning to freeze energy bills over the winter, but 67% of Britons have little to no confidence in Truss’s ability to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. (Sources: Reuters, The Times) |
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| | | Desperate Times | Moscow’s Bought Millions of Artillery Shells and Rockets From N Korea Newly declassified U.S. intelligence shows that Russia’s been buying weapons from Pyongyang. Experts say it’s a clear sign that global military sanctions are working. “The Kremlin should be alarmed that it has to buy anything at all from North Korea,” said Mason Clark of the Institute for the Study of War. Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute added that Russia should be able to manufacture such basic matériel itself. Last week Russia received its first shipment of military drones from fellow pariah Iran — but Beijing has so far resisted the urge to sell military equipment to Moscow. (Source: NYT) |
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| | | Collateral Damage | Explosion Rocks Burkina Faso Convoy, Killing at Least 35 Civilians A military-escorted convoy carrying supplies between the northeastern towns of Bourzanga and Djibo was hit by an improvised explosive device Monday. The government’s “provisional toll” also included 37 injured civilians. “The victims are mainly traders who were going to buy supplies in Ouagadougou and students who were returning to the capital for the next school year,” said an unnamed Djibo resident. Burkina Faso’s become the epicenter of conflict in the Sahel region as militias linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have tapped into deep-seated ethnic tensions. Eighty-six civilians were killed by armed attackers in Seytenga in June. (Source: Al Jazeera) |
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| | | Second Time Lucky? | Flood-Ravaged Pakistan’s Still Trying to Breach Manchar Lake Pakistan tried to widen a breach in its biggest lake Tuesday in an effort to stop the waters from swamping nearby towns. An attempt to drain the lake on Sunday was unsuccessful, but this time things might turn out differently. “After the breach at Manchar, the water has started to flow, earlier it was sort of stagnant,” said resident Akbar Lashari. It’s all part of a balancing act the Pakistan government has been forced into by climate change. Draining the lake will displace 135,000 people but, authorities say, it will allow hundreds of thousands of others to stay in their homes. (Sources: Reuters, BBC) |
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| | | Briefly | Here are some things you should know about today: Ongoing manhunt. One of the suspects in Canada’s stabbing spree has been found dead but his brother, Myles Sanderson, remains at large and is presumed armed and dangerous. (Source: AP) Special master. Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon granted the former president’s request to appoint an independent special master to review the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago in August. (Source: The Hill) Shireen Abu Akleh. The Israeli army has for the first time admitted that there’s a “high possibility” that one of its soldiers “accidentally” killed the Palestinian-American journalist. They don’t intend to pursue criminal charges against any of the soldiers involved. (Source: CNN) |
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INTRIGUING
| | | | | Unforgivable | Almost 700 Children Killed in Zimbabwe Measles Outbreak The health ministry confirmed that 698 children — the vast majority unvaccinated due to their parents’ religious beliefs — have died since the outbreak started in April. Several Christian sects in the country are opposed to modern medicine. In total 6,291 children have been infected in the outbreak, which has spread to all parts of the country. The government’s embarked on a mass vaccination program and is engaging with religious leaders. Dr. Johannes Marisa thinks stronger action might be needed: “The government should also consider using coercive measures to ensure that no one is allowed to refuse vaccination for their children.” (Source: AP) |
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| | | Fog Warning | Cellphone Tracking Tool Offers Cops ‘Mass Surveillance on a Budget’ Police departments across the U.S. are using a little-known tool called Fog Reveal to track people’s movements going years back — often without a search warrant. The technology can be very useful in solving crimes, but it made Davin Hall so uneasy that he resigned from the Greensboro Police Department: “The capability that it had for bringing up just anybody in an area whether they were in public or at home seemed to me to be a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.” The app claims to sidestep the Fourth Amendment by tracking advertising ID numbers as opposed to actual users. (Source: AP) |
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| | | Swimming Upstream | The Octogenarian Fly-Fisher Taking On Colorado’s Rich Landowners Federal law stipulates that the beds of navigable waterways belong to states — but not in Colorado, where a series of unusual rulings has allowed landowners to stop fishers and rafters from so much as floating through their properties. Roger Hill, a retired nuclear weapons scientist, believes that fishing should be for everyone — and, to the chagrin of wealthy landowners and the state attorney general, a suit he filed to regain access to his favorite trout stream has slowly been making its way through the court system. “It’s all very simple,” said Hill. “I just want to stand in the water.” (Source: NYT) |
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| | | Power in a Pinch | The Biodegradable Batteries Made From Crab and Lobster Shells Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation have developed a zinc battery that uses chitosan, a gel made from the shells of crustaceans, as an electrolyte. Chitosan biodegrades in about five months, while zinc can be safely recycled. What’s more, the batteries remained 99.7% energy efficient after 1,000 charge cycles or 400 hours of use. “When you develop new materials for battery technologies there tends to be a significant gap between promising lab results and a demonstrable and scalable technology,” cautioned Graham Newton, of the University of Nottingham — who nonetheless viewed the study as “hugely important.” (Source: The Guardian) |
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| | | Just Not Cricket | India Summons Wikipedia for False Changes to Player’s Bio When Arshdeep Singh dropped an easy catch in the dying stages of Sunday’s match against bitter rivals Pakistan, he probably expected a social media backlash. But having his Wikipedia page changed to link him to a Sikh separatist movement surely wasn’t on his radar. While the misinformation was “removed within minutes” by eagle-eyed volunteers, India’s ministry of information technology has asked Wikipedia how such modifications could be allowed. “The edits have been traced back to servers in the neighboring countries and can cause serious damage to the internal peace and national safety of India,” said a government official. (Sources: Reuters, The Economic Times) |
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