Afghanistan's Deadly Earthquake & A Bloody Mystery At Burning Man

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Hope you had a great long weekend. Today, we’ll be covering India’s dramatic shift away from Trump, an earthquake in Afghanistan, a cyber-attack on a plane, Korea’s doctor strikes, Trump’s Chicago takeover plans, Labor Day rallies, and a death at Burning Man.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ― James Baldwin

New Delhi’s New Diehards

Last week, Trump’s 50% tariffs on Indian goods – a very public punishment for the country’s continued policy of buying Russian oil – went into effect. This week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared at a security summit in China to show off his relationship with his new best friends: China and Russia. Modi was one of the most important guests at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Tianjin, China, and he made sure to pose for multiple jovial handshakes with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping over the past few days.

“Optics is a key part of this summit, and the White House should grasp that its policies will result in other countries looking for alternatives to meet their interests,” said one expert on Indo-Pacific politics. Here were the optics put forth by the leaders of India, China, and Russia. In a speech addressing the summit, Modi called for “promoting multilateralism and an inclusive world order” – meaning a world where India holds more political sway – and the Indian leader later posted a photo of a 50-minute private meeting he held with Putin in the Russian leader’s car. “Conversations with him are always insightful,” Modi wrote of the meeting. 

In Xi’s speech, the Chinese premier criticized a general “Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation, and bullying,” poking at the U.S., and Putin used his remarks to highlight his close relationship with China, announcing that he’d filled Xi in on his recent meeting with President Trump in Alaska. The kids are calling the Trump-Modi falling-out a “generational fumble” and are wondering why Trump decided to piss off a nation of 1.4 billion people. 

Misfortune In The Mid-East

Early yesterday morning, a magnitude 6 earthquake hit the mountainous regions of eastern Afghanistan. The tremors caused landslides and flooding, killing more than 800 people and injuring over 2,500 others. Making things even worse, the recovery effort has been hampered by destroyed roads, landslides, and the area’s already-mountainous terrain, forcing emergency crews to rely on helicopters to deliver aid to the most isolated areas.

“The poor people in this area have lost everything,” said one local. “There is death in every home, and beneath the rubble of each roof there are dead bodies. The mud houses have been wiped away and destruction is everywhere. People are desperately seeking help.” Many people living in non-mud houses also had their homes destroyed – concrete and brick are the main materials used in more modern buildings in Afghanistan, and both of those materials crumble when they experience stronger earthquakes.

The earthquake’s death toll is expected to quickly rise in the coming days, as hundreds of people are still missing and local hospitals are being flooded by waves of new patients. Afghanistan’s Taliban government has called on the international community for help, requesting field hospitals, medical supplies, food and water, rescue supplies, and emergency shelters. China, India, the U.K., and the U.N. have already pledged differing amounts of aid which will arrive over the coming week.

Hitting The Plane Right Where It Hurts

• A plane carrying a top European diplomat has its GPS systems taken offline mid-flight. The pilots are forced to make an unplanned landing using paper maps to guide them, and E.U. leaders scramble to figure out how the cyber-attack was carried out. No, that’s not the opening to the latest James Bond film – it’s what happened over the weekend in Bulgaria.

• On Sunday, a plane carrying European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had its GPS systems taken offline by an alleged Russian interference attack while waiting to land in Bulgaria. “We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia,” said the European Commission in a statement after the incident. 

• According to the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority, the country – which shares a Black Sea border with Russia – has seen a “noticeable increase” in GPS-related incidents since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. In the wake of the latest GPS attack on von der Leyen’s plane, the European Commission has promised to put  additional satellites into low Earth orbit in order to track GPS-interference attacks.

Wait, Doctors Have Unions?

• Doctors in South Korea are heading back to work after an 18-month strike. The labor dispute started last February, when then-president Yoon Suk Yeol announced plans to increase medical school admissions by roughly 65% over 5 years in order to address the country’s doctor shortage. Soon after Yoon was removed from office in April (you might recall his coup attempt last December), the government reversed course and promised to keep 2026 medical school admissions quotas at current levels, though quotas for future years were left up for future negotiation.

• The new administration in Seoul, headed by President Lee Jae Myung, has since continued talks with doctors’ groups. In August, both sides agreed that striking doctors would be allowed to return to work and school with no repercussions. While the doctors were gone, nurses and military doctors filled in their positions, and thousands of operations and visits were postponed, making Koreans frustrated with both sides of the labor dispute.

Additional World News

• China Is About to Show Off Its New High-Tech Weapons to the World (Wired) 

• Belgium to recognise Palestinian state at UN General Assembly (Reuters)

• How the death of a delivery driver ignited Indonesia (BBC)

• ‘What reconciliation? What forgiveness?’: Syria’s deadly reckoning (Guardian)

• Maduro vows to declare a ‘republic in arms’ if US forces in the Caribbean attack Venezuela (AP)  

Trump Blusters At The Windy City

• Chicago is bracing for a D.C.-style federal takeover which could start as soon as this week. “Six people were killed, and 24 people were shot, in Chicago last weekend, and JB Pritzker, the weak and pathetic Governor of Illinois, just said that he doesn’t need help in preventing CRIME. He is CRAZY!!! He better straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming!” Trump threatened/posted on Truth Social on Saturday. 

• Over the long weekend, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson responded by signing off on an emergency executive order. The order instructs city workers and local law enforcement on how to handle “escalating threats from the federal government,” announcing that Chicago police will not “collaborate with federal agents on joint law enforcement patrols, arrest operations, or other law enforcement duties including civil immigration enforcement.” Johnson’s order also encourages federal agents to use body cameras and avoid wearing masks. How many agents will actually listen to the mayor? Probably about the same number of New Yorkers who come to Chicago to enjoy a deep dish pie.

Work Hard, Rally Hard

• Yesterday was Labor Day, and America saw nationwide demonstrations to match the occasion. The rallies took place everywhere, from L.A. and New York to Cleveland, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina, and were organized by a coalition of labor groups including May Day Strong, AFL-CIO, and One Fair Wage. Participants brought signs covering a wide range of topics, from “The only minority destroying this country are the billionaires” to “Shut Down ICE!”

• The protests’ main goal – outside of recognizing the power of organized labor – was to call for increased investment in education, healthcare, housing, and social safety net programs like Social Security. “Together we will demand a country that puts workers over billionaires,” said May Day Strong in a statement. “We have to take a stand,” said one 70 year-old demonstrator in Florida.

Additional USA News

• Trump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom (Guardian)

• US suspends most visas for Palestinian passport-holders, reports say (BBC)  

• Judge blocks Trump administration move to deport Guatemalan children (BBC)

• Crime Festers in Republican States While Their Troops Patrol Washington (NYT, $)

• Starter homes are scarce, so Utah set a target to build more. Here's how it's going (NPR) 

A Bloody Ending To Burning Man

• The Burning Man festival, a week-long gathering of artists and, uh, “free thinkers” in the Nevada desert, wrapped up yesterday. Unfortunately, the festival’s climax – the burning of the “Burning Man” statue – was accompanied by a bloody tragedy, leaving local police scrambling to find a literal murderer as the festival closed up on Monday. 

• On Saturday night, as the Burning Man effigy was being lit, a man was found dead “lying in a pool of blood” by a festival attendee. “Several participants in the immediate area” were interviewed by police after the body was found, but so far little information has been revealed about the incident, which police are investigating as a homicide. Local authorities are looking for help identifying the victim, describing the man as a white male “between the ages of 35 and 40, approximately 6 feet tall and 200 lbs, with short brown hair and facial hair.” Unfortunately that sounds like roughly 50% of the people at Burning Man.

Additional Reads

• Anguilla: The Caribbean island making millions from the AI boom (BBC) 

• His search for the Titanic concealed a top-secret military operation. How the iconic discovery unfolded (CNN)

• Nestlé dismisses CEO after an investigation into a relationship with a subordinate (AP)

• Saving the world’s fattest parrot: can New Zealand vaccinate its rare species before bird flu gets to them? (Guardian)

• AI agents are science fiction not yet ready for primetime (Verge)

• Magnesium Supplements Crash Course: Benefits and Side Effects (Wired)

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