Past 2020 election coverage

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Iran vows revenge

• Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised there will be “harsh retaliation” for the death of the “international face of resistance,” Qassem Soleimani, the top military leader killed in an American airstrike in Baghdad early Friday morning. [AP News / Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Zeina Karam]
• Soleimani’s killing is unprecedented in recent Middle Eastern history; he was simultaneously a crucial military leader and a symbol of the Iranian regime. [The Atlantic / Kim Ghattas]
• If you read one thing to understand Soleimani’s influence and importance, make it this 2013 New Yorker profile. [New Yorker / Dexter Filkins]
• Tensions between the US and Iran have been building for years, ever since President Trump announced he’d pull out of the Iranian nuclear deal. Then Iranian-backed militias struck American interests in the Middle East, including an attack that killed a US contractor and injured members of the military. [Vox / Dylan Scott] 
• The two US presidents before Trump had rejected plans to kill Soleimani, fearing what the fallout of such a consequential strike might be. [NYT / Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff]
• The Pentagon announced plans to deploy about 3,500 more troops to the Middle East to join the 5,200 servicemembers already stationed in Iraq. All Americans in Iraq have been advised to leave immediately. [ABC News / Elizabeth McLaughlin]
• In Iran, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to demonstrate against America and the escalating events between the two countries within Iraq. [Al-Monitor]
• Several members of Congress and presidential candidates expressed their outrage at the lack of notification before the strike as well as many demands for briefings after the fact. [Vox / Emily Stewart]

FDA’s vape ban looks to curb teen illnesses

• The Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday that it will ban cartridge-based vaping devices that appeal to children, with exceptions for vape pens as well as menthol or tobacco flavors. [CBS News]
• This Trump administration initiative is geared toward answering the concerns of parents and public health officials worried about the epidemic that took the form of hundreds of vaping-related hospitalizations that began at the end of 2019. [New York Times / Abby Goodnough, Maggie Haberman, and Sheila Kaplan]
• Federal officials said the move aims to prevent teens from being targeted while not shutting down the vape industry. [Wall Street Journal / Jennifer Maloney and Thomas M. Burton]
• Last month, the FDA also raised the age to purchase tobacco products, including vapes, from 18 to 21. [Vox / Ella Nilsen]

Miscellaneous

• Lexii Alijai’s sudden death shook the hip hop community. [BuzzFeed News / Brianna Sacks]
• Airlines are adapting their markets for a new type of flier: Generation Z. [Chicago Tribune / Lauren Zumbach]
• Artificial intelligence is reading mammograms and it could soon start outperforming doctors. [New York Times / Denise Grady]
• We love the new Instagram story filters because they give us an answer to who we are. [Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]
• European law-enforcement tracked a suspected terrorist before their electronic window into his phone suddenly went dark. [Wall Street Journal / Dov Lieber, Valentina Pop, and Robert McMillan]

Verbatim

“Sticking your head in the sand is no way to advocate for a better future for women.” [Researcher and author Sarah Hill said about taboos in women’s health]

Watch this:

Tech giants are getting in on the oil business to use machine learning and technology to extract more oil. [YouTube / Adam Cole]

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Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

New state legislation in 2020

• The new year means that new state laws are kicking in across the country. [ABC News / Benjamin Siu]
• In 21 states, plus more than 26 cities, the minimum wage went up. At the high end of the spectrum are Washington state ($13.50 per hour) and California ($13 per hour), while in other states, the minimum wage is still below $10 per hour even after the increase. [CBS / Aimee Picchi and Irina Ivanova]
• Minimum wage workers in these states can expect to see increases ranging from $150 to $1,700 in their annual earnings. [CNBC / Megan Leonhardt]
• Other laws are kicking in around the country: Illinois’s Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act requires companies to disclose use of artificial intelligence in the evaluation of job applications. [Vox / Rebecca Heilweil]
• In Colorado, Hawaii, and Nevada, “red flag” laws will let a judge take away guns from people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. [NPR / Acacia Squires]
• Illinois legalized marijuana for recreational use, and Gov. JB Pritzker granted over 11,000 pardons for minor marijuana offenses. [Vox / German Lopez]
• In California, the strictest online privacy law in the country, the California Consumer Privacy Act, has kicked in. [Vox / Rebecca Heilweil]
• New York will no longer require cash bail for most misdemeanor charges. [Democrat & Chronicle / Jon Campbell]
• Oregon has outlawed single-use plastic shopping bags, “except for buying fish and meat or taking home the dry cleaning.” [NBC News / Pete Williams]
• Texas is trying to prevent surprise medical bills — but the law will only apply to about 16 percent of people in the state, or one-third of those with private health insurance. [Texas Tribune / Edgar Walters]

Iraq protesters retreat from US Embassy grounds

• Following several demonstrations within the US Embassy in Baghdad compound, Iraqi protesters left the premises on Wednesday. [NBC News / Saphora Smith]
• Demonstrators stormed the embassy Tuesday after the US launched airstrikes that killed 25 militia fighters on Sunday that were retaliation for an American contractor killed in Iraq last week. By the second day, protesters burned a reception room and US soldiers used tear gas on the crowd. [TIME / Tara Law and Josiah Bates]
• Reporting and official statements attribute the movement into the US embassy grounds to be the work of an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia group, Kataeb Hezbollah. [New York Times / Alan Yuhas]
• While a major conflict didn’t break out, 750 US soldiers were sent to the compound to protect the staff, following a flyover from two Apache helicopters and the arrival of 100 Kuwait-based crisis response Marines. [CNN / Caroline Kelly and Ryan Browne]
• US officials expect more violence from Iran-backed militia groups. “The provocative behavior has been out there for months… So do I think they may do something? Yes. And they will likely regret it,” said Defense Secretary Mark Esper Thursday. [Al Arabiya English]

Miscellaneous

• After falling 500 feet off of Mount Hood, teen climber Gurbaz Singh survives with only a broken leg. [Washington Post / Brittany Shammas]
• Julián Castro ended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. [Vox / Sean Collins]
• Why a morning routine is not all that it claims to be. [The Atlantic / Marina Koren]
• India announces plans to prepare for third moon launch despite crash landing its last mission in 2019. [BBC]
• Rep. Abby Finkenauer endorses Joe Biden in the first high-profile move of the kind in Iowa. [CNN / Arlette Saenz]

Verbatim

“Nike has their First Amendment right to make individuals such as Colin Kaepernick their brand ambassadors. We have the right to make patriots like Chief Gallagher one of ours.” [Founder of Nine Line Apparel Tyler Merritt’s reasoning on why the company and others are partnering with Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher]

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Thousands of Google’s cafeteria workers have unionized 

California now requires solar panels on all new homes. That’s not necessarily a good thing. 

A year of protest, as seen through street art

Why willpower is overrated

What Australia’s devastating fires look like on the ground

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

Suspect pleads not guilty in Hanukkah party attack

• A man arrested for stabbing five Jewish people at a Hanukkah celebration now faces federal hate crimes charges. [New York Times / Michael Gold and Benjamin Weiser]
• Grafton Thomas allegedly entered Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s home Saturday night and attacked with a knife before fleeing the Hanukkah celebration. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
• New York police apprehended the suspect two hours after the attack. While police and Thomas’s family claim he has no known ties to hate groups, he has “a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations.” [NBC News / Dennis Romero and Jonathan Dienst]
• Of the nearly 70 people in attendance, five victims were taken to local hospitals for their stab wounds, according to the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council (OJPAC). By Sunday night, only one victim was still in critical condition with a skull fracture. [NBC 4 New York / Jonathan Dienst and Ken Buffa]
• “People feel their families [and] their friends are under attack,” said Yossi Gestetner, the co-founder of OJPAC. “A lot of people can identify with the attacks up close.” [The Atlantic / Emma Green]
• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the attack “an act of domestic terrorism.” Cuomo said, “It’s important for me to express to the rabbi and for all of the people of New York that intolerance meets ignorances, meets illegality. We see anger. We see hatred exploding. It’s an American cancer in the body politic.” [ABC News / Bill Hutchinson, Stephanie Ramos, Josh Margolin, and Marc Nathanson]
• Thomas is pleading not guilty to five counts of attempted murder, one count of burglary, and the hate crime charges. [Washington Post / Kevin Armstrong, Katie Mettler, Marisa Iati, and Hannah Knowles]
• Following the attack, Rockland County officials confirmed they are soliciting pro-bono assistance from a private security firm to partner with law enforcement during increased patrols in the area. [CBS New York]
• This year alone, anti-Semitic crimes have jumped 21 percent in New York, causing concern from local communities and national organizations about the safety of their friends and families. [Washington Post / Shayna Jacobs]

More than 75 dead in Somalia terrorist bombing

• A busy intersection in Mogadishu was wracked by a truck bomb explosion Saturday morning in one of the worst attacks in recent memory. [AP News / Abdi Guled]
• At least 79 people died and 149 more were injured when a driver exploded their vehicle at a checkpoint at the outskirts of the city. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
• While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and several other members of the government are pointing at fundamentalist extremist group al-Shabaab. [Bloomberg News / Mohammed Omar Ahmed and Mohamed Sheikh Nor]
• A Somali government spokesman said a senior-level al-Shabaab official was killed in an air assault that was designed to respond to the terrorist attack. [CNN / Omar Nor, Raja Razek, and Lauren Said-Moorhouse]
• This attack is one of several terrorist incidents in the country this year. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that much progress has been made against combating what has become a very resilient and deadly insurgency,” said Murithi Mutiga of the International Crisis Group. [New York Times / Hussein Mohamed, Abdi Latif Dahir and Eric Schmitt]

Miscellaneous

• If well-behaved women rarely make history, what’s America’s problem with them? [Vox/ Anna North]
  Not even children were spared in China’s crackdown on its Uighur population. [New York Times / Amy Qin]
• After an American contractor was killed in Iraq by a rocket attributed to an Iran-backed militia group, 25 people were killed in US retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria. [TIME / Qassim Abdul-Zahra]
• German Lopez writes about what his reporting about addiction and treatment has taught him. [Vox / German Lopez]
• The Fab Five’s arrival in small-town Illinois wasn’t as warm and welcoming as Queer Eye made it seem. [The Guardian / Kate Abbott]

Verbatim

“We have learned many times over that there is no such thing as a gun-free zone. Those with evil intentions will violate the law and carry out their heinous acts no matter what.”
[Sen. Donna Campbell, co-sponsor of Senate Bill 535 that allowed the parishioners of the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs to carry firearms]

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Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

It’s fun to vote on the U-S-M-C-A

• With bipartisan support, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement passed in the House on Thursday, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement by a massive bipartisan margin. [Washington Post / Erica Werner]
• The deal includes tougher requirements for manufacturing cars, trucks, and their parts in North America; gives the US access to the Canadian dairy market; extends copyright in Canada to 70 years after the author’s death, and will require Mexico to pass labor-friendly laws. [Vox / Jen Kirby]
• USMCA represents a shift away from free trade to “managed trade” through clauses that restrict what Canada and Mexico, not just the US, are able to do. [LA Times / Don Lee]
• Under the new agreement, cars will be eligible for tariffs unless 75 percent of their parts are made in North America — up from 62.5 percent under NAFTA — and that nearly half of the parts be made by workers making at least $16 per hour. [Washington Post / Heather Long]
• Experts say that these requirements could help some auto workers in the US, but could also make cars more expensive. [Washington Post / Heather Long]
• The bill is being praised as a win for Trump — but it’s partly because the deal was basically popular, and Democrats were able to remove some of the worst parts of the proposal, Vox’s Matt Yglesias writes. [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

Gen. Pervez Musharraf faces execution in Pakistan

• Pakistan sentenced former military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf to death for treason. [NPR / Bill Chappell and Diaa Hadid]
• After coming to power through a coup in 1999, Musharraf subverted the constitution and declared a state of emergency in 2007, a special court ruled on Tuesday. [Al Jazeera]
• The panel of judges handed down this ruling, justified by Article 6 of the Pakistani constitution that includes anyone who “abrogates or subverts or suspends or holds in abeyance” in the description of high treason. This verdict is unprecedented in that it challenges Pakistan’s military. [Brookings Institution / Madiha Afzal]
• If Musharraf dies before his execution date, the judges ruled that “his corpse (should) be dragged to D-Chowk, Islamabad, Pakistan, and be hanged for three days.” The Pakistani government is fighting this ruling, looking to disbar the leader of the judges who handed down the decision. [Reuters / Asif Shahzad]
• Musharraf currently resides in Delhi, India, and has the ability to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, so it is unlikely that the verdict will be carried out. [Financial Times / Farhan Bokhari]

Miscellaneous

• Trump says he believes that Ukraine interfered in American elections because Russia told him so. [Slate / Elliot Hannon]
• Last night’s debate featured an argument over a crystal-adorned wine cave. [Vox / Ella Nilsen]
• Boeing’s Starliner won’t be able to reach the International Space Station after it flew in the wrong orbit. [CNBC / Michael Sheetz]
• New Jersey’s new law makes it illegal to discriminate based on hairstyles, a year after a student was forced to cut his dreadlocks in order to wrestle. [CNN / Dakin Andone]
• Qatar has a special hospital for their prized feathered friends. [New York Times / Tariq Panja]

Verbatim

“There’s a family feud under the water between what Trump and McConnell think is the best strategy.” [Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor, on the upcoming Senate impeachment trial]

Watch this: Who pays the lowest taxes in the US?

Taxes are playing a big part of the Democratic presidential candidates’ campaigns. But who really pays the least taxes? [YouTube / Alvin Chang]

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The case against otters 

The only Christmas music playlist you will ever need

Joe Biden’s stutter and Sarah Sanders’s terrible response to it, briefly explained

The abandoned asylum seekers on the US-Mexico border

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

Hey, Congress agreed on something!

• Congress had a big week. The House and Senate have agreed on a bipartisan budget to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. [Politico / Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma]
• The $1.4 trillion spending package, which passed the House on Tuesday and the Senate on Thursday, will avert a government shutdown that otherwise would have started this weekend — assuming Trump signs the legislation. [Vox / Li Zhou]
• There’s a lot in the two bills making up the package, including a permanent repeal of the medical device tax, an end to the tax on “Cadillac” health plans, and more Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico. [AP News / Andrew Taylor]
• The legislation raises the smoking age to 21 for both regular and e-cigarettes. [BuzzFeed / Dan Vergano]
• It also includes a boost to the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, which gives funds to states to pay for child care for low-income families. [Time / Abby Vesoulis]
• And for the first time in 20 years, it allocates federal money to fund research on gun violence — a tiny amount that’s largely symbolic but could still make a big difference on public health. [FiveThirtyEight / Maggie Koerth]
• Trump will also get $1.4 billion for the border wall: far less than he asked for, but enough to anger the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which didn’t want the wall funded at all. [Dallas News / Tom Benning]
• Of course, Congress being Congress, the bill isn’t exactly on time. The fiscal year started two months ago. [Politico / Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma]

Fires, a heat wave, and a state of emergency

• The Australian state of New South Wales declared a state of emergency as record hot temperatures escalated already devastating wildfires across Australia. [CNN / Jessie Yeung and Sol Han]
• Twice this week, Australia reached temperatures as hot as 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 Fahrenheit), smashing previous records. [BBC]
• As a result, the nearly 100 wildfires raging around New South Wales stand to grow larger in the dry, hot conditions. [CBS News]
• Six are reported dead as a result of the blazes, with many more in danger from the flames and a layer of smoke settling on Australian cities. [NBC News / Isobel van Hagen]

Miscellaneous

• The UN is holding talks on a ship in the Red Sea to resume Yemen deal negotiations from last year. [AP News / Ahmed al-Haj]
• Baby Yoda dolls made by fans are flooding the market. Disney wants to crush them. [Wall Street Journal / R.T. Watson and Erich Schwartzel]
• Two major upcoming cases at the Supreme Court will put the “ministerial exemption” in the spotlight. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]
• A German judge ruled that an upstairs neighbor of a stinky cheese shop couldn’t post signs to express her frustration with the smell. [New York Times / Melissa Eddy]
• The Trump administration proposed allowing states to import prescription drugs from Canada to combat high drug prices. [Politico / Sarah Owermohle, Sarah Karlin-Smith, and Gary Fineout]

Verbatim

“If you’re applying to 10, 15, 20 schools, there’s no way that you’re going to get everything in, review every single thing, sign every single thing on time. There’s probably money being missed out on, applicants not being admitted, that kind of thing.” [Director of a Chicago organization that provides financial advice speaking about the issue of colleges primarily using email to contact prospective students]

Watch this: Impeachment is Trump’s ultimate loyalty test for Republicans

How impeachment turned into a test of loyalty to Trump for Republicans. [YouTube / Ezra Klein]

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The USMCA trade deal passes the House in a rare bipartisan vote 

J.K. Rowling’s latest tweet seems like transphobic BS. Her fans are heartbroken.

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

House votes to impeach Trump

• For the third time in US history, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. [Washington Post / John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez, Colby Itkowitz, and Elise Viebeck]
• After six hours of hearings, with speaking time divided equally between Republicans and Democrats, ended with an almost entirely party line vote that affirmed the impeachment proceedings would move forward to a Senate trial. [New York Times / Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker]
• In the end, the vote in favor of impeaching President Trump for abuse of power was 230-197, with two Democrats voting against. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard voted “present.” [Vox / Ella Nilsen and Emily Stewart]
• Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi started off the hearing by saying that Congress had “no choice” but to pursue impeachment. “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty,” she said. [CNBC / Christina Wilkie]
• On Tuesday, Trump sent a rambling, angry letter to Pelosi, eviscerating House Democrats and blaming them for the investigation against him. [CNN / Maegan Vazquez]
• The letter also presents Trump’s defense of himself, likely to be the basis of his defense in the Senate trial against the president. [Politico / Natasha Bertrand]
• Several Democratic House members are urging Trump to take another path forward: resignation. [Newsweek / Chantal Da Silva]
• Around the country, the televised impeachment hearings were preceded by pro-impeachment rallies with over 200,000 in attendance according to organizers. But a larger political movement isn’t guaranteed to follow. [Vox / Sean Collins]

Algerian presidential election fails to quiet unrest

• A poorly attended presidential election failed to settle Algerian unrest about the political situation of their country. [Financial Times / Heba Saleh]
• Former Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune of the ousted Abdelaziz Bouteflika regime claimed victory over five candidates, all with ties to the regime, with 58.15 percent of the vote. [NPR / Merrit Kennedy]
• Algerians have been protesting for a stake in their government in the streets since February, following the usurping of Bouteflika. All the way up the election, many Algerians and country experts expressed hesitation about the election solving any of the problems facing Algeria. [Vox / Hannah Brown]
• Protesters intermittently took over voting centers and polling stations, irrespective of police efforts to break up the crowd. Demonstrations are taking on a new fury in the face of the newly elected president. [BBC / Ahmed Rouaba]
• Threats of violence and imprisonment are trading between protesters and the government, with some demonstrators sentenced on the day of their arrest and those same protesters previously threatening to physically prevent elites from voting. [The Independent / Borzou Daragahi]

Miscellaneous

• The State Department has plans to reduce its presence in Iraq. [CNN / Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood]
• 309,000 lost their voter registration in Georgia this week, following 234,000 in Wisconsin last week. [Washington Post / Reis Thebault and Hannah Knowles]
• A UN envoy arrived in Saudi Arabia Tuesday to participate in talks on how to advance the Yemen peace deal reached last year with the Houthi rebels. [Arab News]
• How a huge win for LGBTQ rights happened. [Vox / Trish Bendix]
• Attempts to control swine flu racing across China have fallen short; the flu has already killed 25 percent of the world’s pig population. [New York Times / Keith Bradsher and Ailin Tang]

Verbatim

“I was surprised that she didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It just seemed like she was really going to look to impeach Bush and get him out of office. Which personally I think would have been a wonderful thing.” [President Donald Trump said when Wolf Blitzer asked him, in 2008, about Nancy Pelosi]

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Google’s Larry Page gave $400 million in Christmas donations. Not a penny went straight to charity.

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

Boeing is going to stop making the 737 Max

• Aerospace company Boeing announced that it will suspend production of its 737 Max jetliner in January following two crashes of the model that were linked to poor safety standards. [Wall Street Journal / Andrew Tangel, Doug Cameron, and Alison Sider]
• An ongoing Department of Justice investigation into deadly crashes earlier this year in Indonesia and Ethiopia coincided with the company taking full responsibility and grounding the 737 Max 8 and 9 jets worldwide. [Vox]
• The problem that resulted in the death of 346 people was determined to be a bug in the automated anti-stall software, which Boeing has yet to fix. [NBC News / Tim Stelloh]
• After a two-day board meeting, the decision was made to pull production of the 737 Max in an attempt to salvage the company’s damaged reputation, despite the company’s repeated promises to return the model to production. [New York Times / David Gelles and Natalie Kitroeff]
• Boeing claims that the cuts in production will not affect the job security of its employees, promising no layoffs as a result of the decision. [Seattle Times / Dominic Gates and Paul Roberts]
• The economic impacts of Boeing’s decision are likely to be localized but potent. [Yahoo News / Heather Timmons and Howard Schneider]
• The Max 737’s largest customer, Southwest Airlines, is keeping the model out of flight schedules, at least until April. [Washington Post / Taylor Telford]

An end to “pontifical secrecy”

• Pope Francis ended the practice of keeping Vatican legal proceedings involving sexual misconduct or assault confidential, in an effort to combat the accusations of complicity in covering up the recent trove of sexual misconduct by priests. [National Catholic Reporter / Joshua J. McElwee]
• This practice, “pontifical secrecy,” was intended to maintain the privacy of victims and safeguard the reputations of the accused clergymen, but the lifting of the de facto gag order will now allow transparency in the investigations. [BBC]
• “The carnival of obscurity is over,” said victim advocate Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of clergy abuse himself. [AP News / Nicole Winfield]
• Advocates and abuse survivors have called for this measure for decades but recent scrutiny of the Vatican’s handling of priest sex abuse cases prompted the Pope’s decision. [NPR / David Greene]

Miscellaneous

• A new law in New York grants undocumented immigrants the ability to obtain driver’s licenses. [New York Times / Tracey Tully and Michael Gold]
• Far-right Estonian President Mart Helme apologized for his demeaning remarks about Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. [CNN / Bianca Britton and Stephanie Halasz]
• SWAT teams are one of many unexpected participants in Walmart store remodels. [Bloomberg / Matthew Boyle]
• Prohibition ended years ago, but in some town laws, it’s a little hard to tell. [Vox / Matthew Zeitlin]
• A journalist’s tweet-induced seizure has contributed to a shift in what assault means online. [Washington Post / Reis Thebault]

Verbatim

“I was doing nothing more than notifying my co-workers about Google’s obligations under labor law. Googlers are expected to take initiative and it’s really important we hold upper management accountable.” [Wrote former Google security engineer Kathryn Spiers about her firing for notify coworkers of their right to unionize]

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“I forced her out”: Giuliani goes on Fox News and admits he’s much more than Trump’s lawyer

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Consumer groups issue product warning for Amazon Ring after latest video hack

American democracy’s Senate problem, explained

Kansas City is making its bus system fare-free. Will other cities do the same?

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

UN climate talks end without strong commitments

• UN climate talks ended Sunday without a full agreement of world powers on how to address the imminent threat of global warming. [AP News / Frank Jordans and Aritz Parra]
• While the negotiations were meant to shore up the Paris agreement and define the terms on which the signatory countries would reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But Trump has pulled the US out of the deal, unofficially since the US can’t formally withdraw until November 4, 2020, the day after the American presidential election. [Vox / Umair Irfan]
• The US, along with other major polluters, blocked a nonbinding measure that set higher standards for emissions reduction across the world and left little more than a weak call to action in the final declaration of the event. [New York Times / Somini Sengupta]
• Several other countries who are experiencing climate disasters of their own, such as Australia and Brazil, also participated in gutting the summit. [Financial Times]
• ”We’re in a very politically difficult time right now where we’ve got one key world leader denying climate change, so it’s very hard to get other countries to move forward when you’ve got such a critical country playing a spoiling role,” said Ian Fry, a delegate from Tuvalu. [Politico / Zack Colman and Kalina Oroschakoff]
• Future negotiations are possible, with the next UN-sponsored conference regarding climate change set to take place in Glasgow but the EU-China summit next September in Leipzig will likely decide the outcome of future global efforts to combat climate change. [BBC / Matt McGrath]
• Vox’s Ezra Klein says there is still hope, and time, for us to fight global warming. The tools are within our reach. [Vox / Ezra Klein]

2020 US census faces set of issues

• Some states are looking to shell out billions to help the 2020 census effort while others won’t even pitch in a dime. [New York Times / Michael Wines and Jose A. Del Real]
• Many of these costly efforts surround reaching hard-to-count populations within states, often at the expense of those populations. [NBC29 / CJ Paschall]
• Another potential issue that is concerning researchers is the obfuscation of the data due to the new policy of differential privacy that is designed to protect individual responses. While it is supposed to prevent individuals from being identified within data sets, it is skewing data and producing problems in the analysis. [Roll Call / Michael Macagnone]
• The Council on Foreign Relations’ Andrew Chatzky explains why the census really matters: granting political agency, dividing up federal funds, and assist private companies in matching their business endeavors with receptive populations. [Council on Foreign Relations / Andrew Chatzky]

Miscellaneous

• Oklahoma City and other local governments are looking to end food deserts by working with dollar stores. [Wall Street Journal / Talal Ansari]
• Harvey Weinstein says he should receive thanks and recognition for helping women in Hollywood advance their careers. [Page Six / Rebecca Rosenberg]
• Fox News is rebutting Trump’s own claims of good polling numbers. [Vox / Aaron Rupar]
• Kashmir’s internet blackout enters its 134th day. [Washington Post / Niha Masih, Shams Irfan, and Joanna Slater]
• While speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar, Ivanka Trump answered questions and sent mixed signals about the Middle East plan. [Buzzfeed News / Otillia Steadman]

Verbatim

“If a person can accomplish all of that positivity with so little, imagine what they could do with a little bit of support and encouragement.” [Terah Lawyer, program coordinator for the Homecoming Project, speaking to the impact of the project]

Watch this: What makes Delhi’s air so deadly

How India’s air quality plummeted and why it’s a danger to the public. [YouTube / Christina Thornell and Mac Schneider]

Read more

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The reason we’re talking about a government shutdown yet again, briefly explained