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Vox Sentences: “Terrified” in Yemen
Newbies take on establishment Democrats in the New York primaries; “hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance” in Yemen.
A chaotic primary election in New York
Craig Ruttle/AFP/Getty Images
- New Yorkers are heading to the polls on Thursday to vote in the state’s second primary election. Races for governor, lieutenant governor, state attorney general, and several state assembly seats have caught statewide attention as progressive newcomers take on establishment Democrats. [Vox / Jen Kirby]
- Incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo is running against progressive newcomer (and Sex and the City actress) Cynthia Nixon. Many anticipated Cuomo would come out on top easily in the highly contentious race, but Nixon is now giving him a run for his money. [NYT / Jeffery C. Mays]
- Nixon has emphasized her increasingly popular leftist values that contradict her opponent’s, while Cuomo focused on his reliability (and sent out a flyer alleging that Nixon was anti-Semitic for supporting the pro-Palestinian BDS movement). [NY Post / Nolan Hicks, Carl Campanile, and Anna Sanders]
- 32-year-old Alessandra Biaggi, who’s running for the state Senate, is going up against incumbent Jeff Klein. Klein formed the Independent Democratic Conference, a group for like-minded state senators who chose to caucus and vote with state Republicans — and his constituents are not happy with him. [Lohud / Mark Lungariello]
- The New York Times has endorsed multiple progressive candidates looking to unseat or beat out their more established opponents, including Biaggi and Zephyr Teachout, a candidate for state attorney general. [NYT / Editorial Board]
- The election has not been without its (predictable) technical issues. Many voters have complained that their names were not on voting rolls or that there were no records of their registration. Though they just have to sign a sworn affidavit to amend the issue, it has thwarted many frustrated voters from casting their ballots and left them wondering who is to blame. [Vox / Ella Nilsen]
The battle to control Hodeida has “deteriorated dramatically”
- Efforts to eradicate the presence of Houthi rebels in Yemen’s main port city, Hodeida, have “deteriorated dramatically” in recent days, according to the United Nations. Families are “terrified,” while UN officials say that “hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance.” [Guardian / Patrick Wintour]
- The UN is most concerned with mills filled with food across the city. There is, in particular, one mill that holds 45,000 metric tons of food that could feed 3.5 million people for a month, according to Lise Grande, the Yemeni humanitarian coordinator for the UN. [Middle East Online]
- Yemeni forces and allied coalitions launched a campaign to drive rebels out of the port city in June. The UN immediately warned that further fighting in one of the country’s most important cities could trigger a widespread famine. [Al Jazeera]
- Meanwhile, the United States is continuing to back Saudi Arabia (whose coalition is fighting alongside Yemeni forces), despite international outrage that the Saudi-led coalition is to blame for a “disproportionate” number of civilian casualties. [NPR / Merrit Kennedy]
Miscellaneous
- Reddit is in a battle against QAnon, the conspiracy theory that touts President Trump as earth’s hero. The theory’s main subreddit has been banned for “inciting violence, harassment, and the dissemination of personal information.” [The Verge / Adi Robertson]
- A new study finds that ingesting “a single piece of plastic” leads to a 20 percent chance of death for sea turtles. [BBC / Matt McGrath]
- Rapper Meek Mill, whose recent incarceration stirred the nation to protest what they felt was an injustice, is the new subject of a documentary by Roc Nation and Amazon. No, Genece Brinkley, the judge from Mill’s case, is moving to sue the two companies because she felt the film made her look “fucking awful.” [Complex / Trace William Cowen]
- A new study of FBI records finds that the use of a semiautomatic rifle in a shooting doubles the chance of injury or death. [Scientific American / Dina Fine Maron]
Verbatim
“Ron DeSantis is committed to standing with the Puerto Rican community, especially after such a tragic loss of life. He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated.” [A campaign aide for GOP gubernatorial candidate DeSantis, who is among multiple GOP candidates diverging from President Trump on a conspiracy theory that Democrats are behind reports that more than 3,000 Puerto Ricans died in Hurricane Maria / Politico]
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Correction: yesterday’s edition of Sentences incorrectly stated that “Uighur leaders have largely remained silent” about the detention of other Uighur Muslims in China. Instead, it is Muslim leaders who have remained silent.
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By Cameron Peters
By Cameron Peters
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