1. Story of the Week: ‘Megablast’ Unhinges Lebanon

With 154 dead, 60 missing and some 6,000 injured, Tuesday’s apparently accidental port blast was unprecedented even in Beirut’s violent history. Seen as the result of official negligence that allowed explosive ammonium nitrate to be stored for years, it may be forcing a reckoning for Lebanon’s endemic corruption. Meanwhile, the Arab League today pledged to mobilize aid for the stricken city while the U.N. warned of a humanitarian crisis for some 300,000 people left homeless as damage concentrated around the city’s cargo facilities is likely to block food shipments.

Sources: Al Jazeera, BBC

2. Coming Up: Will Relief Bill Ever Pass?

Negotiations toward reaching a compromise between Democrats’ $3 trillion pandemic relief proposal and Republicans’ $1 trillion package ended Friday with no progress, raising concerns that Congress will provide no further help. That’s left President Donald Trump accusing Democrats of taking relief “hostage.” Standing before unmasked members of his New Jersey golf club, some holding wine glasses and jeering reporters, Trump promised executive orders to defer payroll taxes and student debt payments while prohibiting evictions, but his authority to make tax decisions without Congressional approval is uncertain.

Sources: Politico, NYT

3. Early Voting Looks Good for Biden

By the time of the scheduled third presidential debate on Oct. 22, nearly 50 million Americans in 34 states will have already had the chance to vote. For former Vice President Joe Biden, that’s a blessing, as he now has a solid lead over President Trump in many battleground states. The other advantage is evident in Florida, where the state Democratic Party says 1.8 million party members have registered to vote by mail — 500,000 more than the number of Republicans who have signed up. Why might that be? One GOP worry is that Trump’s repeated attacks on mail-in voting have made Republican voters mistrust the widely used concept.

Sources: The Hill, Washington Post

4. US ‘Illegals’ Sneaking Into Europe

It’s impossible to keep them out. Americans desiring a vacation, or trying to escape from pandemic hell, are finding a way in. Determined tourists are taking advantage of confusing rules and loopholes to gain entry and, say, sun themselves on beaches in Portugal or take in Paris vistas from the Eiffel Tower. Some travel agents are even arranging for letters that claim American tourists are on foreign business. One beachcomber in Spain said he came from coronavirus hot spot Miami through London, where authorities mentioned nothing about self-isolation, and that he faced no questions upon arriving in Barcelona. “It’s like they didn’t care,” he marveled.

Sources: Politico

5. Also Important …

Indian authorities are investigating the crash of an Air India plane that broke in two after skidding off a runway in Kerala state, killing 18 people. Jerry Fallwell Jr., a top evangelical Trump supporter, is on indefinite leave from running Liberty University after a viral photo showed him with his pants unzipped, his arm around a woman and holding a drink. And a U.S. intelligence official says Russia is using a “range of measures” to harm Joe Biden's chances of unseating President Trump.

In the week ahead: This weekend, 250,000 people are expected to arrive for the weeklong Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota — America’s largest gathering amid the pandemic. Sunday is the 75th anniversary of the world’s second and last nuclear attack, on Nagasaki, Japan. And U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo begins a five-day trip to Europe on Tuesday.

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1. See Where the Climate’s Already +2 C

There’s no debate. Over a 30,000-square-mile swath of northwestern Colorado and neighboring Utah, farms are drying out and the Rocky Mountain snowpack is receding. It’s part of a feedback loop of drier ground absorbing more heat, boosting evaporation and depriving the Colorado River of 14 million Americans’ annual water supply. Since record-keeping began in 1895, the average temperature has warmed 3.6 degrees, which is the upper limit set in the Paris climate accord and mirrors that of other global hot spots. Now the area’s largely conservative denizens aren’t questioning a warming reality — just what’s to be done about it.

Sources: Washington Post

2. How Tech Help Migrants Survive Abuse

Women who land in a foreign country and don’t speak the local language are often at the mercy of abusive employers. Now, digital networks from Hong Kong to Lebanon to Brazil are providing a lifeline to this vulnerable workforce. An abuse survivor in the Philippines recently launched OFW Watch, an app that allows Filipino workers to connect, share videos and text one another and, most importantly, to document abuse and report it to authorities. With some 100,000 users, the app can’t solve every problem, but it has proved that its numbers give strength to the powerless.

Sources: Rest of World

3. India Offers Kids the Apocalypse Curriculum

What did you learn at school today? For some parents in India, the answer might be something about the danger of zoonotic diseases like the coronavirus, and how they’ll proliferate “if we keep usurping the habitats of wild animals.” Many schools in India now focus on a seemingly catastrophic future, and how students can prepare to survive droughts and weather extremes, OZY reports. They’re planting grasses that won’t overtax water tables and crops hardy enough to survive floods, in addition to making bricks from plastic trash. Amid an otherwise gloomy planetary future, kids in India and in similar schools elsewhere are learning to make the most of it.

Sources: OZY

4. The Porn Industry Gets Its #MeToo Moment

For decades, Ron Jeremy was one of porn’s biggest stars. But numerous female performers allege that he used his status — in an industry “where we are ‘whores,’” as one put it — to assault and rape them with impunity. Jeremy, who denies nonconsensual contact, was shunned by the industry after a 2017 Rolling Stone exposé, though he noted that no charges resulted from those allegations. But in June, Los Angeles prosecutors charged Jeremy with assaulting four women, opening a floodgate of allegations by women in multiple states. “Any of us” in the industry, said one victim, “we all have a Ron story.” 

Sources: LA Times

5. WNBA Shows How It’s Done in the ‘Wubble’

They’re just smarter, right? Whatever the reason, U.S. women’s pro basketball reported zero positive COVID-19 tests among its 139 players since sequestered play began in Bradenton, Florida. That’s way better than ailing Major League Baseball, in which the St. Louis Cardinals canceled Friday’s game against the Cubs after an eighth player tested positive. In its Florida isolation “wubble,” a riff on the NBA’s Orlando “bubble,” the WNBA did have seven positive tests during an initial quarantine period. One team, the aptly named Indiana Fever, decided to quarantine before traveling to Bradenton after two positive tests.

Sources: ESPN, Yahoo Sports