Category: Americas
-
Days instead of months, short briefs, no oral argument, and often no stated reasoning. The Supreme Court’s emergency docket formally decides only what happens while a case proceeds — but for elections and deportations, the interim period is frequently the whole period.
-
A federal judge blocked a new Postal Service rule on mail ballot envelopes, finding it threatened disenfranchisement weeks before the election. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift that block, and challengers’ responses were due this morning.
-
Ecuador ranks sixth in the world for conflict, with over fifty armed groups and more than 2,500 events targeting civilians in a year. It has no war, no insurgency and no foreign enemy — and almost no international coverage, for reasons that have little to do with the scale of the violence.
-
Hurricane Lowell’s centre is forecast to pass west of the main Hawaiian islands, and Kauai is still under a tropical storm warning with up to 14 inches of rain possible. Why the category number tells you little about what a storm does to a mountainous island — and why islands prepare differently.
-
Petrol at $4.14 a gallon is a Labor Day record in cash terms. Adjusted for inflation, 2008 was the equivalent of $5.63, and 2005 and 2022 were also higher. Which measure is right depends on what you are trying to know — and both sides of politics can use the same number.
-
A federal judge called it a cruel bait-and-switch, said the timing was bizarre — and ruled for the Pentagon anyway. Three Stars and Stripes journalists can be fired while their lawsuit proceeds, because speech made as part of official duties is not protected the way private speech is.
-
An aircraft touches down at up to 160 miles per hour with a fixed distance in which to stop. Water, wind, weight and a slightly long touchdown each eat into the margin. Why runway overruns almost never have a single cause, and what is meant to be waiting at the end of the pavement.
-
Regular petrol averaged $4.14 a gallon over the Labor Day weekend and diesel hit a record $5.85. Analysts point to the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz. The reserve is emptier than at any time since the early 1980s, and none of the available policy levers reach the actual cause.
-
A Boeing 767 freighter operating for Amazon left Runway 30 at Miami International Airport on Sunday, struck vehicles on a road outside the perimeter and caught fire. Five people were killed. Officials have not yet said whether the dead were aboard the aircraft or on the ground.
-
At the G20 innovation ministerial in North Carolina, the world’s largest economies unanimously adopted US-proposed guidelines favouring lighter-touch AI governance. Four weeks earlier, the European Commission had begun enforcing the AI Act. Both things are now true at once, which is the actual state of global AI regulation.