Flagship

Murdoch quits Fox, News Corp boards

Rupert Murdoch stood down from the boards of Fox News and News Corp, handing over control to his son Lachlan. In an internal note, Murdoch said he was in “robust health,” but that the “time was right for me to take on different roles.” How much time there will be for those roles is not clear — Murdoch is 92. But he had always said that if he retired he would “die pretty quickly,” so shifting to the title “chairman emeritus” is “the closest step toward retirement that he will likely ever take,” reported Brian Stelter in The Atlantic. After 70 years in the news industry, Murdoch’s fire has dimmed somewhat: He “no longer inspires either the reverence or the revulsion he once did,” said Stelter.

US offers continued Ukraine support

Despite growing opposition from Congress for further funding, the U.S. announced a new aid package for Ukraine. The $325 million package, which includes long-range weapons and air defense systems, is “exactly what our soldiers need,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian leader was met with a far quieter reception in Washington than the “hero’s welcome” he received from Congress last year, underscoring the U.S.’s flagging interest in the war. However, despite objections from GOP lawmakers, who are mired in a budget standoff that risks shutting down the U.S. government, President Joe Biden assured Ukraine that support won’t be compromised. “We’re with you, we’re staying with you,” Biden told Zelenskyy.

Bolsonaro’s ‘putschist plan’

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro reportedly met the heads of the country’s army, navy, and air force last year to discuss a military coup. A former Bolsonaro aide told investigators that there was a “putschist plan” to overthrow the results of last year’s election, and that the navy commander had said that “his troops were ready to act [and were] only awaiting [Bolsonaro’s] order,” according to O Globo and UOL. Bolsonaro denied the accusations, but the news prompted calls for conspirators to be brought to justice. “If this information is confirmed, it proves what we’ve been denouncing since last year ... that a coup d’etat was indeed being planned,” the head of a Brazilian political party said.

Rhino populations recovering

The southern white rhino population rose for the first time in more than a decade, figures released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature show. There are now about 16,800 of this rhino species, up almost 6% from 2021. It’s part of a wider story of progress in protecting the world’s rhino population. After years of poaching and habitat loss, the global headcount fell to 21,000 in 2009 from about 500,000 across Africa and Asia in the 20th century, but the figure bounced back to 27,000 rhinos across all species last year. “With this good news, we can take a sigh of relief for the first time in a decade,” the head of the IUCN rhino group said.

Mexico border crossings hit record

Migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border reached a record high in the first two weeks of September, government figures show. Crossings fell after the Biden administration implemented new restrictions in May, but have surged in recent months as the U.S.’s asylum system has been overwhelmed. Mexican authorities warned that further tightening border restrictions could risk trade between the two countries. Mexico became the U.S.’s biggest trading partner this year. “The [Biden administration] hit on a smart strategy, but they don’t have the resources or capacity to implement it,” Andrew Selee, head of the Migration Policy Institute, said.

White House wants to reduce medical debt

The U.S. government plans to remove medical debt from people’s credit scores, improving credit ratings for millions of citizens. One in five Americans has medical debt, AP reported, and a 2020 survey found that the total burden of medical debt was $195 billion. A poor credit rating can drive up the cost of mortgages and loans. The Biden administration has pushed for a long time to minimize the importance of medical debt, arguing that people’s concern about their rating can prevent them from getting important medical care. As the American novelist James Baldwin wrote, “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

Florida’s private high-speed rail link opens

The first new private U.S. intercity rail link in 100 years opens today, running high-speed services between Miami and Orlando. Brightline’s $5 billion service will carry people 235 miles in 3.5 hours, with a top speed of 125 mph, costing $99 for a one-way ticket. It’s only the second high-speed line in the U.S., after the federally operated Acela service between Washington, D.C., and Boston. The line was proposed in 2012, but compared to California’s government-backed high-speed rail plan — conceived in 2008 and still nowhere near completion — it’s been relatively cheap and quick. Brightline also wants to connect Los Angeles to Las Vegas by 2027.

India votes to require women MPs

The Indian Parliament passed a bill guaranteeing a third of seats for women in its lower house of Parliament and state assemblies. But opposition politicians criticized the “vague” timeline for its implementation. India has a history of powerful female leaders, including a former woman prime minister, but women have been underrepresented in the legislature. The makeup of parliament “is unlikely to change anytime soon,” the BBC reported. Research shows that gender quotas do help increase the proportion of women in legislatures, but poorly drafted laws abound, blunting their impact: Cote d’Ivoire’s law lacks punitive measures, meaning that just 15% of parliamentarians there are women, despite a law requiring the figure be 30%.

AI tools for YouTube, Microsoft

YouTube and Microsoft rolled out more artificial intelligence tools for users. Among the features for YouTube was Dream Screen, which uses AI to generate background videos from short prompts, and a feature which lets creators dub their videos into foreign languages. An AI-powered music recommendation service will suggest musical themes based on a text description of a video. Microsoft meanwhile announced an “AI companion” built into Windows 11. AI might be evolving from an entertaining novelty for most people to a ubiquitous tool.

My Neighbor Totoro studio sold

Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio behind My Neighbor Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle, was sold. It’s now a subsidiary of Nippon Television Network Corp. Ghibli’s founder and director, Hayao Miyazaki, is 82 and thinking about retirement, and there were worries about who would succeed him: Producer Toshio Suzuki is 75, and Miyazaki’s son Goro, himself an animation director, said the responsibility was too great, AP reported. Miyazaki won an Oscar for 2001’s Spirited Away: His most recent film, The Boy and the Heron, was published this year, and is loosely based on his wartime childhood.

• Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is expected to meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asian Games in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
• Sinatra The Musical, based on the early life and career of the late U.S. singer Frank Sinatra, debuts in the British city of Birmingham on Saturday.
• The Japanese Grand Prix is held in Suzuka on Sunday.

The number of people employed by Mexico’s drug cartels, making them collectively the fifth-largest employer in the country. According to a new study published in Science, the number of cartel members has risen steadily for the past decade as gangs’ annual profits have soared to at least $6 billion a year. The country’s lack of employment or education opportunities for young men, as well as the romanticizing of cartel culture through music and film, have pushed thousands into joining gangs, some of which have metastasized beyond drug trafficking and now control swaths of the country. “We have made cartels desirable,” one of the study’s authors said.

One of Vietnam’s most popular coffee shops opened its first U.S. store. Trung Nguyên Legend Cafe, a nearly three-decade-old institution that runs 110 branches at home, now has an outfit in Westminster, Southern California. It will serve up coffee the Vietnamese way, using a phin filter, with Robusta and Arabica beans grown in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Iced Vietnamese egg coffee will be on the menu, Eater reported. “We want to bring Vietnamese coffee culture to the U.S.,” said one of the franchise team. “It’s not just a drink to us, it’s more about sitting down, enjoying each other’s company, and building connections with people.”

• Israeli officials are working to persuade U.S. leaders that a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia could strengthen the U.S. well beyond the Middle East. One top Netanyahu aide said it could be a “reverse 9/11.”
• The U.N.’s climate summit was a bust. The plans world leaders laid out are “like trying to put out an inferno with a leaking hose.”
• An NSFW chatbot app has surged in popularity, but its sexual content spurred OpenAI to crack down. Now, it’s pitching investors on building its own large language model.