Month: August 2019

Police say one suspect is in custody after multiple people were shot, some fatally, inside a Walmart in El Paso, Texas on Saturday.

At 11:03 am local time (1:03 pm EST) the El Paso Police Department tweeted that it was responding to an active shooter situation near the Cielo Vista Mall on the city’s east side. Video from local news station KTSM shows shoppers at the mall being evacuated.

The Walmart is located in the mall complex, near the international airport and Biggs Army Airfield. CNN has reported that nearby businesses are on lockdown.

The Washington Post reported that a …

Saudi Arabia’s Council of Ministers approved a royal decree this week put forth by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that would loosen some of the restrictions placed on women through the kingdom’s network of so-called “guardianship laws,” a move critics say is too little, too late.

The decree marks the most significant changes to date of Saudi Arabia’s wilayah, or guardianship, system — a network of regulations on the movements and behavior of women that required them to seek the permission or accompaniment of a close male relative in matters of work, leisure, finances, law, and health.

The new …

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.

The end of a US-Russia missile treaty could kick-start another arms race; a trade war between South Korea and Japan is hurting the tech market.

The US withdraws from a major missile treaty

Paul Zinken/picture alliance via Getty Images

• The US officially withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement Friday, kicking off the possibility of a new arms race between the US and

Google has had a challenging year. The company is already beleaguered by external scrutiny and criticism from politicians and the public over how it moderates content on its platforms. It’s facing an antitrust probe. And at the same time, it’s struggling internally to deal with rising tensions with both its liberal and conservative employees.

On Thursday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, a former Google engineer, Kevin Cernekee, accused Google of firing him for expressing his conservative political beliefs at work and claimed the company fosters a culture of politically biased bullying. While Google said …

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.

The Senate passes a budget deal that will hopefully prevent a future government shutdown; massive wildfires in Russia could have global impact.

The Senate passes a broad two-year budget deal

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• The Senate passed a two-year budget deal that would significantly increase government spending and raise budget caps — and President Trump is already expected to sign the deal. [NYT

Andrew Yang threw a punch at Amazon during Wednesday night’s Democratic debates, which served, in part, to bolster his presidential campaign’s plan to save traditional retail. And the key to saving traditional retail, Yang believes, is to save the mall.

“Raise your hand in the crowd if you’ve seen stores closing where you live,” he asked from the debate stage in Detroit. “It is not just you. Amazon is closing 30 percent of America’s stores and malls and paying zero in taxes while doing it.”

Yang’s claim is a little misleading — Amazon is not actively shutting down stores or …

In the run-up to the second round of Democratic debates this week, rumors circulated that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was digging up opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden.

On Wednesday night, she deployed it.

Gillibrand said that in an op-ed during his time in the Senate, Biden had argued “that women working outside the home would ‘create the deterioration of family.’”

“Under Vice President Biden’s analysis,” she asked, “am I serving in Congress resulting in the deterioration of the family?”