📊 Nepal, ICE Gloves, and Flock

USAID fallout, electric shock, and surveillance tech.

Aug 13, 2026

Greetings! Happy Left-Handers Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe to PM Daily below:

SPONSORED SECTION

Sponsor PM Daily! Unlike other free daily newsletters, PM’s ad model works differently: 1. one single sponsor slot per issue; 2. 100% share of voice (SOV) guaranteed; 3. higher return on ad spend (ROAS) from your first placement.

No-brainer, little risk, high upside. Q3 slots are filling up quickly! Reach our rapidly scaling, high-intent, vetted premium audience by replying to this email right now.

🌎 GLOBAL NEWS

🇳🇵 Aid cuts leave Nepal mothers and newborns dying. American foreign-aid cuts are reversing maternal and newborn health gains in Nepal. President Trump’s administration dissolved the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), once the world’s largest humanitarian donor. In Nepal, nutrition and reproductive-outreach programs lost funding as clinics shed staff, equipment, and medicine. CARE Nepal country director Mona Sherpa says maternal deaths expected over a year are now occurring within four to six months. CARE Nepal itself lost more than half its American funding. One canceled five-year program was worth $35M and had reached more than 100K women and girls in its first three years. It equipped birthing centers and trained midwives, nurses, and health volunteers. Those workers visited pregnant women, explained danger signs, and often escorted them to prenatal appointments. In Dewahi Gonahi, prenatal visits have fallen by half since the cuts. In nearby Prempur Gonahi, the village averaged 10 to 15 neonatal deaths annually before the program began in December 2022. Records show that figure fell to zero by 2024. After cancellation, five newborns died between December and March. Mortality reporting has also deteriorated because data collectors lost their jobs. Campaign Nepal says officials recorded two infant deaths in one municipality while its staff knew of eight. The State Department says America still funds maternal and child health programs in Nepal and wants other countries to share more of the burden. Health workers on the ground say the lost outreach is already turning preventable complications into deaths.

🇳🇱 Rotterdam port explosion kills one and injures several. An explosion struck a refinery and fuel terminal at the Port of Rotterdam, killing at least one person and injuring several others. The blast occurred at a facility operated by energy trader Gunvor Energy. Rotterdam police established a crime scene to determine what caused it. Investigators said the incident initially appeared to be a workplace accident. Police spokesperson Daan Valkenburg cautioned that authorities had reached no definitive conclusion. He said investigators were keeping all possibilities open. Dutch broadcaster NOS reported that a maintenance team had been working on a section of pipes at the site. The explosion hit an industrial area inside Europe’s largest port. A separate major power failure unfolded elsewhere in the port around the same period. A transformer caught fire for reasons that were not immediately clear. Several companies temporarily halted operations and evacuated workers during the blackout. Electricity was fully restored by mid-afternoon. Emergency services later ruled out a connection between the power failure and the explosion. Rotterdam is a major European hub for oil, gas, fuels, chemicals, and maritime trade. Disruptions there can matter well beyond the Netherlands because the port anchors continental energy and logistics networks. Authorities are now separating an apparent industrial accident from coincidence while examining the fatal blast itself. The immediate facts remain limited, but one worker is dead, several people are injured, and the cause is still under investigation.

🇺🇸 LOCAL NEWS

⚡ Immigration officers may get electric-shock gloves. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to buy thousands of gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notice allows spending of up to $20M by March. The devices are called Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters (G.L.O.V.E.). Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies manufactures them. They function as ordinary patrol gloves until an officer activates an electrical mode. The company says the glove must touch bare skin to deliver a sharp pain stimulus. Supporters say that stimulus can gain compliance within seconds and shorten physical struggles. John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, likened the sensation to a bee sting. He says the devices could help officers remove resistant people from cars, homes, or detention facilities. Civil-rights advocates warn that the technology makes painful force unusually discreet. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Jenn Rolnick Borchetta says ICE already faces criticism over force and accountability. The manufacturer says the gloves should not punish verbal defiance. It also warns against use on children, pregnant women, older adults, and disabled people. Officers must complete training and recertify every two years. DHS had not publicly explained what policies would govern ICE deployment. The solicitation could become the manufacturer’s largest order to date. ICE is therefore preparing to add a force tool whose effectiveness and abuse potential come from the same feature: pain delivered at the press of a hidden switch.

🎙️ Karoline Leavitt will leave the White House. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave President Trump’s administration at the end of August. Leavitt, 28, is the youngest person ever to hold the role. She says she is stepping away to spend more time with her young family. Leavitt returned to the White House podium after giving birth to her daughter Viviana in May. She also has a 2-year-old son. In announcing her departure, she said the demands of the job conflicted with being the mother she wants to be. President Trump said he understood and respected the decision. He has not announced her successor. Trump said Leavitt will remain one of his top outside advisers. He also described her as an influential Republican voice ahead of the midterm elections. Before joining the administration, Leavitt served as a spokesperson for a pro-Trump super PAC and worked on Trump’s 2024 campaign. She ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022. Leavitt won a 10-way Republican primary before losing to Democratic Representative Chris Pappas. During Trump’s first term, she worked in the White House press office. She later served as communications director for Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. As press secretary, Leavitt appeared frequently on conservative television while Trump himself remained highly accessible to reporters. Her departure removes one of the administration’s most visible communicators while keeping her inside Trump’s broader political operation.

🗂️ MISC

📷 Flock tightens surveillance controls after backlash. Flock Safety is changing its surveillance platform after mounting criticism from lawmakers, civil-liberties groups, and communities. The company supplies automated license plate readers to thousands of law-enforcement agencies. Its cameras record plates and other vehicle characteristics that agencies can search across jurisdictions. Police credit the network with finding missing people and tracking suspects in violent crimes. Critics say the same infrastructure can enable immigration enforcement, unauthorized surveillance, and improper personal searches. Dozens of cities and agencies have ended relationships with Flock amid those concerns. CEO Garrett Langley says several previously optional safeguards will become mandatory by January 1st. Every law-enforcement customer will have to use an audit tool designed to flag abnormal searches. A flagged user would be locked out pending internal review. Flock will also cut its standard data-retention period from 30 days to seven. Evidence tied to a case number can be preserved longer. Officers will have to enter a records-management code linking searches to specific cases. Emergency overrides will be automatically flagged for review. Customers can also restrict which categories of crimes outside agencies may use to search their data. That could allow a city to block outside immigration-enforcement searches. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called shorter retention a step forward but criticized other safeguards as inadequate. Institute for Justice attorney Robert Frommer called the changes “window dressing.” The overhaul narrows some surveillance powers without resolving the larger dispute over whether police should operate such searches without judicial warrants.

📈 Stocks rise as oil falls and wholesale inflation cools. American stocks moved toward record highs as oil prices dropped and wholesale inflation eased. The Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) rose 0.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 185 points, or 0.3%. The Nasdaq composite climbed 1%. Wholesale prices were 4.7% higher than one year earlier in July. That remains elevated but slowed from June’s 5.5% annual rate and came in slightly below forecasts. Traders reduced the probability of a Federal Reserve (Fed) rate increase in September to 35%. That was down from roughly 50% two days earlier. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.61% from 4.68%. Brent crude dropped 3.3% to $86.02 per barrel. Oil had traded between $72 and $102 during July as hopes for freer Middle Eastern shipping repeatedly changed. Lower yields helped real-estate shares, with AvalonBay Communities ($AVB) gaining 2.6%. Builders FirstSource ($BLDR) rose 3.4%. Lower fuel costs lifted United Airlines Holdings ($UAL) 1.7% and Carnival ($CCL) 2.9%. Jack in the Box ($JACK) jumped 7.3% after beating quarterly profit expectations. Cisco Systems ($CSCO) fell 7% despite stronger-than-expected profit and revenue as investors focused on margins and elevated AI valuations. Markets are again approaching records because two major sources of pressure, inflation and energy, moved in the easier direction at the same time.