Greetings! Happy National Donut Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇨🇳 China faults the Netherlands in chip spat. Beijing blamed The Netherlands for semiconductor friction amid the Nexperia standoff, casting export licensing as industrial protectionism rather than security policy. Dutch curbs on advanced tools and Chinese ownership have tightened since 2023, with scrutiny centered on supply-chain control and technology transfer. Officials in Beijing argue such limits distort markets and drive decoupling that raises costs for everyone from auto makers to appliance brands. European regulators counter that guardrails are targeted and legally grounded, not blanket bans. Investors are watching whether license reviews become de facto denials that ripple into inventory, lead times, and capex plans. The dispute lands just as consumption cools and margins thin, making any shock to yields or throughput painful. Geopolitics writes the policy; wafer maps do the math.

🇯🇵 Japan deploys troops as bear attacks surge. Authorities deployed military assistance after a sharp rise in encounters left multiple people injured and local police overstretched. Conservation officials say warmer seasons and poor acorn yields have pushed bears closer to towns searching for food. Municipalities are adding fencing, loudspeaker alerts, and garbage controls while hunters and rangers try to relocate animals before conflict escalates. Schools adjusted routes and dismissal times in affected districts to limit dusk exposure. Epidemiologists flagged post-attack infection risks in rural clinics that lack adequate supplies. The Interior Ministry will track incident rates by prefecture to target funding where encounters cluster. When habitats overlap with suburbs, the boundary is a trash can and a timetable.

🗽 Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race. The 34-year-old Queens assemblymember captured City Hall in a generational upset, becoming the city’s first Muslim mayor and first South Asian mayor. His coalition blended outer-borough renters, immigrant small-business owners, and progressive organizers who turned out heavily in early voting. He has been a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights and a critic of Israeli policy, positions that energized younger voters and drew sharp opposition from some civic groups. Transition teams now face a winter budget with structural gaps and a transit system still clawing back ridership. Labor negotiations, shelter capacity, and police staffing will test promises against payrolls. Business leaders want clarity on zoning, permitting, and tax incentives within the first 100 days. To paraphrase Mario Cuomo, campaigning may be poetry, but governance is prose and procurement.

✈️ UPS cargo jet crashes at Kentucky airport. A cargo plane went down and exploded at Louisville’s airport area, with officials reporting at least nine dead and others unaccounted for as investigators secured a wide debris field. Fire crews battled intense flames fueled by jet fuel before forensic teams could begin recovery. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will analyze flight data, maintenance logs, crew hours, and weather to reconstruct the chain of events. Airport operations were partially halted, diverting flights and snarling logistics at a major parcel hub on the cusp of peak season. Local hospitals activated mass-casualty protocols and family-assistance centers to handle notifications. Freight carriers began contingency routing to keep overnight networks intact. In aviation, minutes are lives and logistics.

🗺️ After California’s new map, the redistricting wars move. With a new congressional map adopted in California, strategists are pivoting to where lawsuits or commissions could tip half a dozen seats in 2026. Litigators will press racial-representation claims in one set of districts and compactness or community-of-interest arguments in another. Party committees are already triaging which challenges are worth millions in fees versus millions in field operations. Secretaries of state need timelines soon because ballot design and vendor contracts have lead times measured in quarters. Campaigns will model scenarios down to precincts, looking for 1–2-point swings that turn registration edges into actual seats. Voters rarely notice the line-drawing until their incumbent moves zip codes. Maps are destiny until they are not.

🏫 Shutdown squeezes federally funded schools. Districts that rely heavily on federal money reported hiring freezes, delayed reimbursements, and paused services as the budget impasse drags on. Impact Aid communities near military bases and tribal lands face the brunt, with special-education and transportation plans hardest to maintain. Superintendents are pulling from rainy-day funds that were never meant to cover months of payroll. The Education Department’s contingency processes keep some grants moving, but cash-flow gaps are widening. Principals are cutting tutoring hours and field trips first, then looking at furloughs if appropriations remain stalled. Parents will feel the pinch in longer bus routes, fewer aides, and postponed maintenance. Every week of gridlock becomes a semester of recovery.

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That’s all for today!

Much obliged and many thanks for reading and sharing today’s newsletter.

See you tomorrow!