Russia’s New Push to Torment Kyiv, and a Whistle-Blower’s Warning on Mail-In Voting

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Will Jarvis, in for Tracey Mumford. Today's Wednesday, September 2nd. Here's what we're covering. So here in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, drone and missile attacks have become so common over the last few years that people, including myself, have really stopped responding to the air raid alarms. But the sense of danger in Kiev lately has really increased. Siobhan O'Grady is part of a team of Times reporters covering the war in Ukraine. The most common Russian tactic used to be sending waves of drones overnight into Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. But last week, Russia started using a new tactic. Now they're sending drones constantly into Kiev, literally nonstop. Siobhan says that according to Ukraine's president, over the course of just four days in the past week, Russia launched nearly 1,500 drones into Ukraine, including one that hit a weapons depot in the Kiev suburb. Killing at least 37 people. She says that beyond the new frequency of the attacks, the type of weapons Russia is using is also changing. The drones are powered by jet engines, most of them. And so they fly really, really fast, fast enough that you don't even have a chance to hide sometimes or hear the familiar hum of the drone before it hits its target. And this huge escalation from Russia is coming at the same time that Ukraine has been warning that they're running very dangerously low on interceptors that can intercept the drone. They can intercept ballistic missiles. So all of this put together has really changed how people here are responding. Ukrainians are now checking live maps of drones as they advance on the city, getting used to just the constant sound of explosions in the sky. Even as people are walking their dogs, eating at outdoor restaurants, you'll just hear this boom and understand that another drone has just been shot down or has landed somewhere. And it really has made the city feel like it's at its most dangerous moment since the very beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2020. Shivan says that Ukrainian officials have framed the new surge of Russian attacks as a strategy to both wear down morale and paralyze the capital economically. And at a press conference yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened that Russian strikes across Ukraine, targeting cities, energy infrastructure and key ports on the Black Sea, might spark a financial crisis in the country. At the U.S. Postal Service, a whistleblower is sounding the alarm, alleging that the agency is defying court orders and pushing ahead with President Trump's effort to exert federal control over mail-in voting. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that would create a national database of voters and could bar the Postal Service from sending ballots to people in states that don't cooperate. That effort was quickly challenged in a number of lawsuits, and the most aggressive of the were blocked in court. But the whistleblower says that behind the scenes, the USPS is secretly moving forward with the plan, including by building out a voter database. The whistleblower, a USPS official, said that's been a rushed and haphazard process and could lead to a, quote, catastrophic failure in the mail ballot system. They warned the new technology could potentially reject tens of thousands of ballots in a single batch if even one barcode on one ballot failed the scan. The official alleged that, overall, millions of voters could have trouble getting their ballots. In a statement, the Postal Service confirmed that it has been continuing to work on the database, but said that it was within the bounds of what the court had allowed. With the multiple legal challenges to Trump's executive order playing out in the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, some election experts have warned that the situation is bringing a swirl of chaos and confusion to the elections process, with just two months to go until the midterms. Meanwhile, the USPS has said that it has been continuing to work on the database, but said that it was within the bounds of what the court had allowed. Meanwhile, some state election officials are urging voters to get their ballots in as early as possible and are installing more drop boxes so that people can return their ballots without going through the Postal Service. Around the world over the past few weeks, there's been a surge of volatility in the financial markets, with investors rushing to sell off government bonds. Now, just to break this down, bonds are bits of government debt, essentially a way for you, me, or anyone to lend money to the government. In the US, you can buy bonds or other debt and get paid back in 10 years or 20 or 30 with interest. In bond market lingo, the interest rate is called a yield. Investors generally view those American bonds as an especially stable place to put their money. But when they start feeling uneasy about the economy, that can change, leading them to demand higher yields so that they can feel confident they'll still get a good return. That's what's happening now, with yields on 30-year US Treasury bonds hovering around a two-decade high. There are a bunch of explanations for this. The simplest one is inflation. If I'm going to lend the government $1,000 for 10 years, at the end of that, my $1,000 is going to be worth less. And so I need them to give me a return that's going to make up for that. Ben Castleman is the Times' chief economics correspondent. At the same time, governments around the world are running large deficits. They're borrowing more money. And investors are getting nervous about whether they'll be able to pay that off. And so what we're seeing is investors demanding higher returns, higher interest rates in order to lend governments money. Higher bond yields ripple through the economy in all sorts of ways. If you're trying to buy a house, your mortgage rate is based on the 10-year Treasury yield. And so you're going to have to pay more to get your mortgage. You're going to have to pay more to buy a car. Your company is going to have to pay more to borrow money to build a factory or buy a piece of equipment. And so these seemingly esoteric changes in the world of finance have really substantial real-world implications. About a decade ago in France, the leaders of nearly every country in the world got together and agreed on a major effort to slow down global warming. Under what became known as the Paris Agreement, the countries pledged to try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. But a new report published today by the UN says that that effort has failed. Despite major advancements in wind and solar power, the UN says the average global temperature is now on the brink of crossing that 1.5 degree threshold, as countries have continued to burn oil, gas, and coal. The UN called on countries to limit how far temperatures climb beyond that, but even under the most optimistic scenarios, that would be a major challenge and would require finding ways to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere at a massive scale. The report said that for now, as carbon emissions continue to climb, extreme weather events that have become common, like heat waves and floods, will continue to intensify. And one expert who wasn't involved in the study told the Times, quote, And finally, this week, 91-year-old Dale Sanders set the record as the oldest person to ever hike the Appalachian Trail, which covers more than 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. There's a huge, huge difference between hiking the trail at 82 years old and at 91. Huge difference. Sanders, who goes by the trail name Greybeard, says he felt the hike was about twice as hard as the last time he did it. That was back in 2017, when he initially set the age record as an oh-so-young, ever-so-spry 82-year-old. In the years since, another gray-haired hiker, known as Nimble Will Nomad, had taken the title, with Sanders' encouragement. Sanders says he actually joined him on the trail for the final push so that he wouldn't give up. But Sanders felt like he might just be able to take the record back. And over the last year, he managed to complete the entire trail in roughly 12 miles. Sanders is a trail legend, with other hikers stopping to take selfies or joining him for sections of the hike, something he told the Times helped keep him going and going and going. Meeting people on the trail is really exciting. That's very motivating, the recognition. And so every time I've gotten some form of age record, I think it probably added years to my life. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily. Where are you physically right now? I am currently in my house in the West Bank, under siege by Israeli settlers, extremists. We are not allowed to leave. that needs the property. of one Palestinian American who's at the center of the escalating violence in the West Bank. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you are not a Times subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to everything we publish when you download the Times app now. I'm Will Jarvis. We'll be back tomorrow.