What happened
President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping if Beijing would “like to buy some” U.S. arms “at some point,” U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said on Fox News yesterday. Trump is “strong on Taiwan,” Purdue said, brushing off bipartisan criticism of Trump withholding $14 billion in congressionally approved weapons sales to Taipei. But he “continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world.’” 

Who said what
Purdue “did not give further details” or reveal Xi’s reply, but his “admission” that the offer was made “is extraordinary,” The New York Times said. The “Communist-ruled nation” is widely considered America’s “greatest military, economic and diplomatic rival.” The “unlikely” offer, “if consummated, would upend generations of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan,” The Associated Press said, “and potentially expose U.S. technology to a potential foe.” 

What next?
“U.S. law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China,” the State Department said in a statement. The U.S. is also “bound by its own laws to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself,” the AP said.

What happened
A powerful nor’easter battered coastal communities from New Jersey (pictured above) to New England over the weekend, causing flooding, disrupting travel and knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes. In the Pacific, Hurricane Nolo veered west from Hawaii yesterday after pounding the islands with big waves and heavy rain, while Hurricane Polo was spinning toward Baja California as a dangerous Category 3 storm this morning. The tempests were this year’s “powerhouse” El Niño “making itself felt on two sides of the nation for the first, but probably not last, time this year,” The New York Times said. 

Who said what
El Niño, a global “climate phenomenon that originates in the tropical Pacific,” has fueled an unusual “parade of hurricanes” that “battered Hawaii with an intensity that has caught even scientists off guard,” the Times said. “By some metrics,” this El Niño is “already the strongest on record,” and its “influence on storms around the United States this year might just be getting started.” 

What next?
Polo could bring heavy rains and flooding to the U.S. Southwest later this week after crossing Baja California and mainland Mexico. The nor’easter was forecast to dump “heavy rain” on New England today then “exit into Canada” tomorrow evening, The Washington Post said. Its “impact has been nowhere near” that of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, The Associated Press said, but it “could be the first of several along the East Coast this fall” because of El Niño. 

A war is being waged over the future of Argentina’s Andean glaciers as environmentalists warn of the dangers posed by heavy mining and the construction of vast new data centers. These might be a boon for the country’s fragile economy, but geologists fear they could lead to severe water shortages and devastating flash-flooding, similar to the disaster that killed more than a thousand people in Nepal and Tibet last month.

President Javier Milei has looked to attract major oil ⁠and mining investments to Argentina through tax breaks and regulatory reforms, including changes to a 2010 Glacier Law that bans damaging commercial activity on the country’s nearly 17,000 documented glaciers. The amendments, passed by Parliament in April, transferred responsibility for defining protected glacier areas to provincial governments. Milei believed this would “empower” them to permit exploitation in glacial zones after determining there was “nothing to protect,” said the BBC.

But the legal changes have sparked widespread public protest in areas reliant on glaciers for water. Scientists and geologists have warned that glacial development will further accelerate the retreat of Andean ice sheets, creating unstable conditions that expose Argentina, as well as neighboring Chile and Peru, to the risk of catastrophic floods and mudslides.

In November 2005, the collapse of the Laguna de los Erizos reservoir in San Juan province unleashed a massive mudslide that stretched for 155 miles, although its remote location prevented any deaths. “What happened in Nepal has already happened in Argentina,” said Juan Pablo Milana, a researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, to Argentina’s Infobae.