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Pager bombs, undocumented Arizonans and Instagram guardrails

 
Today's International story

Hezbollah hit with exploding pagers, blames Israel

What happened
Exploding pagers killed at least 11 people in Lebanon yesterday, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounded about 2,800 others, health officials said. Hezbollah said it was the target of the attack and eight of its fighters were among the dead. Lebanon and Hezbollah blamed Israel. An American official told The Associated Press that Israel briefed the U.S. on the operation — in which small amounts of explosives were reportedly hidden in the pagers and detonated remotely — after it was over.

Who said what
Thousands of pagers across Lebanon buzzed for a few seconds at 3:30 pm local time then exploded, reportedly after receiving a triggering message from Israeli intelligence. Hezbollah turned to pagers to communicate after its leaders warned in February that Israel could use cellphones to track and eavesdrop on fighters. The pagers were from a batch of about 5,000 Hezbollah ordered months ago, weaponized by Israel's Mossad before delivery, security sources told Reuters. They carried the Gold Apollo brand, but the owner of the Taiwanese company said these pagers were made under license by a company in Europe.

Two Hezbollah operatives had raised suspicions about the pagers, Al-Monitor said. Israel decided to detonate the devices rather than see its long-planned operation foiled, three U.S. officials told Axios. "It was a use-it-or-lose-it moment," one U.S. official recounted. The original plan, a former Israeli official told Axios, was to blow up the pagers as a surprise blow in an all-out war against Hezbollah. 

"We were not aware of this operation and were not involved," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. "We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians," Hezbollah said, and Israel will "for sure get its just punishment."

What next?
Israel's Security Cabinet threatened late Monday to escalate the tit-for-tat conflict with Hezbollah so thousands of evacuated Israelis could return to their homes near the Lebanon border. After yesterday's bloodshed, Axios said, U.S. and Israeli officials suggested "Hezbollah could launch a major attack against Israel in revenge, or it could be deterred in the short term by the possibility that there might be more security breaches it doesn't know about and that Israel could exploit."

 
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Today's ELECTION story

Arizona official sues to bar 100K from local voting

What happened
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) asked the Arizona Supreme Court yesterday to prohibit nearly 100,000 longtime residents from voting in state and local elections this year, because the state has no evidence they submitted proof of citizenship as required under a 2004 state law. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) argued these voters should be given full ballots, as they have for the past 20 years.

Who said what
"In all likelihood," the estimated 97,000 registrants across Arizona who have not submitted proof of citizenship are "almost all U.S. citizens," Richer (pictured above) said on X. Those voters all first obtained Arizona driver's licenses before 1996, and most of them "lean older and are Republicans," the Arizona Republic said. All of them "swore under the penalty of criminal charges" that they were citizens and have been on voter rolls "for years." 

While this group is just a "small fragment" of Arizona's 4.1 million registered voters, they "could be decisive" in statewide races and ballot initiatives, The Washington Post said. They can vote in federal races, thanks to a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

What next?
Richer asked the state high court to rule swiftly, as ballots are supposed to go out to military and overseas voters on Thursday. This mess is the result of policies "driven by conspiracy theories" about illegal voting, Fontes told reporters. It has "never been the case" in the U.S. or Arizona "that noncitizen voting has been anything other than vanishingly rare."

 
 
Today's TECHNOLOGY Story

Instagram rolls out teen accounts with new limits

What happened
Meta announced yesterday that all users under 18 will have their Instagram accounts modified. The new "teen accounts" will be private by default, meaning only followers they approve can see their posts, and users 13 to 15 won't be able to change the settings without parental consent. Parents will also be able to see who their teens message, though not the content of the exchanges, and notifications will be muted from 10 pm to 7 am to promote sleep.

Who said what
Parents say they are most concerned about inappropriate contact, unsavory content and limiting screen time, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told The New York Times, and "we decided to focus on what parents think because they know better what's appropriate for their children than any tech company, any private company, any senator or policymaker or staffer or regulator."

The changes are "long overdue" and "should have been put in place years ago," said Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer. But Meta is "only acting now because they're under pressure from lawmakers, advocates and a groundswell of public opinion." It's also unclear how effective the changes will be, the Times said. "Meta has promised to protect minors from inappropriate contact and content since at least 2007," with "varying degrees of success."

What next?
Teenagers already on Instagram in the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia will be migrated to the new accounts within 60 days, and Meta said it will begin using AI tools in January to identify users who lied about their age when creating their account. 

 
 

It's not all bad

Scientists have developed a "vaccine" for bees that helps protect them from harmful pesticides. The researchers found that feeding bees hydrogel microparticles in sugar water boosted their survival rates by 30% when exposed to lethal doses of neonicotinoid, a class of pesticide that damages bees' nervous systems. The treatment binds to and neutralizes the pesticide, allowing it to pass through the bees without causing them any harm.

 
 
Under the radar

The murder of an Olympic marathon runner has "highlighted a horrifying trend" in Kenya, said The Sunday Times. Rebecca Cheptegei (pictured above), Uganda's marathon record holder and a runner in this summer's Paris Games, died of severed burns last week in Eldoret, western Kenya. Dickson Ndiema, her ex-partner, had doused her with gasoline and set her alight as she and her young daughters were collecting clothes from their washing line. 

Ndiema, who accidentally set himself on fire, also died of his injuries. But his murder of Cheptegei is "a grimly familiar occurrence" in Kenya, where successful women athletes are targeted for their wealth and challenge to gender norms, the Times said.

Cheptegei, 33, is at least the third elite woman athlete killed by a male partner or ex-partner in Kenya since 2021, the CBC said. Agnes Tirop, a 25-year-old Olympic long-distance runner, was stabbed to death in her home in Iten in 2021. Her husband was charged with her murder. Kenyan-born runner Damaris Mutua, 28, was found strangled in Iten in 2022. Her partner fled and is still wanted for her murder. "We are failing our women," said Zaina Kombo of Amnesty International Kenya. 

More than 500 Kenyan women were killed between 2016 and 2023 — nearly two-thirds by their partners or ex-partners, according to Africa Data Hub. This year thousands of women all over Kenya protested against the "epidemic of femicide" after a series of gruesome murders. 

Local rights groups have called on the government to declare a national emergency and define femicide as a crime distinct from murder, said the BBC. Despite Kenya's already "robust laws against gender-based violence, most perpetrators go unpunished."

 
 
On this day

September 18, 2020

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at age 87. Ginsburg, a trailblazer for women in the legal field and an advocate for gender equality, was the second woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Today, there are four women on the court: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

Rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs "remains in custody in federal case" after pleading not guilty to "sex trafficking, other charges," the Los Angeles Times says on Wednesday's front page. The New York Daily News summarizes the charges as "sex, drugs, violence" tied to "horror-filled 'Freak Off' parties." The "indictment against Combs spans length of career," The Washington Post says. In election news, "race tightens in battleground Georgia," with Kamala Harris "now in a virtual tie with Trump," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says. Another poll finds that "46% of Republicans won't accept Trump loss," the Detroit Free Press says.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Meanwhile in Florida...

An 84-year-old woman in Florida saved her own life by punching an aggressive alligator in the face. Dolores Boppel was walking her dog in a Fort Myers park when the reptile ran at them. "It was like a torpedo," she told Fox News. "I didn't see anything go that fast in my life." After throwing her dog in the air to protect him, Boppel was bitten on her legs and fingers by the gator. She sucker-punched the creature, and it backed off.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harriet Marsden, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Anwar Amro / AFP via Getty Images; Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images; Matt Cardy / Getty Images; Ferenc Isza / AFP / Getty Images