Vox Sentences: The worst bombing since Lebanon’s civil war

Suicide bombings in Lebanon; a rate hike for Xmas; and the US busts 2 members of Venezuela's first family for drug smuggling.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

ISIS tries to inflame Lebanon

Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)

• At least 43 people have been killed and over 200 have been injured in a pair of suicide bombings in Beirut. The attack is the most serious since the end of Lebanon's civil war 25 years ago.

  [The Guardian / Kareem Shaheen]

• ISIS claims responsibility for the bombings.

  [BBC]

• The bombers hit a heavily Shiite neighborhood, and ISIS (a Sunni group) claimed their aim was to kill Shiites. Officials are worried that will exacerbate existing Sunni-Shiite tensions in the country.

  [Washington Post / Hugh Naylor]

• Lebanon is roughly evenly split among Sunnis, Shiites and Christians. After the civil war, it famously adopted a "confessional" political system, wherein each of the 3 top offices was promised to one group.

  [State Department]

• But that model has led to separate patronage networks which fight with each other and hobble government. Most recently, failures in garbage collection in Beirut after a local dump closed led to weeks of protests.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

Don't get up!

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Top Federal Reserve officials dropped some new hints today that the Fed will raise interest rates when it meets in December.

  [CNNMoney]

• The rate hike is expected, but this is still the sort of thing stock traders get antsy about — so expect more stock volatility between now and the meeting.

  [Wall Street Journal / Tommy Stubbington, Riva Gold and Corrie Driebusch]

• Fed officials have been hoping to raise rates for a bit, and last month's strong jobs report might have convinced them the time was right.

  [New York Times / Nelson D. Schwartz]

• But there's a compelling counterargument: since inflation is low right now, keeping interest rates low for a few months might provide a real boost to the economy.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• After all, inflation is the biggest concern with low interest rates — especially for the poor (who Rand Paul argued on Wednesday are hurt by the Fed's current policy).

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• And the Fed projects that inflation will stay low over the next decade.

  [Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland]

• For more on this, here's Tim Lee's explainer on interest rate changes.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

A bad deal in Venezuela

John Moore/Getty Images

• Two family members of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro were arrested last night. They're accused of conspiring to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the US.

  [Wall Street Journal / José de Córdoba]

• The men are nephews of Maduros' wife, Celia Flores — who is much more influential than your average first lady. (Maduro has called her "First Combatant.")

  [Reuters / Nate Raymond and Brian Ellsworth]

• The US has been engaged in a wide-ranging investigation into drug trafficking among Venezuelan elites, despite the government's protests that it doesn't play any role in exporting cocaine from Colombia. But this is the first indication that the trafficking goes right to the top.

  [Wall Street Journal / José de Córdoba]

• It's certainly not great timing for Maduro and company, who are already at risk of losing their party's hold on the government in December's elections.

  [Associated Press ]

• Maduro's economy has been a disaster. Inflation is so bad that even robbers don't want to take their victims' Venezuelan bolivares.

  [New York Times / William Neuman and Patricia Torres]

• The government just today announced measures to cut the price of eggs by 65 percent.

  [Bloomberg Business / Nathan Crooks and Noris Soto]

• People accused of "hoarding" goods — which could be interpreted to mean stores that restock them — could face up to 10 years of prison.

  [PanAm Post / Sabrina Martín]

• Coincidentally, 10 years is also the mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking more than 5 kilograms of cocaine.

  [Drug Enforcement Administration]

MISCELLANEOUS

Don't get TOO excited about the new Star Wars. Everyone freaked out about the Phantom Menace trailer too. [Slate / Forrest Wickman]

• Australian paramedics are used to asking "Who's the Prime Minister?" to check if patients are conscious and coherent. But with 5 Prime Ministers in 5 years, the question's too hard.

  [Courier-Mail / Rhian Deutrom]

• Prison overcrowding isn't just cruel. It makes prisoners more likely to reoffend.

  [Slate / Leon Neyfakh]

• Being an Olympic medalist doesn't guarantee financial security. Just ask Debi Thomas, the bronze medalist figure skater whose surgical practice collapsed and just put up a GoFundMe page.

  [Washington Post / Michelle Singletary]

• Lyndon LaRouche has thrown his support to Martin O'Malley, because the universe apparently hasn't punished him enough during this presidential cycle.

  [The Daily Beast / Olivia Nuzzi]

VERBATIM

"Dating site algorithms are meaningless. They really don’t do anything. In fact, the research suggests that so-called 'matching algorithms' are only negligibly better at matching people than random chance." [Washington Post / Caitlin Dewey]

• "To the extent that anything I ever wrote contributed to the creation of TANF or any block grant, I am sorry."

  [Former conservative welfare reform advocate Peter Germanis]

• "There is a darkness moving over Texas, a creeping dread passing over its most comfortable neighborhoods: the stealth dorm."

  [CityLab / Kriston Capps]

• "That’s what Master of None does: Just when you think you’ve grokked every side of an issue, it flings two more at you, and suddenly all prior perspectives are contextualized, their biases thrown into sharp relief."

  [Slate / Sharan Shetty]

• "A little known fact is that this Bobby was an entirely different Bobby. He was anointed 'Bucket Head Bobby.' We didn't really bond, because we only worked together for a few hours. He seemed chill."

  [The List / Kiernan Shipka ]

WATCH THIS

How a swarm of honeybees cook a giant hornet alive [YouTube / Estelle Caswell and Johnny Harris]

Vox / Estelle Caswell and Johnny Harris

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