Vox Sentences: Rare video footage captures Hillary Clinton moving to left

Angela Merkel capitulates to Europe's thinnest-skinned bully; why last night's Democratic debate was so remarkable; yellow fever is back!

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

No Erdogan man should have all that power

John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

• Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked Germany to prosecute a German comic who'd read a poem insulting him on a German TV show.

  [The Guardian / Philip Oltermann]

• This is the sort of behavior that Erdogan prosecutes all the time in Turkey. He really hates being made fun of.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Germany doesn't generally prosecute people for criticizing politicians. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel still agreed, on Friday, to let the prosecution go forward.

  [Al Jazeera]

• Merkel did, however, say that as of 2018, the law under which the poet is being prosecuted — an obscure German statute that bans insulting representatives of other nations — would be, essentially, retired.

  [NYT / Alison Smale]

• Why did Merkel let Erdogan bully Germany? Refugees. The European Union just struck a deal with Turkey last month to help prevent refugees from Syria and elsewhere from entering Europe, and Turkey is taking full advantage of Europe needing its help.

  [Financial Times]

• Greece, on the other hand — which was supposed to get the help of the rest of the EU to take in refugees — is totally getting shafted.

  [The Guardian / Patrick Kingsley]

Turns out that extra debate was a good idea

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• If you didn't watch last night's Democratic presidential debate (I (Dara) didn't), it appears you (we?) missed a doozy, as Bernie Sanders landed better attacks on Hillary Clinton, and defended his own positions more clearly, than he's done in prior debates.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• The debate could help boost Sanders's momentum, at a time when he's rising in national polls. If he ends up beating Clinton solidly in polling, but lags far behind her on delegates, things could get interesting.

• Even if Sanders loses the nomination (and he still probably will), last night's debate clarified that he's succeeded in moving Clinton and the Democratic Party to the left.

  [Slate / Isaac Chotiner]

• Heck, Clinton moved to the left during the debate, as she talked herself into supporting a nationwide $15 minimum wage — something she and many liberal economists are generally skeptical of.

  [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

• And it's extremely rare in American politics to see an Israel/Palestine debate focus on Palestinian suffering, not who loves Israel the most. But the Sanders-Clinton exchanges on the issue last night were all about the horrors of occupation.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• The candidates also continued to relitigate the crime politics of the 1990s — which is not a substitute for discussing actual criminal justice policy, but does give us an excuse to link to this excellent piece on what black leaders really wanted from politicians during the "tough on crime" years.

  [NYT / Elizabeth Hinton, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, and Vesla M. Weaver]

Yet another mosquito-borne virus outbreak to worry about

Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

• A yellow fever outbreak has killed 226 in Angola since March. Now it's spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where at least 21 have died of the virus.

  [CNN / Faith Karimi]

• The World Health Organization is seriously concerned, writing in an alert: "This outbreak constitutes a potential threat for the entire world. There is a risk for the further spread of the disease in view of the large international communities residing in Angola and the frequent travel activities with neighbouring and overseas countries."

  [World Health Organization]

• It's not yet clear why yellow fever, which has been around for centuries, broke out so quickly and powerfully in Angola. Part of the reason is probably that the country is rapidly urbanizing — and yellow fever is transmitted by a species of mosquito that thrives in urban areas.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• That makes yellow fever just another of the mosquito-borne viruses that have been on the rise around the world in recent years (see also: Zika), thanks to — you guessed it — global warming.

  [Scientific American]

• The Zika outbreak has renewed fantasies that humanity could respond by driving mosquitoes to extinction — or genetically engineering the whole population. That doesn't sound easy, and is probably even harder than it sounds.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

MISCELLANEOUS

Remembering the Abraham Lincoln battalion, the group of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War who wound up getting killed at three times the rate of Spanish troops: "We are shock troops. The Republic had to push some meat out there in front, and we were elected." [New Yorker / Caleb Crain]

• Melissa McCarthy has starred in five profitable studio comedies in a row. Why does the entertainment press keep treating her like a failure?

  [NY Mag / Mark Harris]

• An estimated 2 percent of the world can hear an infuriating noise known only as "the Hum." Is it real, or just a mass delusion?

  [New Republic / Colin Dickey]

• Behold, the world's largest K'NEX ball contraption. It has 126,285 pieces, a Ferris wheel–type contraption, and many, many ramps.

  [Guinness World Records]

• This piece, on the intra-NPR battle between traditional types who want to focus on programs like All Things Considered and podcasters who focus on storytelling, should feel familiar to anyone who's worked in a large bureaucratic organization with internal clashes.

  [Slate / Leon Neyfakh]

VERBATIM

"A play is a movie that can spit on you." [The Toast / Abbey Fenbert]

• "'You’re welcome,' Alexa replied, and I thought for a moment that she — it — sounded pleased."

  [Slate / Will Oremus]

• "Speak clearly and firmly. Women say 'sorry' too much and should refrain from using it. If you knock over your boss’s coffee or accidentally set fire to his desk, lock eyes and nod slowly."

  [McSweeney's / Maura Quint]

• "When she prepares to vote when she turns 18, she will not have the right to vote for senator. If she moved just one mile away, she would have representation and she would have two senators. But by living in D.C., those rights are stolen from her."

  [Muriel Bowser via Washington Post / Aaron Davis]

• "First off, fossil fuels are a concept and concepts don’t have pockets. This is obviously false."

  [Washington Post / Alexandra Petri]

WATCH THIS

Thin underwater cables hold the internet. See a map of them all. [YouTube / Phil Edwards and Gina Barton]

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9553089/underwater-cables-internet

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via