🌊 Cash Landing for Delayed Flights

Happy anniversary of the first guillotine execution!

In 1792, Nicolas J. Pelletier became the first person to be executed by guillotine in Paris. It’s not clear whether his crime was merely a robbery or a robbery and a murder — these are just the minor details — but three different criminal courts confirmed his death sentence.

The hilarious part about the first guillotine execution is that the crowd was unimpressed. Spectators felt it happened too fast and lacked the entertainment of a hanging, death-by-sword, or breaking at the wheel. A 2007 book reports that one witness found it too “clinically effective.” Wow, what killjoys. Why couldn’t they suck it up and make death fun again?

In today's edition:

–Max, Max, Jen, and Alex

KEY STORY

Airline Cash Benefits

The US Department of Transportation (DoT) announced new rules requiring airlines to automatically give cash refunds to passengers for canceled or “significantly delayed” flights

• The new rules define a “significant delay” as 3 hours for a domestic flight and 6 hours for an international. Refunds must be offered in cash – rather than vouchers or other forms of compensation – and must be assigned automatically, meaning flyers don’t have to initiate complaints themselves

• The rules also require airlines to provide refunds if airlines lose bags and don’t return them within 12 hours

Dig Deeper

• All sites that sell tickets – whether they be from the airlines or third-party sites – must provide refunds, which must be paid within seven days for credit cards and 20 for other payment types

• The rules also crack down on “surprise” fees, including by mandating that parents can sit with their children without extra charge

• In response to the new rules, Airlines for America, a trade group representing air carriers, said that most airlines already “abide by and frequently exceed” DoT guidelines

KEY STORY

Kabul Airport Investigation

A CNN investigation questioned the official account of events surrounding the 2021 Kabul airport attack

• On August 26, 2021, an ISIS suicide bomber detonated an explosive backpack outside of Kabul’s major airport. 13 US soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians died

• The Pentagon has acknowledged that US and British forces fired three bursts of gunfire after the explosion, but has alleged that nobody was hit

• Per CNN, GoPro footage from the scene captured 11 gunfire bursts totaling at least 43 shots over the four minutes after the explosion. An Afghan doctor told CNN he treated patients with bullet wounds, suggesting at least some casualties weren’t from the blast

Dig Deeper

• The Afghan doctor said that he received two threatening calls after the explosion, one of which said, “This is not good when you are collecting that data [on the gunshots]”

• It is unclear from the GoPro footage who was firing the shots, or from where

• The Pentagon has released two reports detailing the events of the bombing, both of which denied that gunfire led to casualties

KEY STORY

Good Day for World Peace?

Yesterday President Biden signed into law a package giving $95B to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and forcing a TikTok sale

• The package will give $60B to Ukraine, $26B to Israel (including $1B+ to Gaza), and $8B to Indo-Pacific allies, mostly Taiwan

• Biden called yesterday “a good day for world peace” and said the US would start sending aid to Ukraine “in the next few hours”

• The bill gives China-based ByteDance at least 270 days to sell the app to a US company or face a ban. TikTok’s CEO condemned the bill: “We will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side”

Dig Deeper

• TikTok’s CEO called on American users to post stories on TikTok sharing how the app has improved their lives

• Despite formerly trying to ban it, Donald Trump has opposed the TikTok bill, calling it a ban and arguing it will empower Meta, which he said could then meddle in elections to harm him

KEY STORY

Spain PM Resigning?

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has paused public duties while he considers resigning amid a corruption investigation into his wife

• Sanchez, a socialist, has been Spain’s prime minister since 2018. On Wednesday, a Spanish court opened an inquiry into his wife, Begoña Gómez, after an anti-corruption group associated with Spanish conservatives accused her of helping to bail out a company to which she had ties

• In a letter, Sánchez claimed that Spain’s political right was conspiring to bring the charges: “I am not naive. I realize they are denouncing Begoña, not because she has done anything illegal - they know there is no case - but because she is my wife,” he claimed

• He said he will suspend his public duties in order to “stop and reflect” on “whether I should continue to lead the government”

Dig Deeper

• An anti-corruption group linked to Vox, a far-right political party, brought the complaint against Gómez. The complaint alleges that Gómez had business ties to a tourism group, Globalia, that received a $507M bailout for its airline, Air Europa, during the pandemic

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RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🐄 Beginning Monday, the US Department of Agriculture will require that dairy cattle moving between states be tested for bird flu

🇮🇱 Hamas published a propaganda video featuring an Israeli American dual citizen who hadn’t been seen alive since October 7. He was shown missing his left arm several inches above his hand

⚖️ A collection of prominent trade groups sued the US Federal Trade Commission over new rules banning noncompetes

✈️ Boeing reported a $355M loss over the first quarter of 2024 and $16.6B in revenue, down 8% from a year earlier

🇺🇸 McKinsey, one of the US’ largest and most prestigious consulting firms, is facing a criminal investigation over its work for opioid manufacturers

🎓 Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) delivered a speech at Columbia University amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests. He called on Columbia’s president to resign and said, “We respect diversity of ideas, but there is a way to do that in a lawful manner and that's not what this is”

COMMUNITY

We founded RocaNews because we wanted news companies to give us just the facts – not tell us what to think. That inspires us to do the “Roca Votes” story each week, in which we summarize a controversial topic and see how Roca Nation feels about it.

This week’s debate asks: Should the University of Southern California have cut the commencement speech of its pro-Palestine valedictorian?

Keep the debate going and reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🍔 Land of a Thousand Chains: Maple Grove, Minnesota has declared itself the “Restaurant Capital of Minnesota”

🐎 Unstable situation: Up to five horses, including at least one soaked in blood, broke free in central London, causing chaos. The horses likely belong to the British monarch’s ceremonial guard

💊 Try 1-800-RateMyMeth next time: A 34-year-old Indiana woman faces a felony narcotics charge after she called 911 earlier this year to complain about her dealer providing inferior meth

🏈 About damn time: The Heisman Trust is giving USC star running back Reggie Bush his Heisman Trophy back. He lost it in 2010 after it was found that he accepted money and gifts from agents

🦛 Not a him-po, a her-po: An Osaka, Japan zoo announced that Gen-chan, a 12-year-old hippo believed for seven years to have been male, is female

ROCA WRAP
China’s Sinking Cities

Nearly half of this country’s major cities are sinking. 

A paper published in the journal Science this month found nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence. Subsidence is the gradual settling or sudden sinking of the Earth's surface.

The study found that 45% of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3 millimeters per year, with 16% at more than 10 mm per year.

It attributed much of that to the over-extraction of groundwater, leading to the compaction of soil and a decrease in ground level. That has been amplified by the weight of buildings and infrastructure, further compressing the soil.

The paper warns that the rate of sinking cities could put millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise.

“Even a small portion of subsiding land in China could therefore translate into a substantial threat to urban life,” said the team of researchers who wrote the study.

China already loses over 7.5B yuan ($1.04B) each year related to subsidence costs.

China is not the only country experiencing subsidence of its cities: A February study found that 2.4M square miles of land across the globe are at risk, including much of Indonesia, with large parts of the capital, Jakarta, now below sea level.

Of the 44 major coastal cities experiencing subsidence, 30 were in Asia. Will Chinese cities stay on that list – or can China save its sinking cities? 

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Almost the end of the week, Roca! Thanks for being here and see you tomorrow.

— Max, Max, Alex and Jen