Vox Sentences: A stampede on the hajj kills 717 pilgrims

A stampede in a town outside Mecca kills hundreds; a mysterious Russian military buildup; and the Pope speaks to a joint session of Congress.

TOP NEWS

An Eid stampede

Ozkan Bilgin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

• 717 Muslim pilgrims performing the hajj in Saudi Arabia died in a stampede today, at an intersection between pilgrim camps in the town of Mina. Vox's Zack Beauchamp explains.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The head of Saudi Arabia's Central Hajj Committee blamed the stampede on "some pilgrims of African nationalities."

  [Al Jazeera ]

• But it's not so simple. This isn't even the first deadly hajj incident of 2015: earlier this month, a crane collapse killed more than 100 people.

  [The Guardian / Kevin Rawlinson and Martin Chulov]

• And there have been many more deadly hajj incidents. One big reason: there are simply more Muslims, and more hajjis, than there were several decades ago.

  [PNAS / Hani Alnabulsi et al.]

• Up to a certain point, the increased safety risk of overcrowding is offset by the fact that more people on the hajj makes it likelier you'll be helped up. But we may be past that point.

  [Ibid]

• Saudi Arabia is already banking hard on the expansion of the hajj for tourist purposes: it's bulldozed many other historic sites to expand sites on the hajj. But it's going to have to rethink its infrastructure capacity.

  [Time / Carla Power]

What's Russia doing in Syria?

Salah Malkawi/Getty Images

• Russia is substantially building up its military presence along the coast of Syria. These satellite images give an idea of the scope of the installation.

  [Washington Post / Thomas Gibbons-Neff]

• Why is Russia doing this? The most straightforward theory — and the one being advanced by US Secretary of State John Kerry — is that Vladimir Putin is just trying to protect Russia's extant forces in the country.

  [BBC]

• But that doesn't explain recent reports that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad (a Putin ally) is using new, Russian-made planes to launch air strikes against ISIS targets.

  [Reuters / John Davison]

• While Putin might be trying to shore up his ally Assad, bolstering his Syrian presence also sends a message to Iran — which has been trying to replace Putin as the dominant influence on Assad's thinking.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• And then, there's the UN: Putin is scheduled to appear there this fall for the first time in years. He may want to remind the world that he isn't just a regional power player, but a global one.

  [The Economist / C. L.]

The Pope's Speech

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

• If you didn't have time to watch Pope Francis' speech to Congress, it's worth reading. It's an interesting and compelling piece of rhetoric.

  [Vox / Jonathan Allen]

• Of course, now comes the part where everyone argues the pope really agrees with them, so hold on...

• Pope Francis saved some of his harshest rhetoric for those who treat immigrants as numbers, not as individuals. Democrats happily characterized it as a slam on Republicans — but it's just as much a slam on the Obama administration.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Jeff Sessions, meanwhile, managed to profess ignorance about whether the pope really meant the Golden Rule to apply to unauthorized immigrants: "I don't know that he meant that." (He did.)

  [Huffington Post / Jennifer Bendery]

• Marriage equality supporters were split on whether to be pleased that the pope didn't explicitly condemn gay marriage, or dismayed that he obliquely referred to "threats to the family" instead of skirting the subject entirely (as they hoped a Cool Pope might do).

  [Slate / Mark Joseph Stern]

• Climate change activists, on the other hand, were dismayed the pope didn't have as much to say about their pet issue as they thought appropriate.

  [Slate / Eric Holthaus]

• In typical Cool Pope fashion, Francis blew off a lunch with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to go have lunch with the homeless.

  [Newsweek / Polly Mosendz]

MISCELLANEOUS

53.5 percent of Barack Obama's important appointments have been women and/or minorities. Only 37.5 percent of Bill Clinton's were. [Washington Post / Juliet Eilperin]

• Deontay Wilder is the first American heavyweight champion since 2006. Can he make boxing relevant again?

  [Huffington Post / Lucy McCalmont]

• Click here to find our WHEN YOU WILL DIE (maybe, based on actuarial tables).

  [Flowing Data / Nathan Yau]

• "Hot desking" is the stupid office productivity trend we deserve.

  [Slate / Alison Griswold]

• If you were worried the New Republic had changed too much in the past year, fear not: it's still running articles bemoaning the state of French intellectual life.

  [New Republic / Thomas Chatterton Williams]

VERBATIM

"Putin also rejected some peoples' characterization of him as czar, remarking in Russian, 'So what?'" [Politico / Nick Gass]

• "I sit in clubs and I’m like, Wow, I’ve got five years before I go and run for office and I’ve got a lot of research to do, I’ve got a lot of growing up to do."

  [Kanye West to Vanity Fair / Dirk Standen]

• "It isn’t possible, objectively speaking, to declare one person the most popular teenager in New York City, but if you were making a list, there would be worse places to start than with Lilli Hymowitz."

  [NY Mag / Reeves Wiedeman]

• "It’s easy to imagine how these Dumbo progressives might have reacted had this story unfolded in Atlanta or Birmingham — they’d surely chalk up resistance to the rezoning to racism."

  [National Review / Reihan Salam]

• "You talk to academics who love these big words … It’s not until you force them to explain it in plain English that you realise they don’t even understand it."

  [Stephanie Coontz to The Guardian / Kristal Brent Zook]

WATCH THIS

The myth of race, debunked in 3 minutes [YouTube / Jenée Desmond-Harris and Estelle Caswell]

Vox / Estelle Caswell