panic

Headlines are filled with news of the U.S. government shutdown thanks to a budget impasse. There are real-world impacts from this event and it is both serious and worth watching. However, you need to keep what is likely to be a short-term issue in perspective when you consider the long-term investment approach you take. Here’s what you should do instead of panicking.

The media’s job is to grab your attention

Budget battles in Washington are actually a pretty common affair, as each political faction attempts to advance its priorities. On occasion disagreements lead to a failure to find common ground, and the necessary bills needed to fund the government don’t get passed in time to keep the government funded. When that happens the government is “shut down.” Even the U.S. government needs to work within a budget.

Image source: Getty Images.

“Shutdown” is a rather harsh word, since the government isn’t exactly shut down. For example, the Social Security Administration (SSA) provided a contingency plan for a shutdown before it began. According to that plan, the SSA employed 51,825 people before the shutdown and following the shutdown it plans to retain 45,628 of those employees. That’s hardly shutting down, and Social Security recipients are still going to be paid.

Simply put, the government will continue to operate select services that are deemed vital. The big impact is going to be on what some would consider less essential government-run operations, such as national parks and museums. And some essential employees may be asked to work without pay until a budget is passed, and then get paid retroactively. On that note, it is important to keep in mind that the longest shutdown to date lasted roughly a month (35 days).

Even though most media outlets are covering the shutdown intensely, and it could affect parts of the economy directly and indirectly, history suggests that it probably isn’t as big a deal as it may seem for most investors and for the markets. Remember, the media, including financial media, is trying to get your attention so it can generate advertising revenue. Turning news events into something huge and exciting is how it does that.

Step away from your portfolio

There is a problem here that investors should pay attention to. The news frenzy around the budget impasse could lead some people to make short-term investment decisions that end up being bad for their long-term financial health. Letting emotions drive investment choices is usually a bad choice. The chart below offers evidence that government shutdowns have little real effect on markets.

Data by YCharts.

The chart shows the performance of the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.36%) since 1974, which is when the Congressional Budget Act was passed. It’s a pretty darn good return, right? As the chart highlights, the S&P 500 index has advanced more than 6,700% even though there have been multiple government shutdowns along the way. So far, not a single shutdown has resulted in the permanent destruction of capital.

Data by YCharts.

The shutdown started Oct. 1. As the one-month chart above shows, the market isn’t reacting negatively … so far and is maintaining its current upward trajectory. That said, there could be near-term uncertainty. Emotions can be a powerful force on Wall Street, and the longer the shutdown lasts the more emotional investors are likely to get. Try not to get carried along with the herd. Step back and think about your long-term goals. For example, if you are a buy-and-hold investor, don’t suddenly start selling all of your stocks. If history is any guide, this situation will blow over in a month or so, and maybe much sooner.

Little reaction so far

So far there’s no indication that a precipitous bear market has begun. Wall Street appears to have seen the news and continued along its merry way. That’s exactly what you should do, too. In fact, history suggests you should keep doing that even if Wall Street starts to notice that there is a government shutdown going on.

Sticking to a long-term buy-and-hold investment plan has been the winning play through all of the shutdowns that have taken place to date. In other words, you are better off doing nothing than reacting rashly and making emotionally driven portfolio decisions.

People run for lives from air strikes and explosive-laden ‘robots’, as lifelines collapse in Gaza’s biggest urban centre.

The Israeli army is pushing towards the centre of Gaza City from two directions, “sandwiching” residents and forcing them towards the coast in a bid to drive them out of the enclave’s biggest urban centre.

Israeli army spokesperson Nadav Shoshani told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that infantry, tanks and artillery were advancing on the inner city, backed by the air force, with the aim of applying pressure on the armed group Hamas.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that the Israeli military was advancing from the northwest and the southeast, “sandwiching people in the middle” and pushing them to the west of the city, where the al-Rashid coastal road leading south is located.

“The attacks on overcrowded neighbourhoods are causing panic and fear, and pushing people literally to run for their lives. We’re seeing waves of people now doing just that,” he said, reporting from Nuseirat in central Gaza.

People in Gaza City told Al Jazeera about nonstop attacks, including “aerial strikes by drones and fighter jets” and detonations from remote-controlled “robots” – unmanned vehicles packed with explosives that the Israeli army has been deploying to blow up neighbourhoods as it advances inwards.

At least 40 people were killed in Gaza City on Thursday, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Lifelines collapse

Amid the apocalyptic scenes, fleeing families faced the heartbreaking prospect of renewed displacement in a territory devoid of “safe zones”, only this time with the very real possibility that they might never again return home.

Still, many have stayed put. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics claimed that approximately 740,000 people – roughly 35 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million population – were still in the north of the enclave as of Tuesday.

However, the bureau signalled that numbers could drop, with the continuous Israeli attacks driving more people out and basic services disappearing.

The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) warned on Thursday that Gaza City’s last lifelines were collapsing.

OCHA accused Israel of “systematically blocking” efforts to bring aid to people, citing the closure of the Zikim crossing to Gaza’s famine-stricken north and bans on certain food items.

‘Blatant disregard’

Outside Gaza City, at least 10 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in other parts of the enclave, according to medical sources.

The Israeli military reported that four of its soldiers were killed in the early hours of the morning in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Palestine denounced on social media Israel’s “blatant disregard” for international legal requirements to distinguish between combatants and civilians in its air attacks on Gaza.

The Israeli strikes on internally displaced persons, including as they try to leave Gaza city or seek shelter near hospitals, show the Israeli military’s blatant disregard for the fundamental principle of distinction. Israel has demanded that Palestinian civilians leave Gaza…

— UN Human Rights Palestine (@OHCHR_Palestine) September 18, 2025

As Israel expanded its offensive on Thursday, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the lifting of restrictions on aid into Gaza, and the return of hostages held by Hamas.

The UK’s permanent representative to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said that “Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza.”

A Palestinian mother filmed the panic and confusion, screaming for her son after she said an Israeli strike targeted their neighbour’s home as they were preparing to evacuate. Palestinians in Gaza City say Israel often gives only 15–30 minutes’ warning before striking buildings.

A fight over taxes consumers pay for cannabis products has prompted a standoff between unusual adversaries: child-care advocates and the legal weed industry.

On July 1, California’s cannabis excise tax increased from 15% to 19% as part of a political deal struck in 2022 to help stabilize the fledgling legal market. But the industry now says the increase is untenable as it faces a sharp decline in revenue and unfair competition from the growing illicit market.

An industry-sponsored bill moving through the Legislature — and already passed by the Assembly — would eliminate the tax increase and lower the rate back to 15% for the next six years. This would reduce by $180 million annually the tax revenue that the state contributes toward law enforcement, child care, services for at-risk youth and environmental cleanup.

The losses include about $81 million annually that would have specifically funded additional subsidized child-care slots for about 8,000 children from low-income families.

“They are choosing the cannabis industry over children and youth,” said Mary Ignatius, executive director of Parent Voices California, which represents parents receiving state subsidies to help pay for child care.

Child care faces setbacks

The tension over taxes for legal weed versus child care — both industries in crisis — highlights the inherent pitfalls of funding important social services with “sin taxes,” whether it’s alcohol, weed or tobacco — funding that experts say is often unstable and unsustainable.

Engage with our community-funded journalism as we delve into child care, transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth through age 5.

The measure’s next stop is the Senate. All bills in the Legislature must be passed by Sept. 12, and the governor must sign them by Oct. 12.

“We can both support the legal cannabis industry and protect child care. If the measure reaches the governor’s desk and is signed into law, we will work with the Legislature to ensure there are no cuts to child care due to this policy change,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom.

But it’s unclear where money to backfill the losses would come from, as the state grapples with declining finances and federal funding cuts.

The money from cannabis taxes represents a fraction of California’s $7-billion annual child care budget. But as federal cuts to social services for low-income families, including Head Start, continue, any potential loss creates a sense of panic among child care advocates who say California ought to be shoring up revenue options right now — not reducing them.

“Every single dollar needs to remain in the programs that are serving our children and families. What may seem like a small amount to some is everything for advocates who are fighting for it,” said Ignatius.

The past decade has been a time of progress for child care advocates, as the state rebuilt a child care industry decimated by cuts during the Great Recession. California has more than doubled spending on child care since the recession low, added about 150,000 new subsidized child care slots, eliminated the fees paid by families, increased pay for child care workers and added a new public school grade level for 4-year-olds.

But despite these efforts to bolster the market, California’s child care industry still suffers from low pay for workers, unaffordable costs for families, and a shortage of spaces for infants and toddlers.

The waiting list for subsidized child care slots is still so long that some parents have taken to calling it the “no hope list,” said Ignatius. Those who join the list know they could wait years before a spot opens up, and by that time their child may already be in kindergarten or beyond.

Jim Keddy, who serves on an advisory committee to help determine what programs the tax will finance, opposes the proposed reduction.

“If you don’t work to promote and hold on to a funding stream for children, someone eventually takes it from you,” said Keddy, who is also executive director of Youth Forward, a youth advocacy organization.

The cannabis industry, however, argues that while the causes the tax supports may be worthwhile, market conditions are so abysmal that it cannot weather an increase.

Legal cannabis industry struggles to remain afloat

“It is sad that the cannabis industry is being pit against social programs, childhood programs and educational programs,” said Jerred Kiloh, president of United Cannabis Business Assn. and owner of the Higher Path dispensary in Sherman Oaks. “The reality is, if our legal industry keeps declining, then so does their tax revenue.”

In 2022, when the cannabis industry agreed to increase the excise tax, quarterly cannabis sales were at their peak. The agreement offered the new industry temporary relief by eliminating the cultivation tax passed by voters under Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized cannabis. In exchange, state regulators would be able to increase the excise tax after three years to make the change revenue neutral.

But since then, sales have plunged to their lowest levels in five years, due in part to the growing illicit market that is siphoning off sales from legal dispensaries.

In L.A., Kiloh said that between state and local taxes, his legal dispensary customers end up paying 47% in taxes on their purchase. But if they shopped instead at any of the thousands of stores in L.A. selling cannabis products without a license, they could avoid state and local cannabis taxes entirely.

“A 30% increase in an excise tax that is already egregious is just kind of the breaking point for a lot of consumers,” said Kiloh.

Even before the excise tax hike went into effect, just 40% of the cannabis consumed in California was obtained from the legal market, according to the California Department of Cannabis Control.

The measure to drop the excise tax, AB564, received widespread support from Assembly members, including stalwart supporters of early childhood education like Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus.

“Revenues from legal sales of cannabis are already dropping and if we keep raising the tax they’ll drop even more. That penalizes cannabis businesses who are doing the right thing and working within the legal market. And, it makes illegal sales from cartels and criminals more competitive,” she said in a statement. “We need to fund our kids’ education through the State General Fund, but if we want to supplement education and youth programs, cannabis tax dollars will only exist if we steady the legal market and go after those illegal operators.”

How reliable are sin taxes?

Lucy Dadayan, a researcher who studies sin taxes at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., said the California predicament reflects a larger problem with sin taxes.

If a sin tax is successful and consumption drops — as it has with tobacco — “the tax base shrinks. And in the case of cannabis, there’s the added wrinkle that a high tax rate can push consumers back into the illicit market, which also reduces revenue,” she said.

This is not the first time services for the state’s youngest children have been affected by reductions in a sin tax.

In 1998, California voters slapped cigarettes with a hefty surcharge to pressure smokers to give up their habit. The state used the money to fund “First 5” organizations in every county, which are dedicated to improving the health and well-being of young children and their families. But the less people smoked over time, the less money was available for early childhood programs, and the First 5 system now finds itself confronting an existential crisis as it faces a rapidly declining revenue source.

Meanwhile, the critical social services like child care that come to depend on sin taxes tend to get more and more expensive, creating a “mismatch” in the tax structure versus the need, said Dadayan.

“In the short term, these taxes can raise a lot of money and help build public support for legalization or regulation. But in the long term, they can leave important programs vulnerable because of shifting consumption patterns,” she said.

This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.

“He builds a special relationship with players and they understand where he’s coming from.

“He has a modern mindset and all of those things mean it does take some time to put a team together, to get the team playing the way that you want.

“West Ham is not a club that panics about its managers. We tend to stick with them, tend to support people, stick with them and see it through.

“I really hope he does well. He’s a pleasure to work with, he’s incredibly professional.

“I know his relationship with the players is good. I know he’ll be sitting down with them today to have a long, hard think about what went wrong yesterday, expecting a reaction and expecting to put it right.”

Potter gave full debuts to Senegal full-back El Hadji Malick Diouf, a £19m signing from Slavia Prague, and Denmark goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, who joined for £20m from Leicester.

Striker Callum Wilson also made his debut as a substitute following his arrival from Newcastle, while another free transfer, Kyle Walker-Peters, remained on the bench.

West Ham have yet to bring in a direct replacement for Ghana midfielder Mohammed Kudus, who joined Tottenham for £55m.

They performed well in the first half and went close through Jarrod Bowen and Diouf, but faded badly after Eliezer Mayenda’s 61st-minute opener, conceding twice more in the final 17 minutes.

“I wish yesterday could start all over again,” added Brady. “It’s so tough to take. It’s never easy for the supporters, the players, or the manager to lose 3-0, particularly in the opening game of the season.

“I spent a lot of time with the manager and the squad in America on the pre-season tour. The spirit among them is fantastic. I know that they’ll be more disappointed, that they’ll be the most disappointed people this morning.

“I know we’ll see a reaction and I know they want to turn it around and they’ll want to turn it around quickly.”

Residents of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, North East Nigeria, who live near the Alau Dam and its downstream channel, are in a state of confusion, grappling with conflicting government directives on the dam’s water release. The mixed messages are sparking widespread concern over potential flood risks.

The conflicting messages from these two key government bodies have left residents uncertain about the immediate danger and the appropriate course of action. While the Chad Basin Development Authority (CBDA) suggests a controlled release of the dam that shouldn’t cause panic, the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) is demanding immediate evacuation, indicating a potentially serious flood threat.

“We really don’t know which warning or advisory to follow now,” said Yunus Isa, a resident whose house was submerged in the devastating September flood last year. “I hope we will not be left in the darkness about reality until it is too late.”

The September flood resulted from the breakdown of the Alau Dam after years of neglect and warnings that the flood would happen. It swept through several local government areas of Borno State and affected about one million residents, according to the emergency management agency. HumAngle investigations found money trails that were allocated to the repair of the dam over the years, yet the repairs never happened.

This Wednesday, the CBDA announced the opening of the Alau Dam’s spillway gates to release water downstream. In a special announcement, they tried to calm fears, stating, “The general public should note that the spillway gates of the Alau Dam have been opened for water in the reservoir to spill downstream steadily… people, especially those living within the River Ngadda and Gwange area, should not panic by seeing the water passing through its normal way.” 

CBDA’s Executive Director for Engineering, Engr. Mohammed Shettima, who signed the statement, added that the authority would keep monitoring the dam’s activities until water levels recede.

However, SEMA has issued an urgent public notice concerning the dam’s water release with a stern directive: “Evacuate Immediately: All communities and individuals living or working near the Gadabul River and its tributaries must relocate to higher ground without delay.” SEMA further cautioned against approaching riverbanks, citing “strong currents and sudden surges” as “life-threatening hazards,” and advised residents to secure property and stay informed through local media.

When contacted for clarity, Borno State Permanent Secretary for Information and Internal Security, Aminu Chamalwa, stated that his ministry has reviewed both press statements and will address the matter on Friday to prevent any miscommunication.

The current confusion over the Alau Dam’s water release comes nearly a year after its catastrophic collapse and months after the Federal Government inaugurated a significant reconstruction project. The Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation held a groundbreaking ceremony in March this year for a crucial ₦80 billion project to reconstruct, dredge, and upgrade the vital infrastructure. However, despite that formal flag-off, nearly 120 days later, no significant work has reportedly been done on the dam.

It proved one game too far for Mauricio Pochettino’s United States as defeat to Mexico in the Gold Cup final ended their hopes of lifting the trophy in their own country.

Pochettino’s start to life as head coach has been unconvincing but a promising run in this summer’s Gold Cup had started to provide new hope.

A win against Mexico in Sunday’s final would not only have delivered a trophy but also started the process of instilling some much-needed belief. It was not to be as Mexico came from behind to win 2-1.

The defeat though will leave supporters questioning again whether things are moving in the right direction before a World Cup on home soil next summer.

Pochettino, who was furious after Guatemalan referee Mario Escobar Toca turned down a penalty appeal for handball, believed the majority of the 70,000 crowd at the NGR Stadium in Houston being Mexican went against his side.

He said: “Mexico is a great team, they have great players and a good coaching staff, but I want to emphasize how important the fans are in a soccer match.

“When you have their support, you regenerate the player’s energy on the field, and when you don’t, you drain their energy and it’s hard.

“If we had the majority supporting us today, it would have been different, but that’s what we’re dealing with. The truth was that if that happened in the opposite box, for sure, it’s [given as a] penalty.

“This Gold Cup though allowed us to have the players together for 40 days to establish the principles of what we want, and that has been very helpful. It was important to see players crying after losing; it makes me happy because that’s how this sport should feel.”

Mixed results across the Argentine’s first 16 matches have shown a worrying inconsistency and during this time, they have lost all five matches against a team in the top 30 of Fifa’s rankings.

By now, the US should have some clarity in their preparations for the 2026 tournament, but there remains an unfinished, rocky feel to the foundations they have been laying since Pochettino took over in September 2024.

Questions were being asked of the former Tottenham Hotspur and Paris St-Germain boss following consecutive defeats by Panama and Canada in the Nations League finals, and Turkey and Switzerland in Gold Cup warm-up games.

There has been a lack of consistency in both personnel and results. The squad appears unresolved, with the group of players called up differing for each camp, something that has mostly been beyond Pochettino’s control.

Fifty-five players have made appearances for the USA under the Argentine since he was appointed 10 months ago, making it difficult to build momentum and togetherness.

The Loose Women panellists are said to be worried that, as part of the upcoming shake-up at ITV, they are going to be axed from their jobs to make way for younger stars

Loose Women’s panellists are said to be worrying about their future as younger stars “take over.” It’s no secret that there has been panic backstage behind ITV’s midday show, with several of its leading ladies being vocal about the major changes which will come into play next year.

Last month, ITV announced a major overhaul of their daytime schedules, which affects both Loose and Lorraine Kelly’s self-titled morning programme. However, despite being hit with a mass loss of viewers, the magazine show This Morning remains unaffected. While both Lorraine and Loose air throughout the year, they will be axed to just 30 weeks of airtime.

Now, sources have said that older members of the panel, including Coleen Nolan, Kaye Adams, Nadia Sawalha, Denise Welch, Ruth Langsford and Linda Robson, no longer feel safe in their jobs. Kaye and Nadia are two of the original serving panellists from the show’s launch in 1999.

Reports claim that some of the older panellists fear they’ll be axed in favour of younger members of the panel, including GK Barry, Olivia Attwood, former singer Frankie Bridge and Stacey Solomon, who hasn’t been on the show since 2023. The younger panellists have millions of online followers and use social media platforms such as TikTok to their advantage.

Former singer Stacey has a staggering six million followers on her Instagram page alone. “The other girls feel like they can’t compete with Stacey’s stats,” a source told Closer magazine. The outlet goes on to claim that other members of the panel are being encouraged to build their online following on platforms such as TikTok, but this has been branded a “full-time job in itself.”

Bosses on the programme are reportedly telling panellists that any change is not a personal move, but that hasn’t gone down too well. “Nadia has been warning her co-stars it’s not about who you are anymore, but how many followers you have,” the insider added.

While final decisions are yet to be made, the source went on to comment: “In the long term, it could mean a farewell to the golden oldies. Coleen has been on the show, on and off, since 2000, a quarter of a century. Viewing numbers are down, and financial cuts have been made to save the ship and there’s a few that are expected to walk the plank.”

Nadia, however, has spoken publicly about the cuts. Speaking on her YouTube page, the actress and broadcaster said: “Do you know what, at the moment, all of us on screen are in work and are proud of what we do. But behind the scenes there are people that are really suffering, and what you don’t realise is when you attack the show you attack them, because you never see all the army of people behind the scenes and how hard they work.

“So to all my friends and colleagues behind the scenes who have just got a huge shock out of the blue, I’m so sorry. Mark knows how upset I’ve been at home about it. I just can’t bear it. So just be f*****g kind to people.”

She then added: “What people don’t realise at Loose Women is that we’re self-employed, I am self-employed. Every contract is a new contract. I could be let go tomorrow, in five years, you don’t know because we’re not employees.

“So I can’t tell you anything except I am on for my next contract. What has been brutal over the past week, and I am getting tearful about it, is that hundreds of people are going to be made redundant out of the blue. A lot of my friends and colleagues have been there for decades and I cannot tell you how upsetting it was to see people walking around numb with shock and fear about what they are going to do. That has been so awful. It has been worse than whatever trolls have been saying about our show that we feel really protective of.”

Speaking previously of the fears the panellists are having, a Loose source told the Mirror: “We are not planning any radical changes to the panel. All of our Loose Women are hugely valued and we celebrate each and every one and the experience and opinions they bring to the show every day.

“Many of our long standing panellists have appeared on the show for the majority of its 25 year run on screens and those stalwart, Loose legends are at the core of the show’s success and hugely popular with the audience. The show remains a big priority within our daytime slate, having secured a BAFTA nomination, launched a podcast and celebrated a milestone anniversary in the last year alone.”

The Mirror has approached Loose Women, Nadia and Stacey’s spokespeople for comment.

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Flies hovered over the blackened and swollen bodies of men and boys, lying side-by-side on a piece of tarpaulin, in blood-soaked combat fatigues, amid preparations for a rushed cremation in the Tamu district of Myanmar’s Sagaing region, bordering India.

Quickly arranged wooden logs formed the base of the mass pyre, with several worn-out rubber tyres burning alongside to sustain the fire, the orange and green wreaths just out of reach of the flames.

Among the 10 members of the Pa Ka Pha (PKP), part of the larger People’s Defence Forces (PDF), killed by the Indian Army on May 14, three were teenagers.

The PKP comes under the command of the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s government-in-exile, comprising lawmakers removed in the 2021 coup, including legislators from Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.

It mostly assists the PDF – a network of civilian militia groups against the military government – which serves, in effect, as the NUG’s army.

The Indian Army said that on May 14, a battalion of the country’s Assam Rifles (AR) paramilitary force patrolling a border post in the northeast Indian state of Manipur, killed 10 men armed with “war-like stores” who were “suspected to be involved in cross-border insurgent activities”. The battalion, the Indian Army said, was “acting on specific intelligence”.

The Indian soldiers were stationed at the border in Chandel, a district contiguous with Tamu on the Myanmar side of the frontier. Manipur has been torn by a civil war between ethnic groups for the past two years, and Indian authorities have often accused migrants from Myanmar of stoking those tensions.

However, disputing the Indian version of the May 14 events, the exiled NUG said its cadres were “not killed in an armed encounter within Indian territory”. Instead, it said in a statement, they were “captured, tortured and summarily executed by” Indian Army personnel.

For nearly five years since the coup, political analysts and conflict observers say that resistance groups operating in Myanmar, along the 1,600km-long (994 miles) border with India, have shared an understanding with Indian forces, under which both sides effectively minded their own business.

That has now changed with the killings in Tamu, sending shockwaves through the exiled NUG, dozens of rebel armed groups and thousands of refugees who fled the war in Myanmar to find shelter in northeastern Indian states. They now fear a spillover along the wider frontier.

“Fighters are in panic, but the refugees are more worried – they all feel unsafe now,” said Thida*, who works with the Tamu Pa Ah Pha, or the People’s Administration Team, and organised the rebels’ funeral on May 16. She requested to be identified by a pseudonym.

Meanwhile, New Delhi has moved over the past year to fence the international border with Myanmar, dividing transnational ethnic communities who have enjoyed open-border movement for generations, before India and Myanmar gained freedom from British rule in the late 1940s.

“We felt safe [with India in our neighbourhood],” said Thida. “But after this incident, we have become very worried, you know, that similar things may follow up from the Indian forces.”

“This never happened in four years [since the armed uprising against the coup], but now, it has happened,” she told Al Jazeera. “So, once there is a first time, there could be a second or a third time, too. That is the biggest worry.”

‘Proactive operation or retaliation?’

On May 12, the 10 cadres of the PKP arrived at their newly established camp in Tamu after their earlier position was exposed to the Myanmar military. A senior NUG official and two locals based in Tamu independently told Al Jazeera that they had alerted the Indian Army of their presence in advance.

“The AR personnel visited the new campsite [on May 12],” claimed Thida. “They were informed of our every step.”

What followed over the next four days could not be verified independently, with conflicting versions emerging from Indian officials and the NUG. There are also contradictions in the narratives put out by Indian officials.

On May 14, the Indian Army’s eastern command claimed that its troops acted on “intelligence”, but “were fired upon by suspected cadres”, and killed 10 cadres in a gunfight in the New Samtal area of the Chandel district.

Two days later, on May 16, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of Defence said that “a patrol of Assam Rifles” was fired upon. In retaliation, they killed “10 individuals, wearing camouflage fatigues”, and recovered seven AK-47 rifles as well as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Five days later, on May 21, the Defence Ministry identified the killed men as cadres of the PKP. The ministry spokesperson further noted that “a patrol out to sanitise the area, where fence construction is under way along the [border], came under intense automatic fire”, with the intent “to cause severe harm to construction workers or troops of Assam Rifles to deter the fencing work”.

Speaking with Al Jazeera, a retired Indian government official, who has advised New Delhi on its Myanmar policy for a decade, pointed out the dissonance in the Indian versions: Did Indian soldiers respond proactively to intelligence alerts, or were they reacting to an attack from the rebels from Myanmar?

“It is difficult to make sense of these killings. This is something that has happened against the run of play,” the retired official, who requested anonymity to speak, said. The contradictions, he said, suggested that “a mistake happened, perhaps in the fog of war”.

“It cannot be both a proactive operation and retaliation.”

Al Jazeera requested comments from the Indian Army on questions around the operation, first on May 26, and then again on May 30, but has yet to receive a response.

Thura, an officer with the PDF in Sagaing, the northwest Myanmar region where Tamu is too, said, “The [PKP cadres] are not combat trained, or even armed enough to imagine taking on a professional army”.

‘Taking advantage of our war’

When they were informed by the Indian Army of the deaths on May 16, local Tamu authorities rushed to the Indian side.

“Assam Rifles had already prepared a docket of documents,” said a Tamu official, who was coordinating the bodies’ handover, and requested anonymity. “We were forced to sign the false documents, or they threatened not to give the corpses of martyrs.”

Al Jazeera has reviewed three documents from the docket, which imply consent to the border fencing and underline that the PDF cadres were killed in a gunfight in Indian territory.

Thida, from the Tamu’s People’s Administration Team, and NUG officials, told Al Jazeera that they have repeatedly asked Indian officials to reconsider the border fencing.

“For the last month, we have been requesting the Indian Army to speak with our ministry [referring to the exiled NUG] and have a meeting. Until then, stop the border fencing process,” she said.

Bewildered by the killings, Thida said, “It is easy to take advantage while our country is in such a crisis. And, to be honest, we cannot do anything about it. We are the rebels in our own country — how can we pick fights with the large Indian Army?”

Above all, Thida said she was heartbroken. “The state of corpses was horrific. Insects were growing inside the body,” she recalled. “If nothing, Indian forces should have respect for our dead.”

Border fencing anxieties

Angshuman Choudhury, a researcher focused on Myanmar and northeast India, said that conflict observers “are befuddled by these killings in Tamu”.

“It is counterintuitive and should not have happened by any measure,” he said.

The main point of dispute, the border fencing, is an age-old issue, noted Choudhary. “It has always caused friction along the border. And very violent fiction in the sense of intense territorial misunderstandings from groups on either side,” he said.

When New Delhi first moved last year to end the free movement regime, which allows cross-border movement to inhabitants, Indigenous communities across India’s northeastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh were left stunned. Members of these communities live on both sides of the border with Myanmar – and have for centuries.

Political analysts and academics note that the border communities on either side reconciled with the idea of India and Myanmar because of the freedom to travel back and forth. Erecting physical infrastructure triggers a kind of anxiety in these transnational communities that demarcation on maps does not, argued Choudhary.

“By fencing, India is creating a completely new form of anxieties that did not even exist in the 1940s, the immediate post-colonial period,” Choudhary said. “It is going to create absolutely unnecessary forms of instability, ugliness, and widen the existing fault lines.”

Last year, the Indian home minister, Amit Shah, said that border fencing would ensure India’s “internal security” and “maintain the demographic structure” of the regions bordering Myanmar, in a move widely seen as a response to the conflict in Manipur.

Since May 2023, ongoing ethnic violence between the Meitei majority and the Kuki and Naga minority communities has killed more than 250 people and displaced thousands. The state administration has faced allegations of exacerbating the unrest to strengthen its support among the Meitei population, which the government has denied.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and the Manipur state government, also under the BJP, have blamed the crisis in Manipur in part on undocumented migrants from Myanmar, whom they accuse of deepening ethnic tensions.

Now, with the killings in Tamu, Choudhary said that Indian security forces had a new frontier of discontent, along a border where numerous armed groups opposed to Myanmar’s ruling military have operated — until now, in relative peace with Indian troops.

The deaths, he said, could change the rules of engagement between Indian forces and those groups. “Remember, other rebel groups [in Myanmar] are also watching this closely,” he said. “These issues can spiral quickly.”

The radiation containment domes at Arizona’s Palo Verde Generating Station were, truth be told, pretty boring to look at: giant mounds of concrete, snap a picture, move on. The enormous cooling towers and evaporation ponds were marginally more interesting — all that recycled water, baking in the Sonoran Desert.

You know what really struck my fancy, though? The paintings on conference room walls.

There were five of them, each representing one of the far-flung Southwestern cityscapes powered by Palo Verde. Two showcased Arizona: one for the Phoenix metro area — saguaro cacti and ocotillo in the foreground, freeway and skyscrapers in the background — and one for the red-rock country to the north. Another showed downtown Albuquerque. A fourth portrayed farm fields in El Paso, likely irrigated with water from the Rio Grande.

Then there was an image that may have looked familiar to Southern Californians: Pacific Coast Highway, twisting through a seaside neighborhood that looks very much like Malibu before the Palisades fire.

A painting of Pacific Coast Highway winding through Southern California, on display at Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant.

(Sammy Roth / Los Angeles Times)

That’s right: If you live in Los Angeles County, there’s a good chance your computer, your phone, your refrigerator and your bedside lamp are powered, at least some of the time, by nuclear reactors.

The city of L.A., Southern California Edison and a government authority composed of cities including Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena all own stakes in Palo Verde, the nation’s second-largest power plant. In 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, the plant was L.A.’s single largest energy source, supplying nearly 14% of the city’s electricity. The reactors supplied just over 9% of Edison’s power.

During a tour last month, I walked past the switchyard, a tangle of poles and wires where energy is transferred to power lines marching west and east. When all three reactors are running, the yard can transfer “the equivalent of half of the peak [electric demand] of the state of California on its hottest day,” according to John Hernandez, vice president of site services for utility company Arizona Public Service, which runs the plant.

“So it is a massive, massive switchyard,” Hernandez said.

For all the heated debate over the merits of nuclear energy as a climate change solution, the reality is it’s already a climate change solution. Nuclear plants including Palo Verde generate nearly one-fifth of the nation’s electricity, churning out 24/7, emissions-free power. Shutting down the nuclear fleet tomorrow would cause a giant uptick in coal and gas combustion, worsening the heat waves, wildfires and storms of the climate crisis.

Phasing out the nation’s 94 nuclear reactors over a period of decades, on the other hand, might be manageable — and there’s a case to be made for it. Extracting uranium for use as nuclear fuel has left extensive groundwater contamination and air pollution across the Southwest, especially on tribal lands, including the Navajo Nation.

“When we talk about nuclear, thoughts often go toward spent fuel storage, or the safety of reactors themselves,” said Amber Reimondo, energy director at the Grand Canyon Trust, a nonprofit conservation group. “But I think an often overlooked piece…has been the impacts to those who are at the beginning of the supply chain.”

Reimondo participated in a panel that I moderated at Palo Verde, part of the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. She noted that the nation’s only active conventional uranium mill — where uranium is leached from crushed rock — is located in Utah, just a few miles from the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.

Waste ponds at Energy Fuels’ White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah.

(Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Even during the Biden years, Reimondo said, it was tough to overcome bipartisan enthusiasm for nuclear energy and “get folks to take seriously the impacts that [tribal] communities are feeling” from mining and milling.

“We just haven’t reached a place in this country where we are listening to these folks,” she said.

That dynamic has remained true during the second Trump administration. Just this week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said his agency would fast-track permitting for a uranium mine proposed by Anfield Energy in Utah’s San Juan County, completing the environmental review — which would normally take a year — in just 14 days.

Burgum and President Trump, like Biden-era officials before them, say it’s unwise for the U.S. to rely on overseas suppliers for nearly all its uranium. But many environmental activists, even some who are fans of nuclear, believe running roughshod over Indigenous nations and public lands is disgraceful. And counterproductive.

Victor Ibarra Jr., senior manager for nuclear energy at the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force, said rebuilding the U.S. nuclear power supply chain will require local buy-in — on the front end, where uranium is mined, and on the back end, where spent fuel is stored. Thus far, political opposition has derailed every attempt to build a permanent fuel storage site, meaning nuclear waste is piling up at power plants across the country.

If there’s any hope for more uranium mining and power plants, Ibarra said, it will involve a lot of conversations — conversations that lead to less pollution, and fewer mistakes like those made during the 20th century.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that the nuclear industry has behaved the way it has in the past,” he said.

The benefits of nuclear reactors are straightforward: They generate climate-friendly electricity around the clock, while taking up far less land than solar or wind farms. If building new nuclear plants were cheap and easy — and we could solve the lingering pollution and safety concerns — then doing so would be a climate no-brainer.

If only.

The only two nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in decades came online at Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and cost $31 billion, according to the Associated Press. That was $17 billion over budget.

Units 1 and 2 at the Vogtle nuclear plant near Waynesboro, Ga., seen in 2024.

(Mike Stewart / Associated Press)

Meanwhile, efforts to build small modular reactors have proved more expensive than large nuclear plants.

“It would really be quite unprecedented in the history of engineering, and in the history of energy, for something that is much smaller to have a lower price per megawatt,” said Joe Romm, a senior researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media. “We try to make use of the economies of scale.”

Those setbacks haven’t stopped wealthy investors including billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos from bankrolling efforts to bring down the cost of small modular reactors, in hopes that mini-nuclear plants will someday join solar panels and wind turbines as crucial tools in replacing planet-warming fossil fuels.

I hope they succeed. But I’m not going to spend much time worrying about it.

Like I said earlier: Love it or hate it, nuclear is already a huge part of the nation’s power mix, including here in L.A. We’ve lived with it, almost always safely, for decades — at Palo Verde, at Washington state’s Centralia Generating Station, at the Diablo Canyon plant on California’s Central Coast. Nuclear, for all its flaws, is hardly the apocalyptic threat to humanity that its most righteous detractors make it out to be.

It’s also not the One True Solution to humanity’s energy woes, as many of its techno-optimist devotees claim it to be. There’s a reason that solar, wind and batteries made up nearly 94% of new power capacity built in the U.S. last year: They’re cheap. And although other technologies will be needed to help solar and wind phase out fossil fuels, some researchers have found that transitioning to 100% clean energy is possible even without nuclear.

So what’s the answer? Is nuclear power good or bad?

I wish it were that simple. To the extent existing nuclear plants limit the amount of new infrastructure we need to build to replace fossil fuels: good. To the extent we’re unable to eliminate pollution from uranium mining: bad. To the extent small reactors might give us another tool to complement solar and wind, alongside stuff like advanced geothermal — good, although we probably shouldn’t spend too much more taxpayer money on it yet.

Sorry not to offer up more enthusiasm, or more outrage. The climate crisis is a big, thorny problem that demands nuance and thoughtful reflection. Not every question can be answered with a snappy soundbite.

Before leaving Palo Verde, I stopped by the conference room for a last look at the paintings: Arizona. New Mexico. Texas. California. It was strange to think this plant was responsible for powering so many different places.

It was strange to think the uranium concealed beneath those domes could power so many different places.

A painting of metro Phoenix, on display at Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant.

(Sammy Roth / Los Angeles Times)

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