Quartz

🚨  Texas’s anti-abortion law turns citizens into bounty hunters.

🌀  New Orleans’ infrastructure did… OK against Hurricane Ida.

🥽  Facebook Workrooms brings the worst of office life to VR.

🇨🇳  Chinese citizens aren’t sold on a partnership with the Taliban.

🍟  Do fast-food chains still need dining rooms?

The Pentagon announced Monday evening that the last flight containing American soldiers had left Kabul, ending a 20-year war close to where it started: with the Taliban in control of the country. Afghanistan’s economy is highly dependent on foreign aid, which gives the international community some leverage over the regime. Among the areas of major concern are:

• The safety of Afghans who have collaborated with foreign troops and organizations, both those who wish to flee the country and those who will decide to stay after the Taliban’s promise of amnesty. The UN passed a resolution calling on the Taliban to honor a commitment to let people leave freely, but stopped short of calls for a “safe zone” in Kabul.
• The protection of women and girls, who fear a return to the violations of the first regime, including a ban on work and non-religious study, and widespread rape and kidnapping.
• The overall stability of the country, which could become grounds for a war between the Taliban and jihadist groups such as ISIS-K, further challenging local resistance to fundamentalism.

A surge of refugees is expected out of Afghanistan, and some European countries have already said they’re done accepting migrants fleeing Afghanistan and other war zones.  So where will everyone go?

Historically, refugees tend to settle in countries that neighbor their own. In 2020, over 2 million refugees from Afghanistan fled to Pakistan and Iran. In comparison, around 200,000 ended up in Germany, Austria, France, and Sweden combined. The US took in just 1,592.

As it barreled through Louisiana this week, Hurricane Ida brought all shipping traffic through the mouth of the Mississippi River to a grinding halt, snarling supply chains that have already been strained by the pandemic (and a giant boat stuck in an important canal). Now port closures in New Orleans are pushing the system to its breaking point. Just look at agriculture:

🌾 The Mississippi River connects much of the US grain industry to the rest of the world.

🌱 China is the biggest importer of American-grown soybeans, and ports in and around New Orleans handle 61% of them.

🐽 In China, most of those soybeans go into the bellies of pigs, chickens, and other industrial livestock, which its population depends on for food.

↪️ Farmers could pay extra to reroute to Pacific Northwest ports, but agriculture isn’t known for its wide profit margins.

“When you look at the depth of dissatisfaction with China in Western countries, it stems from foreign policy, not from messaging. And Xi’s policy is: China is on a course, China’s going to purse that course with great rigor until we’ve achieved the place we want for ourselves in the world by 2050. And if anyone stands in our way we will…meet them with an iron wall or something like that.”  —Peter Martin, author of China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, in a Q&A with Quartz’s Tripti Lahiri 

The US released August jobs numbers on Friday, and it was definitely not another July, when one labor market observer tweeted that he’d never seen “such a wonderful set of economic data.”

The US economy added 235,000 jobs, far below the 725,000 expected by analysts polled by Bloomberg, and the 1.1 million posted in July. The delta variant seems largely to blame:

112%: Increase in the 7-day average of new reported coronavirus cases in August

13.4%: Drop in consumer sentiment from July to August

5.6 million: People who said they couldn’t work because of the pandemic, up from 5.2 million in July

42,000: Restaurant and bar jobs lost in August

0: Jobs added in the hospitality sector

Unfortunately, unemployment aid is ending at the worst possible time. The jobs report will no doubt inform what the Federal Reserve does next. Learn more about its thinking in Monday’s Forecast email for Quartz members, on the next Fed chair.

When the NFL season kicks off in the US on Sept. 9 many fans will be monitoring multiple games at once—the live broadcast as well as the fantasy game, or games, of their choosing. It’s a dual-screen viewing experience.

In much of the US, fantasy sports are largely considered games of skill, which has made them a popular and legitimate part of the gaming industry, even after a 2018 US Supreme Court decision legalizing sports betting. They’ve gotten so huge that one of the possible founders has apologized to families of the obsessed, but those who are making millions aren’t apologizing at all. The Quartz Weekly Obsession is ready to assemble a team.

Our fantasy sports team is composed entirely of our latest stories.