Hard Numbers: Veep debate date set, Taliban marks Afghan anniversary, North Korea reopens to tourism, Russia sentences American ballerina

1: There will be at least one vice-presidential faceoff before the US election, and the date has been set. GOP veep candidate JD Vancewill meet his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, on Oct. 1 in New York City, in a debate hosted by CBS. There is at least one other possible veep debate date, as Vance says he has already accepted a CNN invitation on Sept. 18. So far Walz has not confirmed.

3: It’s been exactly three years since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan following the chaotic US withdrawal from the country. The Islamic fundamentalist group’s leader hailed progress in establishing strict Islamic law. Systematic human rights abuses of women and girls have led to huge cuts in foreign aid, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis worsened by a series of natural disasters.

5: Good news for GZERO Daily readers who were forced to put their North Korean vacation plans on hold during the pandemic! The isolated autocracy is reopening to tourism for the first time in five years. The regime is starting by allowing visits to the mountainous northern city of Samjiyon — located near Mount Paektu, a volcano that is sacred in both the Korean and Chinese cultures. As ever, there is a Puppet Regime for this — see you soon on those North Korean beaches!

51.80: A Russian court has sentenced Russian-American amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina to 12 years in prison for high treason. Her crime? Donating $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity — from her phone in Los Angeles — on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Karelina, who became a US citizen in 2021, was arrested while visiting family in Russia last year.