Texas flash floods kill 100-plus

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

Texas flash floods kill 100-plus

Over the July 4 weekend, torrential rains triggered flash floods in Central Texas killing 100—many of them at a girls camp along the Guadalupe River. Dozens are still missing so that death toll is likely to tick upwards.

What happened: Up to 18 inches of rain fell over a three-hour period—swelling the waters of the Guadalupe—which runs from the region all the way to San Antonio Bay. In the map below, the worst-hit Kerr County is at the top left:

You can see how quickly the waters rose in this New York Times gif—and this sped-up footage:

This graph does a pretty good job at capturing the speed of the flood as well:

Important point to note: Flash floods are hardly rare in Texas:

Texas is the deadliest state in the country for flood-related deaths, and the area between Dallas and San Antonio, known as “Flash Flood Alley,” is considered the worst region for extreme flooding.

You can see it below:

About the kids camp: Camp Mystic is an elite Christian summer camp for girls—and sits right on the banks of the river. Of the 84 bodies recovered from just Kerr County—where the summer camps are located—28 are children. As of now, ten campers and a 19-year-old counselor at Camp Mystic remain missing. You can see where the camp sits below:

No warning system: The first notice of potential flash floods went out at 1:18 pm on Thursday from the National Weather Service. More were sent overnight while everyone was sleeping. There were no warning sirens—used in flood-prone areas—to sound the alarm: ”Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.”

A money problem: Kerr County has long debated installing sirens—but it would have cost $1 million. But without federal grants to fund them, local taxpayers were unwilling to foot the bill.

Reading list: Wall Street Journal on the floods—and New York Times on the sirens are paywalled. But The Guardian offers a good overview. CNN connects Trump’s federal funding cuts to the lack of disaster preparation.

Meanwhile, closer to home: Himachal Pradesh was hit by a staggering 23 flash floods and 16 landslides over the weekend. Dozens have been reported missing. The death toll stands at 80. The reporting remains spotty—amid rescue efforts. The Guardian has the best overview. (ANI)

BRICS summit sinks like a brick

A quick intro to BRICS: In 2001, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill coined the acronym to refer to the collective clout of four of the world’s largest developing countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China (hence, BRIC). The four countries made this acronym a reality in 2009—with Moscow the driving force. South Africa came on board in 2011 to form BRICS.

A new momentum: BRICS was formed in order to establish a counterforce to US hegemony but the group has simply pottered along—meeting every year to little effect. But ahead of the 2023 summit, Beijing and Moscow embarked on an aggressive push to turn BRICS into a powerful bloc representing the Global South—an alternative to the G7. A whopping 23 nations applied for membership of which five have been admitted—Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE and Indonesia.

What happened now: Fast forward to the 2025 BRICS summit, which took place in Rio on Sunday with two noticeable absentees—Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Chinese premier Li Qiang and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov showed up instead—a sign of a significant downgrade. This is supposedly a boon for India and PM Modi to grab the spotlight. Except it isn’t clear if the BRICS mantle matters quite as much any more.

The duelling interpretations: According to CNN, Xi still hearts BRICS—but is busy restoring the battered Chinese economy. So the summit is not a “priority.” Others say the entry of a new batch of members has muddled matters further:

“While UN security council expansion was once a stated goal, China was always likely to block India’s accession to the body. Brazil’s commitments to reduce carbon emissions were also likely to collide with Saudi Arabia, Russia and the UAE’s oil- and gas-based economic interests (though Brazil has doubled down on oil production and exports despite its public rhetoric over climate change).”

Also complicating matters: India’s refusal to piss off Washington—just as it's negotiating a trade deal. That’s why it has rejected one key goal pushed by Russia and China: a BRICS currency, backed by gold, to rival the US dollar—and prevent Washington from using it as a weapon to get nations in line. But New Delhi isn’t interested: “India, which is slowly but surely pivoting to the West, has no real desire to get caught in the geopolitical cross-fire between China and the United States.”

Why any of this matters: BRICS offered an opportunity to create a new power bloc—to counter America’s hold on almost every global institution or alliance. Its sudden deflation shows that the task is not quite simple. In Chatham House analyst, Samir Puri’s words:

It seems that the ending of one international order does not necessarily beget the sudden arrival of another. The vacuums created by the US’s sudden retreat from multilateralism and global governance will not be automatically filled by others.

Reading list: The Guardian and CNN have the reporting on Xi and Putin snubbing this year’s summit. Bloomberg News zeroes in on the stalling of local currency trade. For more context on the history of the group, check out our Big Story from 2023.

Meanwhile in Washington: There was no rest for the Prez on the July 4th weekend—during which he attacked the BRICS summit as ‘anti-American’ and threatened any country with a 100% tariff “if they so much as even think” about weaning themselves off the dollar. No doubt, Modi-ji was taking notes in Rio.

As for those tariffs: Donald continues to issue threats—shift goalposts and deadlines—and send cranky letters to world leaders. He extended the deadline to ink deals with the US to August 1—living up to his new nickname TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). He also sent letters to a number of nations—incuding Japan and South Korea—with tariff hike threats. The good news for India: “The administration is close to reaching a deal with India, Trump added. Other officials have said more deals could be announced in the coming days.” (Wall Street Journal, paywalled)

Are Galapagos tomatoes ‘de-evolving’?

According to a new study, wild tomatoes growing in the Galapagos Islands are showing signs of “reverse evolution”. They analysed 56 tomato samples for the production of alkaloids—a “toxic chemical intended to put off predators”—mainly insects. The intriguing discovery: some tomatoes had ancient types of the alkaloids—which were present millions of years ago in its eggplant ancestors. Importantly, the distribution wasn’t random:

It aligned with geography. Tomatoes on the eastern, older islands, which are more stable and biologically diverse, made modern alkaloids. Those on the younger, western islands where the landscape is more barren and the soil is less developed, had adopted the older chemistry.

The lead author of the study, Adam Jozwiak claims: “Some people don't believe in this… But the genetic and chemical evidence points to a return to an ancestral state. The mechanism is there. It happened."

Point to note: In previous studies, the reappearance of old traits has been documented in snakes, fish, and even bacteria.

Is ‘reverse evolution’ real: Belgian biologist Louis Dollo was the first scientist to look at reverse evolution—and declared it impossible in 1905: “An organism never returns to its former state.” And in 2009, a study confirmed that it is nearly impossible to reverse an evolutionary step—when it involves a number of mutations:

“I would never say evolution is never reversible,” Dr. Thornton said. But he thinks it can only go backward when the evolution of the trait is simple, like when a single mutation is involved. When new traits are produced by several mutations that influence one another, he argues, that complexity shuts off reverse evolution. “We know that kind of complexity is very common,” he said.

In the case of the tomatoes, scientists found that changing just four amino acids in a single enzyme flipped the molecule's structure to its ancestral state.

Reading list: Phys.org has more on the study. You can read more about the myth of devolution in our two-parter Big Story: Part one looks at the Turkish family who claim to walk on all four limbs due to ‘devolution’ and part two offers theories on whether humans can evolve backwards.

what caught our eye

business & tech

Elon Musk says Grok’s been “significantly improved”—and the chatbot’s latest responses now include partisan takes on Democrats, Hollywood, and Jewish executives.
Medianama has an explainer on the new Motor Vehicles Aggregators Guidelines, 2025, for ride-hailing apps like Uber and Ola—covering everything from surge pricing limits to app and website specifications.
Tesla just got downgraded by William Blair—blaming shrinking revenues, and Elon Musk’s growing political side quests.
Jack Dorsey has a new project—Bitchat, a decentralized chat app that runs on Bluetooth.

sports & entertainment

JioStar’s Sanjog Gupta has been named CEO of the Jay Shah-led ICC.
Netflix says half its global users now watch anime—over 150 million households—as it unveiled new titles and record viewership stats at Anime Expo in LA.
Apple’s ‘F1: The Movie’ is now its biggest box office hit ever—earning $293 million in 10 days and overtaking all other Apple films, including ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’

health & environment

Andhra Pradesh is using AI to fight off mosquitoes—part of a tech-driven push to tackle the state’s buzzing menace.
Sohra, the world’s wettest place, got just a third of its usual June rain this year—adding to growing climate change alarm bells.

meanwhile, in the world

Financial Times (splainer gift link) has a must read on how Boston Consulting Group modelled the cost of relocating Palestinians from Gaza—while also signing a multimillion-dollar deal to help launch the GHF aid distribution programme for the region. What’s more, Tony Blair’s thinktank was looped into this postwar Gaza plan featuring a “Trump Riviera.”
Israel’s defence minister wants to move 600,000 Palestinians into a fenced-in “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah—a plan legal experts are calling a blueprint for crimes against humanity.
In their much hyped White House meet, Netanyahu handed Trump a Nobel Peace Prize nomination—yes, really.
As Iran speeds up the deportation of 4 million Afghans, thousands of lone women are being forced back into Taliban-ruled Afghanistan—where they face harsh restrictions and deep uncertainty.
A rare trial has kicked off in Boston as US professors challenge Trump-era efforts to deport pro-Palestinian campus activists—marking a first among many similar lawsuits.
Hours after being sacked by Putin, Russia’s transport minister Roman Starovoit was found dead in his car near Moscow.
New York Times (splainer gift link) brings you a 10-minute deep dive into an 1800s Indian painting—an archery face-off set in the Himalayan foothills.

meanwhile, in India

Indian Express has all you need to know about the UAE’s new golden visa programme for residents of India and Bangladesh. Srinath Sridharan writes in Indian Express on why this new Golden Visa can lure India’s elite—offering the order and ease their own country still can’t.
The US is set to extradite Khalistani terrorist Harpreet Singh aka Happy Passia to India—after sending over 26/11 accused Tahawwur Rana.
Carrier India is taking Modi’s government to court—joining Samsung, LG, and others in pushing back against new e-waste rules that sharply raise recycling fees for manufacturers.
The Hindu has all the deets on Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja—Elon Musk’s Indian-origin money man—being named treasurer of his new ‘America Party’.
India’s first Census in 15 years will let people fill in their own details through a new web portal, while officials collect data using mobile apps.
In a rare move, Prestige Group has scored approval to build a private 1.5-km flyover in Bengaluru—linking its upcoming tech park in Bellandur to the Outer Ring Road.

One inspiring thing to see

Sprinter Animesh Kujur became the first Indian to run the 100 metres in under 10.2 seconds. The 22-year-old clocked a blazing 10.18 seconds at a meet in Greece. And that’s not all—he’s already rewritten the national 200 metres record twice this year. Catch his 100 metres sprint below. (Indian Express)