From Bad to Curse: “The disaster only compounds the misery in Afghanistan, which is already deep in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions facing increasing hunger and poverty after the cutoff of international financing to the Taliban.” Afghanistan quake kills 1,000 people, deadliest in decades.

+ Starved: “I can honestly say in my 23 years of responding to humanitarian crisis, this is by far the worst I’ve seen, particularly in terms of the level of impact on children. The starvation that my colleagues and I witnessed in Somalia has escalated even faster than we feared.” Somalia: ‘The worst humanitarian crisis we’ve ever seen.’

+ Cos and Effect: “Jurors at a civil trial found Tuesday that Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975. The Los Angeles County jury delivered the verdict in favor of Judy Huth, who is now 64, and awarded her $500,000.” (It’s amazing that this monster is a free man.)

+ These Little Town Flews: “Amazon says its delivery drones will bring the future to Lockeford, Calif., but not everyone in the rural ranch town is ready for takeoff.” Amazon drones are coming to town. Some locals want to shoot them. (If you’re not a Prime member, they just might shoot back.)

+ At Least They Gru Sales: “If you were generally an uncynical person, you might say that Minions are cute and people like them. If you were not, you might posit that they are agents of the capitalist machine, ready-made and endlessly merchandisable mascots that make the world’s destruction at the hands of mega-corporations seem adorable and fun.” Labor exploitation, explained by Minions.

+ Scream Team: “The doctors were confused until she said that she’d been screaming for hours the night before at the Dallas stop on One Direction’s Where We Are Tour. The exertion, they hypothesised, had forced open a small hole in her respiratory tract.” The truth about screaming fangirls. “Teenage pop fans have long been derided as vacuous victims of marketing. But there is so much more to it than that, explains a Harry Styles aficionado.” (Who am I to judge? I once pull a neck muscle singing along to Watermelon Sugar High.)