RAIN MAN: As many as 70,000 people have been trapped in the Nevada desert after heavy rains turned the ground under the annual Burning Man festival into a sea of mud. Authorities have been blocking anyone from entering or leaving the event and attendees have been told to conserve food and water.

  They might be allowed to leave today.

  At the same time, police are investigating the death of a man at the festival. No further information has been released.

  Burning Man is a convention of the unconventional featuring music, art, and what can be described as “free expression” — a lot of odd and colorful outfits.

  The festival, which is supposed to end today, is capped every year by the torching of a giant statue, the burning man. The exit is an annual giant traffic jam and today it’ll be a mud jam. The DJ Diplo posted on Twitter/X, “just walked 5 miles in the mud out of burning man with chris rock and a fan picked us up.”

EQUAL VOTE: A Florida judge on Saturday threw out the state’s congressional map, ruling that it violated the Florida Constitution by watering down the power of Black voters and ordered the State Legislature “to enact a new map which complies with the Florida Constitution.”

 Under amendments to the Florida constitution voters passed in 2010, lawmakers are forbidden to draw districts “with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”

  Judge J. Lee Marsh of the Leon County Circuit Court ruled that the legislature had violated that stipulation with the new maps drawn after the 2020 census. The case centered on House District 5, which elected a Black Democrat in 2016, 2018, and 2020. Portions of District 5 were then parceled out to four other districts, each of which elected a White Republican in 2022.

   Judge Marsh rejected the Florida secretary of state’s argument that the prohibition didn’t apply to this case because Black voters had been a plurality, rather than a majority, in a district that the new map dismantled.

THE WAR ROOM: With investigations into corruption under way, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced yesterday that he’s firing his defense minister.

  “Oleksii Reznikov has gone through more than 550 days of full-scale war,” Zelensky said in a vaguely worded statement “I believe that the ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large.”

  Reznikov so far has not been the target of investigation himself. His firing comes as Ukraine presses a major counteroffensive against the Russians, slowly gaining territory in the south and east. 

Water, Water Everywhere: A New York Times investigation has found that American agriculture, industry, and cities are pumping up ground water at a rate that can never be replenished.

  The Times says, “Huge industrial farms and sprawling cities are draining aquifers that could take centuries or millenniums to replenish themselves if they recover at all.” 

  The report says, just for a couple of examples, that corn yields have plummeted in Kansas and over pumping is threatening water wells on New York’s Long Island with its concentrated suburbs.

THE OBIT PAGE: Former UN Ambassador, New Mexico governor, and member of Congress Bill Richardson died in his sleep over the weekend in Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. He was 75.

  Despite his long resume in official positions, Richardson did his greatest work as a freelance negotiator winning the freedom of Americans wrongly held by totalitarian and despotic governments.

  Richardson was at the time the country’s only Hispanic governor, serving two terms, from 2003 to 2011. He served New Mexico in the House of Representatives from January 1983 to February 1997. Under President Bill Clinton, Richardson was ambassador to the United Nations.

  As an independent negotiator, Richardson persuaded Sudan to free a Pulitzer-winning American journalist. He helped negotiate the release of a Navy veteran from Iran and a Marine veteran from Russia. Most recently he was involved with the case of professional basketball player Brittney Griner, also held by Russia.

  Richardson won the release of as many as 80 people. He once said, “I plead guilty to photo ops and getting human beings rescued and improving the lives of human beings.” 

THE SPIN RACK: The United Auto Workers union and the big three Detroit manufacturers are reported to be far apart with less than two weeks to reach a new labor contract. A strike that seems increasingly likely could be a blow to the economy. — Electric cars washed in Florida floodwaters have been spontaneously bursting into flames. The salt from sea water acts as a conductor creating short circuits and fire. — Shipwreck hunters have revealed that in July they found the schooner Trinidad that sank in 270 feet of water in Lake Michigan back in 1881. The wreck is said to be “remarkably intact” with such items as plates, bells, and anchors well preserved. 

BELOW THE FOLD: As many as 100 Connecticut state troopers have been accused of reporting traffic stops that never occurred in order to make themselves look more productive. A recent audit found “a pattern of record manipulation” and said there was a “high likelihood” that at least 25,966 recorded stops between 2014 and 2021 were false.

  Let’s all drive in Connecticut.

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