A Deadly Blast in Pakistan, Ukraine Counteroffensive, Trucking Firm Yellow Folds

Dozens were killed in a bombing in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border.

The attack carried the hallmarks of the violent extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State, or the fault lines in Afghanistan spreading to its neighbor.

Amir Martinez with Leila Fadl, and this is up first from NPR News.

And one of the country's biggest and oldest trucking firms is collapsing, taking 30,000 jobs down with it.

This is the largest trucking bankruptcy in the history of the United States.

The company, Yellow, is declaring bankruptcy, and that's after it got a $700 million pandemic loan from the government. Stay with us, we've got the news you need to start your day.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wise, the app that makes.

Managing your money in different currencies easy.

With Wise, you can send and spend money internationally at the mid-market exchange rate.

No guesswork and no hidden fees. Learn more about how Wise could work for you at Wise..com.

On the Ted Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

Technologies that say, I care about you, I love you, I'm here for you, take care of me.

The pros and cons of artificial intimacy. That's on the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. A suicide bombing at a political rally near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan has killed dozens of people and injured some 200..

It was one of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan this year, and it comes as the country prepares for elections this fall.

On the line with us is NPR's international correspondent Dia Hadid. She covers Pakistan. Good morning.

Good morning Layla.

So what do we know about what happened?

Well, more details are emerging now. According to our local media report, the bomber was carrying over 22 pounds of explosives and he struck just as a guest speaker got on stage. Videos shared on Twitter showed the aftermath. In one, a man with bloodied legs dangling off the back of an open-backed jeep is rushed away, and another shows medics placing body parts into coffins.

Disturbing descriptions. Do we know why this rally, this place was targeted?

Well, it occurred in a district called Bajor, and it straddles the Afghan border. And it spotlights, in part, how violence has been spilling over into Pakistan since the Taliban seized Afghanistan nearly two years ago, and that violence has largely been attacks on soldiers and police. It's the work of a Pakistani offshoot of the Taliban and a local insurgent group. But this attack was different.

So what do you mean by a different kind of spillover?

Right, well. The Taliban have been killing suspected Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan and clerics sympathetic to the group. And Islamic State has been striking back against the Taliban and its ideological enablers, and this political party is sympathetic to the Taliban. But it's in Pakistan, so it seems that ISIS may be taking this fight across the border.

In the last couple of months, we've seen that propaganda. And it's not just Pashto and the Farsi versions of the Islamic State of Khorasan publications, but also some of the Arabic publications now clearly said that the group was a target.

And you see that the Taliban-Isis conflict has spilled over into Pakistan in the past. But this attack was big and politically sensitive because the party in question is part of the current Pakistani government coalition. So for this, I also spoke to security researcher Abdul Basit. He's at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

So these two groups have been going back and forth, killing each other. The war has now extended and spilling over into, I mean, it was already in Pakistan, but now it is expanding.

So how is Pakistan responding to this?

Well, security researchers like Abdul Basit say Pakistan's military has to improve intelligence gathering and win over the hearts and minds of locals. It's not something, though, that the Pakistani military has done well in the past, but the stakes are quite high right now. Elections are expected in October this year, and it's hard to see how that will happen if a political party remains targeted like this.

NPR's Diya Hadid, Thank you for your reporting, Diya.

Thank you, Leila.

Ukraine's troops are inching forward on the battlefield, slowly pushing Russian forces out of occupied Ukrainian land.

Yeah, they recently liberated a village in the southeast. That's key to Ukraine's success on the southern front, but there's still a long way to go. Meanwhile, Russia is blaming Ukraine for a series of drone attacks in Moscow. Ukrainian leaders say. Russians should know what it feels like to be under attack.

Joining us now from Kyiv is NPR's Joanna Kakissis Hi Joanna.

Hi Leila.

So Ukraine is touting the liberation of this small town in the southeast. Why are Ukrainians calling it a strategic victory?

So yeah, this village is called Staromayorskoy, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced its liberation himself. On his social media accounts, he posted a video of soldiers in the village holding a Ukrainian flag and shouting glory to Ukraine. We spoke to one of the soldiers who was there. He goes by the call sign Kherson, which is another liberated city in southern Ukraine, and he told us that they captured Russian soldiers. But it was a very, very tough win.

The destruction there is catastrophic, there is not a single surviving house, there is not even an entire surviving tree, there is only scorched earth.

No people, he said. There were only some abandoned animals. But from a military standpoint, he and his commanders call this a strategic win in a counteroffensive where progress has been very slow and very hard fought. They say that reclaiming Staromayorskoy is just one line of attack in the South that aims to cut off resupply routes for Russia's troops. This line of attack goes through Staromayorskoy to the occupied port city of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov, and another line to the west goes through the occupied city of Melitopol.

So very strategic, but also what you're describing quite tragic. As they go into the city. Now, this area isn't the only major front in the counteroffensive. What's going on elsewhere?

So Ukraine is fighting on at least three major fronts. The one we just talked about is in the south, there's another one in the east, around another absolutely destroyed city, Bakhmut. The soldiers we spoke to there say there is steady but very slow progress in recapturing that city and surrounding villages. And there's another front in the northeast where the Russians are attacking.

It's really a story of exhaustion. Our armed forces are trying to wear down our enemy's defenses, and our enemy is fighting back hard. At the same time, we're eager to move forward to continue our offensive.

In the few seconds we have left, what about the spate of drone attacks on Moscow?

So Ukraine is not officially claiming those drone attacks. But after one hit a high rise in Moscow, President Zelensky said. Quote war is returning to Russia. And such attacks on Russia's symbolic centers are fair considering that Russia has been attacking Ukraine cities nearly every day for the last 18 months.

NPR's Joanna Kakis is in Kyiv. Thanks, Joanna.

You're welcome.

Some 30,000 people are losing their jobs as a shipping company. Yellow appears to have collapsed.

During the pandemic, the government deemed yellow essential to national security and propped it up with $700 million in loans.

NPR's Camilla Domonosky joins us now to talk about what's happening. Good morning Camilla, Good morning Mila. So Yellow isn't a household name like Fedex. If you could, just tell us what this company is.

Yeah, folks might've seen the trucks on freeways, they say yellow on an orange background, and it used to be known as YRC Freight. This is the third biggest company in the less than truckload sector. Which is, if you have to ship something that's bigger than a parcel, too big for a parcel service, but not big enough to take up an entire shipping container. You use a company like this, we're talking about 30,000 jobs here, right? This is significant.

What have we heard from the company about the shutdown?

From yellow, nothing. They haven't responded to our requests for comment. But the teamsters, which represent their unionized drivers, say that they have been notified that the company is shutting down. The union had previously warned drivers to pick up their personal items from work and prepare for the worst. The filing itself is expected as early as today.

And what do we know about why the company is going bankrupt?

Yeah, this has been seen coming for a little while now, and the company has previously blamed the teamsters. Yellow has been trying to restructure when executives say that that would have been essential for the company to survive. In legal filings, they said the union was blocking the effort to restructure and quote knowingly and intentionally, triggered a death spiral for Yellow. Just this month, the threat of a strike scared a lot of customers away.

Now we mentioned that the government declared this company essential to national security. Does this mean the U.S is less safe without it?

Yeah, there's no reason to think that. A Congressional Oversight board has raised a lot of red flags about this loan, this pandemic era loan to the company, including, Yeah, why would the third largest, less than truckload shipper be essential to national security when other companies can ship this stuff, too? There's no good answer to that, really. The government didn't just give out this big loan.

I'm PRS. Camilla Domanosky, Thank you Camilla, Thanks Leila.

And I'm Amy Martinez Up First is produced by Lily Quiroz and Claire Murashima. Our editors are Amra Pashuk, Ali Schweitzer, Emily Kopp and Michael Sullivan. Our director is Katie Klein, our technical director is Zach Coleman, with engineering support from Nisha Hynes.

And thanks for listening to Up First. You can find more in-depth coverage of the stories we talked about today and much more. On NPR's Morning Edition, the radio show Amy Martinez and I host along with Steve Inskeep and Michelle Martin. Find Morning Edition and your NPR station at stations.npr..org or just turn on the radio.