Oli Scarff / AFP / Getty
Every time a new Olympic Games takes place, photojournalists endeavor to cover the action in novel and compelling ways—not only taking advantage of new technology, but also using their professional eye to discover new angles or framing. AFP photographer Oli Scarff placed an underwater camera in just the right position to capture close views of swimmers as they pass by above.
Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET on July 31, 2024
When the Woodstock festival took place in August 1969, it was famously only the second gig for the newly minted supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. “We’re scared shitless,” Stephen Stills, informed an audience of 400,000-plus during their set. Watching their performance in Woodstock, Michael Wadleigh’s legendary documentary film, you can see the nerves, and the skill, on display.
We speak with legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw about the historic presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is facing a slew of racist and misogynist attacks from Donald Trump and others as she runs to be the first woman and the first woman of color to occupy the White House. Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality,” says Harris’s candidacy is leading to backlash from those who fear the emergence of a more diverse country.
Fears of all-out war in the Middle East are growing after top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday. Haniyeh was in Iran for the inauguration of the country’s new president. Iran and Hamas both blamed Israel, which has not officially claimed responsibility but had previously vowed to kill Haniyeh and other top Hamas leaders over the October 7 attack.
Advocates are seeking to block referendums in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Montana and South Dakota.
Do charms and trinkets help you stand out in a materialistic monoculture?
It works if you’re vegetarian, too.
Germany is having a heated debate about it.
Curing your travel envy doesn’t have to break the bank.
The position aligns with President Joe Biden but clashes with some abortion-rights activists championing her White House bid.
Parents’ stories about how their children were exploited and bullied online are resonating in Congress.
Stanley Goldfarb and his group, Do No Harm, say Republicans need new advisers because major medical groups have embraced progressive ideology.
Heading into the final day of the Republican Party’s first national gathering since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, the issue has barely received a passing mention.
The Federal Trade Commission investigation of DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care follows years of consolidation in the dialysis industry.
Though hiring remains strong, voters blame President Joe Biden for persistent high prices.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
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Wildfires have been ripping across the American West. Last week, the first major fire that California has seen since 2021 quickly became one of the 10 largest in the state’s history.
Every second of every day, people across the world type tens of thousands of queries into Google, adding up to trillions of searches a year. Google and a few other search engines are the portal through which several billion people navigate the internet. Many of the world’s most powerful tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have recently spotted an opportunity to remake that gateway with generative AI, and they are racing to seize it.
Jamie Squire / Getty
It is an incredible moment when the support of a world-class team pays off and everyone can celebrate their moment of victory. This amazing shot captures the reactions of the gymnast Simone Biles and her teammates in the background, as Biles finishes her floor-exercise routine and they realize that Team USA will win the artistic-gymnastics women’s team final. Photographed on day four of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, at Bercy Arena.
Google is running a new commercial during the Olympics. It’s about a cute little girl—she’s a runner, and she loves Team USA’s Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, a world-record-holding track star who won two Olympic gold medals in 2021. The little girl wants to write her a letter. So Dad fires up an AI chatbot.
“Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone how inspiring she is,” he asks Google’s Gemini.
The word mother is strikingly similar in languages all across the world: From Swedish (mamma) to Swahili (mama), Czech (matka) to Chinese (mama), most use some combination of the same two sounds, m and ah, to refer to the female parent. This consistency across space and time makes physiological sense, the pioneering linguist Roman Jakobson explained. One of the easiest sounds for a baby to make is ah.
Protests erupted on Monday in Venezuela after sitting President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of Sunday’s presidential election despite the opposition’s accusations of election fraud. Maduro has countered by accusing the opposition of attempting to stage a fascist coup. We go to Caracas for an update from Venezuelanalysis reporter Andreína Chávez, who says the opposition’s claims are still unsubstantiated.
New details have emerged about Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s past comments that continue to plague the Trump campaign, with the Ohio senator having made repeated remarks over the years denigrating people without children as “cat ladies” and “sociopaths.” We speak with ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll, who has reported on Vance and says he is “demonizing huge swaths of Americans” and embodies a “really extreme version of conservative politics.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made headlines this week after suggesting the 2024 election could be the last U.S. election if he wins in November. We look at a secret organization of wealthy Christians called Ziklag that is backing Trump’s efforts by working to purge more than a million voters from the rolls in battleground states and mobilize Republican voters to back Trump.
Just a month after the Supreme Court granted former President Donald Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in office, President Joe Biden has laid out a plan to reform the court. On Monday, Biden called for 18-year term limits, an enforceable code of ethics and an end to presidential immunity, though he stopped short of supporting court expansion.
It works if you’re vegetarian, too.
Germany is having a heated debate about it.
