Israeli friends report an eerie calm: The hospitals are preparing for mass casualties, while citizens go about their more or less normal lives—and in the evening drag into place the steel plates that shut the windows to their safe rooms. For the residents of southern Lebanon, the atmosphere is no doubt considerably more fearful and uncertain, living as they do in a failed state dominated by Hezbollah that may soon feel the full weight of Israeli fury.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will be the Democratic nominee for vice president. He’s likely been tapped not for his liberal policies but for his amiability and optimism, in a bid to attract voters tiring of the gloom and doom pushed by Donald Trump and J. D. Vance.

In the realm of presidential politics, progressives have become accustomed to disappointment. Joe Biden wasn’t their first (or second) choice in 2020. Nor, for that matter, was Kamala Harris. And Democratic nominees typically pick moderates for their running mates. So when Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her choice for vice president this morning, progressives experienced an unusual feeling: elation.

Oli Scarff / AFP / Getty
In the artistic swimming events, team members can bring a level of intense theatricality to both their performances and their swimwear. Here, members of Team France pose just before entering the pool, facing away from the camera and displaying the faces on the backs of their swim caps, creating a bit of a mind-bending illusion. Photographed during the team free routine at the Olympics Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis, north of Paris.

A federal judge has declared Google a monopolist. In a 277-page decision released yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta concluded that the online-search company abused its dominance and suffocated competitors—in part by paying Apple and Samsung tens of billions of dollars a year to make Google the default search engine on mobile devices.
Does this mean curtains for Googling? Hardly.

Iran lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in April in the hope of changing the rules of engagement: Israel had struck an Iranian consulate in Damascus, and Tehran sought to deter any further such direct actions against its interests. Those hopes were shattered last week when an operation attributed to Israel took out Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, on Iranian soil. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of President Masud Pezeshkian.

In the past 24 hours, Japanese stocks suffered their worst collapse since the 1987 crash, other Asian markets cratered, tech stocks plummeted, the Dow plunged, and several additional global markets suffered from various synonyms for “fell a lot.”
What’s going on in global markets? Any attempt at an explanation has to start here: Nobody actually understands how markets work. This is not a cop-out. It’s a boring statement of fact.

To some people, the story began in a dusty field, gone wild with invasive grass. It was a story about high winds and sparks turning to flames. It was a story about harrowing escapes and people fleeing in terror, the lucky ones rushing into the ocean as the deadly wildfire devoured an entire town. Those were the stories most people heard. Those were the stories most people told. But those of us who know this place and know its history know there is so much more.