Just hours before Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a series of apparently coordinated arson attacks were reported on France’s high-speed rail network. No one has claimed responsibility yet. Before the games, protests highlighted the displacement of thousands of migrants, unhoused people and other vulnerable communities as “social cleansing.
As Paris hosts today’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympics, we speak with Lebanese photojournalist Christina Assi of Agence France-Presse, who carried the Olympic torch Sunday in Paris to honor journalists wounded or killed on the job. Assi lost her leg in the same Israeli attack that killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon on October 13, and says carrying the Olympic torch was a great opportunity to highlight the “atrocities” happening in the region.
We speak to two doctors who are part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7 and wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo of Israel. The group includes evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza’s population.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, many Democratic lawmakers skipped the speech and held an alternative event on Capitol Hill to promote peace. The panel discussion featured Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers who have both lost family members to violence. Inon’s parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
Yesterday, former President Donald Trump told a group of supporters that they won’t have to vote again if they elect him to the presidency. “You won’t have to do it anymore,” Trump said at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit in Florida. “It’ll be fixed; it’ll be fine; you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.
Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty
Fencers can be very demonstrative during matches, and the impact of participating in the Olympics seems to intensity the many reactions of all competitors. Today’s photos from Paris, on day one of the Games, captured so many faces full of raw emotion, and I felt that this was a fantastic representative image of the moment.
Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here.
With 100 days to go until Election Day, the bid for the White House has the energy of a new race: Donald Trump’s campaign to defeat Joe Biden has been turned upside down since Kamala Harris became the Democrat’s presumptive nominee for president.
For two years, the fire gods cut California a break. The winter rains came down heavy, and brought the state’s yearslong drought to an end. Plants started growing again. Grasses were green. The poppies bloomed larger than normal. For awhile, living here meant seeing the place’s better nature—going outside and exploring the mountains and lakes and vineyards, without thinking of breathing in toxic smoke plumes.
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Many of us have been told that perfectionism is unhealthy. We know we’re supposed to simply “do the best we can” and “go easy on ourselves.” But for the most perfectionist-inclined among us, that’s much easier said than done.
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.
The FTC action would target often high costs by trying to curb rebates it says drug makers pay to steer patients to their brand name products.
Abortion opponents know they need to win hearts and minds. They’re using women’s stories to do so.
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.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, many Democratic lawmakers skipped the speech and held an alternative event on Capitol Hill to promote peace. The panel discussion featured Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers who have both lost family members to violence. Inon’s parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
Well, that was a nice idea in theory. Paris held the first-ever Olympics opening ceremony to take place outside a stadium—and on one of the loveliest settings in the world, the Seine. Athletes paraded not by foot but by boat, waving flags from sleek cruising pontoons, as pageantry unfolded on bridges and riverbanks. The aquatic format promised to do more than just showcase the architectural beauty of Paris or convey the magic of strolling across the Pont Neuf with fresh bread in hand.
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.
The current political climate is suffused with nostalgia for supposedly better times. I remember my own childhood, and those days weren’t better—but they had their sugary moments.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
All airlines are now the same.
François-Xavier Marit / AFP / Getty
Following the Parade of Nations on the Seine River, athletes and spectators watch as lasers light up the sky around the Eiffel Tower, at the Trocadero venue, during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024.
This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
Yesterday OpenAI made what should have been a triumphant entry into the AI-search wars: The start-up announced SearchGPT, a prototype tool that can use the internet to answer questions of all kinds. But there was a problem, as I reported: Even the demo got something wrong.
Yesterday, NASA announced that one of its Mars rovers had sampled a very, very intriguing rock. At first glance, the rock looks much like the rest of the red planet—rugged, sepia-toned, dry. But it’s arguably the most exciting one that robotic space explorers have ever come across. The rock, NASA said in a press release, “possesses qualities that fit the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life.”
Of course it would happen like this.
Just hours before Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a series of apparently coordinated arson attacks were reported on France’s high-speed rail network. No one has claimed responsibility yet. Before the games, protests highlighted the displacement of thousands of migrants, unhoused people and other vulnerable communities as “social cleansing.
As Paris hosts today’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympics, we speak with Lebanese photojournalist Christina Assi of Agence France-Presse, who carried the Olympic torch Sunday in Paris to honor journalists wounded or killed on the job. Assi lost her leg in the same Israeli attack that killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon on October 13, and says carrying the Olympic torch was a great opportunity to highlight the “atrocities” happening in the region.
We speak to two doctors who are part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7 and wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo of Israel. The group includes evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza’s population.
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.
The FTC action would target often high costs by trying to curb rebates it says drug makers pay to steer patients to their brand name products.