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Arson attacks ahead of Olympics

Arson attacks targeted France’s rail network on the day of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. The country’s sports minister said the fires on high-speed lines to and from Paris — including the Eurostar to London — were “coordinated sabotage.” The perpetrators are unknown, although a Russian national was recently arrested on suspicion of plotting “destabilization.” Paris faces some of the greatest security challenges of any Olympics: Its decentralized model, with the opening ceremony in public view on the Seine River and events spread around the city, makes it harder to police. There are also threats of strikes, all while France operates without a functioning government. Every host city gets nervous before the Olympics, but Paris may have more reason than most.

Harris’ tough talk on Israel

US Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee for the White House, struck a tough tone in talks with Israel’s leader over his country’s conduct of the war in Gaza. The remarks — which appeared more strident than President Joe Biden’s — have both domestic and international implications. At home, Harris is looking to energize young voters, among whom the Middle East conflict is a major issue, and capitalize on momentum, with recent surveys showing her narrowing the polling gap with Donald Trump, and with former President Barack Obama officially endorsing her today. Abroad, the comments help define her foreign policy and, more immediately, could complicate efforts to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, critics complained.

South Asian heritage in US politics

The growing role of politicians with South Asian heritage in the US points to the complexity of categorizing them in American ethnic-minority terminology. Though Vice President Kamala Harris, erstwhile Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and even the wife of Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance all count at least one South Asian-born parent, none are from underprivileged households. They are what the economist Shruti Rajagopalan called “thrice-selected” — by virtue of their parents’ elite caste background, educational track record, and immigration success. Still, their prominence speaks to the opportunities the US offers migrants. “Whether Harris likes idlis for breakfast may be noteworthy,” another scholar wrote in The Indian Express, “but it is of little consequence in explaining her political trajectory.”

Chinese diplomacy in spotlight

Chinese diplomatic talks pointed to Beijing’s efforts to assuage both partners and rivals over its alleged aggressive tactics in the region and beyond. The country’s foreign minister met with his Russian counterpart a day after hosting Ukraine’s top diplomat, and was due to meet with the US secretary of state, discussions that highlighted Beijing’s growing role as — depending on who is making the claim — provocateur or defender in the South China Sea; warmonger or neutral arbiter in Ukraine. Washington in particular does not expect ties to improve: China is “very aggressive, it’s confrontational in many ways, it’s very competitive,” the US ambassador to Beijing said recently, “and that’s why we are where we are.”

Venezuela readies for polls

Venezuela’s opposition called on the country’s military to respect the results of Sunday’s presidential election, a vote the government is expected to lose — if it is free and fair. The country’s armed forces have long backed President Nicolás Maduro, who has vowed to win this election “by hook or by crook,” and who has warned that protests against his regime could plunge the country into a “bloodbath.” Meanwhile the US has warned that a rigged vote could lead to the reimposition of sanctions. “When you see… that the love of freedom and the hopes for democracy haven’t yet been asphyxiated by the dictatorship, you understand that change will prevail,” one of Venezuela’s leading journalists wrote in El País.

Mexican cartel bosses arrested

US officials arrested two top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s biggest traffickers of fentanyl and cocaine. Ismael Zambada García, also known as El Mayo, and the son of his long-time associate, Joaquín Guzmán, alias El Chapo, were detained shortly after landing in Texas, part of a sting operation set up by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Although their capture represents a coup — El Mayo had been on the US’ most-wanted list for decades — experts believe it will do little to stem the flow of drugs across the border. According to Reuters, it takes just $3,600 and a web browser to set up a lab capable of producing $3 million worth of fentanyl.

Starvation fears in Ethiopia’s Tigray

More than two million people are at risk of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a humanitarian crisis driven by drought, crop failure, and insecurity following a brutal civil war. According to the BBC, swaths of the region have dried up during periods when farmers would usually be taking advantage of seasonal rains. Meanwhile a reservoir on which the region’s residents depend has emptied. In response, thousands have fled to refugee camps, leaving behind their homes and possessions. “We had animals. We used to harvest crops in winter,” a mother of five whose husband died in the war said. “In short, we had the best lifestyle. Now we are down to nothing.”

On this week’s Mixed Signals from Semafor Media, Ben Smith and Nayeema Raza debate whether Kamala Harris can bring brat to the ballot box, and how memes and the “childless cat lady” stereotype are expanding the K-hive. Then, they call up Veep executive producer Frank Rich to get his notes on an election month that’s stranger than fiction and ask whether an idealist show like The West Wing could be made today. Finally, Max Tani joins for Blindspots on RFK’s phone-free farming program.

AI gets medal score at math Olympiad

DeepMind’s new artificial intelligence models achieved a silver medal score at the International Mathematical Olympiad. AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry II learn by a trial-and-error approach like DeepMind’s AlphaGo, which played billions of games of Go against itself to become superhuman. But they don’t understand problems written in English, so they were linked to Google’s ChatGPT-like AI Gemini, which translated the questions into programming language. The system answered four out of six questions, behind just 58 out of 609 of the best human mathematicians in the world. It’s a “substantial step” towards AI breaking new frontiers in math, Nature reported, and shows that generative AI can be used to guide specialist models to help them understand natural-language problems.

Shingles vaccine may help prevent dementia

Vaccination against shingles may reduce the risk of dementia, new research suggested. Scientists compared dementia rates among people vaccinated with one of two vaccines against the herpes zoster virus which causes shingles and chickenpox, and with people only vaccinated against other diseases. Those given the newer vaccine were 17% less likely than others given the older one to develop dementia, and around 25% less likely than the rest. The findings back up earlier work, and researchers called for full clinical trials: “We… need to see how many years the effect might last and whether we should vaccinate people at a younger age,” one scientist told the Financial Times.

Possible life signs on Mars rock

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance found rocks with intriguing signs that look suspiciously like fossils of microbial life. The colorful spots containing iron, organic chemicals, and phosphate reveal ancient chemical reactions that, on Earth, often indicate bacteria. Perseverance “zapped that rock with lasers and X-rays,” a project scientist said, and has exhausted its scientific capabilities: Until a future mission retrieves the rover’s samples for lab studies, we won’t know the truth, but the finding was “a big surprise.” That said, we’ve all seen NASA getting excited about things that could be aliens in the past, and none of them were. Our Bayesian priors ought to be that the marks were made by chemistry rather than biology.

• Taiwan holds annual military drills that had been disrupted by Typhoon Gaemi.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet with former US President Donald Trump in Florida.
• The Farnborough International Airshow in the UK concludes.

The number of hours during which energy prices in Europe were negative last year. The continent faces a particular problem: The rapid rollout of wind and solar energy has brought down energy prices in some regions to historic lows, notably during summer when solar production peaks. To adapt, grid operators across the region have to send energy to areas with energy deficits, shift demand to hours when it’s plentiful, or find an efficient way to store the excess, all of which present significant challenges. “Ultra-cheap power is something to be celebrated,” The Economist argued. “But as Europe is now discovering, it can be tough to exploit.”

The Mondadori bookstore in Milan recommends The Women at Hitler’s Table by Rosella Postorino. Her 2018 novel about a woman conscripted to be Adolf Hitler’s food taster during World War II has an “ability to beautifully convey feelings of guilt, shame, love and remorse in a single gesture,” according to one review. Buy it from Mondadori or from your local bookstore.

• Africa’s food crisis needs innovative funding.
• China’s relationship with the US is in for a reckoning.
• Young voters are moving toward Harris and feeling less ‘meh’ about voting.