Flagship

Israel and Hezbollah near all-out war

International leaders are scrambling to prevent a war between Israel and Hezbollah. Over the weekend, Israel struck several Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon, retaliation for a suspected Hezbollah rocket strike in Israeli-occupied Syria that killed 12 children on Saturday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut his US visit short to convene his security council after the attacks; French leader Emmanuel Macron was among the voices calling on him to show restraint. Meanwhile, Turkey threatened to invade Israeli territory, and Iran warned against “any new adventures” in Lebanon, as Israeli officials reportedly weighed a strike on Beirut. Regardless of what exactly happens next, “We’re going to get a higher level of violence” in the region, a Middle East analyst told The Wall Street Journal.

How Kamala Harris could win

Kamala Harris can win the US election, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote, a change of heart inspired by Harris’ strong performance in her first days as a candidate. Harris quickly secured broad party support and raised $200 million in her first week. “I had long thought Kamala Harris couldn’t beat Donald Trump. That’s wrong. She can,” Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal. Harris can galvanize young “TikTok voters,” liberal women left devastated by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, and a newly energized Democratic campaign machine that is swinging into action now Biden is out of the running. However, a tightening race will also bring out the Trump campaign’s worst instincts, Noonan warned: “Everything is about to get meaner, more vicious and primal.”

Olympics begins, controversies included

The Paris Olympics officially began on Friday with a glitzy opening ceremony, and the controversies quickly followed. Officials apologized to Christian groups for a drag skit and again for misidentifying South Korea as North Korea, while high pollution in the Seine posed a problem for the triathlon swimming heats. More broadly, the exclusion of Russian athletes and inclusion of Israeli ones has attracted criticism. It’s déjà vu for Paris: Both the city’s 1904 and 1924 games were held amid “geopolitical tensions, far-right turmoil, and domestic apathy,” Foreign Policy noted, adding that the games have survived the tumult and will again. The athletes have also started to distract from any issues; US gymnast Simone Biles made her much-anticipated debut on Sunday to a celebrity-studded crowd.

China glimpses LGBTQ freedoms

Chinese social media users engaged in rare mockery of the country’s state broadcaster CCTV over LGBTQ representation at the Paris Olympics. The topics “CCTV is silent” and “drag queens” trended on Weibo for a full day alongside video clips after CCTV presenters appeared stunned to silence during the ceremony, which featured drag queens and two men kissing. Users joked that CCTV became “Westernized” — a play on the government’s stance that LGBTQ rights are a Western idea — while others praised the ceremony for enabling a display of diversity in China that would otherwise have been quashed by state censorship. Athletes have in the past used the Olympics as a platform to call out the lack of LGBTQ rights in China.

Bangladesh reaches uneasy peace

Student protesters have ended demonstrations against the Bangladeshi government, and the country’s mobile internet was restored on Sunday. A group of protest leaders said in a statement the government had “already met” their demand to nix controversial job quotas and called for investigations into incidents of arson and other violence that occurred during the demonstrations. But others said the statement was issued under police duress, the Dhaka Tribune reported, after multiple arrests targeting the students. The police crackdown has tarnished the legacy of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as an unassailable autocrat, and further strained the relationship between ordinary Bangladeshis and the government. Instead of trying to “bury the truth,” police should investigate the violence against protesters, the Tribune said in an editorial.

Venezuela heads to the polls

Venezualans cast their ballots Sunday in what polls suggest could be a historic upset for ruling President Nicolás Maduro. But the election has sparked fears of fraud and potential violence; international observers have been largely kept out, and there were reports of delays and other issues keeping voters from the polls. Little-known diplomat Edmundo González is the man running against Maduro: He is a stand-in for the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who was banned from running by Maduro. Results are expected in the coming days. But chaos is perhaps guaranteed regardless of who wins: If Maduro triumphs, he will need to show transparency and help Venezuela “shed its status as an international pariah.” If the opposition wins, Maduro has promised a “bloodbath.”

Meloni vows to ‘relaunch’ China ties

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni vowed to “relaunch” relations with China Sunday. Speaking in Beijing to kick off a five-day tour of the country, Meloni’s comments come just months after pulling Italy out of Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. While Meloni wants to talk trade on her visit, she is also on a mission to help normalize relations with China ahead of the US election in November. She is scheduled to meet Xi Jinping on Monday; Meloni has described Xi as an “important stakeholder” in the Ukraine war, Bloomberg reported, a role Europe may seek to build up to counter Putin’s friendly relations with Xi if the US changes its stance on the war, a likely outcome if Trump gets reelected.

NKorea could do nuclear test soon

North Korea could run a nuclear arms test around the US presidential election to gain international leverage, South Korea’s defense minister warned. The North’s leader Kim Jong Un could feel emboldened by his growing ties with Putin, having pledged “unconditional” support for Russia’s war in Ukraine; Putin has also pledged to veto any UN Security Council sanctions in the event of a nuclear test, Bloomberg noted. Pyongyang has used major political events elsewhere as staging for its provocations as a way to get attention in the past. Now, the North has an arsenal of new missiles, and minister Shin Wonsik said Moscow is giving Pyongyang “technical support” to advance its weapons program, according to the outlet.

Honing in on climate tipping point

Scientists are working to predict whether a huge current system in the Atlantic Ocean will soon hit a tipping point and slow or stop. Known as the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Current, it is the dynamo that sucks water from the tropics up to northern Europe, and if it slows or stops, the world’s climate will change irrevocably and rapidly. In 2023, sibling researchers from Denmark made headlines with a paper that predicted the tipping point may come as soon as 2057, far sooner than other scientists are willing to predict. But while their bold paper hit a nerve among an otherwise cautious research field, Wired reported, one thing is inarguable: It’s not looking good. “We have to do something now,” one of the scientists said.

Rembrandt paint secrets revealed

Chemists revealed how Dutch master Rembrandt created the golden sheen of his famous 1642 work known as The Night Watch. The painting depicts a militia led by two officers, and is famous for its innovative use of light and the distinctive individuality Rembrandt imbued into its subjects. Dutch chemists analyzed the paint used to pick out the golden thread on one of the key protagonists’ outfits and found Rembrandt had mixed a reddish arsenic-based pigment with other mercury- and lead-based ones to create the vivid shade — implying that 17th-century Amsterdam had access to a wider range of materials than researchers previously thought, likely via trade routes from Germany, Austria, and Venice.

July 29:

• Top US, Indian, Japanese, and Australian diplomats meet in Tokyo for the QUAD alliance summit.
• Fast-food giant McDonald’s reports Q2 2024 earnings.
• The Olympics continue with men’s surfing in French Polynesia.

Hungarian-British director Pierre Foldes has become the latest to attempt adapting Haruki Murakami’s notoriously “unfilmable” literary works to screen — and perhaps succeeded. Opening with two earthquakes and characters like a giant frog and a young salesman, Foldes’ film combines six of Murakami’s short stories into a single narrative that drifts between reality and dreamscapes, with the flexibility and imagination that perhaps only animation allows. The film works because it floats “above its source material at an artful distance,” Nikkei Asia wrote, with a “lightness of touch” that previous live-action adaptations lacked. Murakami has also publicly endorsed the film for its sense of creative freedom.

• Harris said she would ‘not be silent’ on Palestinian suffering in Gaza after talks with Netanyahu.
• Dropping out may be the best thing Biden ever did on climate.
• Africa’s richest man scrambles to calm crisis around $20 billion refinery.