Weekly News Roundup - 8/16/24
The Paris Olympics Conclude, Sadly // Harris achieves polling lead // Ceasefire talks intensify
Welcome to the 32nd Weekly News Roundup of 2024. The archive for all weekly news roundups is here. If you notice stories or issues you’d like to see mentioned in these roundups, let me know. In 2024, the Border Stalkers Substack is featuring one news update a week, and one book a month, with weekly posts on each book. The book of the month schedule is here.
These weekly dispatches are designed for people who may not have time to do more than glance at the headlines, or who want to stay informed without becoming obsessed by politics and news. These roundups are a targeted way to get a sense of the shape of the past week on the national level. Without such a map, we can be disoriented, not knowing where we have been over the past several days, or where we may be going.
But by spending concentrated, limited time thinking about the big picture, we can devote more of our time to where “agency and justice begin and end,” as Karen Swallow Prior put it: “on the ground, bodily, in community and real relationships, in flesh and blood.”
Quotes of the Week
The Sphere aspires to be a colossus of oblivion, a cutting-edge incarnation of our desire to be amused to death—a brick-and-mortar manifestation of a virtual-reality headset, built to help us achieve “total entertainment forever,” as the Father John Misty song goes. Fattened up and blissed out, floating through virtual space, like the mother-ship émigrés in “Wall-E,” we jam our senses with sounds and visions, to the point of obliteration. - Nick Paumgarten
Big Stories This Week
The Paris Olympics concluded, after providing many in the world with a joyful, hopeful respite from news of war, political division, and other crises. The games also rejuvenated France and the city of Paris. “Paris became a party again and France found itself,” Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris Games organizing committee, said at the closing ceremony. “We saw ourselves as a people of incorrigible grumblers. We woke up in a country of wild fans who would not stop singing.” The impact on France may be the most enduring, as Roger Cohen wrote in the Times. "Uncompromising French ambition has marked the remarkable 16 days of the Olympics, a miracle of detailed planning and execution at a cost of about $4.8 billion. France came into the Games shaken by two rounds of an unexpected legislative election that yielded a political impasse. It will exit with those problems unsolved but with a new self-confidence ... Even if political problems flare again in the coming weeks, as they almost certainly will, a core pride at a remarkable accomplishment, impossible without the contribution of all sectors of society, appears likely to endure for a long time. It is as if the renowned schools of France that produce world-class engineers and world-class analytical thinkers found a way to fuse with the creators of French artistic beauty, turning Paris into a sumptuous, efficient stadium and its sometimes surly inhabitants into some of the kindest people on earth.”
Vice President Kamala Harris gained a slim but clear lead over Donald Trump in polling averages of the presidential race, riding a weeks-long wave of momentum after her replacement of President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Trump continued to struggle to regain a dominant share of the country's attention, a battle he has often won in the past. That dynamic promised to continue as Democrats gather in Chicago next week for their party's nominating convention, a four-day affair.
Mpox was declared a global health emergency, raising concerns about the spread of a new variant of the flu-like virus.
Ukraine said it had gained control of 400 square miles of Russian territory after a surprise attack, but that it did not plan to occupy the territory.
Ceasefire talks in the Middle East intensified as the U.S., Quatar and Egypt pressed to achieve a breakthrough to avoid a broader regional war.
Week in Review
Saturday, Aug. 10
A new round of surveys shows Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in the three key Rust Belt states that will likely decided the election, where Trump had been leading Biden: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The Trump campaign says some of its internal e-mail had been hacked and said a recent Microsoft report highlighting hacking by Iranian agents suggested that was the source. Trump encouraged Russia to release Hillary Clinton's hacked e-mails in 2016, and his campaign aides said mainstream media outlets should print and report on the contents. The Trump campaign says now the press should not print and report on the contents of material stolen from it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledges that his military has entered Russian territory five days after the initial incursion, saying that he wanted to “push the war out into the aggressor’s territory.”
In Las Vegas, Kamala Harris pledges to work to get rid of taxes on tips paid to service workers, following Trump's promise to do the same.
Sunday, Aug. 11
The Paris Olympics holds its closing ceremony. After 16 days of games that enraptured Paris and the world, the French transfer the Olympic flag to Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Games. Tom Cruise jumps into the Stade d'France and then takes the flag to LA, where the Red Hot Chili Peppers play on a stage at the beach. "The mood shift between the arty, conceptual French event and the brash loudness of Los Angeles is whiplash-inducing," notes the New York Times' Elizabeth Vincentelli.
Monday, Aug. 12
France, Germany and Britain endorse a push by the U.S., Quatar and Egypt to achieve a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, seeking to head off an escalating regional conflict.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump talk for two hours on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Ukraine's top general claims that their military now controls nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory, a week after its surprise attack.
Tuesday, Aug. 13
The Ukrainian military says it does not plan to occupy Russian territory it has taken during its attack.
Wednesday, Aug. 14
The World Health Organization declares the new mpox variant's spread in Africa is a global health emergency, seeking to intensify efforts to contain and vaccinate against the virus.
Inflation drops below 3% for the first time since 2021, a milestone in the government's battle against rising prices.
Thursday, Aug. 15
Negotiators from the U.S., Egypt and Quatar meet in Doha with a delegation from Israel to press forward with ceasefire talks, which were expected to last through at least Friday.
Vice Presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walz agree to debate Oct. 1
A first case of a more serious variant of mpox, a contagious virus that causes flu-like symptoms, is found in Sweden, the first known case outside of Africa.
A Russian court sentences a 32-year old woman, a dual citizen of Russia and the U.S. who lives in Los Angeles, to 12 years in a Russian jail for donating $52 to a Ukrainian nonprofit that the court said gives aid to the Ukrainian military. The woman, Ksenia Karelina, was arrested in February during a visit to an industrial city in Russia more than 800 miles from Moscow.
Brazil and Columbia back off claims that Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro should release detailed voting data — which he has not done — to counter evidence that he overwhelmingly lost the last month's election, and suggest a do over over of the election.
Friday, Aug. 16
Negotiations continue in Doha over a ceasefire agreement. In Gaza, one person tells the Associated Press: "Oh Lord, we hope they reach an agreement and the war ends, because the population has been annihilated completely. People have no breath left in them anymore. People are tired.”
Interesting Reads
The Olympics, a Triumph of Ambition, Lift France From Its Gloom, by Roger Cohen for The New York Times
Paris, Uncharacteristically Giddy, Bids Au Revoir to the Olympics, by Catherine Porter for The New York Times
Los Angeles Has Promised a ‘Car-Free’ Olympics in 2028. Can It Do It?, by Jill Cowan and Soumya Karlamangla for The New York Times
Americans’ refusal to keep paying higher prices may be dealing a final blow to US inflation spike, by Christopher Rugaber for The Associated Press
High School Project on Genocide Was a Portent of Real-Life Events, by Samuel G. Freedman for The New York Times
The Post-liberal Catholics Find Their Man, by Damon Linker for The Atlantic
China’s Extreme Fan Culture Makes Olympic Gold a Mixed Blessing, by Vivian Wang for The New York Times
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, one-time hero to election deniers, convicted in computer breach, by Colleen Slevin for The Associated Press
I Said Democrats Should Pander More, and Kamala Is Delivering, by Josh Barro for Slow Boring
The Dramatic Turnaround in Millennials’ Finances, by Joe Pinsker and Veronica Dagher for The Wall Street Journal
The Rise and Fall of the Economic Pivot to Asia, by Robert D. Blackwill and Richard Fontaine for Foreign Policy
Ukraine’s swift push into the Kursk region shocked Russia and exposed its vulnerabilities, by The Associated Press