The Krasheninnikov volcano sent ash 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) into the sky, according to staff at the Kronotsky Reserve, where the volcano is located. Images released by state media showed dense clouds of ash rising above the volcano.

“The plume is spreading eastward from the volcano toward the Pacific Ocean. There are no populated areas along its path, and no ashfall has been recorded in inhabited localities,” Kamchatka’s emergencies ministry wrote on Telegram during the eruption.

The eruption was accompanied by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake and prompted a tsunami warning for three areas of Kamchatka. The tsunami warning was later lifted by Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Services.

“This is the first historically confirmed eruption of the Krasheninnikov volcano in 600 years,” Olga Girina, head of the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, based in the U.S., however, lists Krasheninnikov’s last eruption as occurring 475 years ago in 1550.

The reason for the discrepancy was not clear.

The Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team said late Sunday that the volcano’s activity was decreasing but that “moderate explosive activity” could continue.

The eruption occurred after a huge earthquake struck Russia’s Far East early Wednesday, an 8.8-magnitude temblor that caused small tsunami waves in Japan and Alaska and prompted warnings for Hawaii, North and Central America and Pacific islands south toward New Zealand.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

Today in history:

On August 3, 2019, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 23 people; after surrendering, the gunman told detectives he targeted “Mexicans” and had outlined the plot in a screed published online shortly before the attack.

Also on this date:

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on his first voyage that took him to the present-day Americas.

In 1852, in America’s first intercollegiate sporting event, Harvard rowed past Yale to win the first Harvard-Yale Regatta.

In 1916, Irish-born British diplomat Roger Casement, a strong advocate of independence for Ireland, was hanged for treason.

In 1936, Jesse Owens of the United States won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics as he took the 100-meter sprint.

In 1972, the U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In 1977, the Tandy Corporation introduced the TRS-80, one of the first widely-available home computers.

In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, seeking pay and workplace improvements (two days later, President Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking union members and barred them from federal employment).

In 2004, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty opened to visitors for the first time since the 9/11 attacks.

In 2018, Las Vegas police said they were closing their investigation into the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting that left 58 people dead at a country music festival without a definitive answer for why Stephen Paddock unleashed gunfire from a hotel suite onto the concert crowd.

In 2021, New York’s state attorney general said an investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo found that he had sexually harassed multiple current and former state government employees; the report brought increased pressure on Cuomo to resign, including pressure from President Joe Biden and other Democrats. (Cuomo resigned a week later.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Football Hall of Fame coach Marv Levy is 100.
• Actor Martin Sheen is 85.
• Football Hall of Famer Lance Alworth is 85.
• Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is 84.
• Film director John Landis is 75.
• Actor JoMarie Payton (TV: “Family Matters”) is 75.
• Hockey Hall of Famer Marcel Dionne is 74.
• Actor John C. McGinley is 66.
• Rock singer/guitarist James Hetfield (Metallica) is 62.
• Actor Lisa Ann Walter (TV: “Abbott Elementary”) is 62.
• Rock musician Stephen Carpenter (Deftones) is 55.
• Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady is 48.
• Actor Evangeline Lilly is 46.
• Olympic swimming gold medalist Ryan Lochte is 41.
• Model Karlie Kloss is 33.

The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

—

Cottle: We’re recording this on Thursday and we are going to talk about Gaza, where things have reached a new level of horror. Recently, a U.N.-affiliated group stated that the worst-case scenario for a famine has been reached there. This seems to have caused a tipping point both globally and here in the U.S., and now politicians who had been mostly quiet when it came to criticizing Israel are starting to speak out.

News clip:

On Monday, MAGA stronghold representative Marjorie Taylor Greene

ramping

up her criticism, becoming the first congressional Republican to call Israel’s actions in Gaza, a quote, genocide.

Donald Trump:

We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are, that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake that.

Bernie Sanders:

U.S. taxpayers have spent many, many billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough.

Cottle: Let’s just get right into it.

Lydia, kick us off. You’ve been reporting on this issue for years — and in particular since October of 2023. Seems like there has been a sea change now in the number of people calling what is going on genocide and denouncing it. What do you think shifted and why now?

Polgreen: Obviously, in the immediate aftermath of the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel, everyone expected a response, and a strong response. And that is, indeed, what we got.

But I think that there were many people, myself included, who were listening closely to the kind of rhetoric that was coming out of elements of the Israeli government and worried that this was going to quite quickly tip into war crimes and possibly genocide.

We’ve reached a point now, with the freezing of aid to Gaza, where we’re seeing what is just an undeniable level of human suffering involving hunger. And hunger, I think, is particularly resonant because it’s such a universal human experience, right?

Historically, as I’ve covered famine and hunger across the world, it does have this ability to activate a response in people. It’s interesting because hunger is very intimately linked with the birth of the idea of and the coining of the word genocide. Raphael Lemkin, the man who invented the term in the Holocaust, really identified hunger and starvation as a critical weapon in this type of war.

And I think people know it when they see it. When you see these pictures of emaciated children, women who are unable to nurse their newborns, it just reaches a level of horror that becomes hard for really anyone, including President Donald Trump, to countenance.

I think that’s a big part of why we’re seeing this shift. There are a lot of longer-term issues that are at play here, but I really think that the emotional resonance of that is a big part of it.

French: Yeah. I’m seeing a shift even amongst people who’ve long supported Israel in this war, like me.

Why would you see that now? I think one of the reasons why you see it is that it’s beginning to dawn on people — it’s a very different scenario than Oct. 8, 9, 10. It’s a very different scenario than even the months immediately following.

In the months immediately following, if you were supporting Israel, you were presuming three things were going to occur: No. 1, there was going to be a very strong Israeli response just as there would be from any country attacked the way Israel was on Oct. 7.

No. 2, you knew immediately it was going to be very, very tragic — bloody, messy, horrible. Because Hamas had wormed its way into the Gazan infrastructure to such an extent that taking on Hamas was going to mean something like what happened when we took ISIS out of Mosul, for example, or out of Raqqa in Syria. This was going to be brutal, brutal urban combat.

And the third thing that a lot of supporters of Israel knew is that immediately, big parts of the international community were going to turn on Israel — and that happened as well. Even in the first few days after the attack, you began to see harsh criticisms of Israel based on its early response.

That No. 3 thing did something, that immediate harsh criticism of Israel — really began to almost inoculate friends of Israel against criticisms of Israel. Because what you saw was, “Wait a minute, right after civilians have been massacred in their homes, you’re already after us for a military response that is exactly the one your own nation would do?”

That hardened people against critique. And why would they start to soften now? There has been fighting for a long time. Hamas has been utterly decimated as a fighting force. Hamas is not what it was before.

Now, it’s not completely dismantled, it’s not completely gone. So, I think there’s a very logical question that people ask, which is: “Wait a minute. After Hamas has been utterly decimated, it has a fraction of its fighting power. It has a fraction of the ability to govern and control Gazans — why are we having possible famine conditions now? Why now? Isn’t this when Hamas is on its back? Isn’t this when Hamas is the weakest it’s been in decades? Why now?”

And I think that has penetrated through, and now the consequences of that Israeli approach are fully coming home to roost now. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Israeli government is reacting with alacrity to the crisis that it absolutely contributed to causing.

Now, we have to talk about Hamas here. Hamas not laying down its arms, Hamas not surrendering the hostages, is a grave, grave issue, and that needs to be discussed more. However, Hamas’ failures to comply with the law of war, Hamas’ failures to release hostages, do not relieve Israel of its own obligations.

Cottle: So, taking a piece of what you’re talking about and what Lydia’s talking about — it does seem like we’ve reached a point where nobody in good conscience or who’s being honest about this, can look at the situation and think this is a situation that’s a regular war, so to speak, where you have hostility on both sides — once you reach the famine point.

Whatever Hamas is still doing, there’s something about starving a people to death that feels somehow different in kind than just bombing — which everybody assumes is a part of war, no matter how horrific it is.

It does seem like nearly two years down the road we’ve come to this. It’s just got a lot of people thinking about, what is the end game on some level?

Polgreen: Well, that’s a great point, Michelle, because there’s also been some really excellent reporting on this. There was a fantastic New York Times Magazine piece earlier in July that really laid out in forensic detail how Benjamin Netanyahu decided to essentially prolong the war in order to hold his coalition together.

There’s also been other reporting that has discounted the idea and shown that there’s really no concrete evidence that there’s been widespread aid diversion by Hamas. Now, aid diversion happens in every conflict situation; David knows this, I know this, having reported and been on the ground in these places.

Cottle: Yeah.

Polgreen: But there have been these fig leaf explanations and I think that really tough-minded, fair reporting has really raised questions about those justifications and rightly so.

Cottle: So, now Europe is upping the pressure, as David has pointed out. Britain has said they will recognize Palestine as a state if Israel doesn’t end the humanitarian crisis. France has said they will recognize statehood in September, period.

So given the escalation of international pressure, what about Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition? What impact is this having?

French: It’s very uncertain because you have to look at this also in a larger context, because in a larger context, Israel is riding very high right now.

Oct. 7 was arguably even worse than the surprise before the Yom Kippur war because so many Israeli civilians were killed.

So, from that low ebb — arguably the worst day in the IDF’s military history, as far as allowing harm to Israeli citizens — the Israeli military has recovered and has won on every front in a way that I think very few people expected.

I think that that has created a sense of impunity, in some ways, that Israel has pressed forward, shed off a lot of restraints that people in the international community wanted to put upon it, and won a series of very decisive and very important military victories.

That has led, I think, Israel to this position where it might be feeling a lot stronger and a lot less dependent on foreign approval and authority than it has in generations.

But that is extraordinarily shortsighted thinking.

The European powers are using what leverage they have — which is not a lot, to be honest — to try to ease this crisis. So, in one sense, you would say, “Is Europe rewarding Hamas by saying, ‘Hey, you get recognition even when Hamas is not dismantled.’”

And I see that argument. However, I keep circling back to the point that I made before: Hamas is decimated. It’s not destroyed. It’s utterly decimated.

I know why this all occurred: because of the initial Israeli approach that it stuck to, which is they did not want to occupy parts of Gaza and take responsibility for the safety and the security and the sustenance of its citizens that — we did that in Iraq, in the surge, we took responsibility for the safety, security, and sustenance of the people in my area of operations. And that way we were able to secure it and hold it against al-Qaida when al-Qaida tried to come back.

Israel didn’t do that. They played sort of this game of Whac-a-Mole with a giant mallet where they’re just pounding every place where they saw terrorists and then did not move into the decimated and destroyed areas and provide safety and security and make sure that Hamas didn’t come back.

So you just have this endless round of Whac-a-Mole. What it is doing is it is annihilating Gaza, and it’s creating exactly the conditions that you have now.

Polgreen: In thinking about the European response and, frankly, the somewhat shifting Trump administration position on all of this, it’s helpful to look at the broader regional context. David is absolutely right that Israel has had this string of quite spectacular victories.

They’ve knocked out the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The spectacular strike on the leadership in Iran, obviously not including the supreme leader, but other major figures there. The things that they’re doing in Syria, for example, that threaten to be incredibly destabilizing.

I think that when European leaders, and when the Trump administration looks at this broader picture and looks at the way that Israel is seeking to essentially export its “mow the lawn” strategy from Gaza — which is essentially to do these occasional decapitations and keep the situation under control beyond its own borders and acting almost like an imperial hegemon in the region that starts to conflict with other core interests of these countries.

The Syrian civil war was a powder keg. Tremendous suffering for Syrians, but it completely reordered the politics of Europe, right? The last thing Europe wants is a destabilized Syria that’s going to send huge numbers of Syrians that they’re desperately trying to get back into Syria, back towards Europe or even to Turkey.

So, I think that there are a variety of complex interests, even beyond the humanitarian horror, that are creating a significant amount of daylight between Israel.

You’re starting to see countries like Germany, for example — which, literally claims as its reason of state the protection of the state of Israel and the Jewish people for very understandable reasons given the history — there’s been a real sense of discomfort in having to reassess “What actually are our interests as Germany in this region of the world and what should our commitment to this particular government and its prosecution of this particular war be?”

Cottle: So, where do either of you think this is going and how it’s going to end? I know that’s a really open-ended evil question for something this big and complicated. But, for instance, a senior Hamas official has told news outlets that the group would hold out for a deal that ends the war with a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Can Israel fight Hamas indefinitely in this way?

French: It cannot fight Hamas indefinitely with this degree of intensity. But what you’re hearing about Hamas saying they want a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — that’s a big part of the problem. What nation, after what Hamas did, would not create buffer zones? Would not expand its ability to interdict if Hamas stays in power, if Hamas is still a governing authority?

This is the consequence of the fundamental mistake Israel made with its approach, which was that it did not want to occupy Gaza, but it wanted to defeat Hamas.

Pick one. That’s the problem. They set a goal that was not attainable with the tactics that they chose. That means that you just have this continued round of conflict.

Now, I’m not saying that if Israel had chosen the more conventional path in response to an armed attack like that — which is an occupation, a temporary governance and a handing over to civilian authorities following the cessation of hostilities and the restoring of peace — that that wouldn’t have been extremely difficult.

It would not have been neat and easy and clean. It would’ve been infinitely better than this.

Cottle: Yeah.

French: And yes, the international community would’ve been yelling at Israel over an occupation. There’s no question about that.

Here’s my concern: Has the ship sailed on that? Is this something now where when I talk about it, it’s just like a bunch of academics in a panel discussion?

Are we now at a point where Israel just has to say, “OK, we’re going to negotiate a hostage release, we’re going to negotiate a ceasefire” — and then have what kind of influence on the ground in Gaza? Allow aid in, but what happens next? It feels a lot more like a ceasefire, although incredibly valuable, is a prelude to almost a “Mad Max”-type situation as people sort out Gaza.

Who’s going to run Gaza?

One other thing: There’s been a lot of defense of Israel on the grounds that when America has fought, particularly in World War II, we were very violent. No doubt, no question. But I will tell you this, when we attained control of an area, we took care of the people in it.

And what happened is that people then in Europe voted with their feet. They could have gone over to the Soviet side, or they could have gone to the American-British side. And by the millions they moved to the American British side.

Why? Because we took care of people, as best we could. And that is not just humane, it’s not just legal. It’s smart to do that. It helps you over the long term to do that — and it’s just so sad, tragic and infuriating to see the total disregard of these lessons from history.

Cottle: Lydia, do you have any sense of what could happen, what should happen that would make this a better outcome?

Polgreen: I think the great difficulty in seeing a positive future comes from the cynical and tragic choices that were made in the past.

It definitely aligns with a lot of what David just said. But I will say that the fact that Hamas was in power in Gaza and was able to sustain itself for so long in Gaza was the result of a deliberate strategy by Benjamin Netanyahu to sow division between the Palestinian Authority — which he wanted to be weak — and allowing Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to the horrific Hamas administration in Gaza.

There’s just so much history here and there’s so many terrible and cynical decisions that have been made that make it very hard to clear away the cobwebs and see a future.

I think Israel is riding high, in one sense, having had all of these military successes beyond the envelope of its own territory and the occupied territories. But I think it’s also showing tremendous strain.

One story that I’ve been tracking for some time is the extraordinary amount of mental health strain on IDF soldiers. We’re seeing a spike in suicides. I would not be surprised if, just as during the Vietnam War in the United States, we’re going to see more and more young people in Israel saying, “Look, I don’t want to be a part of this.”

There was an American former Green Beret who was hired as a contractor to work for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation doing whatever this supposed aid distribution was. And he’s come back and just given absolutely chilling accounts. I think that that takes a toll.

So, I do think that there’s just a deep rot that Israel is going to need to contend with both in its policy postures, but also just in its populace and in its own psyche.

Cottle: So, let’s dig in a bit on President Trump and the situation.

So, he has said that he wants to make sure that humanitarian aid is reaching Gaza, which is breaking from Netanyahu’s claim that there is no starvation, however incredible that seems.

But I want to hear from both of you on how you think Trump’s shift potentially changes the entire equation, at least in terms of America’s relationship with and support for Israel.

Polgreen: I think one of the striking things about Donald Trump — because he’s such a brutish and crude person, who seems to enjoy cruelty — I think one of the repeatedly surprising things about him is that he really does have this almost an ick response to seeing suffering children.

But I don’t know that that actually has real longevity in terms of policy. I think it’s quite possible that we could see a quasi return to just enough aid to — certainly not stem off a wave of death, because I think we’re a little bit too far gone for that — but I think we could turn the page enough to satisfy that impulse of Trump’s to be able to just say, “OK, this is fine.”

Trump has said so many different things about what the end state looks like here from his perspective. We all remember the crazy AI video of the Gaza Riviera. He wants America to take it over. There are going to be bearded belly dancers and glitzy resorts and a gold statue of Donald Trump.

My big fear is that the Trump administration will essentially enable an ethnic cleansing of the area. I have complicated feelings about that because I think that if there are people who are in Gaza who want to leave Gaza in order to be safe, who am I to say they shouldn’t go?

I mean, obviously ——

French: Right.

Polgreen: People have a right to live. At the same time, this is one of the most explosive questions of modern times: What happens to the Palestinian people who are currently experiencing incredible violence, not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank? There is just an incredibly complex set of questions that need to be answered here.

So, do I have a lot of faith that Donald Trump and his administration can somehow finally, magically find a way to solve this problem that has bedeviled American presidents for generations? Absolutely not.

French: I think right now, Trump is riding high a little bit because of the Iran strikes and he is also very much riding high with a specific part of his base — and that would be the evangelical conservative base — very, very, very happy with the way he has backed Israel.

But, at the same time, the right is beginning to split on Israel. It used to be quite united on Israel, but now you have outright antisemites like Tucker Carlson, like Candace Owens and others, who have audiences, sadly, millions and millions strong. And they are relentlessly attacking Israel, just relentlessly attacking Israel.

So, one of the things that could end up out of this conflict for Israel is it could end up with a big military victory, but an American public — both on the right and the left — that is substantially less likely to support Israel in the future.

And my question would be, what did they then gain? What did they gain by continuing and pressing and pressing and pressing, if it’s fracturing relationships that Netanyahu may not need — who knows how much longer he’s going be the leading the Israeli government — but Israel will need.

Cottle: I have been completely fascinated by the growing objections from certain parts of MAGA, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has come out and called the situation genocide and they are pressuring Congress and the administration to do something about this crisis.

What do you think ——

French: But I am not necessarily surprised that Miss Jewish Space Lasers is doing ——

Cottle: I know, but she had been pretty supportive of Israel ——

Polgreen: Yeah, but I think quite significant also is you’re seeing the Joe Rogans, the Theo Vons, people in this podcast universe — and I think they represent not necessarily the MAGA base, because I don’t think either of them represent core MAGA, but they definitely represent the soft fringe that drifted towards Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

And there are a number of forces that are pulling that fringe away from Trump — maybe they go to the Democrats, maybe they become just disengaged — but I do think that the relationship with Israel and Gaza feels wrong to that group of people.

I’m always suspicious of the idea of “common sense,” but there is this version — I mean, common and common to whom? — there is this version of an ordinary person looking at this situation, just being like, what the hell? How can we be part of this?

Cottle: Well, one of the things that I do think has come out of Trump taking the new stand he has is it gives permission for Republicans in Congress who are Trump’s “ride or die” group to also come out and be a little bit more critical. And I don’t know where that will go.

I mean, none of us know where that will go in terms of does any action get taken? But I do think that if the leader has opened up a little bit of wiggle room there, he’s given his followers permission.

Polgreen: Yeah. If you give any kind of credence to the notion that there is an actual idea behind Trump’s America First foreign policy, then you could argue that we’re moving in a direction of having more transactional relationships and fewer relationships that are based on these ironclad ideas that we’re always with you no matter what.

We’ve seen that play out in Ukraine. We’re seeing that play out with NATO and other allies. And it’s been interesting to see how that attitude towards foreign policy actually plays out both on the left and the right.

I think that there was a tremendous amount of praise, for example, for Trump’s decision to recognize al-Shara, the new president of Syria, and drop the sanctions there.

Talk about not giving lectures about human rights to countries and things like that, that’s something that was welcomed not just on the right, but also on the left.

Trying to pull America out of these entanglements, I think, is something that has broad support in various political pockets.

Cottle: That speaks to David’s shortsightedness point about what Israel’s done because as anybody who’s been watching American politics on this, both parties have been pretty strong on that over the years. In recent years, there has been a split in the Democratic base, and I think that has gotten very dramatic in recent months with what’s going on over there.

This has long-term implications for what Israel can expect from America in terms of support. This is not just domestic political machinations that we’re talking about. This has major global repercussions.

Do you think this is a permanent issue in the Democratic Party or at least semi-permanent? Lydia?

Polgreen: I don’t like the word permanent because nothing is permanent ——

Cottle: No, I know.

Polgreen: But I think this is a huge realignment within the Democratic Party. It’s notable to me that Bernie Sanders has put up these resolutions repeatedly in the Senate to try and block the sale of certain kinds of weapons to Israel.

You’ve seen the number of Democratic senators that have voted in favor steadily ticking up, and the most recent vote was a high-water mark of 27 Democratic senators. It included people like Jeanne Shaheen, who’s hardly a hard-left figure and is the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Amy Klobuchar; Tammy Baldwin. I mean, these are normal, centrist Democrats. They’re not wild and woolly leftists.

In the most recent Gallup poll, the support for Israeli military action among Democrats was at 8%. So, I think there’s a feeling that this is the direction that it’s going.

And, of course, we just had this historic Democratic primary here in New York City where there was an assumption that the stances that Zohran Mamdani took on Israel were going to be essentially disqualifying — and in the latest analysis of the vote, it seems that it was actually the opposite.

His taking a principled stand on this issue, particularly for voters under the age of 45, was actually really crucial in pushing him to victory. I think there’s going to be a lot of revisiting of this question, you know, around the 2024 election, and ancient history and what happened in the past. But I think in the future … I think there’s, there’s just a fundamental break.

Cottle: Yeah. I’ve just noticed among the generational split in the party on the question of Israel — with younger voters being much more outspoken in their criticism — for a party that’s struggling having lost ground with the young voter, I’ll be interested to kind of see where this goes.

French: This is more consequential than I think Republicans realize. Republicans have drunk their own Kool-Aid for a long time on this idea that the Democrats are the anti-Israel party. This has been a talking point — when I decided way back in 2016 that I’m definitely not supporting Trump, the argument was, “Say what you want to say about Trump, but you’re abandoning Israel if you’re not supporting Trump.”

And my argument was that it was always extraordinarily exaggerated because when the chips were down, Democratic administrations came through for Israel in big ways.

Cottle: Absolutely.

French: So, one of the largest arms deals that Israel has ever had with the United States was with the Obama administration. When Israel was attacked by missiles from Iran, earlier in the Biden administration, Biden put American planes in the air to defend Israel.

This is a very, very, very big deal that the U.S. under a Democratic administration gave Israel a huge arms deal. It’s a very big deal that a Democratic administration protected Israel physically with American pilots.

And so the question that I have is, will that happen in the future? And there’s another thing that’s happening here that — let’s put this in an even bigger context — we’re getting to a point where negative polarization in the U.S. is beginning to leak into our foreign affairs in some pretty substantial ways.

You could end up in a situation where Israel is the Republicans’ ally, and Ukraine is the Democrats’ ally. And so depending on who wins the election, that orients who our allies are and are not. It’s just a terrible formula, not just for us — it’s a terrible formula for Israel going forward.

Cottle: OK. Obviously, we’ve just skimmed the very surface of all this, and there’s a lot going on that people could dig into. Is there anything either of you want to recommend that people read or watch or listen to, to get a good sense of the situation?

Polgreen: I have a couple of recommendations.

Cottle: Please.

Polgreen: Our mutual friend Isaac Chotiner did a rather extraordinary interview, as he often does ——

Cottle: So good.

Lydia: With Amit Segal, who’s a quite right-wing journalist in Israel. And in classic Isaac Chotiner style, he brings out something really interesting that helps us understand the Israeli right perspective in this interview. It’s on the New Yorker website. Anybody can read it.

The other thing that I’ve read recently, that’s quite a long read, but I think very much worth looking at, is an essay by the writer Adam Shatz in The London Review of Books called “The World Since Oct. 7.”

What Adam does in that piece is really zoom out and take in the totality of everything that has happened — both since Oct. 7 but also with the context of history and looking forward to the future. I think it’s just a magisterial, quite deeply felt piece that people will benefit from reading.

Cottle: OK. David, what do you got? Hit me.

French: Well, Lydia got one of mine, which is the Isaac Chotiner interview — which, by the way, I love what Lydia said about the way that he interviews. Because I have often thought if I get a call or a text or something that says, “Isaac Chotiner wants to interview you ——”

Cottle: Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I’ve known Isaac since he was a baby. He’s now officially scary.

Polgreen: Having been once interviewed by Isaac Chotiner, I can tell you he’s a sweetie pie — as long as you’re not a total liar.

Cottle: That’s how people wind up in this situation ——

Polgreen: Yes.

Cottle: Obviously answer Isaac’s calls.

Polgreen: Anyway, sorry, David.

French: I definitely recommend it because you can see how it’s so hard for Segal to rationalize or justify what’s happening right now, even in this person.

The other thing that I would say is that we have a problem with is we have an enormous amount of background ignorance in American society about a lot of things that are so important.

So, I’m going to recommend a book. It’s not about Gaza and Israel, it’s about the U.S. and ISIS in Mosul. It’s written by our former magazine colleague James Verini, and it’s called “They Will Have to Die Now.” It is the story of the battle of Mosul, and there are two reasons I recommended it.

One, it demonstrates to you the extraordinary difficulty that a military force faces when they fight a terrorist force that’s embedded in a city. But it also shows that, in fact, there are better ways to do this.

Now, I’m not going to say we’re perfect in this, in any way, shape, or form. Let’s emphasize: It’s horrible. But you never had to get where we are today.

Cottle: OK. Well, there you go. I now have my excellent beach reads for the week. Thank you both.

French: So uplifting.

Polgreen: Yeah.

Cottle: It’s going to be a doozy. With that, let’s just land this plane. Guys, thank you so much for coming in and explaining all of this.

Polgreen: Oh, thanks for a great conversation, Michelle.

French: Yes. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Lydia.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV urged hundreds of thousands of young people on Saturday to have the courage to make radical choices to do good, as he presided over his first big encounter with the next generation of Catholics during the highlight of the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year.

Leo encountered a sea of people as he arrived by helicopter at the Tor Vergata field on Rome’s outskirts for a vigil service of the Jubilee of Youth. Hailing from early 150 countries, the pilgrims had set up campsites on the field for the night, as misting trucks and water cannons spritzed them to cool them down from the 30C (85F) temperatures.

Leo displayed his fluency in speaking to the kids in Spanish, Italian and English about the dangers of social media, the value of true friendship and the need to have courage to make radical choices like marriage or religious vows.

“Friendship can really change the world. Friendship is a path to peace,” he said. “How much the world needs missionaries of the Gospel who are witnesses of justice and peace!”

But history’s first American pope also alerted them to some tragic news: Two young people who had made the pilgrimage to Rome had died, one reportedly of cardiac arrest, while a third was hospitalized, Leo told the crowd during the vigil service.

Leo was to return to the field for an early morning Mass on Sunday morning to close out the celebration.

Rome welcomes the throngs

For the past week, these bands of young Catholics from around the world have poured into Rome for their special Jubilee celebration, in a Holy Year in which 32 million people are expected to descend on the Vatican to participate in a centuries-old pilgrimage to the seat of Catholicism.

The young people have been traipsing down cobblestoned streets in color-coordinated T-shirts, praying the Rosary and singing hymns with guitars, bongo drums and tambourines shimmying alongside. Using their flags as tarps to shield them from the sun, they have taken over entire piazzas for Christian rock concerts and inspirational talks, and stood for hours at the Circus Maximus to confess their sins to 1,000 priests offering the sacrament in a dozen different languages.

“It is something spiritual, that you can experience only every 25 years,” said Francisco Michel, a pilgrim from Mexico. “As a young person, having the chance to live this meting with the pope I feel it is a spiritual growth.”

A mini World Youth Day, 25 years later

It all has the vibe of a World Youth Day, the Catholic Woodstock festival that St. John Paul II inaugurated and made famous in Rome in 2000 at the very same Tor Vergata field. Then, before an estimated 2 million people, John Paul told the young pilgrims they were the “sentinels of the morning” at the dawn of the third millennium.

Officials had initially expected 500,000 youngsters this weekend, but Leo and organizers from the stage said the number could reach 1 million. The Vatican didn’t immediately provide a final estimate.

“It’s a bit messed up, but this is what is nice about the Jubilee,” said Chloe Jobbour, a 19-year-old Lebanese Catholic who was in Rome with a group of more than 200 young members of the Community of the Beatitudes, a France-based charismatic group.

She said, for example, that it had taken two hours to get dinner at a KFC overwhelmed by orders Friday night. The Salesian school that offered her group housing is an hour away by bus. But Jobbour, like many in Rome this week, didn’t mind the discomfort: It’s all part of the experience.

“I don’t expect it to be better than that. I expected it this way,” she said, as members of her group gathered on church steps near the Vatican to sing and pray Saturday morning before heading out to Tor Vergata.

Romans inconvenienced, but tolerant

Those Romans who didn’t flee the onslaught have been inconvenienced by the additional strain on the city’s notoriously insufficient public transport system. Residents are sharing social media posts of outbursts by Romans at kids flooding subway platforms and crowding bus stops that have delayed and complicated their commutes to work.

But other Romans have welcomed the enthusiasm the youngsters have brought. Premier Giorgia Meloni offered a video welcome, marveling at the “extraordinary festival of faith, joy and hope” that the young people had created.

“I think it’s marvelous,” said Rome hairdresser Rina Verdone, who lives near the Tor Vergata field and woke up Saturday to find a gaggle of police outside her home as part of the massive, 4,000-strong operation mounted to keep the peace. “You think the faith, the religion is in difficulty, but this is proof that it’s not so.”

Verdone had already made plans to take an alternate route home Saturday afternoon, that would require an extra kilometer (half-mile) walk, because she feared the “invasion” of kids in her neighborhood would disrupt her usual bus route. But she said she was more than happy to make the sacrifice.

“You think of invasion as something negative. But this is a positive invasion,” she said.

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AP reporter Paolo Santalucia contributed to this story.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Today in history:

On August 2, 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted seven former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal (though they would later be banned from Major League Baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis).

Also on this date:

In 1790, the first United States Census began under the supervision of Thomas Jefferson; a total of 3,929,214 people were counted in the census, nearly 700,000 of whom were enslaved.

In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.

In 1876, frontiersman “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.

In 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.

In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.

In 1974, former White House counsel John W. Dean III was sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean ended up serving four months.)

In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out by the U.S. in Operation Desert Storm.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Author Isabel Allende is 83.
• Actor Butch Patrick (TV: “The Munsters”) is 72.
• Rock music producer/drummer Butch Vig is 70.
• Actor Mary-Louise Parker is 61.
• Filmmaker Kevin Smith is 55.
• Actor Sam Worthington is 49.
• Actor Edward Furlong is 48.
• Actor Lily Gladstone is 39.
• Singer Charli XCX is 33.
• Olympic swimming gold medalist Simone Manuel is 29.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a warning to Russia, President Donald Trump said Friday he’s ordering the repositioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines “based on the highly provocative statements” of the country’s former president Dmitry Medvedev.

Trump posted on his social media site that based on the “highly provocative statements” from Medvedev he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”

The president added, “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what impact Trump’s order would have on U.S. nuclear subs, which are routinely on patrol in the world’s hotspots, but it comes at a delicate moment in the Trump administration’s relations with Moscow.

Trump has said that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made. He cut his 50-day deadline for action to 10 days, with that window set to expire next week.

The post about the sub repositioning came after Trump, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, had posted that Medvedev was a “failed former President of Russia” and warned him to “watch his words.” Medvedev responded hours later by writing, “Russia is right on everything and will continue to go its own way.”

Medvedev was president from 2008 to 2012 while Putin was barred from seeking a second consecutive term but stepped aside to let him run again. Now deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, which Putin chairs, Medvedev has been known for his provocative and inflammatory statements since the start of the war in 2022, a U-turn from his presidency, when he was seen as liberal and progressive.

He has frequently wielded nuclear threats and lobbed insults at Western leaders on social media. Some observers have argued that with his extravagant rhetoric, Medvedev is seeking to score political points with Putin and Russian military hawks.

Trump and Medvedev have gotten into online spats before.

On July 15, after Trump announced plans to supply Ukraine with more weapons via its NATO allies and threatened additional tariffs against Moscow, Medvedev posted, “Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care.”

Earlier this week, he wrote, “Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10″ and added, “He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.”

Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Plans announced by France, the United Kingdom and Canada to recognize a Palestinian state won’t bring one about anytime soon, though they could further isolate Israel and strengthen the Palestinians’ negotiating position over the long term.

The problem for the Palestinians is that there may not be a long term.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Palestinian statehood and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over annexed east Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state.

Israeli leaders favor the outright annexation of much of the West Bank, where Israel has already built well over 100 settlements housing over 500,000 Jewish settlers. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has reduced most of it to a smoldering wasteland and is pushing it toward famine, and Israel says it is pressing ahead with plans to relocate much of its population of some 2 million to other countries.

The United States, the only country with any real leverage over Israel, has taken its side.

Critics say these countries could do much more

Palestinians have welcomed international support for their decades-long quest for statehood but say there are more urgent measures Western countries could take if they wanted to pressure Israel.

“It’s a bit odd that the response to daily atrocities in Gaza, including what is by all accounts deliberate starvation, is to recognize a theoretical Palestinian state that may never actually come into being,” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

“It looks more like a way for these countries to appear to be doing something,” he said.

Fathi Nimer, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, says they could have suspended trade agreements with Israel, imposed arms embargoes or other sanctions. “There is a wide tool set at the disposal of these countries, but there is no political will to use it,” he said.

It’s not a completely empty gesture

Most countries in the world recognized Palestinian statehood decades ago, but Britain and France would be the third and fourth permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to do so, leaving the U.S. as the only holdout.

“We’re talking about major countries and major Israeli allies,” said Alon Pinkas, an Israeli political analyst and former consul general in New York. “They’re isolating the U.S. and they’re leaving Israel dependent — not on the U.S., but on the whims and erratic behavior of one person, Trump.”

Recognition could also strengthen moves to prevent annexation, said Hugh Lovatt, an expert on the conflict at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The challenge, he said, “is for those recognizing countries to match their recognition with other steps, practical steps.”

It could also prove significant if Israel and the Palestinians ever resume the long-dormant peace process, which ground to a halt after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.

“If and when some kind of negotiations do resume, probably not in the immediate future, but at some point, it puts Palestine on much more equal footing,” said Julie Norman, a professor of Middle East politics at University College London.

“It has statehood as a starting point for those negotiations, rather than a certainly-not-assured endpoint.”

Israel calls it a reward for violence

Israel’s government and most of its political class were opposed to Palestinian statehood long before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Netanyahu says creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas and eventually lead to an even larger Hamas-run state on Israel’s borders. Hamas leaders have at times suggested they would accept a state on the 1967 borders but the group remains formally committed to Israel’s destruction.

Western countries envision a future Palestinian state that would be democratic but also led by political rivals of Hamas who accept Israel and help it suppress the group, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized power in Gaza the following year.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority administers parts of the occupied West Bank, supports a two-state solution and cooperates with Israel on security matters. He has made a series of concessions in recent months, including announcing the end to the Palestinian Authority’s practice of providing stipends to the families of prisoners held by Israel and slain combatants.

Such measures, along with the security coordination, have made it deeply unpopular with Palestinians, and have yet to earn it any favors from Israel or the Trump administration. Israel says Abbas is not sincerely committed to peace and accuses him of tolerating incitement and militancy.

Lovatt says there is much to criticize about the PA, but that “often the failings of the Palestinian leadership are exaggerated in a way to relieve Israel of its own obligations.”

The tide may be turning, but not fast enough

If you had told Palestinians in September 2023 that major countries were on the verge of recognizing a state, that the U.N.’s highest court had ordered Israel to end the occupation, that the International Criminal Court had ordered Netanyahu’s arrest, and that prominent voices from across the U.S. political spectrum were furious with Israel, they might have thought their dream of statehood was at hand.

But those developments pale in comparison to the ongoing war in Gaza and smaller but similarly destructive military offensives in the West Bank. Israel’s military victories over Iran and its allies have left it the dominant and nearly unchallenged military power in the region, and Trump is the strongest supporter it has ever had in the White House.

“This (Israeli) government is not going to change policy,” Pinkas said. “The recognition issue, the ending of the war, humanitarian aid — that’s all going to have to wait for another government.”

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy on Friday visited a food distribution site in the Gaza Strip operated by an Israeli-backed American contractor whose efforts to deliver food to the hunger-stricken territory have been marred by violence and controversy.

International experts warned this week that a “worst-case scenario of famine” is playing out in Gaza. Israel’s nearly 22-month military offensive against Hamas has shattered security in the territory of some 2 million Palestinians and made it nearly impossible to safely deliver food to starving people. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee toured a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which has been almost completely destroyed and is now a largely depopulated Israeli military zone.

Hundreds of people have been killed by Israeli fire while heading to such aid sites since May, according to witnesses, health officials and the United Nations human rights office. Israel and GHF say they have only fired warning shots and that the toll has been exaggerated.

In a report issued on Friday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said GHF was at the heart of a “flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”

Hundreds have been killed seeking food

Witkoff posted on X that he had spent over five hours inside Gaza in order to gain “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”

He did not request any meetings with U.N. officials in Gaza during his visit, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters. U.N. agencies have provided aid throughout Gaza since the start of the war, when conditions allow.

Chapin Fay, a spokesperson for GHF, said the visit reflected Trump’s understanding of the stakes and that “feeding civilians, not Hamas, must be the priority.” The aid group says it has delivered over 100 million meals since it began operations in May.

All four of the group’s sites established in May are in zones controlled by the Israeli military and have become flashpoints of desperation, with starving people scrambling for scarce aid.

More than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli fire since May while seeking aid in the territory, most near the GHF sites but also near United Nations aid convoys, the U.N. human rights office said last month.

The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding.

Officials at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza said Friday they received the bodies of 13 people who were killed while trying to get aid, including near the site that U.S. officials visited. GHF denied anyone was killed at their sites on Friday.

The Israeli military said its forces had fired warning shots hundreds of meters (yards) away from the aid site at people it described as suspects and said had ignored orders to distance themselves from its forces. It said it was not aware of any casualties but was still investigating.

Witkoff’s visit comes a week after U.S. officials walked away from ceasefire talks in Qatar, blaming Hamas and pledging to seek other ways to rescue Israeli hostages and make Gaza safe. Trump wrote on social media that the fastest way to end the crisis would be for Hamas to surrender and release hostages.

HRW slams Israeli-backed aid system

Human Rights Watch said in its report that “it would be near impossible for Palestinians to follow the instructions issued by GHF, stay safe, and receive aid, particularly in the context of ongoing military operations.” It cited doctors, aid seekers and at least one GHF security contractor.

Building on previous accounts, it described how how thousands of Palestinians gather near the sites at night before they open. As they head to the sites on foot, Israeli forces control their movements by opening fire toward them. Once inside the sites, they race for aid in a frenzied fee-for-all, with weaker and more vulnerable people coming away with nothing, HRW said.

Responding to the report, Israel’s military accused Hamas of sabotaging the aid distribution system, without providing evidence. It said it was working to make the routes under its control safer for those traveling to aid sites. GHF did not immediately respond to questions about the report.

The group has never allowed journalists to visit their sites and Israel’s military has barred reporters from independently entering Gaza throughout the war.

At a Friday news conference in Gaza City, representatives of the territory’s influential tribes accused Israel of empowering factions that loot aid sites and implored Witkoff to stay in Gaza to witness life firsthand. Israel denies aiding looters but says it backs factions that are opposed to Hamas.

“We want the American envoy to come and live among us in these tents where there is no water, no food and no light,” they said. “Our children are hungry in the streets.”

Top German diplomat in the West Bank to highlight settler violence

Germany’s foreign minister visited Taybeh in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian Christian village that has seen recent attacks by Israeli settlers. Johann Wadephul said Israel’s settlements are an obstacle to peace and condemned settler violence. He also called on Hamas to lay down its arms in Gaza and release the remaining hostages.

Germany has so far declined to join other major Western countries in announcing plans to recognize a Palestinian state.

Palestinians in another nearby town laid to rest 45-year-old Khamis Ayad, who they say suffocated while extinguishing fires set by settlers during an attack the night before. Witnesses said Israeli forces fired live rounds and tear gas toward residents after the settlers attacked.

Israel’s military said police were investigating the incident. They said security forces found Hebrew graffiti and a burnt vehicle at the scene but had not detained any suspects.

There has been a rise in settler attacks, as well as Palestinian attacks on Israelis and large-scale Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel out of Gaza that triggered the Israel-Hamas war.

Hamas-led terrorists killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, that day and abducted 251 others. They still hold 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive. Most of the others have been released in ceasefires or other deals.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians and operates under the Hamas government. The U.N. and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.

Metz reported from Jerusalem and Frankel from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Today in history:

On August 1, 1981, MTV began its American broadcast; the first music video aired on the new cable TV network was “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by The Buggles.

Also on this date:

In 1876, Colorado was admitted as the 38th state in the Union, less than a month after the US Centennial (earning it the nickname “the Centennial State”).

In 1907, a week-long boys’ camping event began on Brownsea Island in southern England, organized by Robert Baden-Powell; the event is now marked as the beginning of the Scout Movement.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler presided over the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Berlin .

In 1944, an uprising broke out in Warsaw, Poland, against Nazi occupation; the revolt lasted two months before collapsing.

In 1957, the United States and Canada announced they had agreed to create the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

In 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman, 25, went on an armed rampage at the University of Texas in Austin that killed 14 people, most of whom were shot by Whitman while he was perched in the clock tower of the main campus building.

In 1971, The Concert for Bangladesh, an all-star benefit organized by George Harrison of The Beatles and sitar player Ravi Shankar, was held at Madison Square Garden in New York.

In 2001, Pro Bowl tackle Korey Stringer, 27, died of heat stroke, a day after collapsing at the Minnesota Vikings’ training camp on the hottest day of the year.

In 2004, the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire in Asuncion, Paraguay killed more than 400 people.

In 2007, the eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, collapsed into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour, killing 13 people.

In 2014, a medical examiner ruled that a New York City police officer’s chokehold caused the death of Eric Garner, whose videotaped arrest and final pleas of “I can’t breathe!” had sparked outrage.

In 2023, former President Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and obstruction charges related to his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Actor Giancarlo Giannini is 83.
• Basketball Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams is 75.
• Blues musician Robert Cray is 72.
• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum is 69.
• Rock singer Joe Elliott (Def Leppard) is 66.
• Rapper Chuck D (Public Enemy) is 65.
• Actor John Carroll Lynch is 62.
• Rock singer Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) is 61.
• Film director Sam Mendes is 60.
• Actor Tempestt Bledsoe is 52.
• Football Hall of Famer Edgerrin James is 47.
• Actor Jason Momoa is 46.

Today in history:

On July 31, 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. (He would finish his career with 28 total Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.)

Also on this date:

In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast; of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 died.

In 1777, the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette received a commission as major general in the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.

In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic’s National Assembly.

In 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him.

In 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.

In 1964, the U.S. lunar probe Ranger 7 took the first close-up images of the moon’s surface.

In 1971, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to use a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.

In 1972, vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket with George McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had received electroshock therapy to treat clinical depression.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in Moscow.

In 2020, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn’t adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (The Supreme Court reimposed the sentence in 2022.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Jazz composer-musician Kenny Burrell is 94.
• Actor Geraldine Chaplin is 81.
• Former movie studio executive Sherry Lansing is 81.
• Singer Gary Lewis is 79.
• International Tennis Hall of Famer Evonne Goolagong Cawley is 74.
• Actor Michael Biehn is 69.
• Rock singer-musician Daniel Ash (Love and Rockets) is 68.
• Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is 67.
• Rock musician Bill Berry (R.E.M.) is 67.
• Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is 66.
• Actor Wesley Snipes is 63.
• Musician Fatboy Slim is 62.
• Author J.K. Rowling is 60.
• Actor Dean Cain is 59.
• Actor Jim True-Frost is 59.
• Actor Ben Chaplin is 56.
• Actor Eve Best is 54.
• Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden is 51.
• Country singer-musician Zac Brown is 47.
• Actor-producer-writer B.J. Novak is 46.
• Football Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware is 43.
• NHL center Evgeni Malkin is 39.
• NASCAR driver Kyle Larson is 33.
• Hip-hop artist Lil Uzi Vert is 30.
• Actor Rico Rodriguez (TV: “Modern Family”) is 27.