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Netanyahu's address, the next Olympic city, and tumbling stock markets

 
Today's politics story

Netanyahu makes controversial address

What happened
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a rare address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday amid ongoing protests over Israel's war in Gaza.

Who said what
Netanyahu lauded the U.S.-Israeli relationship while lambasting the large demonstrations across Washington, D.C. over his presence. "For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now, outside this building," Netanyahu said. He earned his "biggest cheers" for calling protesters "Tehran's useful idiots," The New York Times said. 

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who is Palestinian American, attended Netanyahu's speech, holding a sign reading "war criminal" and "guilty of genocide." Many other high-profile Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), were not in attendance, with "around half" of each of the Democratic caucuses "absent," said Andrew Solender at Axios. 

Heading into his speech, Netanyahu had to contend with a "new balancing act, appealing to the new, potentially more progressive face of the Democratic Party while not antagonizing Trump," The Wall Street Journal said. 

What next?
Despite skipping his address on Wednesday, Harris is scheduled to join President Joe Biden for a bilateral meeting with Netanyahu today. Netanyahu will then meet Donald Trump on Friday. Their once-glowing relationship has "grown tense in recent years following the 2020 election," Politico said. 

 
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Today's Sports story

Salt Lake City named host of 2034 Winter Olympics

What happened
The International Olympic Committee voted on Wednesday to confirm Salt Lake City as the home of the 2034 Winter Games.

Who said what
The Utah capital's bid had "long been considered an inevitability, given a public approval rating consistently measured near 80% and the plan to reuse all the facilities from the 2002 Games," The Salt Lake Tribune said. Still, the decision to choose the Crossroads of the West came "only after a last-minute demand that the agreement shield global sports authorities from U.S. investigations into doping by Chinese athletes," The New York Times said. Factors like "climate change and high operational costs" have limited the number of cities "willing and able to welcome the Winter Games," CNN said.

What next?
Salt Lake City's decade of preparation time before hosting is the "longest lead-in for a modern Winter Games," The Associated Press said. The 2030 Games have been awarded to France as a "regional project split between ski resorts in the Alps and the French Riviera city Nice."

 
 
Today's markets Story

Wall Street tumbles on poor tech results

What happened
US stocks suffered their worst day in more than 18 months yesterday after lacklustre results from Tesla and Google owner Alphabet fuelled fears over the high valuations of large technology companies.

Who said what
Losses in both the S&P 500, which dropped 2.3%, and Nasdaq Composite, which fell 3.6%, were largely "driven by big tech stocks" including Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple and Tesla, said the Financial Times. Tech – and artificial intelligence stocks in particular – has "driven the bulk of market gains this year".

Tesla reporting a 45% drop in profits for the spring and Alphabet's fall of 5% could "feed concerns” that the broader market has become too reliant on the so-called "magnificent seven" technology stocks, said Charlie McElligott, an analyst at Nomura.

What next?
Analysts have questioned whether the companies that have been responsible for the majority of the S&P 500's record run this year are now too expensive. Some investors are "moving their money away from Big Tech to smaller companies", said The Telegraph. Asian shares dropped in morning trading today.

 
 

It's not all bad

Two volunteers at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie — 98-year-old Holocaust survivor Janine Oberrotman and 14-year-old Dhilan Stanley — have developed a close bond. They work together at the museum information booth, and while being from different generations, they enjoy chatting and learning from each other. Stanley asks Oberrotman questions about the Holocaust and listens as she recounts her experiences, he told CBS News. It's "amazing to hear from someone who witnessed it firsthand," he said.

 
 
Under the radar

NASA's 'strangest find': pure sulfur on Mars

NASA's Mars rover has made its "most unexpected" discovery since it landed on the red planet in 2012: rocks made of sulfur. On May 30, the Curiosity rover "happened to drive over a rock and crack it open, revealing yellowish green crystals," said CNN. NASA used the robot's instruments to analyze the rock, receiving data indicating it was pure sulfur. 

Scientists were "stunned," said NASA when it revealed the discovery last week. "Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. It's the "strangest find" and "most unexpected" of Curiosity's 12 years on Mars. 

Previous research has suggested that pure sulfur "may have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth," said the Daily Mail. Scientists are now trying to establish what its presence can tell us about the red planet's past, but the discovery adds to the "growing evidence of other life-sustaining elements identified on Mars." 

Pure sulfur rocks are typically found in hydrothermal vents on Earth. They form in a "narrow range" of conditions, such as volcanic activity or springs, said NASA. "Think Yellowstone," said Briony Horgan, a co-investigator on the Perseverance rover mission and professor of planetary science at Purdue University in Indiana. 

Pure sulfur "shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it," said Vasavada. "Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."

 
 
On this day

July 25, 1978

Louise Brown, the first human to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF), was born. Brown was born in Lancashire, U.K., after her mother underwent an experimental IVF procedure in which the embryo that was to be Brown was fertilized and grown in a petri dish. Today, IVF remains a common practice for women who are unable to have children naturally. 

 
 
TODAY’S newspaperS

Joe Biden "ticked through the accomplishments of his term" as he looked to "make the case for his single-term legacy" in his address last night, said The Boston Globe. His tone was "wistful", added The New York Times.

Benjamin Netanyahu made a "powerful" address to Congress, says the New York Post, with a "stirring defence" of his country's response to October 7. "They stand with evil," he said of peace protesters.

"Carbon cowboys" are cashing in on public lands in the Amazon, says The Washington Post.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Not kidding around

A rare goat breed has been given a royal title by King Charles. Now known as the Royal Golden Guernsey Goat, the breed had the accolade bestowed upon it by the monarch during a visit last week to Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. Such titles are "given sparingly," said Sky News, and are "so special" the U.K. government's Cabinet Office must sign off on it with "strict standards applied."

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harold Maass, Summer Meza Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Tierney L. Cross / Bloomberg via Getty Images; C. Morgan Engel / Getty Images; Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images