WeekDay AM: 10 Things you need to know this morning
Netanyahu's fiery address, tumbling stocks, and a 'revolutionary' HIV drug

 
today's international story

Netanyahu delivers fiery US Congress speech

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

Who said what
Speaking to members of both chambers of Congress, Netanyahu lauded the US-Israeli relationship while lambasting the large demonstrations taking place across Washington DC 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", said The New York Times.

Democrat Rashida Tlaib, 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, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders, 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 antagonising Trump", said The Wall Street Journal.

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

 
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today’s markets story

US stock market 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 profit 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 after the nose-dive on Wall Street.

 
 
Today’s health story

Experts hail 'revolutionary' HIV drug

What happened
Twice-yearly injections used to treat AIDS were 100% effective in preventing new infections in women, according to study results published in The New England Journal of Medicine yesterday. 

Researchers reported no new HIV infections among young women and girls receiving the shots in a study of about 5,000 participants in South Africa and Uganda. In contrast roughly 2% of those given daily prevention pills contracted HIV from infected sex partners.

Who said what
Thandeka Nkosi, who helped run the research at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in Masiphumelele, South Africa called the prospect of a twice-a-year shot "revolutionary news" for patients. "It gives participants a choice and just eliminates the whole stigma around taking pills" to prevent HIV, she said.

What next?
The shots, made by US drugmaker Gilead and sold as Sunlenca, are approved in the US, Canada, Europe and elsewhere as a treatment for HIV. The company is awaiting results from testing in men before seeking approval for its use in preventing infection.

Due to the encouraging results the women's study was stopped early and all participants were offered the shots.

 
 

It's not all bad

Scientists from Northwestern Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have identified the cause of lupus and believe they may have found a potential cure. Lupus, a devastating autoimmune disease that affects about five million people worldwide, involves the immune system attacking the body's own cells. The researchers found that lupus patients had higher levels of interferon and insufficient amounts of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR). By activating the AHR pathway they reduced disease-causing cells in lupus patients' blood samples, potentially offering a cure without the side-effects of current treatments.

 
 
under the radar

Ukraine's Olympians: going for gold in the line of fire

Ukraine's Olympic team heads into the Paris Games with "a spirit of defiance and resilience", said The New York Times, hoping to win 15 to 20 medals.

But this year's 140 athletes are also a poignant reminder of what the country's prestigious sporting world has lost. About 500 current and former high-level athletes and coaches have died in the war, according to Ukraine's sports ministry.

Ukraine's sporting deaths "far exceed" the 155 competitors it sent to the Tokyo Games in 2020, said the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and some of those killed might have qualified for this year's games, the first since Russia's invasion in 2022.

The toll of the war and the "widespread destruction" of sports facilities "threaten to erode Ukraine's edge" in Paris, said ABC News – and imperil the country's future as a "powerhouse of Olympic sport".

Another challenge will be the prospect of crossing paths with athletes from Russia, whose participation in this year's games has been the subject of "intense debate". Russians and Belarusians without a connection to the military are allowed to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs). They will wear neutral uniforms and be carefully vetted to make sure they have not publicly supported the invasion.

Some Ukrainian athletes are "armed with new motivation to fight, through sport, for the broader national cause". For Anna Ryzhykova, her goal is "not just gold, but also to rivet global attention on her country's fight for survival". "Our victories are to draw attention to Ukraine," said the hurdler. "You're not doing it for yourself anymore."

 
 
on this day

25 July 1898

US troops invaded Puerto Rico three months after Washington declared war on Spain. By October American flags "floated atop most public buildings", said the Library of Congress, marking the end of Spanish imperial occupation and the start of US sovereignty over the Caribbean island. Governor Pedro Pierluisi said this month that the island's political status would be on the ballot at the 5 November general election.

 
 
Today’s newspapers

The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is hoping to build a group of rebel independent MPs to press Keir Starmer on key issues like the two-child benefit cap, says the i paper. "I'm ready to leave the ECHR", is The Telegraph's headline as the former minister Tom Tugendhat announces he is running to be the next Conservative leader. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail says the future of 1p and 2p coins has been "thrown into doubt", as the Treasury announces it has no plans for more copper coins to be minted in the coming years. "The penny drops", says The Times.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
tall tale

Cardboard beds OK for fun and games

Athletes competing in the Paris Olympics are sleeping on beds made from cardboard as part of the organisers' attempts to make the event more eco-friendly. Some have dubbed the design "anti-sex", but the bed's inventor has "insisted they can accommodate the horizontal gymnastics of three people, or even four", said The Times. A video posted by Tom Daley on Instagram shows the Team GB diver jumping up and down on his. "As you can see they are pretty sturdy," he said.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Arion McNicoll, Harriet Marsden, Sorcha Bradley, Julia O'Driscoll and Chas Newkey-Burden, with illustrations by Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Tierney L. Cross / Bloomberg via Getty Images; Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images; Angela Jimu / Majority World / Universal Images Group via Getty Images.