Google antitrust case; Harris to pick running mate : NPR

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Today’s top stories

Investors will be watching the stock market nervously today after yesterday’s sharp sell-off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 1,000 points while the S&P 500 Index dropped by 3%. Japan’s stock market also fell sharply but recovered overnight. The market’s unpredictability has raised questions about the staying power of the U.S. economy, which had been a pillar of global growth since the pandemic.

• 🎧 NPR’s Scott Horsley tells Up First that most analysts believe the stock market slide is an overreaction. The economy is not growing as fast as it has been. “We’re no longer adding jobs at the pace we were a year or two ago. But we’re not on the brink of a recession,” he says. The Federal Reserve is keeping an eye on the market to make sure the financial system is functioning properly. They didn’t cut interest rates last week and now some see that as a missed opportunity, Horsley adds.

Vice President Harris is expected to announce her pick for vice president later today. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona has the highest favorability rating, according to the latest NPR poll. Still, half of the respondents say they’re unsure or don’t have an opinion of him. Harris is set to hold an event with her pick in Philadelphia tonight. The duo will continue on a seven-state tour of mostly closely watched swing states.

A federal judge has ruled that Google acted illegally to ensure it dominated the search engine market. It’s a historic victory for the Justice Department in the first antitrust lawsuit against a major company to go to trial in decades.

• 🎧 NPR’s Dara Kerr says Judge Amit Mehta “straight out called Google a monopolist” in his nearly 300-page ruling. Google quickly said it would appeal the ruling and emphasized it is the best search engine. The judge recognized that but said Google had a major advantage over its rivals due to exclusive agreements with device makers like Apple and Samsung. In one year alone, Google paid more than $26 million to be the default search engine on their phones and computers. A separate trial will determine remedies for the company going forward.

In her new book, Nancy Pelosi writes about wielding power as America’s first House Speaker. Pelosi has been a pivotal part of political history for decades. She was at the U.S. Capitol the morning of 9/11 and in the speaker’s chair during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Pelosi recently opened up about her career and what she was doing in the days leading up to the moment President Biden withdrew from the 2024 race in a wide-ranging interview with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly. Read the highlights here, listen to part of it on Morning Edition and tune in to All Things Considered today and tomorrow for more.

Deep dive

Algeria’s Imane Khelif, reacts after defeating Italy’s Angela Carini in their women’s 66kg preliminary boxing match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, in Paris.

John Locher/AP

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John Locher/AP

Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is fighting more than her opponents in the ring. She and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting face accusations that they are not women. Both identify as women and have long competed in boxing as female athletes. Questions surfaced when the International Boxing Association said both athletes were disqualified from the IBA’s 2023 world championships after failing eligibility tests. It’s the latest controversy in a long history of female athletes being questioned over their sex.

• 🥊 The International Olympic Committee said this week that all boxing athletes “comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations.” An athlete’s gender and age are determined by their passport.
• 🥊 Tests aren’t fully reliable because there are medical reasons why females, who typically have XX chromosomes, might have an XY chromosome, according to Penn State professor Jaime Schultz.
• 🥊 In 1928, women who competed in Olympic track and field for the first time were under suspicion for being too masculine. Twenty years later, an organization now known as World Athletics established a rule requiring anyone who wanted to compete as a woman to submit a doctor’s note.
• 🥊 In the 1960s, athletic organizations launched physical examinations. Some required women to strip and present their bodies to a panel of physicians.
• 🥊 Athletic organizations forced women to carry certificates of femininity after the 1960s. The IOC adopted the Barr body Test, which examined an athlete’s chromosomes, but this method was also challenged.

Learn more about the struggle over who qualifies for women’s sports on “Tested,” a new series from NPR’s Embedded. The podcast follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race in the women’s category unless they change their biology.

Picture show

Great white shark tours have become popular around Cape Cod as more of the largest predator fish are showing up here. Captain Cullen Lundholm (left) of White Sharks Tours Cape Cod points to a 12-foot female shark as passengers of a private charter try to spot it. Tours like this are pricey as companies use spotter planes to find the great whites. A private tour on a charter boat can costs $2,000 dollars or more, while group tours are around $300 per person.

Kayana Szymczak/for NPR

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Kayana Szymczak/for NPR

The ocean’s largest predator fish, the white shark, has made a remarkable comeback in Cape Cod, helping tourism take off. Kris Roszack, who owns Down Cape Charters near the elbow of Cape Cod, says white sharks have become more predictable there than the weather. A few decades ago, white sharks in the area reached an all-time low because fishermen decimated their main food source, seals. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 helped seal and shark populations recover.

3 things to know before you go

Bon Iver performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Saturday, June 9, 2018, in Manchester, Tenn.

Amy Harris/Invision/AP

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Amy Harris/Invision/AP

1. Bon Iver is set to perform at Vice President Harris’ rally in Eau Claire, Wis. tomorrow as part of her barnstorm tour of the swing states.
2. JD Vance’s wife, Usha, attempted yesterday to defend her husband’s past comment deriding women without children as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” in a Fox News interview.
3. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has admitted to dumping a bear cub carcass in Manhattan’s Central Park, finally solving a decade-old mystery.

This newsletter is edited by Suzanne Nuyen.