Today's Liberal News

The Winter Will Be Worse

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Throughout the pandemic, one lodestar of public-health advice has come down to three words: Do things outside. For nearly five months now, the outdoors has served as a vital social release valve—a space where people can still eat, drink, relax, exercise, and worship together in relative safety.

The End of Big Tech? Calls Grow to Break Up Facebook, Amazon for “Mob-Like” Behavior, Monopoly Power

Calls are growing to break up the Big Tech giants, with a handful of companies controlling more and more of the technology industry, crowding out or acquiring would-be competitors and exercising vast power over the U.S. economy. Lawmakers grilled the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook during a hearing last week on whether their companies are guilty of stifling competition, in a scene reminiscent of the 1994 hearing of tobacco executives who claimed cigarettes were not addictive.

Journalist Rami Khouri: Beirut Explosion Follows Years of Lebanese Gov’t Incompetence & Corruption

The explosion in the port of Beirut, which killed at least 100 people and injured about 4,000 others, is the latest blow to Lebanon, which already faces an economic, political and public health crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic. The blast is believed to have been triggered by 2,700 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate inexplicably left unattended in a warehouse for six years.

“Despair and Destruction”: Doctor in Beirut Describes Harrowing Scenes After Massive Port Explosion

As Beirut reels from a massive explosion that killed at least 100 people and injured thousands, we get an on-the-ground update from pediatrician and writer Dr. Seema Jilani, who treated her own daughter for injuries after the blast. “It was extremely packed because we’re just coming out of a four-day lockdown,” says Jilani. “Everybody was out.” Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab called the explosion a “national catastrophe.

Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Updated at 10:36 a.m. ET on August 5, 2020.There’s a joke about immunology, which Jessica Metcalf of Princeton recently told me. An immunologist and a cardiologist are kidnapped. The kidnappers threaten to shoot one of them, but promise to spare whoever has made the greater contribution to humanity.

Live Coverage: August 4, 2020 primaries

Tuesday brings an action-packed night of elections as five states are holding downballot primaries, and we’ll be liveblogging the results. Due to the coronavirus, many voters are choosing to vote by mail, and each state has different deadlines for the return of mail ballots. As a result, we may not know the final results for some races for several days or more.

The orca mom who mourned her calf is pregnant again, raising both hopes and deep fears

Friday Harbor, Washington—Two summers ago, an orca nicknamed Tahlequah—officially J35, a 20-year-old member of the endangered Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW) population that normally populates the Salish Sea in the summertime—captured the attention of people around the world as she mourned the death of her new calf by displaying its limp corpse, pushing it around on her rostrum for 17 days straight.