Axios

Israel didn't inform the Biden administration in advance about its intelligence operation to explode thousands of Hezbollah members' pager devices, two U.S. officials told Axios.

Why it matters: The explosions killed at least nine people, including a child, and wounded 2,800 others, among them many members of Hezbollah and its military units.

1. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa says he is proposing a constitutional amendment to allow foreign military bases in the country.

• Noboa's government has been aggressively fighting rising violence since he took office late last year.
• The U.S. has assisted with some police and emergency equipment such as bulletproof vests and ambulances. It previously had a military base in the country but was booted in 2009.

2. The Cuban government this week began reducing the amount of bread it sells on the island, saying it ran short of wheat flour.

• The latest is on top of years of food and medicine shortages that have forced many to leave Cuba.
• The island has also been having more blackouts and outages and water supply problems this summer.

Floki playing a round of footvolley. Source: via Noticias Telemundo

Floki, a border collie, has been gaining fans on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro as part of amateur teams playing footvolley.

State of play: Combining elements of volleyball and soccer, footvolley, or futevôlei, is a popular beach sport in Brazil.

• Floki, who's 3 years old, has become a master at keeping the ball in the air alongside teammate Gustavo Rodrigues, his human. They've have gained TikTok popularity.
• Rodrigues said he didn't directly teach Floki how to play and instead noticed he could when he started bouncing balloons with his snout at a birthday party.

Latino Protestants are more politically diverse than conservative-leaning white evangelicals, according to a new report.

Why it matters: The growing number of Latino Protestants, who are predominantly evangelical, are making elections hard to predict as the latest data show they differ politically from white and Black Christians.

Chinese-manufactured cargo cranes are sounding alarm bells in D.C. about state-backed espionage and cyber threats.

Why it matters: Many China hawks now believe that Beijing holds the power to knock out most of the U.S.'s cargo cranes — potentially disrupting the global trade of consumer goods, military equipment and other resources.

Days of devastating flooding in Central Europe have left at least 19 people dead and displaced thousands of others from their homes.

The big picture: As Storm Boris moves through the region, it has brought several months' worth or more of rain to Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and other countries in just a matter of days.

At least 1,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced, by floods across Central and Western Africa. Parts of Nigeria, Mali, and Niger have been particularly hard hit by some of the heaviest rains in decades.

Threat level: The flooding, which has hit some of the driest places in the world, has displaced large groups of people and drowned many who could not escape swiftly-moving water in time.

Meta is banning RT and other Russian state media outlets due to "foreign interference activity" after the U.S. accused the organizations of advancing an election interference scheme.

Why it matters: The Justice Department (DOJ) alleged in an indictment earlier this month that employees of the Kremlin-backed outlet spent millions to direct an American company and several right-wing influencers to unwittingly publish Russian propaganda.

Microsoft is boosting its investment in AI for the Middle East and Africa, in conjunction with Abu Dhabi-based G42.

Why it matters: Microsoft wants its technology — and U.S. tech more broadly — to beat China in the battle to power the world's AI systems, especially in developing countries.

U.S. students have made up for some pandemic-era learning losses in math and reading — but the recovery has been slow and uneven, especially among students of color, per a new report.

Why it matters: The pandemic exposed deep racial and income inequalities in the nation's public school system, and the uneven recovery is showing few of those inequities have been addressed enough.

Jordan Chiles, the U.S. gymnast who was stripped of her Olympic bronze medal at the Paris Games, filed an appeal Monday challenging the decision in the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.

The big picture: The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee filed a letter of support in Chiles' appeal against the Court of Arbitration for Sport's (CAS) decision to revoke the medal in the women's gymnastics floor event and award it to Romanian gymnast Ana Bărbosu, per a statement from her attorneys.