2024
August
13
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 13, 2024
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Amelia Newcomb
Senior editor

Reporters tackle plenty of tough stories daily, striving to bring better understanding to complex and often weighty issues. Today’s stories on artificial intelligence deepfakes and urban tent encampments are just two examples. But there are also moments when a casual tip or simple serendipity reveals a place that brings connection, that gives our world more breadth by making it a little bit smaller.

Ann Scott Tyson shares such a moment in Chengdu, China, when strangers shifted into friends, and the tyranny of the clock melted away. It, too, helps us understand our world just a little bit better.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Former President Donald Trump claimed that the Kamala Harris campaign used AI to fake her rally size. This Reuters photo shows Air Force Two, as supporters of Vice President Harris rally at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Michigan, Aug. 7, 2024.

Today’s news briefs

Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle/AP
With new authority to clear homeless camps, cities like San Francisco are doing so, while others are focusing on improving social services. A city employee dismantles a tent in San Francisco, July 30, 2024.
Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor
Local residents and out-of-town visitors alike frequent Heming Tea House in People's Park in central Chengdu, China, June 13, 2024.

Points of Progress

What's going right
Staff
Staff

The Monitor's View

Reuters
A person in Caracas holds a Venezuelan flag during an Aug. 8 vigil for citizens who were detained following disputed election results.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Viewfinder

Emrah Gurel/AP
Venerable statues are illuminated during the Perseid meteor shower atop Mount Nemrut in southeastern Turkey, Aug. 12, 2024. Perched at an altitude of 2,150 meters (over 7,000 feet), the statues are part of a temple and tomb complex that King Antiochus I, of the Commagene kingdom that was founded in 163 B.C., built as a monument to himself.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow, you can read about a court that Liberia is creating to try perpetrators of violence. And have you ever heard of “stunt journalism”? It emerged in the 1800s. We’ll introduce you to one of its modern practitioners. 

More issues

2024
August
13
Tuesday
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