Sabotage Snarls French Trains as Olympics Begin
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A massive act of sabotage halts trains across France just hours before the Olympic opening ceremony. There are 250,000 travelers who are currently impacted, and that figure will rise to 800,000 by the end of the weekend. It's a kind of nightmare on the opening day of the Olympics for the government. Plus, the Obamas back Kamala Harris for president, solidifying her Democratic Party support.

And U.S. agents arrest a Mexican drug lord in Texas. It's Friday, July 26th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

We begin in France, where the country's rail service has been hit by a massive act of sabotage hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris. Officials say fires were set this morning at multiple sites around France's rail network, disrupting service on lines that bring traffic to Paris from different parts of the country. WSJ reporter Matthew Dalton has the latest.

Lines serving the north, the southwest and the east were all disrupted. It seems like service on those high speed lines is completely down. Officials are saying it will take days to fix. There are 250,000 travelers who are currently impacted and that figure will rise to 800,000 by the end of the weekend.

So all told, it's a really massive attack. And Matthew said that disruption stands to prevent thousands of people, including athletes, from attending the opening ceremony in Paris tonight. The games are mostly held in Paris, but there are a number of sites around the country where the games are also being held, like in Lille. And so some people are going to be trying to get to Paris for the games, and many of those people will be using the high-speed rail network to get there.

So, yeah, their plans are going to be disrupted. The opening ceremony is this evening. France is expecting 300,000 people or more to attend, so it would be the most attended opening event in Olympics history. It's a kind of nightmare on the opening day of the Olympics for the government. Officials don't yet know who is behind the attack, though France had been bracing for acts of state-sponsored sabotage planned by adversaries such as Russia or Iran during the Games.

And later in the show, we'll talk more about the security challenges Paris had been preparing for before this latest news, as well as some of the things to get excited about as competition gets underway. Former first couple Barack and Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris's bid for the White House, capping a week in which she has quickly become the expected Democratic nominee for president.

The former president was the last major figure in the Democratic Party to withhold his endorsement, with people around him saying he had wanted to see the party unite before weighing in. In election years, Obama typically ramps up his campaign activity after the Labor Day holiday in early September, an approach he is expected to take this year.

Mexican drug lord Ismael El Mayo Zambada has been arrested by U.S. agents after a high-ranking Sinaloa cartel member tricked him into flying to Texas. Zambada co-founded the cartel three decades ago and heads a faction that's considered the leading smuggler of fentanyl into the U.S.,

According to a Homeland Security investigations official, Zambada thought he was going to inspect clandestine airfields in Mexico, but was instead flown to El Paso, Texas, where he was taken into custody on the tarmac. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, was on the same plane as Zambada and was also arrested. It is the latest blow to the Sinaloa cartel, which has been a top target for U.S. law enforcement.

Venezuela is holding presidential elections on Sunday. Pollsters say that challenger Edmundo Gonzalez could easily beat incumbent Nicolas Maduro in a fair election, but that isn't expected to happen, according to diplomats and Venezuela experts. Maduro has been in power for 11 years, and his authoritarian regime has overseen an economic collapse that has decimated a once-potent energy sector and prompted a quarter of the population to flee.

However, journal correspondent Kajal Vyas in Caracas says that behind closed doors, there are some oil executives and creditors on Wall Street who are quietly embracing Maduro. His government badly needs foreign investment and it really needs tens of billions of dollars to restart their oil industry.

One of the big impediments, obviously, is that there are U.S. sanctions and there's this government legitimacy issue. Maduro in private has been offering pretty sweetheart deals to Americans who can help him effectively lobby in Washington to try to get the U.S. to both recognize his government as legitimate and

and reestablish commercial ties. He's kind of offering an opportunity to work in a country where you can potentially get generous returns, get operational control over your projects,

with virtually no environmental or regulatory oversight, and no tender contracts. And so for many oil executives, this is kind of a unique opportunity. And in markets news that we're watching today, Mercedes-Benz has reported a drop in second quarter net profit and revenue on the back of fewer vehicle sales. The carmaker also pointed to a tough Chinese market and trade tensions as it lowered a key margin target for the year.

Bristol-Myers, Squibb, Colgate-Palmolive, and 3M are among the companies reporting earnings this morning. And the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index for June, is due out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern. Those readings could help clarify why U.S. core inflation topped analysts' expectations in yesterday's GDP report.

Coming up, as Paris prepares to celebrate the start of the 2024 Olympics, it won't just be the athletes looking to make history as city authorities take on a mammoth security challenge. We've got that story after the break.

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At long last, the Paris Olympics are upon us. The opening ceremony of the Games will feature a four-mile-long parade of boats along the Seine tonight, carrying athletes through the heart of the city. And if all goes well, it will be just one of many good storylines to emerge over the next two and a half weeks.

But as journal reporters Noemi Bissourb and Joshua Robinson are here to discuss, there are some other dynamics we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about both on and off the field of competition. Noemi, I want to start with you talking about the Paris security situation. You report that threats against the Games have essentially turned the capital into an open-air fortress.

Tell us a bit more about that. So 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 22,000 security guards are being deployed across the country and mainly in Paris where the opening ceremony is taking place today. It will be held on the Seine River, so outside the stadium, which represents a huge security challenge for authorities.

You'll have police stationed every six feet along the river. They will also be patrolling the city's catacombs, which is a maze of underground galleries under the city. And you'll have helicopters of special forces flying above. They have conducted more than a million security checks on any individual which is supposed to come anywhere near the Games. And they have banned several thousand people from coming to the Games sites for security reasons.

All these measures and these resources being deployed are unprecedented here in Paris and anywhere in the world, really. France, Noemi, has been in the news. You've come on the program to talk about the political situation there. Does that have any bearing on the preparedness for responding to anything that might come up here? So, yes, the games come as France is amid one of the biggest political crises in decades. The government has resigned and...

It is staying on in a caretaker capacity, but it should have a limited impact on the games themselves. Beyond that, Noemi, there is the perennial question of whether the host city and in particular its venues, most notably this year, the River Seine, are ready for competition. Folks are going to be swimming in a river that has been notoriously dirty as recently as just a few weeks ago. What are we looking at there?

So yes, the Seine River is safe for swimming and the Paris mayor took a dip last week to prove it. But yeah, as you say, the station remains fragile. The issue is that much depends on the weather. The water quality can deteriorate very quickly when it rains because that's when the city's sewage system saturates and that creates sewage pollution in the river.

So here's hoping for good weather in days to come. Josh, you are our European sports reporter. I know there has been some concern about

raised about doping at many Olympics, but that is coming up again this year, including in the swimming competition. What are we looking at there? Yeah, this comes on the heels of the revelation that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for banned substances ahead of Tokyo 2021 and were allowed to compete anyway. Now, 11 of those athletes are coming back to Paris and

And they'll be under heavy, heavy scrutiny to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks again. And Josh, I understand the American swimmers this year are sort of on guard for this. Oh, there's been outrage across the sports community that anyone could be allowed to test positive and still compete. And it's really a major black eye for the IOC and WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency. In an attempt to end this segment on a more positive note, we've got lots of competition coming up in the next few weeks. What are some storylines we should be getting excited about?

Well, first of all, I think we should be excited about some of the arrival of new sports. We've got breakdancing in the Olympics for the first time, and that's going to happen in the Place de la Concorde. So this wide open plaza with the famous Hotel de Crillon with an obelisk and every gilded building you can imagine. So the visual should be amazing. We've got surfing returning for a second time. That's not in Paris per se. That's a little further afield in Tahiti. But those images are going to be spectacular as they surf the Terre Hooper wave.

I think for Americans, the return of Simone Biles is especially exciting because she is an incredible Olympian who ran into a case of the twisties in Tokyo 2021. And so she's made the long journey back and is hoping to add to her tally of gold medals. And I think...

Above all, the visuals of this Olympics are going to be absolutely spectacular. We've got skateboarding in the Concorde. We've got beach volleyball at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. We've got a equestrian at the Palace of Versailles. No matter what happens on the field of play, I think we're sure to have a postcard everywhere we look. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal reporters Noemi Bisserv and Joshua Robinson.

Thank you both. Enjoy the games. Au revoir. Thank you. And that's it for What's News for Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Boulivant and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend. Thanks for listening. ♪

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