THE WAR ROOM: Israel faces the prospect of war on a new front after a rocket attack launched out of Lebanon killed 12 children and young adults in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The rocket hit an AstroTurf soccer field in a Druse Arab village. Most of the dead were children ages 10 to 16.

  Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah targets last night “deep inside Lebanese territory” and along the border, according to the military. The situation has been flirting with out-out war for ten months with both sides trading fire.

   Israel blames Hezbollah militants and said they will “pay the price,” although Hezbollah denies responsibility for the roughly 30 rockets that were fired. Israel has a policy of hitting back harder that it’s been hit itself.

THE COCONUT TREE: Vice President Kamala Harris has attracted $200 million in contributions in the week since she started her run for president. 

 The Harris candidacy has brought an energy to the race, much of it showing in social media buzz that Joe Biden could never generate.

  Social media posters have added coconut and palm tree emojis to their pages and memes. Clips of Harris speaking have been remixed into pop songs by artists like Charli XCX and Chappell Roan, and they have spread across TikTok.

  The coconut tree is a reference to Harris at a White House event last year quoting her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

  Harris lovers have also borrowed the lime green color from the front of British performer Charli XCX’s latest album, “Brat,” after the singer declared Harris to be “brat,” a version of cool. Some Kamala fans calling themselves members of the “KHive,” adapted from the “BeyHive” of singer Beyonce.

  Sen. JD Vance’s denunciation of childless cat ladies has inspired memes like “Cats for Kamala” and then there are the t-shirts with cats and coconuts on them. 

ORANGE ALERT!: The talking heads are debating about what Donald Trump meant last Friday when he told an audience of Christians in West Palm Beach that if he’s elected to the presidency again they won’t have to vote anymore. Did he mean that he believes he will give them everything they want and fix their problems, or that he would not intend to ever leave office?

  Here’s what he said: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

  Trump’s campaign staff says that what he meant was that he would unite the country. Democrats have said they take him at his word that he intends to be a dictator, if only on the first day.

  One thing that needs no debate, Trump is not a Christian in faith or practice. But he has found in his third run for president that Christian believers are willing to believe him as well.

FIVE RINGS:  French swimmer Léon Marchand won the men’s 400-meter individual medley, breaking the Olympic record set by American Michael Phelps. 

  The US women’s soccer team beat Germany 4-1.

  American Torri Huske from Stanford University won the women’s 100 meter butterfly by a margin of just .04 seconds. Team mate Gretchen Walsh finished second.   

  Kevin Durant and LeBron James led the US in crushing Serbia 110-84 on the basketball court. James had 21 points and the Americans dropped in 18 three-pointers. But what’s the point of having NBA professionals play Serbia?

  On Saturday, American swimmer Katie Ledecky came up short on her quest to win gold in the women’s 400 freestyle. She finished third, but it’s still an Olympic medal.

  And in the department of “Really, he said that,” a broadcaster for Eurosport was removed from his post for his comments following Australia’s win in the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay: “Well the women are just finishing up. You know what women are like … hanging around, doing their makeup.”

  He’s gone.

THE OBIT PAGE: Irish author Edna O’Brien who wrote primarily about the loves and lives of women, died on Saturday at age 93.

  O’Brien wrote dozens of novels and short-story collections over almost 60 years, some of her work autobiography masked as fiction leading to questions about her morals. Her first book in 1960, “The Country Girls,” was about the emotional conflicts of two Irish girls who rebel against their Roman Catholic upbringing.

  O’Brien often wrote about willful yet insecure women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married. She was not a favorite of the women’s rights movement, and said, “I feel strongly about childhood, truth or lies, and the real expression of feeling.”

THE SPIN RACK: Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, has been declared the winner of a third six-year term in an election that’s under question. — Scientists have developed a new blood test that identifies Alzheimer’s disease with 90 percent accuracy, much more so than standard CT scans and cognitive tests. Alzheimer’s robs people of memory and cognition. — The Park fire in northern California, started by a burning car rolled into a ditch, has grown to 350,000 acres and is expected to burn for months. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Church leaders and some politicians were outraged about the live entertainment event in the Paris opening ceremonies that they thought mocked the scene depicted by Leonardo DaVinci in his painting, “The Last Supper.” Critics missed the real reason for Christian indignation. What they saw was a drag queen bacchanalia which, by the way, was pretty cool.

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