Vox Sentences: The most-hyped company in biotech is in big, big trouble

No, really, things are getting Very Bad in Israel/Palestine; bad news for biotech darling Theranos; and catching up with FIFA bribery scandals.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

A fire in Joseph's Tomb

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

• Palestinian rioters set a fire on the compound containing Joseph's Tomb — which is venerated by Jews as a holy site — in the West Bank city of Nablus today.

  [CNN / Ben Brumfield and Greg Botelho]

• The arson is almost certainly going to exacerbate growing violence between Israelis and Palestinians. This explainer from Vox's Zack Beauchamp should catch you up on what's been going on.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Many Jews believe that Joseph's Tomb is the gravesite of the Joseph from the Book of Genesis (he of the amazing technicolor dreamcoat); many Muslims, on the other hand, believe that the body belongs to a 19th-century Islamic cleric.

  [AFP]

• There's been a power struggle over the site for decades — including previous attacks. Haaretz explains the tomb's recent history here.

  [Haaretz / Jack Khoury]

• Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack. But Abbas doesn't exactly command much respect from many Palestinians at this point.

  [New York Times / Isabel Kershner]

• In fact, one of the most worrisome things about a possible "third intifada," some experts say, is that it won't have a leader — Palestinians appear to be goading each other over social media, rather than organizing attacks strategically.

  [Al-Monitor / Orit Perlov]

• It is pretty safe to say that things will only get worse from here.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp and Jeremy Pressman]

Sorry, needlephobes

Lisa Lake/Getty Images

• If you follow biotech, you might have heard of Theranos — a company that claims it has developed technology that can do blood tests using only a drop of blood, rather than a whole vial.

• The press loved Theranos (and its wunderkind founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford to start the company at age 19). Holmes even made the TIME 100 — in a blurb written by Theranos board member Henry Kissinger.

  [Time / Henry Kissinger]

• Here's the twist: this week, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Theranos wasn't actually using its wonder technology for most of its tests (and was relying on other companies' old-school tech instead)...

  [Wall Street Journal / John Carreyrou]

• ...and then reported that the FDA had actually forced Theranos to stop using its tech for most tests until the FDA has approved them.

  [Wall Street Journal / John Carreyrou]

• The exception: a test for herpes, which the FDA approved in July — and the press welcomed as a "strong endorsement" of the legitimacy of the rest of Theranos' testing.

  [Fortune / Roger Parloff]

• It turns out that testing tiny samples of blood is really hard. This article from Wired explains the science behind it.

  [Wired / Nick Stockton]

• Theranos and Holmes have responded...badly to the WSJ piece. They're attacking the reporter, but not releasing any information that would contradict him. It sure looks like the company's in deep trouble.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

Let he who has not bribed a soccer official cast the first stone

Clive Rose/Getty Images

• In the latest development in FIFA's ever-widening corruption scandal, it looks like Germany bribed the organization to get the World Cup in 2006.

  [Der Spiegel (English)]

• The news comes a whole 10 days into FIFA head Sepp Blatter's 90-day provisional suspension by FIFA's ethics committee, while it investigates Blatter for two other ethical violations — both of which are also being investigated by Swiss law enforcement.

  [SB Nation / James Dator]

• One of the crimes Blatter's accused of: making a sweetheart deal with the head of the Caribbean soccer association CONCACAF for TV rights for the 2006 World Cup.

  [BBC]

• The other: making a "disloyal payment" (no really, that is the actual phrase used by Swiss authorities) to the head of the European soccer association, Michael Piatini. Blatter and Piatini both claim it was long-overdue back pay from fifteen years ago; the Swiss are skeptical.

  [AP / Rob Harris]

• The scandal has caused both Coca-Cola and McDonald's to call for Blatter to step down.

  [SB Nation / Conor Dowley]

• Of course, given that Blatter managed to get himself re-elected this spring only days after several of his top officials were arrested by US authorities, it's not clear what could actually wrest him from office.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

MISCELLANEOUS

24 words that mean totally different things than they did before the internet. [Washington Post / Caitlin Dewey]

• This is the definitive history of the "Ermahgerd" meme, and the surprising good-humored girl behind it.

  [Vanity Fair / Darryn King]

• More than twice as many Americans claim to have Cherokee blood as are actually members of Cherokee tribes.

  [Slate / Gregory D. Smithers]

• Doctors are less likely to take pain seriously when the patient is a woman.

  [The Atlantic / Joe Fassler]

• This is a great interview with Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on how the show handles its viewers twin demands for socially aware plotlines and vicious, unrelenting brutality.

  [Slate / June Thomas]

VERBATIM

"The media liked this ‘brilliant man’ approach to science. But the real world of science is lots and lots of people." [Meg Urry to BuzzFeed / Peter Aldhous, Cat Ferguson, Virginia Hughes]

• "Economists say that schizophrenia costs the U.S. at least $60 billion a year, and probably a good deal more."

  [Huffington Post / Jonathan Cohn]

• "If a company can make money by deceiving or manipulating people, someone is going to create such a company, and it will prosper (unless the law regulates it). And if it prospers, companies that do not deceive or manipulate people may well be at a competitive disadvantage."

  [NYRB / Cass Sunstein]

• "I think the dream of radical transparency is a nightmare. People saying how wonderful technology is and that crime will disappear because everything will be known about everyone."

  [Jonathan Franzen to NYT / Rachel Kushner]

• "The only way President Sanders or President Clinton will accomplish anything is through skilled use of bureaucratic power."

  [Slate / Jamelle Bouie]

WATCH THIS

Benghazi, the attack and the scandal, explained [YouTube / Zack Beauchamp, Carlos Waters, Joss Fong]

Vox / Carlos Waters, Joss Fong

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