Vox Sentences: North Korea announces a “semi-war state” with South Korea. Don’t freak out.

Brinkmanship between North Korea and South Korea heats up, and Israel launches airstrikes against Syria. Here's what you need to know.

TOP NEWS

Quasi-war

A South Korean soldier at a barricade near the border. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)

• North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has ordered his military units into a "semi-war state" with South Korea after the countries traded rocket and artillery fire on Thursday; there were no casualties, but it was the most significant such incident in five years.

  [NYT / Choe Sang-Hun]

• On August 4, two South Korean soldiers were wounded in a land mine exposion in the demilitarized zone, for which the South blamed the North.

  [NYT / Choe Sang-Hun]

• In retaliation, the South began blasting propaganda in the demilitarized zone, which used to be a common practice but which the countries agreed to stop doing in 2004.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• On August 16, the US and South Korea began annual joint military exercises, which the North denounced as training for an invasion; a few days later, on Thursday, the North fired at the South, and the South responded.

  [CNN / Jethro Mullen and Kathy Novak]

• After the exchange of fire on Thursday, the US briefly suspended and then started back up the military exercises.

  [LA Times / Jonathan Kaiman]

• The North has demanded that the South end its loudspeaker propaganda by Saturday afternoon, or else face an attack from the North; the South rejected the ultimatum.

  [Reuters / Ju-Min Park and James Pearson]

• This sounds scary, but brinkmanship like this between the North and South has happened for decades without escalating into war. For more, see Zack Beauchamp's explainer.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

Another combatant in Syria

An Israeli soldier in the Golan Heights, from earlier today. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)

• Israel launched two rounds of airstrikes against the Syrian military and allied militant groups in Syria on Thursday and Friday, in response to rocket attacks at the Golan Heights.

  [NYT / Diaa Hadid]

• Israel claims that the rocket attack was conducted by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad and coordinated by Iran; Iran backs the Syrian government in the country's civil war.

  [WSJ / Noga Tarnopolsky and Raja Abdulrahim]

• Syria's government claims five civilians were killed in the second round of strikes; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says they were pro-government fighters.

  [McClatchy / Joel Greenberg]

• Israel claimed that they were actually Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad, which has so far denied responsibility for the rocket attacks.

  [Reuters]

• The Israeli government is already connecting the rocket attacks to the Iran nuclear deal; Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon alleged the rocket strikes were a "preview of a richer and more murderous Iran” after sanctions are lifted.

  [NYT / Diaa Hadid]

MISCELLANEOUS

You think the Bay Area is coffee-obsessed? It's got nothing on Alaska. [The Guardian / Julia O'Malley]

• The income models of these six artists are a good guide to how the economics of art are changing.

  [NYT / Ryan Bradley]

• Is the British Labour Party purging its rolls of supporters of leftist leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn? Well, no, not really.

  [New Statesman / Stephen Bush]

• A new apartment development in London will feature a "sky pool" — a pool suspended between two buildings, with a glass floor so swimmers can look down at the people on the streets belows.

  [Mashable / Sam Haysom]

• An increasing number of Bernie Sanders supporters are embracing a conspiracy theory in which Black Lives Matter is a Hillary Clinton front meant to destroy Sanders' campaign.

  [BuzzFeed / Evan McMorris-Santoro]

VERBATIM

Deez Nuts Has Started a Revolution [National Journal / Emma Roller, Nora Kelly, and Matt Berman]

• "In 1860s Manhattan, young men and women in search of some excitement could duck into a little stationery shop uptown, open the unmarked notebook on the counter, and scribble a message to all the other strangers who were in on the secret."

  [Slate / Amanda Hess]

• "You know, an email is just an utterance in digital form. But it has some kind of dark energy that gets everybody excited. So I don’t know how. It’s almost like a vampire. She’s going to have to find a stake and put it right through the heart of these emails in some way."

  [California Gov. Jerry Brown to Meet the Press / Chuck Todd]

• "While the biggest hacks to receive attention lately — the Sony hack, the Fappening's nude-celebrity-photo link, and Ashley Madison — may have targeted groups that are easily held at a distance, that won't always be the case."

  [NY Mag / Heather Havrilesky]

• "In 1923, my grandfather arrived in New York after an eight week voyage from Ireland. He lived in the city his entire life, and even though he passed away when I was 10, he made sure to pass down some of the valuable lessons that he learned before he died — sage advice like 'The hot dog stand on 54th Street sells loosies for a quarter' and 'Always tip your barkeep, even if he's a Protestant.’"

  [Millennials of New York]

WATCH THIS

Vox / Christophe Haubursin

• How prosthetics went from peg legs to biolimbs

  [YouTube / Joseph Stromberg and Christophe Haubursin]