Good morning.<\/p>\n
Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that adds as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, the supreme court ruled<\/a> yesterday, handing Donald Trump a major win in his push to boost Republican seats ahead of next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n In an unsigned order, the 6-3 conservative-majority court granted a request by Texas to lift a lower court\u2019s ruling that struck down the state\u2019s new map in November. The supreme court\u2019s three liberal justices dissented.<\/p>\n \u201cThe district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,\u201d the supreme court said in an order explaining its decision.<\/p>\n What did the lower court rule?<\/strong> The lower district court previously found that Texas had likely sorted voters based on their race \u2013 an unlawful practice called racial gerrymandering \u2013 when it adopted the new maps, and ordered the state to use the maps it had adopted after the 2020 census for next year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Pentagon announces it has killed four men in another boat strike in Pacific<\/strong><\/p>\n The Pentagon announced yesterday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men<\/a> in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.<\/p>\n The US southern command, based in Florida, posted video of the new strike on social media with a statement saying that at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, \u201cJoint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization\u201d.<\/p>\n The footage showed a large explosion suddenly overtaking a small boat as it moved through the water, followed by an image of a vessel in flames and dark smoke streaming overhead.<\/p>\n Why was the boat targeted?<\/strong> \u201cIntelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the eastern Pacific. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n EU leaders race to save Ukraine funding deal as Kyiv\u2019s cash runs low<\/strong>Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ursula von der Leyen in Washington in August. Photograph: Planetpix\/Alamy<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will meet the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and Belgium\u2019s prime minister, Bart De Wever, for emergency talks today<\/a> as the EU tries to save its sorely needed financing plan for Ukraine.<\/p>\n With Russia\u2019s attacks intensifying, Washington pushing for a peace deal that favours Moscow, Kyiv fast running out of money and Europe struggling for influence at US-led talks, the bloc must find a solution or suffer a major blow to its credibility.<\/p>\n What else is happening?<\/strong> Vladimir Putin is visiting Delhi<\/a> for a summit with India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi. It comes as Washington seeks to increase pressure on India to cut back trade with Russia. It is the first time Putin has visited India since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and marks another step for him on the international stage since starting a war that has turned Russia into a global pariah.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n In other news \u2026<\/strong>People displaced from El Fasher reach out as aid workers distribute food supplies at a newly established camp in Al Dabbah, Sudan. Photograph: Marwan Ali\/AP<\/p>\n The Sudanese city of <\/strong>El Fasher<\/strong> resembles a massive crime scene<\/strong> with large piles of bodies heaped throughout its streets as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) work to destroy evidence<\/a> of the scale of their massacre.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n A grand jury declined to indict <\/a><\/strong>Letitia James<\/a><\/strong> yesterday, according to a source familiar with the decision<\/strong>, less than two weeks after a judge ruled that a similar mortgage fraud case brought by federal prosecutors against the New York attorney general was unlawful.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Donald Trump has replaced the architect<\/a> originally selected to oversee his $300m planned gilded ballroom. <\/strong>The president and James McCrery II disagreed over expanding ballroom\u2019s size but the change was ultimately prompted by the firm\u2019s limited staff.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Stat of the day: Three-year-old chess prodigy becomes youngest player to earn official rating<\/strong>Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha plays chess for up to five hours a day. Photograph: Diy13\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n India\u2019s Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has become the youngest player in chess history to earn an official Fide rating, at the age of three years, seven months and 20 days<\/a>. Kushwaha defeated three rated players in events across his state and other parts of the country to secure his record-breaking status.<\/p>\n Culture pick: Cover-Up review \u2013 atrocity exposer Seymour Hersh, journalism legend, gets a moment in the spotlight<\/strong>Seymour Hersh in 1975. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix\/Redux<\/p>\n The renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was never played in a film like the Washington Post\u2019s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were. But as this documentary portrait argues, he\u2019s probably more important than either<\/a>. Hersh\u2019s record of uncovering the big stories, from My Lai to Abu Ghraib, speaks for itself. This documentary, which has a limited US theatrical release this month and will also be available to stream on Netflix, watches him at work: dogged, nonconformist and combative.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t miss this: \u2018It was about degrading someone completely\u2019 \u2013 the story of Mr DeepFakes, the world\u2019s most notorious AI porn site<\/strong>The hobbyists who helped build this site created technology that has been used to humiliate countless women. Why didn\u2019t governments step in and stop them? Composite: Guardian Design; posed by models; master1305; Jacob Wackerhausen; stockcam\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The story of Mr DeepFakes, the world\u2019s largest and most infamous non-consensual deepfake porn site, is essentially the story of AI porn itself<\/a>. Its pages, viewed more than 2bn times, hosted extreme, graphic deepfakes of countless famous women. Yet that was only the shop window: the real engine room was its forum, where people could commission deepfakes of women they knew \u2013 a girlfriend, sister, classmate or colleague \u2013 for a price.<\/p>\n Climate check: 60,000 African penguins starve to death after sardine numbers collapse \u2013 study<\/strong>Black-footed penguins hunting sardines. Photograph: Peter Verhoog\/Minden Pictures\/Alamy<\/p>\n More than 60,000 penguins in colonies off the coast of South Africa have starved to death as a result of disappearing sardines, a paper has found<\/a>. The penguins probably starved to death during the moulting period, according to the paper, which said the climate crisis and overfishing were driving declines.<\/p>\n Last Thing: Spotify\u2019s listening age feature stirs delight and dismay<\/strong>Taylor Swift was the most streamed artist on Spotify in the UK for the third year running. Photograph: Scott A Garfitt\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n It has given some in middle age dubious hope that they have their finger on the cultural pulse. Meanwhile, some younger users have been told their listening habits suggest they are well into retirement. Spotify has confected a wave of intrigue over what our musical preferences suggest about our vintage, with its \u201cyour listening age\u201d feature causing delight and consternation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sign up<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for the US morning briefing<\/p>\n<\/p>\n First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you\u2019re not already signed up, subscribe now<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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