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I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the word word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds. The fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem. New York Times games are made by people, like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com/games to start playing today.
From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, June 29th. Here's what we're covering.
“Heading into the week, here are three key stories to watch. First, in the Middle East, there's the question of how far the fragile two-week-old agreement between the U.S. and Iran can bend.”
American officials say Iran has now struck two ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. In order to show, it still has power over the crucial waterway. The strikes set off a wave of back and forth attacks over the weekend, as the U.S. responded, hitting Iranian targets. Still, analysts say neither side appears eager to return to full-blown war. Iran is still seeking relief from years of punishing sanctions, and President Trump may be reluctant to restart the conflict, which is unpopular with voters before the mid-terms.
Next, in Washington, the Supreme Court is poised to make a big decision this week on birthright citizenship, and whether President Trump can end that long-standing guarantee for babies born to undocumented immigrants. Trump has been bracing for a likely defeat in the case. During the oral arguments, key justices appeared skeptical about the administration's efforts to limit who is automatically a citizen. The justices are set to issue rulings today and at least one other day this week before going on their traditional summer break.
In that mix are a couple of other major cases, including decisions on who the President has the authority to fire. And last thing to watch for. I certainly want to take the biggest boldest marker that he has and do that big Trump signature proudly on that legislation,
“because we're delivering for the people, and that's what he wants to do.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is sending President Trump the bipartisan housing bill that cleared Congress, though there's no word on whether Trump will sign it. He was supposed to sign it last week. There was a ceremony set for it and everything. But Trump abruptly canceled saying he wouldn't act on it until the Senate passed an unrelated bill that would impose nationwide voter restrictions.
Trump has called the housing bill, which is aimed at bringing down prices and is the first major housing legislation in decades,
quote, "of minor importance." Once Johnson formally transfers the bill to him today, it starts a clock, and the President has 10 days to sign it or veto it.
“In Venezuela over the weekend, the search for survivors of the deadly back-to-back earthquakes turned increasingly frantic.”
As first responders and volunteers picked through the rubble of flattened homes and high rises. There were some moments of relief as workers found victims and pulled them free, but rescuers were largely working without the heavy machinery that would have let them dig deeper. Instead, people used pickaxes and jack hammers to try and get through the crushed concrete, some even used their bare hands, and crowds lined up to clear bucket after bucket of debris. At times, the rescuers called for silence, hoping to be able to hear anyone who might be shouting for help from underneath the collapsed buildings.
The desperate search came in what's known as the Golden Window. The first 72 hours after an earthquake, when experts say there's the highest chance of finding victims alive.
That window is now closed, and scores of people are still believed to be trapped. According to Venezuela in authorities, the official death poll is more than 1,400, and that number is expected to rise. Rescue workers and aid from many other countries have started flowing in, but the disaster is testing Venezuela's already fragile healthcare system. Officials say many hospitals have been damaged by the earthquakes, and according to a doctor, one of the facilities in the hardest hit area was operating without running water, and patients were being treated intense outside.
Across the western and southwestern U.
Wildfires are raging in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.
“Huge smoke plume associated with that. This is a new one that has developed and now it is really taking off.”
According to the governor of Utah, one of the wildfires, the cottonwood fire, is now the most destructive blaze in the state's history in terms of property loss. Burning rural cabins and mountain condos to the ground. And on the Colorado Utah border, a series of fires have merged into a kind of mega blaze that killed three firefighters who were overwhelmed by fast moving flames.
This is really just the latest sign of how devastating this wildfire season has become only just a few days into the official start of summer.
My colleague Jack Healey has been covering the fires. Conditions across the west have been primed for a terrible fire season, and we are starting to see that come to pass unfortunately.
“It was a very dry winter with limited snows, and then things heated up extraordinarily quickly.”
Burning away the snow pack and really marching the ground. So what you have is a deadly tinder box across multiple western states, and so it's going to be a very long and very difficult summer out here. [Music] As the AI boom continues to take off around the world, there's one place that can be considered ground zero, Taiwan. It's home to TSMC, which makes some of the most sought after chips that power AI systems.
Amid the chip frenzy, Taiwan's economic growth rate has accelerated rapidly, shooting up to become one of the fastest in the world.
“And my colleague Megan Tobin has been reporting on what that looks like in TSMC's hometown, Shinju.”
The area used to be farmland, and now when you get to town, you know, you can take the high speed rail there, and there's luxury high rises, there's glittery Tesla dealerships, there's plastic surgery clinics, and real estate offices, and Pilates studios. You can feel the money, and beyond that one super interesting thing that's happened here is, as household incomes have gone up in the area, people are also having more kids. So they're actually having been enough schools to educate all the children that have been born here in the last decade or so.
While this small slice of people in Shinju are doing really well, it kind of masks a deeper divide in the economy in Taiwan. You know, making chips does not really take that many people, and the wealth from the global interest in AI has not translated to broader wage gains across other industries. So this mirrors a trend that economists are observing around the world as a result of their rise in AI. They call it a "c" shaped divide, where people close to the industry are really benefiting, and those who are not are struggling to find a way in.
And finally, talk of micro dramas has been around for years, the shows, which are often super soapy, are designed to be watched on your phone, their shot vertically, and released in little bite-sized episodes, short as a minute or two.
They are huge in other countries, especially China, and there's now an $11 billion global market for them.
In the US, they've been slower to catch on. A few years ago, a start-up devoted to them, Quibi went down in flames so spectacularly that Quibi became kind of entertainment industry slang for a bad idea. But now, you're going to get over that. Main stream networks like Fox, Bravo, and Lifetime are looking at micro dramas with renewed interest. Hollywood actors like Tay Diggs and Issa Ray have thrown their weight behind producing them. "We should just talk about everything, all of our secrets, confess what we think your main number about us."
The shows can be 50, 60 plus episodes long, but take less than two hours to watch the whole thing. You flip through them like you would TikTok videos. The big companies looking at this aren't all necessarily creating new content. In one case, Fox struck a deal to slice up an existing reality show, Farmer wants a wife, and release it as more than 100 micro series episodes. One TV executive told the Times that younger people are already consuming more and more content on their phones, so quote, "We're just meeting audiences where they are."
Those are the headlines.
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