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      Alabama Scrambles to Redraw Its Voting Map After a Supreme Court Surprise

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      State lawmakers have until Friday to come up with new congressional districts that do not illegally dilute the power of Black voters.Under orders from the Supreme Court to produce a voting map that no longer illegally dilutes the power of Black voters in Alabama, the state’s lawmakers are now facing a high-stakes scramble to come up with an acceptable replacement by the end of this week.A little over a month after the court’s surprise ruling, the Alabama legislature will convene for a special five-day session on Monday, with the Republican supermajority having given little public indication of how it plans to fulfill a mandate to craft a second district that allows Black voters to elect a representative of their choice — one who could well be a Democrat.The effects of the revised map, which must be passed by Friday and approved by a federal court, could reverberate across the country, with other states in the South confronting similar voting rights challenges and Republicans looking to hold onto a razor-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year.The session also comes at a pivotal moment in the debate over the constitutionality of factoring race into government decisions, as conservatives have increasingly chipped away at the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other longstanding judicial protections centered on equality and race.“The eyes of the nation are looking at you,” Evan Milligan, one of several Alabama residents who had challenged the legality of the map, told lawmakers during a committee hearing in Montgomery on Thursday. “If you can cut out the noise, look within — you can look to history, you can make a mark in history that will set a standard for this country.”Alabama has a long list of bitter disputes over the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark law born out of the civil rights movement whose key provisions were gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court decision. Litigation forced the creation of Alabama’s first majority-Black congressional district in 1992, and the seat has been represented by a Black Democrat ever since then.But the current fight stems from lawsuits filed to oppose the map drawn after the 2020 census. In a state where 27 percent of the population is Black, the Republican-controlled legislature packed nearly a third of the Black population into that one district. The state’s remaining six districts each elected a white Republican.There is little disagreement that voting in Alabama is highly polarized, but lawyers for the state legislature attributed the situation to politics rather than race. (The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a gerrymander that discriminates against one party’s voters is a political problem, not a legal one.)Evan Milligan, an Alabama resident who sued over the state’s voting map, speaking with reporters outside the Supreme Court in Washington last year.Patrick Semansky/Associated Press“Black Alabamians’ ‘candidates of choice’ tend to lose elections in Alabama not because they are Black or because they receive Black support, but because they are Democrats,” the state’s lawyers wrote.And with about 80 percent of Black voters in Alabama identifying as Democrats or leaning toward Democratic candidates, according to the Pew Research Center, “that just makes them easy prey in terms of redistricting,” said Seth C. McKee, a University of Oklahoma professor who has written about political realignment in the South. “And once Republicans get control, it’s just difficult for them not to dominate.”But a federal panel of three judges unanimously said the map had most likely violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered it redrawn, four months before the 2022 primary elections. The Supreme Court, while agreeing to consider the challenge, allowed the map to go into effect ahead of the November elections.Many experts expected the Supreme Court to say in the Alabama case what it essentially said in its decision outlawing affirmative action in education: Making allowances to remedy discrimination against one group inevitably ends up discriminating against other groups.However, in June, the court narrowly upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the principal remaining clause of the law, which outlaws any election law or rule that discriminates based on race, color or language. That decision has already had ramifications elsewhere: a similar lawsuit is now moving forward in Louisiana, while voting rights advocates in Georgia have begun sparring with the state over whether the ruling affects similar lawsuits there.“We’re already showing how this opinion is going to have ripple effects,” said Abha Khanna, who represented some of the Alabama plaintiffs as the head of the Elias Law Group’s redistricting practice. She added, “You are sending a message to states and jurisdictions.”The Alabama legislature now has until Friday to create another map that gains approval from a federal court, and has solicited public proposals. Should the legislature fall short, the map could again be challenged, leaving open the possibility that the court would draw its own map and cut out the legislature altogether.“It is critical that Alabama be fairly and accurately represented in Washington,” said Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, as she formally summoned the legislature back for the special session. “Our legislature knows our state better than the federal courts do.”But it leaves Republicans with a task that could jeopardize the electoral security of one of their own in Congress. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now marks the once solidly Republican First and Second Congressional Districts as toss-ups, citing “the presumption that one of their seats will ultimately become a Montgomery and Mobile-based Black majority seat that comfortably elects a Democrat.”On Thursday, multiple Black Republicans spoke during the committee hearing, including Belinda Thomas, a Dale County councilwoman and Republican Party official who later described herself as “living proof” that the current map made it possible for Black candidates to succeed. Some residents and officials also raised concerns about diminishing the representation of rural communities and economic opportunity under some of the proposed maps.State Senator Rodger Smitherman comparing congressional maps during a special session on redistricting at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery in 2021.Mickey Welsh/The Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated PressDemocrats appeared divided over which plan to back, with some lawmakers supporting one that relies on a combination of traditionally Democratic voting blocs to create a new district in order to avoid drawing on racial lines. At least one of the plaintiffs wore a T-shirt emblazoned with their preferred map, which would enshrine the 18 counties of Alabama’s Black Belt, the stretch of historically rich soil that fueled cotton plantations worked by slave labor, into two districts with at least 50 percent of the Black voting population.“I want myself and my community to have a seat at the table, rather than be on the menu,” said Shalela Dowdy, a Mobile resident and one of the plaintiffs.But notably absent from the public discussion on Thursday was any plan backed by the Republican supermajority. State Representative Chris Pringle, a Republican from Mobile, said that a final map would be shared before a committee meeting on Monday, although Democrats balked at being left out of the process and at the public getting little time to review a final plan.“This is a really tortured process,” said State Representative Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa. He added that “everybody else has been presenting the maps that they believe best represent the state of Alabama, give everybody an opportunity to be represented, but the supermajority has not.”Mr. Pringle said that the committee tasked with overseeing the creation of the new map had been overwhelmed with a number of submissions, including from as far away as France and New Zealand. A little over a dozen had been made public online or in a hearing, with Mr. England sharing a few more maps circulated among the committee on Twitter on Friday evening.“We have been pretty much overwhelmed,” Mr. Pringle said.Adam Liptak More

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      Canadian Politicians Who Criticize China Become Its Targets

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      The polls predicted a re-election victory, maybe even a landslide.But a couple of weeks before the vote, Kenny Chiu, a member of Canada’s Parliament and a critic of China’s human rights record, was panicking. Something had flipped among the ethnic Chinese voters in his British Columbia district.“Initially, they were supportive,” he said. “And all of a sudden, they just vanished, vaporized, disappeared.”Longtime supporters originally from mainland China were not returning his calls. Volunteers reported icy greetings at formerly friendly homes. Chinese-language news outlets stopped covering him. And he was facing an onslaught of attacks — from untraceable sources — on the local community’s most popular social networking app, the Chinese-owned WeChat.The sudden collapse of Mr. Chiu’s campaign — in the last federal election, in 2021 — is now drawing renewed scrutiny amid mounting evidence of China’s interference in Canadian politics.Mr. Chiu and several other elected officials critical of Beijing were targets of a Chinese state that has increasingly exerted its influence over Chinese diaspora communities worldwide as part of an aggressive campaign to expand its global reach, according to current and former elected officials, Canadian intelligence officials and experts on Chinese state disinformation campaigns.Canada recently expelled a Chinese diplomat accused of conspiring to intimidate a lawmaker from the Toronto area, Michael Chong, after he successfully led efforts in Parliament to label China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim community a genocide. Canada’s intelligence agency has warned at least a half-dozen current and former elected officials that they have been targeted by Beijing, including Jenny Kwan, a lawmaker from Vancouver and a critic of Beijing’s policies in Hong Kong.After Jenny Kwan, a member of Parliament, began speaking out against Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uyghurs, invitations from some organizations dried up.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesThe Chinese government, employing a global playbook, disproportionately focused on Chinese Canadian elected officials representing districts in and around Vancouver and Toronto, experts say. It has leveraged large diaspora populations with family and business ties to China and ensuring that the levers of power in those communities are on its side, according to elected officials, Canadian intelligence officials and experts on Chinese disinformation.“Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has doubled down on this assertive nationalist policy toward the diaspora,” said Feng Chongyi, a historian and an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney. China’s role in Canada mirrored what has happened in Australia, he added.Chinese state interference and its threat to Canada’s democracy have become national issues after an extraordinary series of leaks in recent months of intelligence reports to The Globe and Mail newspaper by a national security official who said that government officials were not taking the threat seriously enough.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been criticized for not doing enough to combat reported interference by China, is under increasing pressure to call for a public inquiry.Current and former elected officials interviewed by national security agents said some of the intelligence appeared to stem from wiretaps of Chinese diplomats based in Canada. The Globe has said that it has based its reporting on secret and top-secret intelligence reports it has viewed.In Vancouver and two surrounding cities — Richmond and Burnaby — that are home to Canada’s largest concentration of ethnic Chinese, the reach of the Chinese Consulate and its allies has grown along with waves of immigrants from China, said longtime Chinese Canadian activists and politicians.Richmond, a city south of Vancouver, has one of Canada’s highest populations of ethnic Chinese and is believed to be a focus of China’s interference in Canadian politics.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesThe Chinese Benevolent Association, or C.B.A. — one of Vancouver’s oldest and most influential civic organizations — was a longtime supporter of Taiwan until it turned pro-Beijing in the 1980s. But it has recently become a cheerleader of some of Beijing’s most controversial policies, placing ads in Chinese-language newspapers to support the 2020 imposition of a sweeping national security law that cracked down on basic freedoms in Hong Kong.The association and the Chinese Consulate publicize close ties on their websites.A former president of the C.B.A., Hilbert Yiu, denied that the organization had any official ties to Chinese authorities, but acknowledged that the association tended to support China’s policies, arguing that Beijing’s human rights record was “a lot better” than in the past.Mr. Yiu, who remains on the C.B.A.’s board, said stories of Chinese state interference in Canadian politics were spread by losing candidates.“I think it doesn’t exist,” Mr. Yiu said, adding instead that Western nations were afraid of “China being strong.”Mr. Yiu, who as a host on a local Chinese-language radio station also pushes pro-Beijing views, was an overseas delegate in 2017 to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the Chinese government that Beijing uses to win over and reward supporters who are not members of the Communist Party.The leaders of the C.B.A. — whose opinions hold sway, especially among immigrants not fully comfortable in English — say their organization is politically neutral.But in recent years, it and other ethnic Chinese organizations have excluded politicians critical of Beijing from events, including Ms. Kwan, the Vancouver lawmaker. A member of the left-leaning New Democratic Party, Ms. Kwan has represented, first as a provincial legislator and then at the federal level, a Vancouver district that includes Chinatown since 1996.But after Ms. Kwan began speaking out in 2019 against Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uyghurs, invitations dried up — including to events in her district, like a Lunar New Year celebration.“Inviting the local member of Parliament is standard protocol,” Ms. Kwan said. “But in instances where I’ve not been invited to attend — whether or not that’s related to foreign interference are questions that I have.”Fred Kwok, another former C.B.A. president, said Ms. Kwan was not invited to the Lunar New Year celebration because the coronavirus pandemic forced organizers to hold the event virtually and there was “limited time.”Later that year, a couple of months before the federal election, Mr. Kwok held a luncheon for 100 people at a well-known seafood restaurant in Chinatown to support Ms. Kwan’s rival. Mr. Kwok said he was acting on his own behalf and not as the C.B.A.’s leader.Richard Lee, a councilor in Burnaby and a former provincial legislator, faced far worse.Mr. Lee, who immigrated to Canada from China in 1997, and was elected in 2001 to the provincial legislature, became known for supporting local businesses and never missing ribbon-cutting events. He also faithfully attended an annual commemoration of the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.Richard Lee, a city councilor in British Columbia, said he was asked by a former Chinese consul general why he attended an event marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Alana Paterson for The New York TimesIt was once a low-key event, but with Mr. Xi in power, many participants started wearing masks to hide their identities, fearing reprisals from Beijing.Mr. Lee’s attendance became an issue at a barbecue party in the summer of 2015 when he said that the consul general at the time, Liu Fei, asked him, “Why do you keep attending those events?”Later, in November, Mr. Lee and his wife, Anne, flew to Shanghai. At the airport, he said he was separated from his wife and detained for seven hours while the authorities searched his personal cellphone and a government-issued Blackberry.He asked why and said he was told: “‘You know what you have done. We believe you could endanger our national security.’”He and his wife were put on a plane back to Canada.In Burnaby, the political climate shifted. He was no longer invited to some events because organizers told him that the consul general did not want to attend if Mr. Lee was also present. Longtime supporters started keeping their distance. Mr. Lee said he believed the icy treatment contributed to the loss of his seat in 2017, after 16 years in office.A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa did not reply to questions about the consulate’s alleged actions in Vancouver, saying only that “China never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs” and that accusations of interference were an “out-and-out smear of China.”But China’s former consul general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, boasted in 2021, according to The Globe, about helping defeat two Conservative lawmakers, including one she described as a “vocal distractor” of the Chinese government: Kenny Chiu.After arriving from Hong Kong in 1992, Mr. Chiu settled in Richmond, where more than half of the population of 208,000 is made up of ethnic Chinese. He was elected to Parliament in 2019 as a Conservative.Mr. Chiu, 58, quickly touched on two issues that appeared to put him in the cross hairs of Beijing and its local supporters: criticizing Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and proposing a bill to create a registry of foreign agents, inspired by one established by Australia in 2018.Mr. Chiu proposed a bill to create a registry of foreign agents, among the issues that put him in the cross hairs of China and its supporters.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesThe anonymous attacks against him on Chinese social media amplified criticism of the bill among some Canadians that it would unfairly single out Chinese Canadians.A month before the federal election in September 2021, the polls instilled confidence in Mr. Chiu’s campaign staff.But in the final 10 days, Mr. Chiu relayed growing concerns to his campaign manager, Jordon Wood: cooling response from ethnic Chinese voters and increasingly hostile and personal anonymous attacks. The attacks, which were going viral on WeChat, painted his bill as a racist assault on Chinese Canadians and Mr. Chiu as a traitor to his community.Mr. Wood recalled a frantic late-night call from Mr. Chiu after a searing meeting with Chinese Canadian voters.“‘Our community is more polite than this,’” Mr. Wood recalled Mr. Chiu telling him. “Even if you don’t like someone, you don’t go after them in this way. This was a level of rudeness and attack beyond what we would expect.”The attacks on WeChat drew the attention of experts on disinformation campaigns by China and its proxies.The attacks were driven by countless, untraceable human and artificial intelligence bots, said Benjamin Fung, a cybersecurity expert and a professor at McGill University in Montreal.Their proliferation made them especially effective because ethnic Chinese voters depend on WeChat to communicate, said Mr. Fung, who assessed Mr. Chiu’s case shortly after the vote.Less than a week before the vote, a Canadian internet watchdog, DisinfoWatch, noted the attacks against Mr. Chiu on WeChat.“My assumption was that this was a coordinated campaign,” said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing and senior fellow at an Ottawa-based research group behind DisinfoWatch.Mr. Chiu made last-ditch efforts to save his campaign, including meeting a group of older people who echoed the attacks against him and his bill on WeChat.“Why would I subjugate my grandchildren to generations of persecution and discrimination?” Mr. Chiu recalled being asked.The next day, he saw social media photographs of the same people publicly backing his main rival from the Liberal Party, Parm Bains, the eventual winner. Mr. Bains declined to comment.Mr. Chiu asked allies to reach out to local leaders who had suddenly dropped him, including prominent members of a Richmond-based umbrella group, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations. Its leader, Kady Xue, did not respond to messages seeking comment.Chak Au, a veteran city councilor nicknamed the “Chinese Mayor of Richmond” and a longtime ally of Mr. Chiu, pressed ethnic Chinese leaders about the sudden erosion of support.“There was a kind of silence,” Mr. Au said. “Nobody wanted to talk about it.”He added, “They didn’t want to create trouble.” More

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      Britain’s Tories Expected to Face Election Losses

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      Almost the first thing I saw when I arrived in the London suburb of Uxbridge was two teenage girls in school uniforms getting into a fistfight in the shopping mall outside the underground station. Uxbridge is a middle-class place, stodgy but diversifying, whose voters are squeezed by a cost of living crisis and anxious about rising public disorder. Until last month, it was represented by Boris Johnson, and, as Labour lawmaker Steve Reed told me, it hasn’t sent a member of the left-leaning Labour Party to Parliament since 1966.But last month Johnson, who’d stepped down as prime minister in 2022, resigned his seat rather than face discipline for lying to Parliament regarding his shameless socializing during the pandemic lockdown. And in the election next week to replace him, Labour candidate Danny Beales is considered the favorite, a sign of just how far Tory fortunes have fallen.The contest in Uxbridge and South Ruislip — the full name of Johnson’s former constituency — is one of three elections happening next Thursday to fill seats that Conservatives have vacated. There’s also an election in Selby and Ainsty, where Johnson’s ally Nigel Adams quit shortly after Johnson did, reportedly furious about the political machinations that had thwarted his elevation to the House of Lords. And there’s one in Somerton and Frome, where the Conservative David Warburton resigned in a scandal involving cocaine and allegations of sexual misconduct.A recent poll shows the Labour candidate ahead in Selby and Ainsty, where in 2019 Adams won more than 60 percent of the vote. In Somerton and Frome, the candidate of the centrist Liberal Democrats appears to have a strong chance of prevailing. “My central expectation is that we lose all three,” a Conservative lawmaker told the BBC.Obviously, that’s not guaranteed. When I spoke to Joshua Simons, head of Labour Together, a think tank close to Labour leadership, he suggested that Conservatives were strategically exaggerating their pessimism to lower expectations. Still, there’s a broad sense that, with national elections due sometime in the next 18 months, the Conservative Party is imploding. “We Are on For a Massive Defeat,” blared a headline in the Financial Times, quoting a former Tory cabinet minister.The U.K.’s conservative collapse looks particularly stark when set against the ascendant right in much of the rest of Europe. Italy has a prime minister from a party with fascist roots. The far-right Vox could be part of the next government in Spain. There are right-wing governments in Sweden and Finland. Conservatives just won a second term in Greece. The last French election was a contest between the center-right Emmanuel Macron and the far- right Marine Le Pen, and though Le Pen lost, she appears to be gaining support in the wake of the recent riots. Even in Germany, where shame about the Holocaust once seemed to inoculate its people against right-wing extremism, the reactionary Alternative for Germany just won its first mayoral election, and in a recent poll it was the second most popular party in the country.Yet in Britain, the right appears to be approaching something like free fall, with a recent poll showing Labour with a 21-point lead nationally. It’s quite a turnaround, given that, until recently, the Tories were often called the most successful political party in the world. Less than four years ago, the party won its fourth consecutive national election by a staggering margin, leaving Labour, then led by the leftist Jeremy Corbyn, decimated. “It was catastrophic,” said Reed. “It was really in question as to whether the Labour Party could survive.” A 2021 New Republic article was subtitled, “How the Tories Became Unbeatable.”It would be nice, as someone who wants to see social democracy thrive, to report that Labour has since discovered some brilliant strategy for beating the right. In truth, though, if conservative hegemony in Britain is starting to break down, the Tories deserve most of the credit, both for their dissipation and their mismanagement.There have been so many Conservative sex and corruption scandals that the phrase “Tory sleaze” has become a cliché, and the ruling party’s decadence is matched by its incompetence. Covid created economic misery worldwide, but since the pandemic the U.K. has performed significantly worse than its peers in the rest of Europe. Among the reasons for this malaise are the fallout from Brexit, finalized in 2020, and the supply-side fantasies of Liz Truss, Johnson’s successor, who sent the economy into a tailspin during her 44 days in office.Today inflation is no longer in the double digits, but as of May, it was still at 8.7 percent, “the highest among the world’s big, rich economies,” as Reuters reported. Rent has reached record highs, and spiking interest rates are clobbering homeowners, since unlike in America, most British mortgages have their rates locked in for only two or five years. “People are seeing, you know, £500 to £600 a month increases in their mortgages, which people just can’t afford at the moment,” said Reed.Britain’s prized National Health Service is in crisis as well, with a record 7.47 million people on waiting lists for routine hospital care. On Thursday, junior doctors — postgraduate trainees who make up about half of doctors in English hospitals — went on strike over low pay. That comes after a nurses’ strike that ended late last month. Reed, who is chairing Beales’s Labour campaign in Uxbridge, points out that the hospital there is crumbling. “There is literally masonry falling out of the roofs, and parts of it are closed off because water is leaking through the roof,” he said.Simons of Labour Together told me he’s visited Uxbridge twice in the last week, and said that voters there “hate the Tories, and hate British politics at the moment.” Now, that’s very different from saying that people like or trust Labour. Scarred by the mortifying rout of the 2019 election, the Labour politicians I spoke to were decidedly humble about their own connection with voters. But they at least see things trending their way.“I think they’re going to show just how incredibly unpopular the Tories are at the moment,” Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, said of next week’s elections. “And I think they’ll show how much work the Labour Party has done to regain the trust. We’re still on that journey, by the way. I’m not complacent about that. But I think people are starting to listen to the Labour Party now.” For that, they have the Tories to thank.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      A Century Ago, Golf Fans Watched a ‘Do-or-Die’ Moment

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      Bobby Jones won the first of his four U.S. Opens at a course near what is now Kennedy Airport. The New York Times was there.Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at a moment in the history of golf that will be recreated where it happened 100 years ago tomorrow. We’ll also get details on why there will probably be more squabbling over the maps for New York’s congressional districts.Bobby Jones in 1927, four years after he won the U.S. Open at Inwood Country Club.Fox Photos/Getty ImagesOn July 15, 1923, 100 years ago tomorrow, a 21-year-old golfer named Bobby Jones stood just off the 18th fairway at Inwood Country Club, now just across from Kennedy International Airport. My colleague Corey Kilgannon explains how Jones made history:Jones had squandered a commanding lead in a playoff for the U.S. Open the day before, but he still had a chance to salvage a victory over the Scottish star Bobby Cruickshank — if Jones made a daunting shot. The New York Times described what happened as “truly miraculous.”“Without a moment’s hesitation,” The Times said, “Jones drew his No. 1 iron out of the bag, took a momentary look at the lie, glanced at the flag and swung. The ball flew off the face of his club, rose in the air and carried squarely on the green, 190 yards away.” The ball landed within six feet of the cup.That moment will be memorialized on Saturday at Inwood, where several of Jones’s descendants are expected at a club tournament and dinner. Among them is a grandson, Dr. Bob Jones IV, who said his grandfather had been on a losing streak and was considering quitting championship golf until his “do-or-die moment” in 1923.“When he got to Inwood, he was really considering that this might be his last tournament,” Dr. Jones said. “If he had not executed that shot and won, I think he would have given up tournament golf and become an obscure sports trivia item.”Instead, Jones drilled the ball next to the hole and two-putted to win the first of his four U.S. Opens.It jump-started golf’s most successful amateur career, one that would include Jones’s 13 majors, four of them in a single calendar year (1930) — golf’s Grand Slam. He became a lawyer but later designed the Augusta National Golf Club and co-founded the Masters tournament.Bobby Jones receiving the trophy after winning the U.S. Open in 1923.Edwin LevickHis triumph at Inwood came at a time when golf had assumed a place in the debonair lives of the well-to-do in the Jazz Age, when the New York area was the cradle of golf in America. There’s a reason F. Scott Fitzgerald made the blasé Jordan Baker a golfer in “The Great Gatsby,” published two years after Jones’s Inwood victory. Babe Ruth and the Three Stooges used to frequent Van Cortlandt, a public course in the Bronx.Inwood will try to recapture the old-fashioned vibe on Saturday. On several holes, players will have to use hickory-shafted replicas of Jones’s clubs. For the putting contest, they will have to use a replica of Jones’s favorite putter, which was known as Calamity Jane, and old-fashioned golf balls. For the dinner in the clubhouse, guests are encouraged to wear Jazz Age dress.But first, during the cocktail hour, they will get a chance to replicate Jones’s storied shot from the same spot. If they can. It is still a daunting shot, even with modern high-compression golf balls and titanium-shafted clubs.“With a wooden shaft, it’s a lot harder to get the ball up in the air,” said Kyle Higgins, the club’s head pro, who added that Jones often played in a long-sleeve dress shirt and tie — something Higgins has tried himself, to get the feel of hitting the way Jones did. (“It’s definitely restrictive and makes it pretty tough to swing,” he said.)Jones had wasted a three-shot lead in the final round to let Cruickshank into a playoff. But Jones’ shot on 18 “sealed the fate of the little Scottish gamecock,” The Times reported, and “opened up the portals of fame” to Jones.The celebration, with spectators carrying Jones triumphantly toward the clubhouse as a kilted bagpiper wailed away, is known to many club members even today.“The day is less about competition and more about celebrating the anniversary,” said the club’s golf chairman, Brian Ziegler. “We try to make sure everyone who joins is aware of the club’s history, and we knew we needed to celebrate the 100th anniversary.”WeatherIt’s going to be mostly cloudy, with temperatures in the 80s. There’s a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon persisting into the evening. At night, temps will fall to the mid-70s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest New York newsSeth Harrison/USA Today NetworkPolice fatally shoot man after report of stolen fruit: A 37-year-old man was shot by the police in New Rochelle, N.Y., on July 3 after he was accused of eating grapes and a banana without paying, his family’s lawyer said. The man died a week later.Mayor turns to his religious base: As signs of trouble have arisen in recent weeks, Mayor Eric Adams has leaned heavily on the religious segment of his multiethnic, outer Manhattan base for support.One man’s war on pickleball: “Paddleball Paul” is making his last stand to eradicate pickleball from the handball courts of Central Park. It’s not going very well.More squabbling over mapsCarlos Bernate for The New York TimesA New York appeals court ordered the state’s congressional map redrawn yet again. Or re-re-redrawn.Language aside, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Albany sided with Democrats in a long-running legal fight, saying that the districts drawn last year on orders from the state’s highest court had been only a temporary fix. The justices ordered the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to restart a process that would effectively give the Democrat-dominated State Legislature final say over the contours of New York’s 26 House seats for the rest of the decade.My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that if that decision is upheld, as many as six Republican-held seats could go the Democrats’ way.The state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, will have the final say, because Republican leaders immediately said they would appeal. And it was the Court of Appeals that blocked Democrats’ attempt to gerrymander the maps of the state’s congressional districts last year. The high court said then that the Democrats had violated the state Constitution and ignored the will of voters who approved a 2014 constitutional amendment intended to limit political influence in redistricting.The current district lines were drawn by a court-appointed expert last year to maximize competition. The new map helping Republicans flip four seats on the way to taking control of the House.If Thursday’s ruling stands, both parties believe that Democrats could draw maps that would pass muster legally while making re-election almost impossible for incumbent Republicans, such as Representatives Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro in the Hudson Valley, or Anthony D’Esposito and George Santos on Long Island and in Queens.New Democratic seats in New York could help offset expected Republican gains in North Carolina, where a newly conservative top court is allowing the G.O.P. to replace a more neutral map. Separately, Democrats won an unexpected victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. The court said Alabama had used a map that watered down the power of Black voters in a decision that could affect redistricting in several southern states.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat, praised Thursday’s ruling and called the current New York congressional map undemocratic. METROPOLITAN diaryBarefoot on the FDear Diary:It was a hot summer day in the late 1990s. Dressed in a sundress and slide-style sandals, I was about to step onto an arriving F at 14th Street when one of my sandals slipped off and fell between the train and the platform and then down onto the tracks.I sheepishly entered the car and looked for a seat, praying that no one had noticed. Of course, several people had“Well, that’s a first!” said one of them, an older man.With my bare foot tucked behind my sandaled one, I spent the rest of the ride home to Brooklyn pondering what I would do once I got off.Should I walk through the station and the three blocks to my apartment with one sandal and one bare foot? Should I remove the other shoe and go fully barefoot?As we pulled into the station, a woman sitting a few seats away approached me and pulled something from her bag.“Excuse me,” she said, “but I saw what happened when you got on the train, and I wanted to offer you this pair of flip-flops.”— Megan WormanIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Johnna Margalotti and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Elecciones en Guatemala: incertidumbre tras la suspensión de Movimiento Semilla

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      La medida pone en riesgo la candidatura presidencial de Bernardo Arévalo, un contendiente anticorrupción que sorprendió en la primera vuelta y pasó al balotaje.Las elecciones presidenciales de Guatemala se vieron envueltas en una tormenta política la noche del miércoles luego de que un fiscal suspendió la personalidad jurídica del partido de un candidato anticorrupción en ascenso, lo que pone en riesgo su intento de participar en la segunda vuelta y posiblemente asesta un golpe a una democracia ya en crispación.La medida podría evitar que Bernardo Arévalo, un congresista que remeció a la clase política en junio con un apoyo sorpresivo en las urnas que lo catapultó a la segunda vuelta del 20 de agosto, se enfrente a Sandra Torres, otrora primera dama.Rafael Curruchiche, el fiscal que integró el caso para suspender al partido, ha sido a su vez incluido en una lista de Estados Unidos de funcionarios centroamericanos corruptos por obstaculizar investigaciones de corrupción.Este suceso añade más tensión al sistema político de Guatemala, luego de que se impidiera la participación de varios de los principales candidatos a la presidencia, que eran percibidos como una amenaza para las élites políticas y económicas, además de los ataques a la libertad de prensa y el exilio forzado de decenas de fiscales y jueces dedicados a combatir la corrupción.“Nos están robando las elecciones, a plena luz del día, usando en contra las propias instituciones que nos deberían de proteger”, dijo en Twitter Gustavo Marroquín, profesor de historia y columnista.La medida del fiscal suscitó confusión e indignación en la capital de Guatemala, donde cientos de personas se reunieron a protestar el miércoles poco después del anuncio de Curruchiche. El fiscal tomó la decisión cuando las autoridades electorales de Guatemala se preparaban para desestimar oficialmente los intentos de postergar la segunda vuelta y permitir que las votaciones transcurrieran de acuerdo a lo planeado.Cuando se le preguntó por las medidas del fiscal contra el partido de Arévalo, la magistrada presidenta de la autoridad electoral, Irma Elizabeth Palencia, dijo que “es algo que nos preocupa”.El principal funcionario del Departamento de Estado de EE. UU. para el Hemisferio Occidental, Brian Nichols, dijo en Twitter que el gobierno estadounidense estaba “profundamente preocupado” por lo que describió como las “amenazas a la democracia electoral de Guatemala” por parte de Curruchiche. “Las instituciones deben respetar la voluntad de los votantes”, añadió Nichols.El partido de Arévalo puede apelar el fallo, lo cual desencadenaría una batalla legal y podría plantear el tema a la corte constitucional más alta de Guatemala.Curruchiche indicó que el caso contra el partido de Arévalo, Movimiento Semilla, involucraba denuncias de que había usado firmas fraudulentas para calificar como partido político. Luego de que su despacho investigó el caso, un juez penal ordenó la suspensión del registro de Semilla, lo que podría prohibir su participación, y la de Arévalo, en la segunda vuelta.Arévalo dijo a CNN en Español que procedería con su candidatura y asegura que según la ley guatemalteca los partidos políticos no pueden ser suspendidos durante un proceso electoral (la primera vuelta de votación se llevó a cabo el 25 de junio y se espera que la segunda vuelta sea el 20 de agosto).“Los poderosos ya no quieren que el pueblo decida libremente su futuro, pero los vamos a vencer”, dijo Arévalo en Twitter la noche del miércoles.Los juristas cuestionaron la decisión de Curruchiche, aliado del presidente saliente, Alejandro Giammattei. Un experto en derecho constitucional, Edgar Ortiz Romero, dijo que la medida estaba “violando abiertamente el orden legal”, ya que un juez de lo penal no puede suspender el registro de un partido bajo la ley electoral guatemalteca.“Creo que esto nos pone en el triste grupo de países con rasgos autoritarios más avanzados donde se usa el sistema legal para atacar a opositores”, dijo Ortiz Romero.Mirador Electoral, un grupo independiente de vigilancia electoral, dijo en un comunicado que la suspensión “intenta consumar un golpe electoral equivalente a un golpe de Estado en el país”.Emiliano Rodríguez Mega es un investigador reportero del Times en Ciudad de México. Cubre México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. Más de Emiliano Rodríguez Mega.Simon Romero es corresponsal nacional y cubre el suroeste de Estados Unidos. Ha sido jefe de las corresponsalías del Times en Brasil, los Andes y corresponsal internacional de energía. Más de Simon Romero. More

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      Guatemala’s Top Party Is Suspended, Putting Election Into Turmoil

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      The move threatens the presidential bid of Bernardo Arévalo, an anticorruption candidate who made a surprisingly strong showing in the initial voting, propelling him into a runoff.Guatemala’s presidential election was thrown into turmoil Wednesday night after a top prosecutor moved to suspend the party of a surging anticorruption candidate, threatening his bid to take part in a runoff and potentially dealing a severe blow to the country’s already fraying democracy.The move could prevent Bernardo Arévalo, a lawmaker who jolted Guatemala’s political class in June with a surprise showing propelling him in the Aug. 20 runoff, from competing against Sandra Torres, a former first lady.Rafael Curruchiche, the prosecutor who mounted the case to suspend the party, has himself been listed among corrupt Central American officials by the United States for obstructing corruption inquiries.The development places even greater stress on Guatemala’s political system, after the barring of several top presidential candidates who were viewed as threatening to the political and economic establishment, assaults on press freedom and the forced exile of dozens of prosecutors and judges focused on curbing corruption.“They are stealing the election in broad daylight, using one of the very institutions which is supposed to protect us,” Gustavo Marroquín, a history professor and columnist, said on Twitter.The prosecutor’s move fueled confusion and anger in Guatemala’s capital, where hundreds of people gathered in protest Wednesday shortly after Mr. Curruchiche’s announcement. The prosecutor took the action as Guatemala’s election authority was preparing to officially dismiss efforts to delay the runoff, allowing the vote to proceed as planned.When asked by reporters about the prosecutor’s move against Mr. Arévalo’s party, Irma Elizabeth Palencia, the election authority’s leader, said, “It is definitely something that worries us.”Brian Nichols, the top State Department official for the Western Hemisphere, said on Twitter that the United States government was “deeply concerned” by what he described as Mr. Curruchiche’s “threats to Guatemala’s electoral democracy.” “Institutions must respect the will of voters,” Mr. Nichols added.Mr. Arévalo’s party can appeal the ruling, setting the stage for a legal battle and potentially sending the issue to Guatemala’s top constitutional court.Mr. Curruchiche said the case against Mr. Arévalo’s party, called Semilla, or Seed, involved claims that it used fraudulent signatures to qualify as a political party. After his office looked into the case, a criminal judge ordered the suspension of Semilla’s registration, which could effectively prohibit the party, and Mr. Arévalo, from competing in the runoff.Speaking on CNN en Español, Mr. Arévalo said he would proceed with his candidacy, contending that under Guatemalan law political parties cannot be suspended during an electoral process (the first round of voting took place on June 25 and the runoff is set for Aug. 20).“The powerful no longer want the people to freely decide their future, but we will defeat them,” Mr. Arévalo also said on Twitter on Wednesday night.Legal experts questioned the move by Mr. Curruchiche, an ally of the outgoing president, Alejandro Giammattei. Edgar Ortiz Romero, a constitutional law expert, said the move was “absolutely illegal” since a criminal judge cannot suspend a party’s registration under Guatemalan election laws.“This places us in the sad group of countries with advanced authoritarian features in which the legal system is used to attack opponents,” Mr. Ortiz Romero said.The independent watchdog group Mirador Electoral said in a statement that the suspension “attempts to consummate an electoral coup equivalent to a coup d’état.” More

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      Thailand Parliament Vote: Pita Limjaroenrat Faces Setbacks

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      The Thai military’s hold on the Senate blocked a popular progressive candidate who had emerged as the clear winner. Parliament will now have to vote again, as the opposition vows to demonstrate.The takeaway from Thailand’s general election in May was clear: Voters had dealt a crushing blow to the ruling military junta by supporting a progressive party that challenged not only the generals but also the nation’s powerful monarchy.The generals and their allies responded on Thursday by rejecting the party’s leading candidate for prime minister, tipping the country into a political void and potentially thrusting it further toward autocracy.Parliament failed to elect a new prime minister on Thursday evening after the progressive candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, was unable to muster enough support in the military-backed Senate, where lawmakers are loyal to the generals who have governed Thailand since seizing power in a coup nearly decade ago.As night fell over a rainy Bangkok, one of Southeast Asia’s most important economies was staring down what looked like another intense period of political unrest and nationwide protests.“This is déjà vu,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University, referring to the cycles of elections, protests, coups and crackdowns that have occurred in Thailand since 2007.Now it is up to Parliament to pick from the field of candidates again, through what is likely to be a tumultuous week ahead that may or may not end with a new prime minister in charge. A second vote is scheduled for July 19. A third, if necessary, would be held a day later.While Mr. Pita, 42, is relatively new to Thailand’s political drama, the queasy feeling of drifting toward civil strife is not. The country’s recent history is littered with military coups; protesters have led widespread demonstrations against a royalist establishment that they say has consistently thwarted efforts to introduce democratic reforms.“There’s a pattern here of establishment pushback against any progressive movement in Thai politics,” Mr. Thitinan added. “And the pushback comes in different shapes and forms,” including dissolutions of political parties and disqualifications of major candidates.Supporters of Mr. Pita and the Move Forward party outside of Parliament in Bangkok on Thursday.Mailee Osten-Tan/Getty ImagesAhead of the vote on Thursday, Mr. Pita, a former technology executive who holds graduate degrees from prestigious American universities, had positioned himself as a champion of reform. On the campaign trail he called for amending a law that criminalizes public criticism of the Thai monarchy — a move considered unthinkable a decade ago.“I want to be the leader of the people,” he said in Parliament on Thursday. “To tell the world that Thailand is ready. To look for a new balance between international political powers.”But Thailand’s Parliament appeared unwilling to embrace such a vision. Even though Mr. Pita’s political party, Move Forward, had built a multiparty coalition, he received only 324 combined votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate — short of the 376 he needed to win the premiership.Supporters of Mr. Pita’s coalition had gathered on Thursday outside the parliament building in Bangkok where the vote was held, and some had vowed to hit the streets in protest if he did not win enough votes to become prime minister.“The votes that have been cast, the 25 million votes, are sacred voices that will shape the future of the country,” Arnon Nampha, a political activist and protest leader, said during a protest on Wednesday night, referring to the votes in May for Move Forward and Pheu Thai, the second-largest party in the coalition.“If you want to change this, no way, we will not allow it,” he added.Mr. Thitinan said he expected a reprise of the flash mob-style protests that erupted in Thailand during the coronavirus pandemic and were led by young demonstrators calling for checks on the Thai monarchy’s vast power.Mr. Pita had already been dealt a major setback on Wednesday when Thailand’s Election Commission asked the Constitutional Court to suspend him from Parliament. He had been under investigation for allegedly owning undeclared shares in a media company, which could disqualify him from running for office.Even though Mr. Pita’s Move Forward had built a multiparty coalition, he was short of the 376 votes he needed to win the premiership.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockThe Constitutional Court also said on Wednesday that it had accepted a complaint against Mr. Pita over his calls to amend the law that penalizes criticism of the monarchy. Analysts predicted that both moves would give Mr. Pita’s opponents in the Senate a convenient excuse not to vote for him.Mr. Pita’s progressive coalition may not be strong enough to weather the loss. Members of Pheu Thai, in particular, could try to form a new coalition that is led by one of its own candidates for prime minister.A likely scenario is that Pheu Thai would field Srettha Thavisin, a property tycoon who is considered a more palatable candidate among Thailand’s military establishment. Military-backed lawmakers may vote for Mr. Srettha, said Wanwichit Boonprong, a political scientist at Rangsit University, outside Bangkok.Still, he said, Pheu Thai could be a good compromise for reform-minded voters who had supported Mr. Pita.As for the old guard, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the general who took power after leading Thailand’s 2014 military coup, said on Tuesday that he would retire from politics once a new government is formed. But even if he does retire, analysts said the military and its allies may try to hold onto power in other ways.The military has engineered a system in which it essentially controls one chamber of the legislature, the Senate. To keep one of its own in charge, the military could promote Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, a member of the ruling party, as a possible candidate for prime minister during the vote next week.“Almost all the senators were handpicked by General Prawit,” said Jade Donavanik, an expert on Thai politics at the College of Asian Scholars in Thailand, referring to the 250 members of that chamber. “This is part of the problem.”The military could promote Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, a member of the ruling party, as a possible candidate for prime minister during the vote next week.Jack Taylor/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPheu Thai may field Srettha Thavisin, a property tycoon who is considered a more palatable candidate to Thailand’s military establishment than Mr. Pita.Jack Taylor/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe election is being closely watched, not least because Thailand is a major player in a region where several countries have been sliding again toward autocracy after experiments with democracy. Thailand was once a stable ally of the United States but has moved closer to China under the current junta.For decades, the country was dominated by two opposing political forces — one led by conservative royalists and militarists, the other by Thaksin Shinawatra, a former telecommunications tycoon and populist politician who served as prime minister for five years before he was ousted in a 2006 coup.His sister Yingluck Shinawatra became prime minister 2011 and was forced from office days before the 2014 coup.Move Forward has captured a similar sort of energy that Mr. Thaksin’s populist movement once did, and its failure on Thursday appeared to be another example of Thailand’s royalist establishment snuffing out a popular political candidate.Mr. Wanwichit, political scientist at Rangsit University, said that Move Forward’s aggressive calls for reforming the monarchy may have been too extreme for most voters, even those who consider themselves liberal and in favor of democratic reform.“For now, the monarchy is seen as the main pillar of the country,” he said. “Whether you are liberal or conservative, you still respect the monarchy as embodying the dignity of the nation.” More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Biden Vows Not to ‘Waver’ After NATO Summit

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      Also, Chinese hackers hit the State Department, ocean temperatures rise and Milan Kundera dies.President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden met yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York Times‘We will not waver,’ Biden says after the NATO summitPresident Biden concluded the meeting of NATO allies by comparing the battle to expel Russia from Ukraine with the Cold War struggle for freedom in Europe. “We will not waver,” he promised in a speech.Biden seemed to be preparing Americans and the allies for a confrontation that could go on for years. He cast the war, which has been going on for almost a year and a half, as a test of wills with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who is intent on fighting. Biden insisted that NATO’s unity would hold.“Putin still wrongly believes he can outlast Ukraine,” Biden said, describing the Russian leader as a man who made a huge strategic mistake in invading a neighboring country. “After all this time, Putin still doubts our staying power. He is making a bad bet.”Ukraine: The alliance has formed a new council intended to give Ukraine an equal voice on issues related to its security alongside member states. China: Beijing criticized a NATO statement that accused it of a military expansion that threatens the West, saying that the alliance was still stuck in a Cold War mentality.Uncertainty in Russia’s top ranks: Gen. Sergei Surovikin, once a Wagner ally, hasn’t been seen publicly since the mutiny last month. A top lawmaker said he was “taking a rest.”Another top commander was killed in an airstrike in Ukraine. And a third former commander was gunned down while out on a jog.Microsoft said the hack was discovered last month.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersChinese hackers targeted the U.S. State DepartmentChinese hackers targeted specific State Department email accounts in the weeks before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to China last month, U.S. officials said.The hack, which went undetected for a month, comes at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the countries. “The Biden administration is trying to reset relations with Beijing,” Julian Barnes, who covers national security for The Times, told me. “The U.S. does not want that dialogue to end. So there is an interest in downplaying this.”No classified email or cloud systems were said to have been breached, and the hack did not initially appear to be directly related to Blinken’s trip. Still, the attack was sophisticated.The hackers targeted specific accounts, instead of carrying out a broad-brush intrusion, which Chinese hackers are suspected of having done before. U.S. officials did not identify which accounts were targeted. The breach revealed a significant security gap in Microsoft’s cloud, where the U.S. government has been transferring data from internal servers.“We’ve had all these promises that the cloud is not only going to be just as secure, but that it will be more secure,” Julian said. “But here’s an example where basic security was breached and the information was stolen. That has opened us up to a new avenue of attack: Here is the first big cloud attack on the U.S. government email.”Tech: The Biden administration thinks it can slow China’s economic growth and its A.I. industry by cutting it off from semiconductor chips. The plan could handicap China for a generation, but if it backfires it could hasten the very future the U.S. wants to avoid.Elena ShaoAn ocean heat wave threatens marine lifeThe water surrounding Florida is much hotter than most swimming pools in the U.S. are right now. This could pose a severe risk to coral and marine life in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. But the real worry is that it’s only July: Corals usually experience the most heat stress in August and September.The maritime heat wave has pushed water temperatures into the 90s Fahrenheit, or above 32 Celsius. Surface temperatures in these waters are the hottest on record; some beachgoers in Florida even compared the ocean to bath water.The science: When the sea gets too hot, corals bleach, expelling the algae they eat. If waters don’t cool quickly enough, or if bleaching events happen in close succession, the corals die. That can lead to ripple effects across the ecosystem.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldPresident Mahmoud Abbas’s visit was widely reported as his first to Jenin in more than a decade.Nasser Nasser/Associated PressPresident Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority visited Jenin, the West Bank city targeted by Israeli raids last week, in a show of authority.U.S. inflation cooled in June, offering good news for consumers and the Federal Reserve.Black women in Latin America are more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth because of systemic medical racism and sexism, a U.N. report said.“Succession” got the most nominations for the Emmy Awards.Other Big StoriesA former Mozambican official accused in the $2 billion “tuna” scandal, a scheme that defrauded U.S. investors, was extradited to New York.The BBC staff member suspended on allegations of sexual misconduct was identified by his wife as Huw Edwards, an anchor on the network’s flagship nightly news program.International demand for drugs has unleashed a wave of violence in Ecuador that is unlike anything in the country’s recent history.Snow fell in Johannesburg for the first time in more than a decade.A Morning ReadBhuchung Sonam’s publishing ventures have printed dozens of books.Poras Chaudhary for The New York TimesBuchung Sonam fled Tibet in the 1980s. Later, he co-founded a publishing house for Tibetan writing, hoping literature could be a salve for other exiles.As Beijing tightens its crackdown on Tibet, detaining writers and intellectuals, many say Sonam’s press is helping Tibet’s literature become a proxy for the nation-state.“It’s not like I can live my life on Tibetan land,” said Tenzin Dickie, a writer and editor, “but I can live it in Tibetan literature.”ARTS AND IDEASMilan Kundera in 1984.Francois Lochon/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesMilan Kundera dies at 94“It’s hard to overstate how central Milan Kundera was, in the mid-1980s, to literary culture in America and elsewhere,” my colleague Dwight Garner writes in an appraisal of Kundera’s life.Kundera, who died in Paris this week at 94, wrote mordant, sexually charged novels that captured the suffocating absurdity of life. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which was adapted into a film, is his most famous book.“He was the best-known Czech writer since Kafka,” Dwight continued, “and his fiction brought news of sophisticated Eastern European societies trembling under the threat of Soviet repression.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Mix this Thai-style vegetable salad.What to WatchIn “Amanda,” a dark Italian comedy, a delusional graduate befriends an agoraphobic misanthrope.FashionMore men are baring their midriffs in crop tops.Tech TipHow does Meta’s Threads stack up against Twitter? Read our review.Now Time to PlayFill in the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Broke ground in a garden (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow! — AmeliaP.S. Alice Callahan will be our new nutrition reporter.“The Daily” is on the U.S. labor market.We’d love to hear from you. Write: briefing@nytimes.com. More