Wednesday Briefing

Modi won, but his party suffered losses

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India claimed a third term in office yesterday. But his party won by a far narrower margin than expected, and the aura of invincibility around Modi has been shattered.

His Bharatiya Janata Party still won the most parliamentary seats, but it lost dozens of them and was left without enough for an outright majority. So the B.J.P. will need smaller parties in its coalition to form a government, a surprising setback.

See results and takeaways.

The Indian National Congress, the main opposition, did better than expected. The party had been seen by many as irrevocably weakened after big losses in the previous two elections. The Congress and its allies increased their margin against Modi by tapping into issues like unemployment, social justice and the prime minister’s ties to India’s billionaires.

Context: Modi will be only the second Indian leader to start a third straight term, after Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister. Modi called the third term “a historical feat in India’s history.”

Economy: As the election results became clearer, India’s stock markets plunged. By the end of trading yesterday, the markets were down 6 percent, nearly wiping out the year’s gains.

What Ukraine has lost

Since World War II, few countries have experienced the level of devastation that Ukraine has. But until now, the scale has been too vast to see more than a glimpse at a time.

My colleagues published the first comprehensive picture of the destruction. Using detailed analysis of years of satellite data, they created a record of each town, each street, each building that has been blown apart. In some places, like the city of Marinka, not a single resident is left. So many people have lost more than their homes. They’ve lost their communities, their histories.

“If I shut my eyes, I can see everything from my old life,” said Iryna Hrushkovksa, 34, who was born and raised in the city. “But if I open my eyes, it’s all gone.”

The scale of destruction: More buildings have been destroyed in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan were to be leveled four times over. Parts of Ukraine look like Dresden or London after World War II, or Gaza after half a year of bombardment.

HIMARS: Ukraine used a U.S.-made rocket system to destroy missile launchers inside Russia, a Ukrainian official said. The strikes came just after the U.S. granted permission for Ukraine to do so.

Israel killed an Iranian general in Syria

Israeli airstrikes in Syria killed an Iranian general who was there as an adviser, the Iranian media said. He was believed to be the first Iranian killed by Israel since the two countries almost went to war in April, after Israel bombed Iran’s embassy compound in Syria.

Iran is currently enmeshed in a leadership crisis stemming from the death of its president last month. A new wave of attacks on Israel seems unlikely. The Iranian was identified as Gen. Saeed Abyar, a member of the Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards.

Gaza: Some Gazans are urging Hamas to accept a cease-fire plan proposed by President Biden, but remain skeptical that the U.S. would truly bring an end to the war. In an interview with Time magazine, Biden suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was prolonging the war to stay in power.

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Benjamin Bolger has spent his life amassing academic degrees. He has 14 advanced degrees, including a few that took many years to complete, such as a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The reason for his university quest is simple: “I love learning,” he told our reporter.

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The Transfer DealSheet: A weekly guide to transfers across Europe this summer.

Moving on: The driver Esteban Ocon will leave the Alpine team at the end of the Formula 1 season.

French Open: Novak Djokovic withdrew because of an injury, and Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek and Carlos Alcaraz all won.

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Chinese websites are disappearing

China’s internet is vanishing in chunks. Posts are being removed and censored.

As of 2023, there were 3.9 million sites, down from 5.3 million in 2017, the country’s internet regulator found. A recent post on WeChat reported that nearly all information shared on China’s internet — news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites — between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available.

While archiving a website anywhere is costly and difficult, internet publishers in China are under intense pressure to censor under Xi Jinping’s leadership, Li Yuan writes in the column The New New World.

Internet companies have more incentive to overcensor and to let older content disappear by not archiving.

Two weeks ago, Nanfu Wang, a documentary filmmaker, searched her name on the film review site Douban and found nothing. “Some of the films I directed had been deleted and banned on the Chinese internet,” she said. “But this time, I feel that I, as a part of history, have been erased.”

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