Olivia Rodrigo’s Grammys Gown Is the Punk Prom Dress You’ve Been Looking For

Reuters
India's Modi wins test of strength in parliament with election of speaker
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed the first big political test of his third term on Wednesday as a ruling party candidate was elected speaker of the lower house of parliament, defeating an opposition lawmaker by a voice vote. Om Birla, from Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who was speaker in the last term of the house, was elected again, beating K Suresh, an eight-time MP from the opposition Congress party. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was declared the leader of the opposition late on Tuesday by his party, accompanied Modi as they congratulated Birla on his election, a rare show of harmony between the two bitter rivals.
Reuters
UN warns of overdose deaths after Afghan opium production plummets
The Taliban-ordered crash in opium production in Afghanistan, long the world's dominant supplier, could drive up overdose deaths as heroin users switch to synthetic opioids already proving deadly in Europe, a U.N. report said on Wednesday. The cultivation of opium, from which heroin is made, fell by 95% in Afghanistan last year after the Taliban banned the production of narcotics in 2022. Although opium production in Myanmar increased by 36% last year, it still fell globally by 75%, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual World Drug Report published on Wednesday.
NBC News
Plant-based meat substitutes may be healthier for the heart than real meat, new analysis suggests
Plant-based meat alternatives, despite being ultraprocessed, may be healthier for the heart than meat, a new report suggests.
TODAY
‘Love Island USA’ star Hannah Smith on why her relationship with Kendall Washington 'died out'
Hannah Smith also opens up to TODAY.com about a “stigma” she faced in the villa and discusses the dramatic recoupling after her departure.
AFP
First radioactive rhino horns to curb poaching in S.Africa
South African scientists on Tuesday injected radioactive material into live rhino horns to make them easier to detect at border posts in a pioneering project aimed at curbing poaching.Border agents often have handheld radiation detectors which can detect contraband in addition to thousands of radiation detectors installed at ports and airports, the scientists said.
Politico
Trump’s endorsement is starting to show its limits
Trump-endorsed candidates lost Tuesday in Utah, South Carolina and Colorado.
CNN
This North Korean defector sends ‘smart’ balloons back home. Here’s a look inside his secretive assembly room
Beside a desk scattered with soldering pieces, loose wires and electronic parts, Choi’s computer screen tracks wind conditions and the GPS location of some unlikely parcels: massive “smart” balloons he has sent floating into North Korea.
AFP
India's Rahul Gandhi faces new test in revived fortunes
Once dismissed as an "empty suit", perennial Indian premier-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi emerged from his third consecutive election defeat with his reputation enhanced and his party back from the political wilderness.Leaked US embassy cables disparagingly referred to him as an "empty suit", and Modi dismissed him as a dynast more interested in luxury and self-indulgence than fighting to helm the world's biggest democracy.
AFP
Iran picks new president at turbulent time
Iranians vote on Friday to elect a new president from six candidates, including a lone reformist who hopes he can challenge the dominance of conservatives in the Islamic republic.Neda said: "The hijab law will never be lifted since this is the Islamic republic.
NBC News
Growing wildfire in central Oregon chars 1,700 acres, prompts evacuations
A small wildfire in central Oregon quickly spread Tuesday, charring around 1,700 acres by nightfall and triggering evacuations while leaving thousands without power.
CNN
Julian Assange is flying back to Australia a free man. Here’s what we know about his US plea deal
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pled guilty to a single espionage charge in front on a US judge Wednesday and walked free after his 12-year battle against extradition to the United States ended in a plea deal.
CNN
Julian Assange ends stalemate with US, exchanging guilty plea for his freedom
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked free for the first time in 12 years after a US judge signed off on his unexpected plea deal on Wednesday morning.
Associated Press
Native American ceremony will celebrate birth of white buffalo calf in Yellowstone park
Ceremonies and celebrations are planned Wednesday near the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park to mark the recent birth of a white buffalo calf in the park, a spiritually significant event for many Native American tribes. A white buffalo calf with a dark nose and eyes was born on June 4 in the the park's Lamar Valley, according to witnesses, fulfilling a prophecy for the Lakota people that portends better times but also signals that more must be done to protect the earth and its animals. Looking Horse has performed a naming ceremony for the calf and will announce its name during Wednesday's gathering in West Yellowstone at the headquarters of Buffalo Field Campaign, an organization that works to protect the park's wild bison herds.
Associated Press
Texas inmate facing execution for 2001 fatal shooting as his lawyers argue he's no longer a danger
A Texas man who admitted that he kidnapped, sexually assaulted and fatally shot the 18-year-old girlfriend of his drug dealer was set to be executed on Wednesday. The remains of Bridget Townsend weren't found until October 2002, two years after she vanished, when Ramiro Gonzales, having received two life sentences for kidnapping and raping another woman, led authorities to the spot in Southwest Texas where he left her body. Gonzales, 41, was condemned for fatally shooting Townsend after stealing drugs and money and kidnapping her in January 2001 from a home in Bandera County, located northwest of San Antonio.
NBC News
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a vocal Israel critic and 'squad' member, loses primary
NBC News projects George Latimer defeated Jamaal Bowman after a bitter and expensive Democratic primary in New York’s 16th District.
Reuters
Iran election hopefuls struggle to offer fix for economic woes
Candidates in Friday's Iranian presidential election have vowed to revive the flagging economy, but voters see little prospect of relief from a cost of living squeeze without an end to sanctions and an easing of Iran's international isolation. The daily struggle of ordinary Iranians to make ends meet is a persistent challenge for Iran's ruling clerics, who fear a revival of protests that have erupted periodically by lower and middle-income communities angry at enduring hardship. The reinstatement of U.S. sanctions in 2018 hit Iran's oil exports, slashing government revenues and forcing it to take unpopular steps such as increasing taxes and running big budget deficits, policies that have kept annual inflation close to 40%.
Associated Press
As Iran's presidential vote looms, tensions boil over renewed headscarf crackdown
Seemingly every afternoon in Iran's capital, police vans rush to major Tehran squares and intersections to search for women with loose headscarves and those who dare not to wear them at all. The renewed crackdown comes not quite two years since mass protests over the death Mahsa Amini after she was detained for not wearing a scarf to the authorities' liking. A United Nations panel has found that the 22-year-old died as a result of “physical violence” wrought upon her by the state.
AFP
Julian Assange: WikiLeaks' controversial founder
Julian Assange, who walked free Wednesday following a plea deal with US authorities that ended a years-long legal saga, is for many a fearless campaigner for press freedom.Assange travelled to the Northern Mariana Islands, a US possession in the Pacific, where he pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information in exchange for his freedom, ending his years-long legal drama.
AFP
Costly odyssey for cancer care in war-torn Sudan
Doctors in eastern Sudan say Mohammed al-Juneid's wife, displaced and diagnosed with cancer, needs treatment elsewhere in the war-torn country.Among them is Juneid's wife, who used to undergo radiation therapy at Wad Madani hospital in central Sudan before "it closed because of the war", her husband said.
Associated Press
US journalist goes on trial for espionage in Russia, with a conviction all but certain
Fifteen months after Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on espionage charges, he returned there for his trial starting Wednesday behind closed doors. The 32-year-old Gershkovich appeared in the courtroom on Wednesday morning in a glass cage, with his head shaven clean and wearing a black-and-blue plaid shirt. The American-born son of immigrants from the USSR, he is the first Western journalist to be arrested on espionage in post-Soviet Russia.

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