| George on Wednesday: Trump Loses Supreme Court Battle to End Jus Soli, 6 Dead in Mass Shooting at German Child Welfare Center, Diverging Civilian and Military Goals in Iran Make Peace Negotiations Tricky, Global Heat Waves ContinueFrequent Business Traveler

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, the first of July, 2026 and this is the Wednesday Edition of GEORGE.

GEORGE reaches midweek with a clear look at the stories that matter, from major global developments to original reporting and analysis. Here is the context needed to understand the day ahead.

The details coming out of Venezuela continue to be grim as the death toll approaches 2,000. The World Health Organization said it expects that this figure could eventually reach closer to 10,000 once all of the rubble from collapsed buildings has been searched. GEORGE’s @World News Roundup reporters have the latest details on this and on the mass shooting in Germany, final U.S. Supreme Court rulings of the season, and the forecast for the U.S. severe heat wave, as well as a report on the June Strawberry Moon.

At the 2026 World’s Cup, our @On the Pitch reporters examine how the U.S. team is using brain-wave technology to help train its players, how the U.S. Department of Justice is helping shut off the spigot of advertising revenue to illegal websites streaming the competition, and how Argentina fans used what comes natural at a World Cup match – jumping up and down and chanting – to reunite a man and his lost wallet.

GEORGE’s upgraded @The War Room feature now covers multiple battles and conflicts across the globe. The @The War Room correspondents zoom in on the diverging opinions in Iran between military and civilian leaders and what this means for peace negotiations..

The newspaper’s @The Sketch editorial cartoon columnist took inspiration from June’s Strawberry Moon, which received its name from Algonquin Native Americans because it came at the start of the wild strawberry harvest season.

There is more exclusive reporting in today’s GEORGE – but don’t touch that dial. Scroll down for today’s editorial cartoon in @The Sketch, then continue with additional news, commentary, and stories readers will not find elsewhere.

GEORGE will return tomorrow with a new editorial cartoon and more original dispatches and reportage.

Until then, remain curious!

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VOLUME VI… № 1,752

@THE LEDE  (above)

@THE SKETCH (above)  Strawberry Moon Wakeup Call

IN THIS ISSUE

@INTERMEZZO I  Space Shuttle Enterprise on a Boeing 747

@ON THE PITCH World Cup Coverage

@INTERMEZZO II  Strawberry Moon

@THE WAR ROOM

@INTERMEZZO III Setting Strawberry Moon

@WORLD NEWS ROUNDUP

@INTERMEZZO IV  A tree-lined road in Italy

@THOMASHEFSKY ON THEATRE  Review: ‘Schmigadoon’

  ATCHES OF NOTE

@ABOUT GEORGE      

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The prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise at JFK in late April 2012, having arrived mounted atop a modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

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Essential World Cup Dispatches

— A man lost his wallet at the Argentina vs. Jordan match on Sunday in Dallas and Argentina football fans banded together to get his attention by doing a variation of what football fans do. Instead of jumping up and down, dancing, and chanting “Vamos, Vamos, Argentina,” they chanted the wallet owner’s name, Juan Manuel Montero, turning what could have been a major inconvenience into a memorable moment that Mr. Montero will most likely remember long after the winning match (Argentina, 3-1) is forgotten.

— The U.S. Department of Justice seized nearly 400 websites that were streaming pirated World Cup content as part of its “Operation Offsides” campaign one week ago, and since then, ca. 1,400 illegal World Cup streaming sites have had their advertising revenue cut off. This latest move was led by Trustworthy Accountability Group, a non-profit group created by the global advertising industry to fight ad-related crime. The DOJ said that these steps illustrate the responsibility shown by the United States as a host nation “to protect the FIFA World Cup from criminals.”

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— Mexico defeated Ecuador for its first World Cup knockout game win since 1986 thus setting up a last 16 tie back in Mexico City against either England or DR Congo. The match was delayed by thunder and lightning by one hour, and when the game finally got underway, it was Mexico that made a hot start placing the World Cup co-hosts 2-0 up in 31 minutes.

— The U.S. men’s national team is using brain-wave technology to help players practice penalty kicks. “Everybody talks about being ‘in the zone,’ and having things slow down,” U.S. captain and defender Tim Ream told the Athletic about the high-tech gear. The U.S. staff explained to players that they “can actually track these brainwaves and help you get into that zone, to be ready to take the penalties,” Ream added.

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June’s Strawberry Moon

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U.S.-Israeli War in Iran

— Civilian leaders in Iran have greatly diverging priorities from the country’s military officials, a group comprised largely of top officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This divide will likely hinder how the country’s negotiators approach the talks and suggests that are multiple roadblocks ahead for peace treaty negotiators that may not be easily resolved in what remains of the 60-day negotiating period. Moreover, they show that an agreement on truly difficult topics such as Iran’s nuclear program is still far off. The civilian group wants billions of dollars of assets unfrozen to assist in the country’s economic recovery, while hardline military officials seek control of the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC envisions assuming full control of the strait no matter what the cost, despite the fact that the Strait functions as an international strait under international law of the sea. This requires both Oman and Iran to allow foreign commercial vessels and military ships the right of “transit passage.” This right guarantees continuous, expeditious, and unobstructed movement for all vessels and aircraft. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guard Corps envisions charging vessels tolls or fees to transit the strait in order to enrich its coffers and allow the IRGC to dominate the security map for the entire region.

— Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, told state television that the country’s direct talks with the United States would not include discussions of a final deal until terms of the memorandum of understanding had been fully met. He said that the Islamic Republic of Iran “prepared for war” if “dialogue is not implemented.”

—Qatar’s foreign ministry said America’s envoys would hold lower-level talks with Qatari mediators this week.

—Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said while visiting southern Lebanon on Tuesday that his country’s armed forces would not leave the occupied territory until the Iran-backed terror group Hizbullah “is eliminated.”

— In the United States, the House of Representatives failed to pass a war-powers resolution that would have required Congress to approve any American involvement in Israeli military operations in Lebanon.

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The setting Strawberry Moon

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The twin earthquakes in Venezuela have now killed at least 1,900 people, with the confirmed death toll continuing to climb as rescuers recover more bodies from the rubble. Although the chances of finding survivors are rapidly diminishing, occasional miracles continue, including the rescue today of a small child from beneath a collapsed apartment building six days after the disaster. Even so, frustration is mounting amongst survivors over what many describe as an inadequate government response, while hospitals remain overwhelmed, tens of thousands of people are still unaccounted for, and hundreds of thousands require humanitarian assistance. Rescue workers and volunteers continue to report hearing voices beneath collapsed buildings in some areas but say they lack the heavy machinery needed to reach those trapped before time finally runs out.

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In the German city of Stade, a man seeking custody of his baby daughter shot and killed six social workers at a child welfare facility there. The shooting took place after a quarrel about the custody of his baby daughter. The dead were all facility employees. No children were injured in the incident. The daytime assault in the small city of Stade – it has a population of just over 48,600 people – shocked a country where strict gun laws have made mass shootings a rarity. The city, first mentioned in records in 934, is the seat of the Landkreis, or district, which bears its name. It is located 45 km (28 miles) to the west of Hamburg, and belongs to that city’s wider metropolitan area. The shooter, who was 45 years old, was born in Germany to a family with Turkish background, and lived in the Hannover area, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive away, officials said. “This was a murder committed for family reasons –  an extremely cold-blooded act of violence with no political or economic motives,” Daniela Behrens, the Ministerin für Inneres und Sport, or minister for interior and sport, for the state of Niedersachsen, or Lower Saxony, which includes Stade, told reporters at a press briefing on Monday evening. The man, who was not identified by police, did not possess a gun permit and it is not known where he acquired the weapon.

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In the United States, the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, blocked an executive order issued by Mr. Trump the day he took office that would have denied birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented migrants. The ruling is considered a major blow to the president’s agenda.

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In a separate case, the Supreme Court ruled state officials have the right to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports at universities and schools. The Trump administration supported the bans, and national polls show that between 64% and 69% of between Americans support banning transgender women and girls also support the ban. Polls in the United Kingdom and Ireland separately show that ca. 70% of the citizenry support such bans while public sentiments on the Continent are more divided.

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U.S. stock markets ended a stellar first half of the year second quarter. The Dow Jones industrial average capped its best first half since 2021. The tech-heavy Nasdaq posted a quarterly gain of over 21%, while the S&P 500 was up nearly 15%, the two driven by an artificial intelligence-related semiconductor rally.

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The DAX, or Deutscher Aktienindex, the leading stock index in Germany, ended the first half of 2026 trading near record highs, surging 1.43% on 30 June to close at 24,996 points. This topped off a remarkable first half of the year, with the index gaining roughly 10% in the second quarter alone, driven by easing inflation, lower interest rates, and strong corporate earnings.

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The United States will begin the celebration of its 250th anniversary – which officially takes place on 4 July – with extreme temperatures, high humidity and intense sunshine combine under a massive heat dome. “Dangerous, record-breaking heat will intensify across most of the central and eastern U.S this week,” the National Weather Service said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the largest digital camera on Earth, finally began to film a motion picture of our universe. The observatory, a huge telescope in Chile, began on Tuesday its survey of the universe, starting with began the widest, deepest survey yet of the entirety of the southern sky. Over the next ten years, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time will scan the southern sky, collecting over ten terabytes of data every night. This will result in the creation of the most detailed map of the cosmos in history.

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The Space Shuttle Endeavor is ready for its next mission. The legendary spacecraft, which took American astronauts to the stars on more than two dozen journeys, is on the move again, this time to its final destination at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center where it will be featured in a one-of-a-kind exhibit. Endeavor had been on display horizontally at the California Science Center for more than a decade after its spectacular arrival in Los Angeles on the back of an airliner, but it was recently moved to the Science Center’s new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center where it was installed in its original upright launch position between two solid rocket boosters and next to a 65,000-pound external fuel tank.

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A country road in Northern Italy

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France reported a surge in deaths last week, including a sharp increase at private homes, especially in the Paris region, the national public health agency said Sunday. Much of western Europe has been baking under a heat dome this week, but the number of “additional deaths“ that France is reporting shows the extent of the ongoing health emergency. There were more than 1,200 deaths on Wednesday, when France was sweltering under its hottest temperatures, increasing to more than 1,400 deaths on each of the two following days, Santé Publique France, or Public Health France, said in a statement.. The agency concluded that France experienced a total of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three days alone, an estimate it cautioned is likely to increase as more data is collected, including for deaths at home. Eighty-five percent of those deaths has been people 65 years of age and older.

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The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency official who once claimed he had teleported to a Waffle House is leaving the agency. Former FEMA official Gregg Phillips, who led the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery, made national headlines after claiming on podcasts that he was involuntarily teleported, including an incident where he was allegedly sent to a Waffle House 50 miles (80 km) away. He was pushed out of the agency following the controversy.

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George: How to Consume News in a World of Information Overload

George delivers news for curious thinkers in a world of shortened attention spans.

Decades of research on how readers consume information when faced with Information Overload – led by George co-founder Jonathan Spira, one of the foremost authorities on the subject – ensures that each article gets straight to the point with no fluff and no bias.

George presents important news and events of the day clearly and concisely in a format better suited to the modern reader’s limited time and focus, without forsaking the founders’ traditional commitment to fact-driven news, commentary, and dispatches – all prepared by curious thinkers, for curious thinkers.

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George was conceived by the late Greg Andrew Spira,

Jonathan Spira, and the late Basilio Alferow.

Jonathan Spira, Alexander Khusid, Tim Perry, Christian Stampfer, Kurt Stolz, Anna Breuer, and Paul Riegler contributed to this issue of George.

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