What happened
A federal judge in California yesterday paused Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, agreeing with 12 states that the merger of two of Hollywood’s remaining five major movie studios could run afoul of antitrust laws. The combined company would also amalgamate CBS, CNN, HBO Max, Paramount+ and dozens of cable channels. The “pause will last only 14 days,” said The New York Times. But in her ruling, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín “raised the prospect of a much longer delay.”

Who said what
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a “critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day.” Paramount said the states’ “antitrust arguments are without merit” and it would “vigorously defend” its “lawful, pro-competitive” merger. Along with the dozen states, the merger is being challenged in court by a group of consumers, the Writers Guild of America and Paramount shareholders.

What next?
Martínez-Olguín said she would consider issuing a longer injunction at an Aug. 3 hearing. Any lengthy delay in the merger, which had been set to be completed as soon as Wednesday, “would have huge financial costs for Paramount,” NPR said. Starting Oct. 1, it has to pay Warner shareholders “roughly $650 million for every 90 days the deal is set back.”

What happened
Former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham took office yesterday as Britain’s seventh prime minister in 10 years, vowing that his government would be a “circuit-breaker for Britain” after a series of “wrong turns” successive leaders had taken since the 1980s. “I know people at home are fed up with politics,” Burnham said in front of No. 10 Downing Street shortly after King Charles III officially appointed him prime minister following Keir Starmer’s resignation. “We need to be better. We will be.”

Who said what
Burnham “wasted no time” showing there’s “much more to him than the friendly, folksy image he’s cultivated in public by swiftly banishing Keir Starmer’s closest allies from the Cabinet,” Politico said. The “biggest surprise” was Burnahm’s appointment of former defense secretary John Healey as chancellor of the exchequer, putting the Treasury in a “safe pair of hands” as he moves to decentralize power from London, re-industrialize the country and unwind the privatization of key utilities. The new prime minister also named Ed Miliband as foreign secretary and kept Shabana Mahmood as home secretary, signaling he’s “largely backing her efforts to crack down on legal and illegal migration,” The New York Times said. 

What next?
Burnham said he was working on a 10-year plan for Britain and today would unveil some initial measures “to give people some breathing space now, some help with the cost of living.” He also pledged to end “rough sleeping,” or homelessness.

Gray whales are in the midst of a “catastrophic mortality event” off the U.S. West Coast, according to the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Close to 150 carcasses were found on beaches along the Pacific Ocean just this year. This loss is heavily tied to human-caused climate change.

Gray whales face “multiple threats, including ship strikes and reduced food sources,” said PEER in a statement. Between 2019 and 2023, the gray whale population declined almost 30%, from 20,500 to 14,526, and an estimated 2,500 to 8,000 whales died in 2025 and 2026. 

The marine mammals are “starving” because “Arctic sea ice decline is reducing their Arctic seabed prey resource,” said Rick Steiner, an Alaska marine ecologist and the chair of PEER’s board of directors. The whales travel to the Arctic to “feed on crustaceans called amphipods,” said Smithsonian magazine. And because climate change is reducing the amphipod population, some whales are “detouring into dangerous places like San Francisco Bay, where they are being fatally struck by ships or becoming entangled in fishing gear.”

Gray whales were once protected under the Endangered Species Act because of commercial overfishing, but were removed from the protection list in 1994 after populations recovered. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has yet to relist them or take other protective action. However, individual states have enacted protective policies. “The loss of thousands of whales in just two years,” PEER’s Steiner said in a statement, “should be of concern to us all.”