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Article snippet: (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Cheering and celebratory gunfire erupted in the streets of the Syrian city of Raqqa after a U.S.-backed militia composed of Kurdish and Arab fighters said they had seized the Islamic State’s de facto capital. Here’s what our photographer saw when he entered the city with Kurdish fighters. Analysts say the militant group is preparing for a new phase: morphing back into the kind of underground insurgency it was at the start. Trying to defeat its ideology will probably vex President Trump as it did his predecessors. In Iraq, Kurdish independence aspirations appeared to stall — at least for now — as government forces seized oil facilities near Kirkuk that supply most of Iraqi Kurdistan’s revenue. _____ • President Trump’s latest attempt at a travel ban was blocked just hours before it was to take effect, by the same federal judge in Hawaii who blocked the second ban from taking effect in March. Above, a protest against the ban in Los Angeles on Sunday. After falsely asserting that President Barack Obama and other presidents did not contact the families of fallen troops, Mr. Trump has turned the combat death of his chief of staff’s son in 2010 into a political talking point. The Times Magazine took a close look at the inner workings of the State Department and found it adrift and demoralized under Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state. _____ • Some 200,000 demonstr... Link to the full article to read more