Corax

Corax

The number of students being home-schooled in the 2023-2024 school year increased in 19 out of 21 US states surveyed, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, report author Angela Watson is unsure of the reasons but says she knows it's due to something other than the pandemic

World

The Libertarian Party and two independent candidates who have spoken out against smart cities get 11 seats in the local parliament in the state of New South Wales in Australia, in their manifesto it says that if we don't take a stand now, we are headed for a 24/7 government surveillance and a social credit system similar to China
The former Chancellor of Germany, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder, says in an interview with the Swiss Die Weltwoche that it may sound a little strange that he now hopes that Donald Trump will win, but he thinks it can be a solution to reduce the risk of even greater conflicts in the world, he also says that he does not necessarily support Hungary's Viktor Orbán but that his peace mission was very useful and reasonable
The British territory of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean is transferred to Mauritius as announced jointly by the Prime Ministers of both countries, and the American and British military base on the included Diego Garcia atoll will continue to operate as before
Hezbollah's leader for 32 years, 64-year-old Hassan Nasrallah, is confirmed dead after an Israeli air attack in Lebanon, and most of the organization's leaders are now elimnated according to the Israeli military
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis meets Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the sixth time in a year in connection with the UN General Assembly, Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides has expressed optimism about the possibility that the meeting in New York will lead to the restart of talks on the Cyprus issue
The organization Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which is described as far-right, is through legal action attempting to stop the Canadian government's plans to disclose the names of 900 Nazi war criminals who immigrated to the country after the second world war, they justify their position by arguing that such a disclosure would provide Vladimir Putin with ammunition for his claim that the war in Ukraine is about purging Nazis
Volodymyr Zelensky critical of Great Britain and the United States' failure to decide on permission for Ukraine to attack Russian territory with weapons from the West, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Keir Starmer met in the White House and afterwards it was communicated that no change in the countries' policy had taken place
Pakistani imam Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali is sentenced by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in absentia to 14 years in prison for having issued a fatwa against Dutch politician Geert Wilders, but no extradition agreements between the countries exists
The governments of the United States and Iraq when agreement on the final withdrawal of all American and its allied forces from Iraq when the last of them are to leave by the end of 2026, the presence began in 2003 with the invasion and bombing of the capital Baghdad
Ukraine's success in the Russian region of Kursk may give the country an advantage in possible peace talks with Moscow, says US Senator Mark Kelly (D) in connection with the American delegation's meeting with Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, and points out that the operation surprised the US

Miscellaneous

The actor and country artist Kris Kristofferson passes away at the age of 88, born in 1936 as the son of a Swedish father, perhaps best known for the song Me & Bobby McGee, as a member of the band The Highwaymen and his acting roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973 ), A Star Is Born (1976) and the Blade trilogy (1998-2004) among others
President of Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council, Edgard Leblanc Fils, spills water in the lectern as he drinks straight from a pitcher instead of a glass, just after addressing the United Nations General Assembly, saying the country has inspired others to throw off the yoke of unbearable colonialism, Fils then demanded justice and respect for Haiti
Pope Francis tells a group of young people in Singapore that every religion is a way to reach God and rhetorically wonders where such claims as one's religion is more important than another's will lead us, former bishop Joseph Strickland who was deposed by the Pope in 2023 says this is called indifferentism, is heresy and goes against the position of previous popes
Previously unknown music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart discovered in a library in Leipzig, Germany, is dated to the 1760s - Mozart was born in 1756 - and consists of seven miniature movements for string trio of a total of twelve minutes
Ancient Athens is the pre-modern empire that Americans view most favorably, according to a YouGov survey, with the Roman Empire second, Sparta third, and the Visigoths and the Huns last
The Muslim theologian and former professor of Islamology at the University of Oxford, Tariq Ramadan, convicted of rape in a Swiss court, is the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and four other women have accused him of molesting them when they were his students and between 14 and 18 years old
Brazilian bossa nova musician Sergio Mendes dies at the age of 83 as his health, according to his family, has been suffering from long-term covid, known for the songs Mas Que Nada and The Look of Love among others
Monumental nine-hour documentary about Prince will probably never air, despite tens of millions invested by Netflix, new administration of the artist's estate blocks the project which is said to give unique and deep insights into his life and complex psychology, according to long essay in New York Times Magazine which gives numerous details about the contents of the documentary
Followers of Asatru in Iceland are raising capital to build a temple in East Iceland, according to the law, all legally recognized religious organizations in the country have the right to a plot of land to construct a sacred building, chief clergyman Baldur Pálsson says the goal is for it to be built in the area of Fljótsdalshérað, where the largest town in East Iceland, Egilsstaðir, is located
Russian TV produces comedy series "Goodbye" in which Joe Biden travels incognito to Russia to find out why sanctions against the country are not working, loses his passport and is forced to work as an English teacher to afford a new passport for the trip home while the CIA takes pensioner Ivanovich, who looks exactly like Biden, to the United States

Media

Mel Gibson is working on a television series about the Great Siege of Malta in 1565 and was recently on a visit to the island where he met the country's Prime Minister Robert Abela, says the story of the 700 knights who won when they defended Malta against the attacks of the Ottomans is incredible
Alex Jones' media company Infowars will be sold in parts at an auction after an order by federal judge due to pay the USD 1 billion Jones was sentenced to pay for claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting never took place and was a false flag operation
The company Tortoise Media, with Karl-Johan Persson and Christina Stenbeck as two of the owners and James Harding as the largest, plans to acquire The Observer publication now owned by The Guardian
Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo says he called Donald Trump because he was embarrassed by the reactions and lack of reactions regarding the threats against him, says he does not understand how Trump continues his campaign, how he manages to raise his fist second after being shot and barely talk about it, though clarifies that the idea of ​​him being a Trump supporter is laughable
British magazine The Spectator is bought by businessman Paul Marshall, owner of right-wing media GB News and online publication Unherd, for GBP 100 million, is profitable and has grown turnover every year since 2013
Youtube stops recommending certain types of health and fitness videos to teenagers as it can be harmful to their self-confidence and body image, the same measures were taken for the US last year
Court upholds previous ruling that the Internet Archive's activity of scanning and lending library books violates copyright laws, assesses that all four requisites for fair use speak in favor of the publisher, but judges that the site's activity is not commercial in nature, unlike the assessment of the previous instance
SpaceX's Starlink will block X in Brazil after the Supreme Court's decision to ban the platform in the country and to freeze of Starlink's assets to ensure that X pays its fines, both companies' owner Elon Musk writes that if Brazil does not return the illegally seized property they will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too
Russian opposition journalist Sergei Mikhailov, editor of the publication Listok, is sentenced to eight years in prison for reporting on the number of dead civilians in the Kiev suburb of Butja and Mariupol in Donetsk, something that the court judge was knowlingly spreading of fake information
X, formerly Twitter, is being shut down in Brazil after order from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre De Moraes citing refusal to comply with local laws, using VPNs to get around the shutdown faces fines of USD 8,900 daily, and according to X's owner Elon Musk, the social media platform is the country's most used news app and what the people want

Politics

Elon Musk donates to the political group America PAC, which supports Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election of the United States, according to sources to Bloomberg who says the amount was sizable, story breaks four months after the entrepreneur wrote that he does not donate money to either candidates
The share of young people in Slovenia who self-identify as rights more than doubled since 2018 to 24 percent and those who consider themselves to be far-right increased from 7 percent to 11 according to study with 600 participants by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Maribor Faculty of Arts in Slovenia, the right-wing youth are also more likely to show an interest in politics
Afro-Swedish EU parliamentarian Alice Bah Kuhnke (MP) tells The Guardian she has learned to keep her ID close at hand as she frequently is stopped in and around the European Parliament and that other black parliamentarians have the same experience, the article author writes that the over-representation of white men in parliament have far-reaching consequences
Argentine President Javier Milei attends a convention of European patriots organized by the right-wing party Vox with Marine Le Pen among others present and has no plans to meet the king or Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez during a visit to Spain, calls socialism satanic and a cancer in a speech on the first day of the visit
Dutch Geert Wilders presents an agreement between four parties that will introduce the country's strictest immigration policy ever by, among other things, getting exemptions from the EU's immigration policy similar to Denmark, takes place after his party the Freedom Party became the largest party in the 2023 election and since then negotiated the formation of a government, still unclear who will be prime minister
The Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang is leading the polls ahead of the Belgian election at June 9 with 28 percent support and the party's Barbara Pas says the desire to have children generally remains the same, but cannot be fulfilled by the people due to practical and financial obstacles which the party seeks to eliminate
France's National Assembly party, with 28-year-old Jordan Bardella as front runner and party leader, leads Emmanuel Macron's party by a wide margin ahead of European Parliament elections, Bardella has 1.2 million followers on Tiktok and Macron's appointment of 34-year-old Gabriel Attal as prime minister may have been made as response to the popularity of the young nationalist
Protest movements generate attention online but have limited effects on political attitudes, researchers who studied protests in US from 2017 to 2022 say all had zero effect, except BLM protests after death of George Floyd which shifted views on race and benefited Democrats
The documentary Flynn about General Michael Flynn reaches number one on Amazon's bestseller list, follows Flynn's life through the ranks of the US military, the twists and turns following his tenure as national security adviser to Donald Trump and is said to provide an insight into the workings of the deep state
Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill becomes Northern Ireland first minister after two years of deadlock due to the Democratic Unionist Party's terms on renegotiating the 2021 Brexit deal to support the government, O'Neill says she believes there will be a referendum on Irish unity within 10 years

Opinion

Paul Gottfried: Abortion is held to be a key political issue but in fact female support of leftist candidates is fueled by general grievances about the imagined mistreatment of women, this means Republicans are unable to win over women to their cause and should therefore focus on winning as many young men as possible
Niall Ferguson: We are in Cold War 2.0 with China in which the US plays the role of the Soviet Union as despite some differences the similarities are many, geriatric leaders, shorter lifespans, deaths from addiction, large, expensive and inefficient military, low trust in public institutions and an elite that doubles down on its bizarre ideology that no one really believes in
Borepatch: Donald Trump is the modern day Tiberius Gracchus who, despite his family's great wealth, chose to run for public office to benefit the Roman working class and failed because the political establishment buried their traditional political differences and had him killed
Douglas Mackinnon: To those trying to save the people and infrastructure of Ukraine I am truly sad to report that you have failed and those who, from comfortable offices thousands of miles away, encourage Ukraine to fight to the last citizen need to come up with a more convincing rationale, for a number of defense contractors in the US and Europe, Ukraine has become the gift that keeps on giving but when but when does a never-ending supply of taxpayer money begin to resemble fraud, waste and abuse?
David P. Goldman: The Jews founded the first nation on the basis of language and religion, while the pagan kingdoms were multi-ethnic and Christian Europe was built on dual loyalty to both the church and one's own nation, the God of Israel was the first to offer eternal life to mankind while Christianity extended the promise of Israel to all, the remaining paganism in the Christian nations has expressed itself in an idolatrous desire to be a chosen people in the flesh, and Christian anti-Semitism is rather pagan resentment against Israel
Communism was ideology of Antichrist during 20th century, unholy alliance of anti-communism was kathechon which after its triumph morphed into neoliberal attempt to create new world order and a global state, says Peter Thie in interview by Tyler Cowen about political theology
Andrew Beck: Ten years ago, Javascript's creator, Brendan Eich, was forced out as CEO of Mozilla, which he co-founded, as a result of donations he made to lobby groups opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage, which I felt at the time was a major escalation of the culture war and made me realize that the ideological conformity to the top-down, programmatic transformation of the country was all that mattered
Robin Hanson: Global monoculture is a dangerous mistake which is on track to repeat historical patterns of population collapse, centuries of minimal development and increasing illiberalism, no cultural counterforce has realistic chance of reversing the trends but high tech could prevent some of the problems ahead
Curtis Yarvin and Christopher Rufo debate whether the American Revolution was a left-wing project and whether returning to the original American republic is a worthy goal for the right
George Carter: The circle around Bronze Age Pervert understands, through Nietzsche, that nature uplifts the strong, healthy and beautiful and downgrades the weak, deformed and diseased, that the point of life is not procreation but the pursuit of eternal glory, which Bronze Age Pervert terms the Faustian spirit, and because the right has always sided with natural hierarchy, conservatives should not fear this energy despite its clear paganism

Europe

The European Commission is suing Hungary over legislation intended to defend the country against undue political influence by foreign entities that came into force in December 2023, saying the law violates several EU rules and principles
Every chicken in the UK must be registered with the state from October 1st, citing improved preparedness for avian flu and other infectious diseases
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in court together with 26 other party members accused of misuse of EU funds by fabricating employees of the EU Parliament with whose salaries they financed domestic political activities, threatened with up to ten years in prison, five-year ban on political assignments but says nothing will stop her from standing in the upcoming presidential election
The anti-immigration Freedom Party, FPÖ, with party leader Herbert Kickl, becomes the largest party in Austria with 28.8 percent of the vote after Sunday's parliamentary elections, unclear how the government will be formed
Iceland's Justice Minister Gudrún Hafsteinsdóttir says gang criminals are sent from Sweden to commit crimes in the country, citing arson attack on police car in August 2023, announces stricter border controls
Ukraine intends to join all political statements of the EU without exception, according to the country's foreign ministry, and Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha says they expect Ukraine's ambassadors to be invited to regular meetings with ambassadors from EU member states and to become an integral part of these diplomatic communities
The prime minister of Albania, Edi Rama, unexpectedly announces that a state for the Muslim Sufi order Bektashi will be established in the country's capital Tirana, the state is intended to be based on the model of the Vatican City and will have an area of ​​27 hectares with its own borders, passports and administration, in the Albanian constitution it is stated that the state is unitary and indivisible
Alternative for Germany comes in second place with 29.2 percent of the vote after the Social Democrats' 30.9 percent in the federal election on Sunday in Brandenburg, Sahra Wagenknecht's party gets 13.5 percent and the Christian Democrats 12.1
The King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander says during a speech at the opening of the parliament that migration is an acute concern and is due to excessive regulations that are not adapted to reality, that things we should be able to take for granted such as a home of our own, a decent income and a safe and familiar neighborhood is increasingly drifting out of reach, creating a sense of insecurity that erodes people's independence and causes resentment
Polar bear is for the first time since 2016 spotted in Iceland after specimen makes its way from Greenland on ice floes and rummage through garbage outside remote cabin where old lady is, being shot

North America

The number of students being home-schooled in the 2023-2024 school year increased in 19 out of 21 US states surveyed, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, report author Angela Watson is unsure of the reasons but says she knows it's due to something other than the pandemic
Tee US Federal Emergency Management Agency is accused by, among others, Elon Musk and Congressman Matt Gaetz (R) of preventing the civil relief work after the ravages of Hurricane Helene, its spokesman Jaclyn Rothenberg denies the accusations
Black Marcellus Williams is executed in Missouri after being sentenced to death in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle who was found at home by her husband with 43 stab wounds, became a devout Muslim while in prison, acted as an imam for other inmates, was spared execution in 2015 and 2017, has the entire the time maintained his innocence and until the very end, attempts were made to overturn the sentence
Elliot Resnick, former editor-in-chief of the Jewish Press, who was convicted for his involvement in the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is banned from two different dating apps for Jews, according to information to the New York Jewish Week, he wrote in his profile that he will be in prison for four months from November but also that he is looking for woman who is smart, kind, God fearing, sweet and sincere
Oran Routh, the son of Ryan Routh who was arrested last week for the attempted murder of Donald Trump, is arrested on charges of child pornography which was discovered in connection with the search of the house after the failed attempt
Cary Kozberg, the sole rabbi of Springfield, Ohio, says he was wrong when he said that Haitians lack civilized Western values ​​and implied that they did not deserve Jewish support, drew criticism from several Jewish groups such as the New York Jewish Agenda, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Temple Sholom, American Jewish Committee and 41 Ohio rabbis in an open letter
US Department of Justice publishes letter written by Ryan Wesley Routh, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a round of golf, in which he confirms it was a failed assassination attempt and offers 150 000 USD to whoever succeeds
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering suing 31-year-old Olivia Nuzzi, a writer at New York magazine who was fired after an alleged relationship with him, for sending him increasingly pornographic images and videos
Sean "P. Diddy" Combs arrested on charges of sex trafficking among other things, denies bail and is placed on suicide watch at The Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, defense attorney Marc Agnifilo says Combs is in relatively good spirits and that they are going through their defense
Mexico approves judicial reform that includes popular election of federal judges, unlike today's appointments that are largely separate from the political process, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's coalition long held only 85 of the 86 votes needed but in the end two senators, one of whom was under corruption investigation and the other had seen his father arrested in the days leading up to the vote, switched sides

Latin America

Armed members of the Gran Grif criminal gang kill at least 70 residents of the Haitian village of Pont-Sonde, including ten women and three infants, and 45 homes and 34 cars are said to have been set on fire, motive still unclear
The Dominican Republic announces plan to per week deport up to 10,000 Haitians who made it to the neighboring country after the recent lawlessness, according to the UN, the Dominican Republic sent back 200,000 Haitians last year
Venezuela plans to issue arrest warrants for Argentina's President Javier Milei, his sister Karina Milei and Security Minister Patricia Bullrich over the expropriation of state-owned aircraft at the behest of the US Justice Department, which claimed it actually belonged to Iranian airline affiliated with the terrorist-designated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Peru's former president between 1990 and 2000, Alberto Fujimori, passes away at the age of 86 from cancer, known for fighting communists and was forced to flee to Japan in 2000 after allegations of election fraud
All gifts to Argentine President Javier Milei are declared and include a chainsaw key ring, a pair of underwear, a mug with the inscription "socialism kills" from a German fan, Toblerone, a toy dog, the Argentina national soccer team jersey during a trip to Israel, red wine and olive oil from Georgia Meloni and cognac of the Hennessy XO brand from Emmanuel Macron
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro brings forward the start of the Christmas celebration for the third time during his administration, which was announced in a speech to the people during his show Con Maduro+ broadcast on Youtube, this year the celebration starts on October 1st, while in 2020 it was on the 15th and in 2021 on the 4th of October
The US recognizes Venezuela's opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of Sunday's presidential election, which incumbent President Nicolás Maduro also claims to have won, the Venezuelan electoral authority states Maduro won with 51 percent of the vote, but no explanatory data has been published
Incumbent President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition coalition declare themselves victorious in Sunday's presidential election in Venezuela, the opposition with its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia claiming 70 percent of the vote compared to the official 44
Thirteen sharpnose sharks in Brazil test positive for cocaine, the concentration is said to be more than 100 times greater than what has ever been found in aquatic animals
New images show what is believed to be the world's largest uncontacted tribe, the Mashco Piro people of the Peruvian Amazon, and the organization Survival International is now calling for logging companies in the area to have their licenses revoked

Asia

Former defense minister Shigeru Ishiba is expected to become Japan's new prime minister after a vote in parliament next week after winning the Liberal Democratic party leadership vote with 215 votes to female challenger Sanae Takaichi's 194 votes
Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayake is elected president of Sri Lanka in what has been seen as a rejection of the old-guard by voters, the country was declared bankrupt in 2022 and Dissanayake has gone to the polls to renegotiate the bailout agreement with IMF
Chinese Coast Guard vessel collide with two Philippine Coast Guard vessels in the area around the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, with both countries at odds over what happened
Japan's Prime Minister Kishida Fumio will not run for re-election as party leader ahead of the Liberal Democratic Party's vote in September and a new party leader will take over as prime minister, has seen support below 20 percent in surveys
Thailand's Constitutional Court dissolves the biggest party in the parliament, Move Forward, after the party's proposal to curtail the power of the monarchy is deemed threatening of the democratic system with the king as head of state, the party's leadership is banned from politics for 10 years
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, resigns and flees the country on Monday after major protests, and 84-year-old Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus takes over the post in a transitional government
Armed faction of the West Papua National Liberation Army in Indonesia, led by Egianus Kogoya, are according to audio message published by spokesman willing to release the New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens who was kidnapped over a year ago, the Indonesian army has said that military intervention would be dangerous and has instead prioritized diplomacy
Philippines and China reach agreement on Philippines-controlled reef Second Thomas Shoal which is also claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam, the US has repeatedly warned that attacks on Philippine ships in the South China Sea might lead to intervention as the US and the Philippines have a joint military agreement
Curfew imposed and military deployed after at least 115 have died in student protests in recent days in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, the unrest comes amid controversy over quotas for certain groups in government jobs
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam since 2011 and the country's president from 2018 to 2021, Nguyen Phu Trong, dies at the age of 80, the news comes the day after he was awarded the country's highest honour, the Gold Star, and the government announced that he would step aside to focus on his health

MIDDLE EAST

Africa

In order to operate in South Africa, Starlink needs to be 30 percent owned by "historically disadvantaged groups", which includes blacks, women, youth and disabled, the service can be accessed from most parts of the world but for the delivery of necessary products to customers, permission from the states is required
Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine seriously injured after being shot in the leg by police outside the capital Kampala on Tuesday, street confrontations between him and the police is not unusual and in this case police say he had to no avail been advised against holding a street procession when he left a private event
Germany ends its military presence in Niger in Africa as the last 60 soldiers and equipment leaving, but the countries write in a joint statement that their military cooperation will not end, since 2016, 3,200 German soldiers served on air bases in the region
More cases so far in 2024 of people infected with monkeypox in Africa compared to all of 2023 and the World Health Organization calls for a meeting of its Emergency Committee, a new deadlier and more infectious strain of the virus is said to have been discovered in April in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Burkina Faso's military government, which seized power in a military coup two years ago, has announced that military rule will be extended for another five years after first promising civil rule from July 1 this year, arguing that elections are not a priority as long as jihadists still control territory
Mahamat Idriss Deby is sworn in as president of Chad after winning elections with 61 percent of the vote after three years as a leader under military rule following the assassination of his father who ruled the country since a military coup in the early 90s, present at the installation was, among others, the minister of foreign trade of France and the international cooperation organization for French-speaking countries and areas, Francophonie
Congo-Kinshasa's army says the stopped failed coup attempt in capital Kinshasa following a shootout with three dead and says several foreigners among those arrested
Liberia's president Joseph Boakai decides to set up the country's first war crimes court more than 20 years after end of civil war that killed 250,000 people for which no one has been brought to justice in the country but former president Charles Taylor is serving a 50-year prison sentence in Britain for war crimes but that for his role in the conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa says during speech in Cape Town, in regards to apartheid, that they still need to address high unemployment and to remove the barriers that kept black South Africans from full participation in the economy, that they must undo the effects of Bantu education, transform our schools completely, end illiteracy, and help people find decent work
Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi says in response to German authorities' proposal to limit the import of hunting trophies that they would like to offer 20,000 elephants to Germany and will not take no for an answer, says the number of elephants has increased explosively as a result of conservation efforts and that the country had to pay the price

Economy

Donald Trump first president to make a transaction with Bitcoin as he buys hamburgers and beer for supporters in the pub PubKey in Manhattan in New York, says it was very easy and that his son Barron has four wallets or something for cryptocurrencies
The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan in Asia reportedly has Bitcoin worth 27 percent of the country's annual GDP after mining the cryptocurrency with the its renewable energy resources
The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by 0.5 percentage points, which is the first cut since 2020, Donald Trump says it is either political intervention or confirmation the US economy is doing much worse than indicated, while Chairman Jerome Powell justifies the cut saying it aims to limit the risk of a full-blown downturn
Google wins in the European Court of Justice and avoids paying a fine of EUR 1,5 billion after the European Commission accused the advertising giant of abusing its market dominance between 2006 and 2016 by preventing websites from using advertising brokers other than their own platform, AdSense, the company was recently sentenced in the EU court in a separate case for fines of EUR 2,4 billion
Microsoft signs 20-year deal with Constellation Energy to restart nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island known for partial meltdown in 1978 with start-up scheduled for 2028
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announces that most of the company's employees will need to work full-time in offices starting from 2025 and according to a study by KPMG US, eight out of ten CEOs from large American companies expect remote work to be a closed chapter within the next three years
Japan's Nikkei stock market falls 12.4 percent on Monday, which is the biggest fall in 37 years, and rises 10.2 percent on Tuesday, July 31 Bank of Japan raised interest rates and on Friday US jobs data came in worse than expected
Nvidia becomes the world's most valuable company with a market capitalization of more than 3.3 trillion dollars when it surpasses Microsoft earlier this week, the company has around 80 percent market share of the chips used for the development of artificial intelligence
EU imposes additional tariffs of up to 38.1% on Chinese electric vehicles from July, the move follows a nine-month investigation finding that unfair Chinese battery electric vehicles subsidies threaten EU industry, the EU braces for trade war with Beijing but argues that Chinese manufacturers can easily absorb the increased levies
Saudi Arabia decides not to extend its 50-year agreement with the US on economic and military cooperation which means that the Arab nation can now sell oil in a currency other than the dollar

Technology

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, vetos bill SB 1047, regarding AI-safety regulations, after massive lobbying from Big-Tech in Silicon Valley
OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati as well as two other prominent employees are leaving the company on the same day and the board of the non-profit organization is considering giving CEO Sam Altman equity by starting a for-profit entity, according to an ongoing capital round, the company is valued at USD 150 billion
Encrypted chat app Ghost, which police say is used by criminals, is cracked by Australian police, the apps owner, 32-year-old Jay Je Yoon Jung in Australia, was arrested on Tuesday and police raids are being carried out simultaneously in Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Canada
SpaceX performs the first private spacewalk ever as 41-year-old billionaire financier Jared Isaacman and 30-year-old astronaut Sarah Gillis step out of the capsule at nearly twice the height as the International Space Station
Nasa announces that SpaceX spacecraft will bring home the two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station since June, instead of Boeing's Starliner that took them there and was then deemed unfit to take them back, would have returned after eight days but now expected to return in February next year
The U.S. AI ​​Safety Institute under the US Department of Commerce, which was established after the Biden administration's executive order on AI in October 2023, signs cooperation agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic, which means that they will get access to new models before they are publicly launched
After a five-year absence, Curtis Yarvin is back at the helm of Urbit, which he founded, after its executive director since 2021, Josh Lehman, has been fired and the non-profit organization that intends to rebuild the Internet from scratch is close to running out of money
Co-founder John Schulman and product manager Peter Deng are leaving OpenAI while President Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave of absence, only three of eleven founders now remain of which Brockman is one, Schulman is leaving for competitor Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI employees
Switzerland mandates that all software used and created for government activities must be open source
Faulty CrowdStrike update of cloud-based security service Falcon Sensor causes major global IT outage for Windows computers, taking out banks, airlines and businesses globally, CrowdStrike confirms it is not a cyberattack

Science

This year's Ig Nobel Prize, which is given to unusual scientific achievements, is awarded to studies that concluded that mammals can breathe through the anus, that drunk worms are slower than sober ones, that hair curls on people in the northern hemisphere generally curl in the same direction as hair curls on people from the southern hemisphere and scaring a cow every ten seconds affects its milk but having a cat on its back does not
Aging increases at the ages of 44 and 60 according to a Stanford study published in Nature Aging that examined 108 people between the ages of 25 and 75 of various races for up to seven years by taking blood samples 2-4 times a year
With moderate confidence there is link between fluoride in drinking water and children's IQ according to US government report, the addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has, according to the article, long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century as the chemical element is good for dental health
Reservoirs of liquid water 11 to 20 kilometers beneath the surface of Mars may have been found by scientists, who have analyzed four years of data collected by NASA's Mars InSight lander, if extracted to the surface the amount of liquid water found could cover the planet in a 1-2km deep ocean
The European Space Agency is creating Lego pieces of space dust from a meteorite in northwest Africa using 3D printers, the phenomenon of so-called in situ resource utilization (ISRU) is the main focus of the organization's office in Cologne, Germany and teamleader Aidan Cowley says we have to figure out how to build structures on the moon since we can't bring any materials there
Why males do not breastfeed despite biological possibility may be an evolutionary strategy to curb the spread of harmful microbes in mammals, according to a study using mathematical models by the University of York published in Nature Communications
Left-wingers have smaller and lower faces, with lips and noses oriented further down towards the chin compared to those with right-leaning views, according to research with 591 participants at Stanford University that shows that political beliefs and facial characteristics correlate
Chinese Academy of Sciences publishes map of moon in the scale of 1:2,500,000 which took 100 scientists more than a decade to compile
Researcher Nathan Cofnas is fired from Emmanuel College, part of the University of Cambridge, for violating its diversity and inclusion policies ​​when he argued that the number of black professors at Harvard would approach zero in a meritocracy and that they would not hold any high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment
Nobel laureate in physics 2013, Peter Higgs who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson in particle physics in 1964 which was later confirmed at CERN in 2012, dies at the age of 94, was born in Newcastle in 1929 and worked at the University of Edinburgh for almost all of his career