Scaffolding on the North Portico of the White House is being covered by tarps. The project is for "security enhancements and upgrades" and is expected to be finished around mid-September. Trump administration has undertaken several other projects around the People's House since the president returned to office. The Commission of Fine Arts proposes a project that would fence off Lafayette Park and possibly even Pennsylvania Avenue in front of White House.

Trump has given orders for how the U.S. should respond if Iran ever succeeds in assassinating him. Israel shared intelligence about a new Iranian assassination plot with the Trump administration. CNN reports that some Iranian officials within Iran’s leadership wanted Trump assassinated. Ahmad Vahidi, the new commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was among those advocating for such a plan.

There are three foodborne outbreaks in Florida at once. The state is doing the work out loud while the federal government does it quietly or not at all. Florida's open-government laws make arrest records easier to get than in almost any other state, so Florida's oddities end up in print. The states are counting. The feds are catching up.

The US has at least 37 active sanctions programmes with diverse targets ranging from countries to companies and individuals. The OFAC website lists the diverse nature of its sanctions, which are wide-ranging in scope and targeted in their application. China has responded with its own countermeasures.

On June 24, two powerful quakes struck less than a minute apart, their epicenters in towns less than two hundred miles west of Caracas. As of July 8, the death toll stands at 3,811 and the number injured at 16,740. NASA satellite radar estimates that approximately 69,400 buildings were damaged or destroyed across the affected region. The economic losses from direct physical damage to buildings and infrastructure are estimated at approximately $37 billion. Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro suffered one of the most dramatic collapses in gross domestic product per capita in modern history. The decline in Venezuela’s capital stock closely follows the collapse of its production of cement

Some bloggers are using AI weather models to make predictions about Typhoon Bavi on social media. The state broadcaster China Media Group warned that the bloggers could fall foul of the law. Meteorologists are responsible for issuing public weather forecasts and severe weather alerts under the People's Republic of China's Meteorology Law.

Almost all living things on the planet died in a mass extinction 252 million years ago. A working group led by J. Andres Marquez from Stanford University has deciphered the “kill mechanism’ and why some animal species survived. A peculiarity in the metabolism was probably crucial. The organisms that survived the catastrophe triggered by gigantic volcanic eruptions reacted less sensitively to a lack of oxygen at high temperatures. Ocean acidification played a significantly smaller role.

CoreWeave secured more than $20 billion in debt and equity financing this year, including a recently closed $3.1 billion loan backed by graphics processing units. Investors are routing tens of billions of dollars toward artificial intelligence infrastructure rather than Bitcoin because the AI sector can offer predictable revenue, income and physical collateral that Bitcoin lacks. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that the five largest hyperscalers will spend $1 trillion on AI-related capital expenditure across 2025 and 2026.

Europe is studying proposals to charge navigational fees in the strait of Hormuz. The proposal adapted from the Malacca strait has already been developed by Oman. Muscat will send legal experts to Tehran to explain the plan in detail. Iran's foreign minister will travel to Oman on Saturday to discuss the issue. Iran is under pressure from regional states to clarify its proposals.

Patriot Front was on the streets of Washington, D.C., on July 4th weekend. The group was founded out of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Its founder, Thomas Rousseau, was formerly a leader of a group called Vanguard America. He painted everything in red, white and blue so that it would be more attractive. He also put swastikas at natural disaster sites in Central Texas. His organization sued members of Patriot Front for vandalizing a public mural dedicated to Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., in 2021.

Southeast Asia's scam industry has found a powerful new weapon: borrowed faces. Criminals are cloning the region's most trusted leaders using generative AI, wrapping fraud in the unimpeachable authority of a president’s voice or a prime minister's visage and cashing in on the thing no security system can patch: human trust.

In the past year-and-a-half, entire offices were dismantled and oversight bodies were stripped of staff and authority at the Department of Homeland Security. Several officials claim they were subjected to polygraph examinations conducted by US military personnel. Under Kristi Noem, the department carried out more than 675,000 deportations and expanded immigration detention to record levels.

Edgar Domenech is concerned about Chinese organized crime groups selling flavored disposable vapes to children in the U.S. and China. He claims the companies create confusion by changing the product's ingredients, causing law enforcement and regulatory agencies to take no action. The companies keep the same branding, packaging and flavors while changing just one ingredient, allowing them to profit from children who may not realize what they're consuming.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on February 28. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has vowed revenge for his father's killing. The statement lands as ceasefire talks unravel and both sides exchange threats and strikes, raising fears of a wider regional conflict. President Donald Trump has threatened massive retaliation if Iran targets him. Strait of Hormuz remains a key flashpoint and any renewed escalation there could quickly ripple through global oil and shipping markets.

A United Nations list of space launches has been missing for months due to an unexplained IT problem. UNOOSA oversees the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), a place where 104 nations can discuss and resolve technical, political or safety issues regarding space travel.

Hathaleen family's outhouse fell within the illegally expanding boundaries of the nearby Carmel settlement. The family has to cross the road to use the neighbors' outhouse. The IDF declared the outhouse a closed military zone and made things worse for the family.

At least 4,118 people were killed and 16,740 injured in the back-to-back June 24 quakes in the coastal state of La Guaira. The stronger 7.5 magnitude quake struck 39 seconds after the first 7.2 magnitude shock, flattening entire high-rise apartment blocks to layers of rubble. On Friday, a 3.0 magnitude tremor in central Caracas caused momentary panic and buildings were evacuated.

Both houses of Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act with veto-proof margins. The bill addresses the national housing shortage. It was the product of a partnership between progressive firebrand Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is a staunch Trump ally. Trump refused to sign the bill because he's angry about his anti-voting bill, the Save America Act.

Turkey's health ministry has fined more than 100 obstetricians-gynaecologists for carrying out cesarean sections. The country has the highest rate of C-section births among the OECD's 38 nations, with around 615 such procedures out of every 1,000 live births in 2023. President Erdogan wants to address Turkey's record number of elective C-sections.

Shriram AMC believes India's strongest investment opportunity in the AI boom lies not in software or AI startups, but in power generation, transmission and electrical infrastructure. The world's four largest hyperscalers committed $1.08 trillion in AI-related capital expenditure between 2021 and 2025. 2026 spending alone is expected to reach $725 billion.

The US wants Iran to declare the Strait of Hormuz fully reopened to navigation and pledge not to attack tankers transiting the waterway. Washington and Iran have clashed over the management of the strait. The two countries traded strikes on Wednesday and Thursday after Washington and the Gulf states blamed Tehran for attacks on three commercial ships. Negotiators from the US and Iran will meet in Oman on Saturday to continue negotiations.

Marie-Cécile Zinsou founded a contemporary art museum in Cotonou, Benin's economic capital and largest city, in 2005. She wanted to encourage museum visits for children and expand access to contemporary art and art education. She started collecting archives on the Kingdom of Dahomey, in the present-day Republic of Benin. Benin asked France to return objects looted during colonial rule in 2016.

A US military delegation is expected to travel to Lebanon in the coming days to help implement a framework agreement aimed at ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The discussions will focus on implementing a US-sponsored framework agreement reached on June 26. The State Department confirmed that CENTCOM is "coordinating closely" with both countries at the technical and logistical levels.

Microsoft, Amazon and Google's carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year. They emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) in the financial year ending March 2026, or about a third of those of France. The previous year, they emitted roughly 101m mT CO2 equivalent. The companies' climate ambitions have been hit in recent years by a boom in demand for cloud services related to training and operating chatbots and other AI products. The world's biggest tech companies are on track to spend $765bn this year on building AI datacentres.

Edgar Domenech is warning about Chinese organized crime groups selling flavored disposable vapes to children. He claims the companies create confusion by changing the product’s ingredients, causing law enforcement and regulatory agencies to “take no action” on the illegal trade.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act, which protects the California coast. President Trump wants to drill for oil off the coast of Santa Barbara County. The Coastal Commission has said nothing over the years to prohibit offshore oil projects and desalination plants. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered a review of the state's coastal management program.

AI has become a major factor in this year's university admissions process in China. More than 14 million users tried out the university admissions agent on Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen AI assistant as of late June. Baidu reported in late June that about 15 million students had used its AI university application assistant. Tencent Holdings announced its Yuanbao chatbot had answered nearly 80 million admissions-related queries.

Sergey Lavrov visited Ethiopia on July 7 as part of his regular Africa tour. He held talks with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos and the chairperson of the African Union Commission Mahamoud Ali Youssouf. The parties agreed to hold high-level political consultations at least once a year. The third Russia-Africa Summit is scheduled to take place in Moscow on October 28-29.

SK Hynix raised $26 billion in its U.S. debut. Information technology gained 1.65% on Friday and consumer discretionary added 1.46%. Eight of eleven S&P 500 sectors finished in the green. President Trump said Iran has requested additional talks with the United States.

It's been nearly a month since Sen. Mitch McConnell was hospitalized. He hasn't been seen in public since, and his office has offered few details about why he was admitted or when he might return. This is not the first time this year a member of Congress has been absent for weeks with little explanation. There's a debate on Capitol Hill about what lawmakers owe the public about their health or fitness for office.

EU regulators accuse US tech giant Meta Platforms of failing to protect users of Facebook and Instagram from features they say encourage compulsive use and harm wellbeing. If confirmed, the findings could result in a fine of up to 6% of Meta's global annual revenue, more than $12 billion based on the company's reported 2025 revenue.

Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that unborn and minor children are considered "patients" for the purposes of informed consent. Charlie Brekke, 11, was deformed by a vaginal birth and sued the doctor for negligence. The court ruled that she was a patient before her birth and she has every right to purse her claims.

Berman is famous in the real estate world for bringing cheap conversions to New York City. The Pfizer conversion used almost no organized labor, which did not make the unions happy. The carpenters’ union deployed a truck to the area with an electronic readout sign: “Crime Scene,” “1,600 residential units at risk due to cutting corners.”

There is a fuel crisis in Russia's Novosibirsk region due to Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries. More than 90 percent of Russian regions have experienced fuel shortages since June, some have introduced petrol rationing at petrol stations and bans on filling jerry cans. Putin blames Kyiv for the crisis.

12 people have been killed in a wildfire in the village of Bedar, among them four Britons. Another 23 people are still missing. The Los Gallardos fire has burned across 6,600 hectares (16,300 acres) of land. The cause of the fire has been put down to a fallen power line.

The Saturday Salon lecture series in Newport Beach, CA received a cease and desist letter from the surveillance technology company Flock Safety. The text of the letter demands that the group stop hosting conversations about Flock’s surveillance technology. Flock has received significant backlash over its technology and work with law enforcement agencies. The company denies that it sent the letter.