“Ryanair will ‘reluctantly’ allow parents to sit with their children for free from Thursday, a change it said would be revenue-neutral and comes two weeks after Britain’s competition watchdog launched a probe into its policy. Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers previously required adults travelling with children aged between 2 and 11 to pay a ‘family seat’ charge, allowing up to four children to sit next to one accompanying adult. … The budget carrier said families still have the option of paying the charge to reserve seats. Otherwise, they will be allocated random seats together for free after check-in, likely towards the rear of the plane. ‘We will reluctantly adjust to this industry standard as we don’t want to waste time explaining to misguided regulators how badly they misunderstand what is in the best interest of UK and Europe’s consumers,’ Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said in a statement.” (06/25/26)
“Dozens of Kenyans took to the streets on Thursday under heavy security in memory of protesters killed two years ago when massive anti-government demonstrations erupted in Nairobi over proposed tax hikes and the surging cost of living. Organisers had planned remembrance marches in the coastal city of Mombasa and the capital Nairobi to mark the anniversary of the June 25, 2024 unrest, when protests escalated dramatically and protesters breached parliament grounds before a security crackdown left dozens dead. … Dozens of marchers turned up in Mombasa escorted by security forces while Nairobi’s streets appeared largely deserted as police set up roadblocks with water cannons and mounted a razor wire barricade outside parliament.” (06/25/26)
“IBM has unveiled a new chip design which it says could enable manufacturers to cram 100 billion transistors on a silicon chip the size of a fingernail. The current industry-standard size for chips, measured in a the unit of nanometres – a billionth of a metre and the size of a few atoms – is around two nanometres (nm). But IBM claims its new chip tech is the equivalent of around 0.7nm, which may make it the world’s first known chip technology below 1nm. However, it will be several years before the chip tech could be ready to go into production. The firm claims in tests, its prototype performed 50% better than its own 2nm chip and was 70% more energy efficient. It claimed similar boosts in performance when it debuted its 2nm chip tech back in 2021 – saying at the time its tests of those, slightly larger, chips produced similar leaps in performance and energy efficiency.” (06/25/26)
“Cambodia’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the treason conviction and 14-year prison sentence of two journalists who posted photographs on Facebook last year related to border clashes with Thailand, prompting new accusations from rights groups that Prime Minister Hun Manet ‘s government is influencing the courts to quash press freedoms. … ‘The bogus prosecution and draconian prison sentences handed down to these two journalists shows the Cambodian authorities’ disdain for media freedom,’ Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press.” (06/24/26)
“Gov. Mike DeWine has vetoed a new Republican-passed bill that would have required Ohioans to show a photo ID to vote by mail. DeWine announced late Wednesday that he had vetoed House Bill 472, which expanded the strict photo ID requirement Ohio has had for voting since 2023. The Republican governor issued an unusually lengthy statement explaining his decision. He said the requirement would pose an unwieldy challenge for voters without providing any real benefit. ‘This bill is not needed, because Ohio does an excellent job running elections,’ DeWine said. ‘We know who wins on election night and not weeks later!’ In vetoing the bill, DeWine noted complaints from bipartisan elections officials, who said lawmakers passed the bill too quickly during a busy legislative session earlier this month, as well as from the Ohio chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons.” (06/25/26)
“The U.S.’[s] chief mailman told lawmakers Wednesday that his agency would restrict the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that don’t hand over a list of eligible voters, in line with proposed rules ordered by President Donald Trump. Postmaster General David Steiner dismissed Senate Democrats’ concerns that the floated regulations are an attempt by Trump to federalize elections, instead characterizing the proposal as an assurance that ‘the right ballots are going to the right people’ during an appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.” [editor’s note: Per 18 US Code § 1702, “Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package … before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed, with design to obstruct the correspondence … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” – TLK] (06/24/26)
“Massive, twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24 killed at least 32 people and injured at least 700 others as buildings collapsed across several states in the South American nation, officials said. In an early update on June 25, acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez warned that the death toll is expected to climb as rescuers continue searching through the rubble. … The first quake occurred at around 6:04 p.m. local time about 15 miles east-northeast of San Felipe, Venezuela, data from the U.S. Geological Survey showed. The temblor, initially reported as a magnitude 7.1, had a depth of about 12.6 miles, and its epicenter was west of Morón, a town located on the country’s Caribbean coast. Less than a minute later, the USGS reported a second major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5.” (06/25/26)
“Frozen bank accounts, canceled credit cards and blocked travel led three International Criminal Court judges to sue the Trump administration Wednesday, arguing they were punished simply for the cases they decided. In the 66-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the trio asks a judge to strike down President Donald Trump’s sanctions order, remove Judges Kimberly Prost, Solomy Bossa and Reine Alapini-Gansou from the U.S. sanctions list, unblock any frozen property and bar the government from enforcing the measures against them. … Trump signed Executive Order 14203 on Feb. 6, 2025, after the ICC pursued investigations involving U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza. The order declared a national emergency and authorized sanctions against foreign nationals involved in ICC investigations or prosecutions targeting U.S. citizens or nationals of allied countries that do not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.” (06/24/26)
“The Senate late Wednesday night in a 47-50-1 vote opted not to rebuke the Trump administration a second time over its military conflict in Iran, as leaders convinced some Republican swing votes that doing so would harm the negotiations to end the war. The resolution would have been Congress’[s] way to reassert its power to declare war and directed President Trump to ‘remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force.’ Sen. Rand Paul, who has voted with Democrats for similar resolutions in the past, said in a statement shortly before the vote that he would vote ‘present,’ rather than ‘no,’ to avoid jeopardizing the negotiations.” (06/24/26)
“Ukrainian forces struck a major natural gas processing plant and two key satellite communications centers in their latest nighttime attacks on Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said Wednesday. The operation was part of Ukraine’s aerial campaign targeting energy facilities and military industries that has intensified as Kyiv builds bigger and better long-range weapons to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion, now in its fifth year. In response, Moscow has ordered the redeployment of some air defense systems from Russian regions to the capital and to Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, a crucial link for supplying Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The bridge connects the Crimean Peninsula with the Russian mainland.” (06/24/26)
