“Opposition lawmakers easily survived recall votes in Taiwan on Saturday, but an opposition-backed referendum to bring back nuclear power failed. The recall votes, the second in a month, were an attempt to restore ruling party control of the legislature after the Democratic Progressive Party lost its majority in a 2024 election. The recall results were a second straight setback for the ruling DPP. The seven lawmakers from the opposition Nationalist Party all held onto their seats, as did 24 members of other parties in a first round of recall votes on July 26.” (08/23/25)
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of two types of new antiair missiles, state media said Sunday, displaying his expanding military capabilities as the South Korean and U.S. militaries carry out joint drills. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the test Saturday proved the missiles effective in countering aerial threats such as drones and cruise missiles, and that Kim assigned unspecified ‘important’ tasks to defense scientists ahead of a major political conference expected early next year. The report did not specify the missiles that were tested or where the event took place. … The test coincided with new South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s trip to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, where they vowed to strengthen bilateral cooperation and their trilateral partnership with the United States to address common challenges, including North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.” (08/23/25)
“The benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical space are ever-growing, but evidence suggests it can also come with risks. A new study by European researchers investigated how AI can change the behavior of endoscopists when conducting a colonoscopy, and how their performance dips when not using AI. The research followed clinicians at four endoscopy centers in Poland participating in the ACCEPT (Artificial Intelligence in Colonoscopy for Cancer Prevention) trial, where AI tools for polyp detection were introduced at the end of 2021. Colonoscopies at these centers were randomly selected to be administered with or without AI assistance. The researchers gauged the quality of the colonoscopies by comparing the identification of tumors (also known as the adenoma detection rate, or ADR) three months before and three months after implementing the AI.” (08/23/25)
“Sri Lankan police on Friday arrested the country’s former president and senior opposition politician Ranil Wickremesinghe over allegations of misusing public funds during his tenure as president, police said. Wickremesinghe, who served as the island nation’s president from 2022 to 2024, was arrested on allegations of using public funds to attend his wife’s graduation ceremony in London after an official visit to the U.S, police spokesman Fedrick Wootler told The Associated Press. Wickremesinghe’s aide, Danushka Ramanayake, said the former president has been taken to a court after being arrested by the Financial Crimes Investigations Department.” (08/22/25)
“A bus carrying a junior high football team to a game crashed Saturday north of Pittsburgh, sending 21 of the 28 people on board to the hospital, officials said. Twenty-five Aliquippa Junior High students and three adults were headed to a game in nearby Gibsonia. The crash occurred in Economy Borough, about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh. Economy Borough Police Chief Michael O’Brien said he didn’t have information on the medical status of those taken to hospitals. O’Brien said he understood the bus turned on its side during the crash but came back upright as the students were evacuating the vehicle. The police chief said the crash occurred in a tough spot in the road. ‘It’s on a bad bend,’ O’Brien said. ‘It’s being investigated now to determine what happened.'” (08/23/25)
“Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell told the Department of Justice in newly-released interview transcripts that she thinks he was murdered. … Maxwell said she had no firsthand knowledge of what happened but based her opinion on her knowledge of Epstein, who was not known to be suicidal. Maxwell faulted the Bureau of Prisons and said people can be killed for little money. ‘In prison, where I am, they will kill you or they will pay — somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary. That’s about the going rate for a hit with a lock today,’ she said. … the DOJ released four redacted transcripts of their interview with Maxwell, the once associated of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, on Friday afternoon.” (08/22/25)
“Italian police have arrested a Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, Germany’s prosecutor general said on Thursday, adding that he would be brought before a German judge after being transferred. Seen by both Russia and the West as an act of sabotage, no one has ever taken responsibility for explosions that severely damaged pipelines carrying gas from Russia to Europe in September 2022, marking a major escalation in the Ukraine conflict and ramping up an energy supply crisis on the continent. The suspect, identified only as Serhii K. under German privacy laws, was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the German island of Bornholm in September 2022, a statement from the prosecutor’s office said.” (08/21/25)
“A classified Israeli military database shows the vast majority of Palestinians killed in Gaza are civilians, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call. Figures reviewed by the outlets revealed on Thursday indicate that, as of May 2025 – 19 months into Israel’s war on Gaza – Israeli military intelligence had listed 8,900 fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as confirmed or ‘probably’ dead. Over the same period, Gaza’s health authorities recorded at least 53,000 deaths from Israeli attacks, meaning that named fighters accounted for just 17 percent of those killed, with civilians at about about 83 percent of the total death toll. Conflict researchers say that ratio is almost unparalleled in modern warfare. Only the Rwandan genocide, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, and Russia’s 2022 siege of Mariupol recorded a higher civilian death rate, the authors noted.” (08/21/25)
The former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams ran lucrative and audacious bribery schemes out of City Hall — selling off her help as a public official four different times to people willing to shower her with money or gifts, according to a series of indictments unsealed Thursday. Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the former chief adviser to the mayor, is accused by a grand jury of helping friends secure lucrative city contracts and expediting their regulatory issues with city government in exchange for cash payments to her son, lavish karaoke parties, free home renovations, nearly $10,000 worth of seafood for city events and even a guest appearance on the TV show ‘Godfather of Harlem.’ Lewis-Martin … ‘overrode other City officials’ expertise and decision making to ensure that certain required actions were accomplished for the benefit of her co-conspirators,’ prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office wrote in a sweeping and detail-rich summary of the indictments.” (08/21/25)
“A federal judge in Miami late on Thursday ordered the closure of the Trump administration’s notorious ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ [concentration camp] within 60 days, and ruled that no more detainees were to be brought to the facility while it was being wound down. The shock ruling by district court judge Kathleen Williams builds on a temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago halting further construction work at the remote tented camp, which has attracted waves of criticism for harsh conditions, abuse of detainees and denial of due process as they await deportation. In her 82-page order, published in the US district court’s southern district of Florida on Friday, Williams determined the facility was causing severe and irreparable damage to the fragile Florida Everglades.” (08/21/25)
