Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry has reclassified the Nile crocodile as a “tended” wild animal. The change clears the legal path for National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s plan to ring Ketziot Prison with crocodile-filled moats. The ministry’s own legal adviser told the minister she had no authority to make the move alone and warned that prison staff have no experience handling dangerous reptiles. The minister proceeded regardless. A court challenge now looks more likely than an actual crocodile. This definitely sounds like an evil plot out of a cartoon movie, but unfortunately it isn’t. We live in a wild world these days.
Spotify has removed more than 75 million AI-generated tracks from its platform over the past year. The platform receives around 100,000 new uploads every day, and a growing share are mass-produced, duplicated, or mislabelled songs designed to collect royalty payouts rather than reach listeners. Spotify is not banning AI-made music outright: artists can still upload AI-assisted tracks if they hold the rights, avoid unauthorised voice cloning, and show real creative intent. The removed tracks add up to roughly three-quarters of Spotify’s entire catalogue of 100 million legitimate songs, deleted within a single year.
What It Is: Iran exploited SS7, the decades-old signalling protocol that connects the world’s mobile networks, to track US military personnel across bases and hotels in Iraq, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the Middle East. A Financial Times investigation, citing data from the Mobile Surveillance Monitor research project, found the operation ran both before the Iran war began and through its opening days.
Why It Matters: SS7’s weaknesses are not secret. Security researchers have documented them publicly for over a decade, and any well-funded intelligence service could plan around them. Iran's use of a known, public flaw to locate American personnel says as much about Tehran’s cyber capability as it does about the planning that went into a war Washington chose to start.
The Big Picture: The war shows no sign of a clean resolution. Both Iran and the US have started striking each other again, now going at each other for 10 straight days at the time of writing. Now there is a greater risk of the war spreading across the region with Yemeni Houthis and Saudi trading blows and on top of that Pakistan might get drawn into the conflict due to its defense agreement with Saudi. For a conflict framed as a war of choice, the absence of an exit plan has become as newsworthy as the war itself.
What It Is: Twenty-seven European countries recorded more than 10,000 excess deaths during the week of 22 to 28 June, when a record heatwave swept across France, Spain, Britain, and neighbouring countries. More than 9,000 of the dead were 65 or older. Scientists say the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, and estimate that global warming accounts for 42% of the deaths.
Why It Matters: Comparisons to Britain’s hot summer of 1976 are already circulating, but they miss the point. A single scorching summer half a century ago was rare. A summer this lethal, recurring every year or two, points to a shift in the underlying climate, a more serious problem than any single hot spell. Heatwaves are becoming a part of the new normal, with cross-channel Eurostar services between England and France planning for a Saudi-style summer of 55 degrees as the temperature at which they are now planning to keep their services running.
The Big Picture: Behind the mortality figures are people who did not come home this summer, and that loss does not show up in a statistic. Climate change needs to return to the top of the political agenda, and this heatwave was as strong a prompt as any. With the current US administration pulling back from climate policy, the country with the most capacity to lead a coordinated global response is instead stepping away, leaving other nations to count the cost.
What It Is: Secretary of State Marco Rubio used a Wall Street Journal op-ed to announce a formal US campaign against the International Criminal Court, promising to dismantle it “brick by brick, if necessary.” The plan combines travel bans, visa revocations, and sanctions and calls on allies who host US forces or rely on American security guarantees to reject the court’s authority outright.
Why It Matters: The United States helped build the post-World War II rules-based order and is now working to dismantle the one institution designed to hold powerful states accountable when they break international law. The pattern is consistent: oil embargo on Cuba, invading Venezuela, a war of choice against Iran, and now an open campaign against the court with a mandate to prosecute war crimes regardless of who commits them. When the most powerful country in the system decides the rules no longer apply to it, there is no remaining mechanism to argue otherwise.
The Big Picture: When the ICC issued a warrant for Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, Western governments welcomed it as accountability in action. Now that the court has issued one for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some of those same governments are working to defund and dismantle the institution instead. International law was always going to be tested by whether it applied to allies as well as adversaries. We’re getting that answer now; Western governments' hypocrisy is on full display, and it does not bode well for the next few years of the international order.
Portugal: Parliament passed a ban on face-covering veils in public with a two-thirds majority. Amnesty International warned that the law threatens the religious freedom and privacy of Muslim women who wear the full veil.
Japan: Parliament passed a law expanding the pool of male heirs eligible for the throne while keeping women barred from succession, despite polls showing most of the public now supports a female emperor.
England: The government will ban sales of high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s from April 2027, citing links between the drinks and anxiety, poor sleep, and reduced concentration in children.
Germany and France: German troops will join a French nuclear exercise for the first time this autumn, as part of a wider push by both countries to deepen nuclear cooperation amid growing questions about reliance on US security guarantees.
Poland: President Karol Nawrocki signed a law criminalising “trash streaming,” with sentences of up to five years for creators who broadcast violence, abuse, or humiliation for profit.
Estonia: New rules now require employers to disclose salary ranges before a job interview and ban questions about a candidate’s previous pay, part of the country’s rollout of the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
Global development: A UNESCO report found that 113 countries, home to 6.1 billion people, now spend more on debt repayments than on education, with sub-Saharan African nations spending 3.6 times as much on debt as on education.
Italy’s parliament has given final approval to the “Free to Choose” law, offering children and young adults raised in mafia families a way out of a life of crime. People under 25, along with the relatives who care for them, can now be relocated from their home region, provided with education and psychological support, and, where necessary, a new identity. The programme grew out of an initiative started by a juvenile court judge in Reggio Calabria in 2011, and of those who have since reached adulthood, roughly 80% have rejected organised crime entirely. Around 400 children are expected to enter the programme each year.
POLL
Should international courts like the ICC be able to prosecute citizens of powerful nations such as the US, Russia, or China?
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
— Thucydides
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