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US bitcoin spot ETFs (Exchange-traded funds) recorded $763 million in net inflows last week helping to push prices higher. Strategy, the largest bitcoin treasury company by total holdings, also disclosed another significant purchase of 17,994 bitcoin for approximately $1.28 billion. Looking ahead, the Federal Reserve meeting this week could be pivotal to a breakout, or indeed a correction from the...

Iran warned Romania on Monday it would respond politically and legally if the country allowed the United States to use bases on its territory for operations against Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was urging countries not to become involved in the war. "If Romania makes its bases available to the United States, it would amount to participation in...

Kansas previously allowed transgender residents to update the gender markers on their driver’s licenses and state identification documents beginning in 2007. In 2023, however, the state adopted a new legal definition of sex that recognizes only two categories (male and female) determined at birth. Similar measures have been introduced in multiple states in recent years, and federal policy has also...

A Council of Europe conference on Friday in Chişinău, Moldova will examine innovative ways to combat disinformation, foreign information manipulation and interference, and hate speech, which are eroding public trust and undermining the integrity of democratic processes across the continent. Moldovan President Maia Sandu, the Council of Europe Secretary General, Alain Berset, will open the conference. The Council of Europe...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused several European partners of attempting to pressure Ukraine into reopening a key pipeline which transports Russian oil to Central Europe.  Zelensky believes that doing so would weaken sanctions imposed on Moscow. The key pipeline in question Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian crude oil to Hungary and Slovakia.  Ukrainian authorities say the pipeline was damaged by...

All In all, the region's pretty small, and has much to gain from integration. The wreckage since Oct. 7 can be viewed two ways. One is as an unmitigated tragedy. The other is as a horrendous prelude to something different — the darkness before a dawn. No one can promise that dawn — but things have rarely been darker. The...

On the strategic drift in the US-Israeli war against Iran's regime This is a two-birds-with-one-stone AQL weekend update. Call it Iran War meets AI. As discussed in recent articles and on the Critical Conditions podcast, we appear to be at a moment when momentum in the war may be shifting. The early exuberance (among opponents of the Iranian regime, which include...

Romania's Eurovison entry "Choke Me” has provoked outrage  over claims that it promotes sexual violence that can lead to brain damage. The phrase “choke me” is repeated 30 times in the three-minute song and anti-sex violence campaigners say it taps into intimate violence against women. Other lines such as “It’s hard to breathe in” and “make my lungs explode”, have...

Life expectancy across the European Union has now fully recovered from the demographic shock of the pandemic, reaching 81.5 years in 2024, a new Eurostat study shows.  The figure marks a 0.1-year increase compared with 2023 and slightly exceeds the 81.3 years recorded in 2019, the last year before the outbreak of COVID-19. During the pandemic, life expectancy in the EU...

On World Sleep Day, we reoffer our cri de coeur on behalf of night owls everywhere Are you losing sleep over the state of the world these days? Who knows — it might be darkest before the dawn. Which is reassuring, unless you are a night owl. For us, dawn arrives at an unholy hour, making the cliche yet another example...