worldisfullofinterestingstories

The bronze figure of shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt by the Köpenick town hall serves as a reminder of the famous 1906 scam
But who was this guy? A war hero? A famous general? Why did he become a symbol of the area?
"The Captain still exists as a symbol of Köpenick and as a legend," says German actor Max Hopp, who grew up in the area. "I heard this story back in my childhood, it wasn't part of the school curriculum - it's just something everyone knows."

The judge scheduled the start date of the trial against former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro for 01.06.2027 in a drug trafficking and drug-terrorism case in the United States. The hearing was Maduro’s first appearance in court since March.
U.S. Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein set the trial date during a hearing in an overcrowded courtroom in Manhattan. According to the prosecution, Maduro, captured by U.S. forces on 03.01.2026, played a key role in a conspiracy aimed at smuggling cocaine into the territory of the United States.

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) called for an independent review of the actions of the president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), Gianni Infantino, amid a scandal surrounding his plan for the partial privatization of international tournaments, which was later decided to abandon. An open letter from the three organizations was published on Monday, August 10, on the UEFA website.

On Thursday, June 11, the match between the national teams of Mexico and South Africa kicks off the World Cup. The main tournament of the number one sport will last over a month and wrap up with the final in East Rutherford, New Jersey on July 19. Key facts about the host countries and participants of the 2026 World Cup, the political context, changes in rules, and ticket prices - available at DW.

Founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, has become a co-owner of one of the most decorated football clubs in the world. A group of investors with his involvement agreed to buy around 33% of the English “Liverpool” from Fenway Sports Group. The deal values the Premier League club at more than $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources.

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) threatened to boycott all tournaments under FIFA’s auspices, including the World Cups. The boycott was supported by all 55 UEFA members, including the reigning world champion — the Spain national team. The decision was made at an emergency meeting of the organization on 30 July.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Zillow Group’s bid to dismiss a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of misleading investors about its home-reselling business.
The court rejected the Seattle-based real estate platform’s appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed a 2021 lawsuit to proceed in federal court in Washington state.

US authorities named the A7 network as one used by Iran to evade sanctions. In a proposal to ban transfers of any funds «as part of operations involving sub-agents of the A7 network,» Mendeleev is mentioned four and a half times alongside his projects Indefibank and Exved, as well as once with a stock exchange once linked to him, Garantex, and with the general director of the Russian legal entity «A7», Ilan Shor.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick reported at least $250,000,000 in income and other receipts for the past year, according to calculations based on his recently published annual financial report for 2025.
The largest portion was a distribution of $192,000,000 from Cantor Fitzgerald—the global financial services company that Lutnick led for decades. In his financial disclosure, this payment is described as a tax distribution carried out under an ethical agreement he signed before taking office.

The Bank of Mozambique kept the policy interest rate at 9.25% for the fourth consecutive meeting, balancing ongoing inflation risks against a sluggish recovery of the domestic economy. The decision was announced by the new governor, Felisberto Navoie, during his first statement on monetary policy, and reflects heightened vigilance regarding external shocks and pressure on domestic markets.

The White House has banned journalists from CNN from flying aboard Air Force One, the U.S. presidential aircraft, during a trip by President Donald Trump on Saturday, September 26, the TV network reports.
CNN journalists, as part of the White House press pool, were supposed to fly aboard the president’s plane during his trip to Tennessee for a college football game. As CNN notes, the press pool traditionally covers the president’s activities in places with limited space and shares the information gathered with other TV networks.

Shares of Asian companies in the rare earth metals sector fell on Thursday after the United States and China agreed to extend their trade truce for two more months, easing near-term uncertainty over supplies of critical minerals between the two largest economies in the world.

Apple board chairman Tim Cook believes the Australian government’s measures to regulate social media are “advanced.” This was stated on Sunday, September 20, by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after meeting with Cook at Apple’s headquarters in the United States.
“Tim Cook spent a lot of time with us this morning. He believes the work we’ve done in the field of social media is advanced on a global level,” Albanese said while speaking at the Apple Park campus in California. A recording of the remarks was broadcast in Australia, Reuters reports.

Researchers at IBM developed a new method for suppressing errors in quantum computing, which in experiments reduced the number of required runs of a quantum circuit by 63 times. The approach combines two error-processing methods and was tested on IBM's 27-qubit quantum processor.
The authors believe the technology will enable more efficient use of modern noisy quantum computers before fully fault-tolerant systems are available.

Cognitive biases are less pronounced among managers of large investment funds. But this is only about some such biases, and this still does not mean that big money automatically makes a person a more rational subject. This conclusion is reached by researchers Richard Harris from the University of Bristol and Murat Mazibash from the University of Dundee in a new joint study. The reason for this limited effect may not lie in the managers’ special psychological resilience, nor even in their accumulated experience. Why does this happen, and what lessons can private investors draw from it?

The widespread adoption of AI brings to mind the so-called law of overloaded systems, and automation of labor does not always mean being freed from it—in some cases, work for people increases. The company’s founder and CEO, Mahrum himself, in an article for Project Syndicate, explained why government institutions do not so much slow down progress as simply fall behind it.

On September 18, the Hong Kong court sentenced former China Construction Bank (Asia) manager Lam Chun-ying to four years in prison. He received more than $470,000 in USDT for validating forged bank documents, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) reported.
The 32-year-old Lam worked with retail customers at a bank branch in Causeway Bay. Corporate loans and letters of credit were not part of his duties, and the organization did not grant him authorization to handle such documents.

"Crocus City Hall" after the attack, April 30, 2024
A court in the United States sentenced an Afghan citizen, Mohammad Sharifulla, to 20 years in prison. In a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, published on Wednesday, September 16, it states that Sharifulla is a member of the "Vilayat Khorasan" group (ISIS-K), the Afghan branch of the terrorist organization "Islamic State," and was involved in more than 10 terrorist attacks in different countries from 2006 until his arrest in 2025.

A senior member of the U.S. Democratic Party from the House Committee on Oversight may investigate reports of payment for part of Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding by Russian businessman Umar Kremlyov, who is close to Vladimir Putin. This was reported on Tuesday, September 15, by the online publication Axios.

In December 2023, a Swiss trading unit of the Polish state-owned conglomerate Orlen transferred a $230 million advance to a Dubai intermediary for Venezuelan oil that it never received. Part of the funds was converted into USDT and passed to counterparties in Caracas on USB drives containing private keys. This was reported by the Financial Times (FT) following its own investigation.