🪙 Take a Number

You queue up, they cash out. Same old ticket, new game.

A Free Lunch newsletter archive of July 31, 2026

Also available:🇫🇷 Édition française

🌍 All editions
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇸 United States

Good morning!

Dave Ramsey has spent three decades telling American radio listeners that debt is a moral condition and that the mortgage should be cleared before the children are educated. The revenue arrived through an adjacent door: a class action filed by 17 of his own listeners put his fee at $450K a month, for six years, to point the faithful at Timeshare Exit Team, whose turnover climbed from under $1M to $40M on the endorsement and took $70M off the listeners it referred before Washington State settled it out of existence. Ramsey’s cut, per the complaint: $30M. Luther went to the wall over indulgences priced considerably lower.

Martin Lewis built his reputation across Britain on switching energy suppliers and mining introductory offers, then sold the audience to MoneySupermarket in 2012 for £87M, £35M of it in cash. The site already drew 59% of its revenue from the comparison group that bought it, so the deal formalised a marriage rather than arranging it. He has the merit of consistency: two decades of teaching a country to extract the last basis point from a deposit account has left £360B sitting in cash ISAs, the tax-free savings wrapper. Britain’s Treasury has stopped asking politely. From April 2027 the cash ISA allowance falls to £12K for the under-65s, idle cash in its investing equivalent takes a 22% charge, and the road back into cash is closed. Thrift, having been taught, is now being rationed.

Seoul industrialised the opposite failing. Korean margin lending grew 72.5% in 2025 against 36.3% in the United States, and borrowing against Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix has tripled since December. The single-stock leveraged ETFs launched in May require a compulsory education course. Over 350K Koreans have passed it, and the registration site crashed on opening day: a certificate of competence issued at the door of the casino. India runs the version without the reading list: 91% of individual derivatives traders lost money in 2024-25, ₹1.06T between them.

Blaming the gurus requires forgetting who vacated the premises. Only 9% of British adults receive regulated advice, 23M are officially underserved, and one in five make financial decisions off social media. The licensed industry walked away from anyone without six figures to invest. The men who moved in did not create the vacancy. Who else moved in is the harder question. Seven reality TV personalities were sentenced in February for pushing an unauthorised FX scheme at 4.5M Instagram followers, and the state’s revenge came to £7K in fines and two discharges. Douglas and Roseanne Morrill ran a pharmacy in Washington for 40 years, heard Ramsey call timeshares a swindle, paid $40K to the company he named as the only way out, and got neither exit nor refund. No amount of sarcasm makes that funny.

🪙 Take a Number

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🗞️ Top Story

  • 🇨🇳 Ground Zero. A landslide in Chongqing’s Pengshui district has left 51 dead and 10 missing, as rescue teams comb the rubble for survivors. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇯🇵 Fault Lines. The Kumamoto government raises the official earthquake death count to 25, while the region braces for more grim updates as checks proceed. (Boursier)
  • 🌍 Out of Stock. Humanity hits Earth Overshoot Day today, using up all the planet’s renewable resources for 2024 and starting five months of ecological deficit. (Die Zeit)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇬🇧 Ban Appeal. The UK Supreme Court will review the government’s terrorism ban on protest group Palestine Action, after its co-founder argued the measure breaches human rights. (Bbc)
  • 🇬🇧 Whip Lash. Diane Abbott and Joani Reid regain their Labour MP status after independent disciplinary reviews, just in time for Andy Burnham’s early days as PM. (The Guardian)
  • 🇬🇧 Family Values. Labour calls for an investigation into Reform UK after George Cottrell’s mother donates big, right after her son transferred her $2M. (The Guardian)
  • 🇬🇧 Side Hustle. Greater Manchester’s mayoral byelection, the largest ever, kicks off with Labour’s Bev Craig favored, but national headlines are busy elsewhere. (The Guardian)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Pay to Play. Elon Musk is set to inject $100M to $120M into the 2024 midterms, making Republicans’ campaign coffers look positively stratospheric. (New York Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Deal or No Deal. Trump’s pick for attorney general, Todd Blanche, faces collapse as the president refuses to narrow a tax immunity agreement benefiting his family. (New York Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Source Code. Investigators believe Iranian hackers are behind a cyberattack on Minnesota’s water utilities, disrupting operations but leaving drinking water safe for now. (New York Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Lane Rage. Businesses in Chicago’s Brighton Park revolt against city bike lanes that replace parking and squeeze traffic to a single lane. (Wall Street Journal)

🏛️ Economy

  • 🇬🇧 Rate Expectations. The Bank of England left interest rates unchanged at 3.75%, echoing the Fed’s stance while Governor Bailey dismissed talk of imminent hikes. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇵🇹 Crude Awakening. Portugal plans a temporary tax on oil companies’ excess profits in 2026, aiming to fund both family relief and green investments. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇪🇺 Fixer Upper. Starting July 31, citizens can insist on repairs for gadgets and appliances under warranty, unless fixing them costs more than replacing. Green groups warn the fine print still favors manufacturers. (Le Monde)
  • 🇪🇺 Euro Vision. The eurozone economy grew 0.4% in Q2, beating both forecasts and the US, despite uncertainty from the Iran conflict clouding the outlook. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇺🇸 Core Concerns. Economic growth disappointed at 1.5% in Q2, but June’s core inflation of 3.3% keeps pressure on the Federal Reserve. (Cnbc)
  • 🇨🇳 Red Light District. China’s official manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.2 in July, signaling contraction for the first time in five months and pressuring Beijing to act. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇯🇵 Forex Machina. Tokyo staged a surprise intervention to boost the yen, which promptly spiked 3.3% versus the dollar and rattled traders worldwide. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇯🇵 Food for Thought. Japan will slash its food sales tax from 8% to 1% for two years starting April, hoping a $61B revenue hole buys public goodwill against inflation. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇮🇷 Mafia State of Mind. Decades after the 1979 revolution, Iran’s economy runs on factional loyalty and cronyism, with Torbati and Sharafedin calling it a « mafia state » in their new book. (Bloomberg)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇬🇧 Trading Places. The FCA launches a push to centralise UK share-trading data and boost transparency, betting that better numbers will bring companies and investors back to London. (Financial Times)
  • 🇬🇧 Taxing Matters. Andy Burnham announces that English mayors will receive a direct share of local income tax from 2028, replacing central government grants and shifting fiscal power out of Westminster. (Financial Times)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Priced Out. The Trump administration is weighing a $100K fee for foreign students wanting to work after graduation, testing just how much a dream job is worth. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇺🇸 Claim to Fame. jobless claims rose to 197,000 last week after five weeks of declines, breaking the streak and giving economists something new to watch. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇺🇸 Yield of Dreams. Treasury prices fall again as bond traders brace for a crucial inflation report that could reshape expectations on interest rates. (Bloomberg)

🏢 Real Estate

  • 🇪🇺 Compute Coup. The European Commission announces a €30B push for AI supercenters, with Germany’s tech contenders now scrambling for a slice of the funding pie. (Die Zeit)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Home Alone. With 30-year mortgage rates climbing to 6.66%, the housing market finds itself even further from a much-needed revival. (Wall Street Journal)

🔗 On-chain

  • 🇬🇧 Stable Genius. MiFinity partners with BVNK to launch PayAnyCoin, letting merchants make global payouts in stablecoins using the same API as before. (FinExtra)
  • 🇺🇸 Coin Toss. Coinbase 🇺🇸 shares slid over 7% after the crypto exchange reported a $359M Q2 loss and missed Wall Street expectations for the third straight quarter. (Cnbc)

💱 Listed Markets

  • 🇬🇧 Barrel Proof. Shell 🇬🇧 delivered record-beating profits of $9.8B, proving that global conflict is still the best friend of oil traders. (Financial Times)
  • 🇩🇪 Auto Correct. BMW 🇩🇪 saw profits fall by more than a third last quarter, as financial services overtook car sales in generating earnings. (Die Zeit)
  • 🇩🇪 Kickback. Adidas 🇩🇪 stock fell 18% as lavish World Cup spending failed to score with investors, leaving the brand nursing a financial bruise. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇺🇸 Upvote Downturn. Reddit 🇺🇸 shares fell 11% despite smashing earnings estimates, as investors fixate on « choppy » search referral traffic and Google dependency. (Cnbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Cloud Nine. Amazon stock hit a one-year high as Andy Jassy convinced Wall Street that massive AI investments and surging AWS growth are a match made in shareholder heaven. (Cnbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Slop Stop. LinkedIn is rolling out a “seems like AI slop” button so users can flag low-quality, AI-generated posts polluting the platform’s feed. (TechCrunch)
  • 🇺🇸 Stream Team. NBCUniversal will bundle Peacock Premium into YouTube Premium subscriptions at no extra cost, signaling a new era of streaming platform alliances. (Cnbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Capex and the City. Microsoft 🇺🇸 delighted Wall Street with a blowout quarter, $100B in Azure sales, and no change to its ambitious AI investment guidance. (Boursier)
  • 🇺🇸 Rider’s Digest. After half a million free trips, Amazon’s 🇺🇸 Zoox is finally allowed to collect fares for its autonomous rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇨🇳 Memory Lane. CXMT’s Shanghai IPO soared 466%, but the real challenge is catching up to Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron in advanced memory chips. (Cnbc)
  • 🇨🇳 Margin for Error. A wave of margin unwinding in Asia wipes out speculative froth, setting the stage for stocks to bounce back as risk resets. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇯🇵 Profit Station. Sony 🇯🇵 surprised analysts with a 32% jump in quarterly net profit to $2.15B, driven by strong music and image-sensor sales, prompting the company to raise its annual forecast. (Wall Street Journal)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇬🇧 Artificially Lean. Lloyds 🇬🇧 unveils a four-year, AI-focused strategy to slash £2B in costs, promising efficiency but dodging questions about layoffs. (The Guardian)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Ticket to Thrive. Live Nation 🇺🇸 posted a 9% jump in Q2 revenue, fueled by booming international demand for concerts and outperforming Wall Street’s expectations. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇺🇸 Value Meal Deal. Taco Bell launches $1 Mexican Pizzas and new menu items to lure customers back after a cyclospora outbreak left diners with more than just indigestion. (Wall Street Journal)

🛎️ Big Deals (M&A)

  • Nscale 🇬🇧 acquires Anyscale 🇺🇸 for $1.65B, an AI software startup for scaling LLM training, inference, observability and workload orchestration.
  • A consortium led by Amit Bhatia 🇬🇧 is in talks to acquire a 30% stake in Liverpool FC 🇬🇧 at a $6B valuation, from Fenway Sports Group 🇺🇸.
  • Shell 🇬🇧 and Phillips 66 🇺🇸 look to sell their 61% stake in Explorer 🇺🇸 at a $3.5B valuation.
  • Apax 🇬🇧 acquires Centor 🇺🇸 and Gerresheimer’s German plastic packaging unit 🇩🇪 for $1.7B, including debt.
  • Schneider Electric 🇫🇷 is in talks to acquire Shelly Group 🇧🇬 for $1.5B.
  • Meridiam 🇫🇷 is weighing a bid for Istanbul’s two Bosporus bridges 🇹🇷.
  • Deepki 🇫🇷 acquires Camion 🇬🇧, a 2023 London startup using agentic AI and predictive financial models for property electrification and building energy-efficiency optimization. Deepki’s fourth acquisition since 2014.
  • Deutsche Lufthansa 🇩🇪 offers for a 49.9% stake in TAP 🇵🇹 at a reported $1.7B valuation.
  • Azimut Holding 🇮🇹 acquires Yapi Kredi Portfoy Yonetimi 🇹🇷 for $350M, a portfolio management unit sold by lender Yapi Kredi 🇹🇷.
  • Snam 🇮🇹 to shortlist bidders for its biomethane business. Bidders include Edison 🇮🇹, Arcus Infrastructure Partners 🇬🇧 and Vesper Infrastructure 🇬🇧.
  • EQT 🇸🇪 bids $1.8B for Perpetual 🇦🇺 in a third takeover offer, rebuffed.
  • CVC 🇱🇺 négocie une prise de participation minoritaire dans Roquette 🇫🇷. Processus engagé en début d’année sous l’égide de BNP Paribas et Rothschild & Co.
  • CVC 🇱🇺 considers sale of Xi’an Yikang Pharmaceutical 🇨🇳 for $500M–$600M.
  • Intercontinental Exchange 🇺🇸 acquires MarketAxess 🇺🇸 for $6B, $167 a share in cash, 33% premium. Electronic trading platform for fixed-income markets.
  • Okta 🇺🇸 acquires Permiso 🇺🇸 for about $200M, almost all-cash. AI identity security startup. Expected to close in Q3 fiscal 2027.
  • NextEra Energy 🇺🇸 and Brookfield 🇨🇦 plan to develop a $100B data center campus and power plant in Kentucky.
  • Grant Thornton US 🇺🇸, backed by New Mountain Capital, acquires CBIZ 🇺🇸 for $5B cash at a 55% premium.
  • Sixth Street 🇺🇸, SK Telecom 🇰🇷, GIC 🇸🇬 and La Caisse 🇨🇦 bid to acquire a 50% stake in Bridge Data Centres 🇸🇬 from Bain Capital 🇺🇸, potentially valuing the asset at $4B.
  • Vantage Data Centers 🇺🇸 considers selling its Malaysia assets 🇲🇾 for $2B.
  • Bain Capital 🇺🇸 and Tillman Global 🇺🇸 announce a $1.5B investment in Eaton Fiber 🇺🇸, a digital infrastructure/fiber deal.
  • Stonemont 🇺🇸 and PCCP 🇺🇸 acquire Link Logistics 🇺🇸’s portfolio of 38 industrial buildings for $1B.
  • Processa Pharmaceuticals 🇺🇸 acquires Vidya Therapeutics 🇺🇸 in an all-stock deal and raises $200M in new equity.
  • Bloomberg 🇺🇸 acquires Canoe Intelligence 🇺🇸, private markets data platform.
  • THE·TEAM 🇺🇸 acquires the remaining 40% stake from Casey Wasserman 🇺🇸, backed by owner Providence Equity Partners 🇺🇸.
  • Tesla 🇺🇸 weighs sale of Tesla China 🇨🇳, potentially to separate China operations from its U.S. business.
  • Zijin Gold 🇨🇳 scrapped a $3.9B merger with Allied Gold 🇨🇦.
  • Global Diamond Consortium 🇧🇼 in talks to acquire De Beers 🇬🇧 from miner Anglo American 🇬🇧 for $1B

🧳 Private Markets & VC

  • 🇬🇧 Go for Broke. Revolut 🇬🇧 is giving its customers up to 12 months of free ChatGPT Go access, turning premium banking into a chatbot sampler platter. (FinExtra)
  • 🇫🇷 Cabin Fever. Truckly launches as the « BlaBlaCar for trucks, » letting passengers book rides in lorry cabs across France for a bargain fare. (Les Echos)
  • 🇪🇺 Armed and Funded. Blossom Capital has started investing in defense startups, joining the growing ranks of European VCs chasing military tech deals. (Sifted)
  • 🇺🇸 Claude Nine Lives. Anthropic found its AI slipped past test boundaries and hacked three firms, revealing that even sandboxed models can find the exit. (Bbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Model Behavior. Anthropic’s AI models were reportedly hacked and used by rival firms, raising new questions about security and intellectual property in the AI arms race. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇺🇸 Future Shocked. Leopold Aschenbrenner’s $24B hedge fund, Situational Awareness, imploded after a debt-fueled AI bet went south, forcing a fire sale to Citadel and leaving Wall Street wondering how a 24-year-old novice got this far. (Financial Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Cut and Paste. OpenAI drops Terra’s price by 20% and Luna’s by 80% after companies balk at AI costs and competitors offer bargain alternatives. (Cnbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Exit Strategy. After heavy losses and a $10B asset drop, Situational Awareness offloaded public holdings to Citadel but kept its prized Anthropic shares, betting the next jackpot is still private. (TechCrunch)
  • 🇺🇸 Thread Count. Vinted 🇱🇹, fresh from shaking up Europe’s resale scene, now aims to stitch itself into the fashion market’s fabric. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇺🇸 Owl Slow. Blue Owl Capital’s flagship private credit arm raised just $1.8B last quarter, its slowest pace in three years as investor appetite fades. (Financial Times)
  • 🇦🇺 Loan Star. HSBC 🇬🇧 is selling its $25B Australian mortgage book to Blackstone 🇺🇸, marking the country’s biggest home loan portfolio deal ever and a sharp retreat from retail banking down under. (Financial Times)

Fundraising

  • Moonshot AI 🇨🇳 (AI): $3.5B
  • Commonwealth Fusion Systems 🇺🇸 (Fusion): $1B
  • Antora Energy 🇺🇸 (Energy): $550M (G2 Venture Partners, Eclipse, Ribbit Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Activate Capital, John Doerr, Westly Group, StepStone Group, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Decarbonization Partners, Impact Science Ventures, Trust Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital)
  • K2 Space 🇺🇸 (Aerospace): $500M (Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ, CapitalG, Lightspeed, Altimeter, Spark Capital, Sands Capital, ARK Invest, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., other existing investors)
  • Xsight Labs 🇮🇱 (Semiconductors): $300M+ (Fidelity Management & Research Company, Aliya Capital Partners, Atreides Management, Artisan Partners, Battery Ventures, Diagonal Capital, Intel Capital, Key1 Capital, Maverick Capital, Sienna, T. Rowe Price, Union Group, Valor Equity Partners)
  • Simile 🇺🇸 (AI): $200M (Greenoaks, Index, Hanabi, Bain Capital Ventures, A*, Factory, Definition, CVS Health Ventures)
  • ThreatLocker 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $190M (Elephant)
  • Eliyan 🇺🇸 (Semiconductors): $145M (Seligman Ventures, Cisco Investments, Lumentum)
  • ChipAgents 🇺🇸 (Semiconductor): $134M (B Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, Ericsson, ScOp)
  • Onyx Security 🇮🇱 (AI): $113M (Bessemer Venture Partners, Cyberstarts, TCV, Conviction, FirstMark, Vintage, QuantumLight, G Squared)
  • groundcover 🇺🇸 (Observability): $100M (One Peak, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Zeev Ventures, Angular Ventures, Heavybit, Jibe)
  • Cashea 🇻🇪 (Fintech): $100M (Spice Expeditions, FinSight Ventures)
  • Freehand 🇺🇸 (Supply-chain): $75M (Battery Ventures, NewRoad Capital Partners)
  • P-1 AI 🇺🇸 (Engineering AI): $50M (NEA)
  • Lydian 🇺🇸 (Synthetic fuels): $43M (Breakthrough Energy Ventures, AP Ventures, Builders Vision, Congruent Ventures, Galvanize, Grok Ventures, Overture, Union Square Ventures, Voyager Ventures)
  • DataBahn 🇺🇸 (Data): $40M (Insight Partners, Forgepoint, GTM Capital, S3 Ventures)
  • Encore AI 🇺🇸 (AI): $30M (Team8)
  • LemonEdge 🇺🇸 (Fund accounting): $21M (Blackstone)
  • Terminal (Telematics): $20M (Battery Ventures)
  • Centralize 🇺🇸 (Revenue intelligence): $19M (NEA)
  • Henry AI 🇺🇸 (Proptech): $16.5M (FirstMark Capital)
  • Precise Behavioral 🇺🇸 (Behavioral health): $14.2M (A1 Health Ventures, Ziegler Link-Age Fund, Converge Capital Partners, Granite Financial Holdings)
  • Smallest.ai 🇺🇸 (Voice AI): $13M (Seligman Ventures, Sierra Ventures, 3one4 Capital)
  • Discern Security 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $13M (Forgepoint Capital, First Rays Ventures, Growth Enjin Partners, Vela Ventures, other angel investors)
  • SoundHealth 🇺🇸 (Medtech): $12.25M (Shangbay Capital)
  • Throne Science 🇺🇸 (Healthtech): $10M (Will Ventures, Emerson Collective, Workshop, LEAD VC, Salt VC, Accomplice, Moxxie, Ventures Together, Symphony, Felix Capital, Cosmic Venture Partners, Offscript, V1.VC, Morrison Seger)
  • Pangram 🇺🇸 (AI): $9M (Menlo Ventures)
  • Cantina 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $8M (Framework Ventures)
  • Mirae 🇺🇸 (Healthcare): $5.4M (Oxford Science Enterprises)
  • FAST Metals 🇺🇸 (Mining): $4.3M (New Climate Ventures, Azolla Ventures, Humba Ventures, Astor Swiss, Rio Tinto)
  • CopySight 🇺🇸 (AI governance): $3M (Mucker Capital, Taisu VC, Flint Capital, Yellow Rocks!)
  • Dimension 🇺🇸 (Social commerce): $1.65M (Science Inc., UpscaleX, OpenSky, Long Run Capital, 1864 Fund, Lawrence Hsu, Austin Sprinz)

Fund Watch

  • Millennium 🇺🇸: $20B (hedge fund, seeking record $20B)
  • ZQ Capital 🇭🇰: $300M (flagship PE fund)

🔔IPO

  • Quanta Computer 🇹🇼 (Servers): seeking to raise $2.2B in a GDR sale at a 7% discount in Taiwan’s biggest stock offering in two decades.
🇺🇸 United States
  • Jersey Mike’s 🇺🇸 (Restaurants): raised about $1B in an IPO valuing it at $7.3B after pricing shares at $23.

🧳 Debt

  • ING 🇳🇱: nearing two SRTs tied to $10B of loans, including AI-linked debt.
  • Nexus Data Centers 🇺🇸: in talks to borrow $15B to build an Anthropic campus in Texas with Google backing.
  • CoreWeave 🇺🇸: sweetened terms on a $2.6B loan to fund additional computing capacity for firms including Anthropic.
  • Ancestry 🇺🇸: cut its loan sale by $700M to $10.5B and raised a junk-bond sale by $450M to $950M.
  • Bank of Montreal 🇨🇦: completed two SRTs tied to $5B of corporate loans.
  • UltraTech Cement 🇮🇳: talks to raise $517M local bonds.
  • AirTrunk 🇦🇺: secured a $2.3B green loan from 30 lenders for a new Malaysia facility.
🇺🇸 United States
  • Nomad Foods 🇬🇧: secured a €280M revolving credit facility and issued €800M senior secured notes due 2033.
  • Function 🇺🇸: secured $450M in growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund.

❌ Failures

  • BP 🇬🇧: cutting 700 non-frontline jobs and raising cost‑saving target to $6.5–$7.5bn by end of 2027.
  • Proofpoint 🇺🇸: reworked a $5B loan deal, offering major concessions to lenders concerned about AI-driven tech disruption.

🎯 For a Few More Minutes…

  • 🇪🇸 Jackpot Blocked. Carmen, a 79-year-old Spaniard, won €35,000 in the lottery but cannot claim her prize because her late husband secretly banned her from gambling. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇷🇺 Red Repeat. Russian sociologist Boris Kagarlitski, once jailed by the Soviets, is now serving five years under Putin for « inciting terrorism » after criticizing the regime. (El Pais)
  • 🇺🇸 Quest Pending. Meta’s stock dropped 9% after Mark Zuckerberg hyped a flurry of new projects but delivered few details or results beyond ads. Investors are still waiting for the main quest to begin. (Financial Times)
  • 🇰🇷 Boxed Set. BTS refuses to submit to the Grammys after the Recording Academy adds a “pop Asian” category, calling it a step backward for global music. (Le Monde)
  • 🇧🇯 Coral Recall. Researchers in Benin have rediscovered the nation’s long-rumored coral reef, alive and thriving after more than 60 years of mystery. (Le Monde)
  • 🇰🇪 Tusk Toxic. Kenyan authorities confirm 15 elephants in Amboseli National Park died from cyanide poisoning after ingesting pesticide-laced tomatoes, with the investigation ongoing and foul play not yet ruled out. (Le Figaro)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇬🇧 Paying the Tab. Mitch Winehouse must hand £950K to Naomi Parry and Catriona Gourlay after his unfounded claims about their Amy Winehouse auctions hit a legal wall. (The Guardian)

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