Apart

• The group phase of Asia's World Cup qualifiers concluded on June 27, leaving only Australia and Japan remaining in the competition. • The tournament has seen a significant collapse in participation, with most teams eliminated or withdrawn, leaving just two nations active. • This development drastically alters the competitive landscape of the regional qualifiers and undermines the intended structure of the tournament.

• Only two AFC teams have advanced to the knockout rounds of the current World Cup, highlighting a significant performance gap between Asia's elite and the rest of the region. • Major contenders including South Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and champions Qatar were eliminated in the group stages, with South Korea's exit leading to coach Hong Myung-bo's resignation on Sunday. • This result marks a decline from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where three Asian nations—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—successfully reached the first knockout round.

• Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, has sought to distinguish his political identity from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. • Burnham was sworn into Parliament on Monday shortly after Starmer announced his resignation, positioning himself as a potential successor for the premiership. • Despite his efforts to differentiate himself, Burnham may be constrained by the center-left Labour Party platform that ended 14 years of Conservative rule in 2024.

City’s mayor has consistently argued that rising housing costs have made it increasingly unaffordableA New York City housing board has voted to freeze rent for approximately 1m apartments.In a major victory for Zohran Mamdani, the mayor who campaigned on a pledge to freeze rent, the Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 on Thursday to freeze increases on one- and two-year leases. The decision will provide relief to tenants in more than one million rent-stabilized apartments, representing over 40% of the city’s rental housing. Continue reading...

• The Taliban's autocracy is being sustained through economic and political lifelines provided by international bodies, including the United Nations, which have compromised human rights standards. • Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented a humanitarian catastrophe characterized by gender apartheid and systemic rights violations. • This crisis persists not merely due to a lack of political will, but because of active geopolitical mechanisms and fragmented international interests that normalize the regime's actions.

Tenants push for tougher rules against unfair add-on charges. Industry players argue against policies that they say could limit the ‘effective use of fees’‘Extremely overwhelmed’: apartment renters face rising tide of feesAcross the US, many renters are calling for national action to stem add-on charges that spike their housing costs and increase their risk of eviction.“The rental housing market is one where consumers have little power,” Farah Momin, a renter in Seattle, told the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in April. “Landlords can impose fees through take-it-or-leave-it lease terms, and the cost/disruption of moving means that tenants may absorb unfair charges rather than leave. Federal baseline protections are needed to level this playing field.” Continue reading...

• A viral thought experiment circulating among European policymakers warns of an "AI doomsday scenario" where the EU is sidelined by global tech powers. • The scenario predicts that by 2031, a tech-dominant United States and a robot-building China will effectively "tear apart" and carve up Europe. • This projection highlights the risk of Europe's economy falling into ruin and its own AI ambitions remaining stillborn due to a lack of competitiveness.