Oceania Marshall Islands The fish aggregation devices FADs that fishing boats use to make catches easier, lately equipped with satellite communications gear to pinpoint location, are now being built by drug cartels that wrap packs of cocaine and radio transponders to trace troves
Europe Poland The government wants to hold a referendum on the country's participation in the EU's migrant relocation programme, with the likelihood that the vote would be held at the same time as next autumn's parliamentary elections
Asia Myanmar Responding to questions from parliamentarians, Singapore Foreign Minister Balakrishnan admitted that 91 Singaporean entities provide various goods to the Myanmar military despite the 1 February 2021 coup
Europe Bulgaria Bulgarian military aid to Ukraine will be increased this year, Defence Minister said, adding that the country will send weapons after they finish analysing the needs of the Ukrainian army and how much the Bulgarian armed forces are capable of giving
Africa Liberia Significant progress has been made towards fiscal transparency, as outlined by the US Bureau of Economic and Trade Affairs in its Fiscal Transparency Report 2023
Europe Slovakia Almost 7.000 km of non-productive areas, 4 times the length of national borders, have been created with new Common Agricultural Policy reform: farmers participated in subsidy that encouragse environmentally friendly practices like shrubs between sown land
Europe Luxembourg Luxembourg remains the country with the lowest defense spending relative to gross domestic product in the North Atlantic Military Alliance at around 0,72%, despite government's efforts to increase it and reach the agreed 2% in 2014
Asia China Six people have been killed in an early morning knife attack outside a kindergarten, said Lianjiang city police and Chinese state-run media; other mass stabbings have been reported in recent years, often targeting children in or outside schools
Asia Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has denied that Malaysia is a secular state, saying the concept of secularism, where there is a total separation of state and religion, is "not acceptable", not only to him as a Muslim, but to all Malaysians
America Trinidad and Tobago 850 schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago must implement the National School Hair Code; they will, however, have the authority to implement how it will be enforced
Africa Morocco Protection of intellectual property and targeted support to the various components of Morocco’s economic fabric were emphasised in Geneva at 64th meetings of Assemblies of Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organisation WIPO
Africa Burkina Faso The number of schools closed due to insecurity continues to rise: as of May 31, there were 6.149 schools closed, reports the latest monthly statistic
Europe Finland Faced with a decline since 2006 in the results of the country's young people for the Programme for International Student Assessment, the new right-wing government has said it will adopt minuses, including a law banning the use of mobile phones in schools
Europe Czech Republic The world-famous Czech writer Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, passed away on 11 July in Paris at the age of 94; in April, he had transferred his personal archive of 4000 books and 25 boxes of notes to Moravian Library in Brno