Israeli forces continue to commit genocide against Palestinians by deliberately targeting children in the Gaza Strip, an independent United Nations Commission of Inquiry has found. In a report published Tuesday, the commission — which last year concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza — found that Israeli military operations have continued causing “unprecedented death, injury and trauma” to Palestinian children. The commission describes what it says is the deliberate targeting of children as a key indicator of Israeli authorities’ genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian people, including after a ceasefire in Gaza took effect.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/24/middleeast/israel-targeting-children-report-un-intl
China has clinched the top spot on a list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, overtaking the United States for the first time since 2017 with a model powered by homegrown chips amid an intense race for tech supremacy between the two superpowers. The LineShine machine, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in China’s tech hub of Shenzhen, replaced the American titleholder El Capitan in the latest biannual TOP500 ranking, which tracks the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The ranking released on Tuesday showed the LineShine achieved a computing speed 20% faster than El Capitan, which is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/24/tech/china-tops-world-supercomputer-ranking-intl-hnk
Joseph McGrail-Bateup, an Australian professional air conditioner cleaner and honorary town crier, has been recognized as the world’s loudest person. Guinness World Records last week acknowledged the 58-year-old Canberra resident recorded the loudest ever shout by an individual. He yelled “now” at 122.4 decibels. That broke the previous record of 121.7 dB set by Northern Ireland schoolteacher Annalisa Flanagan in 1994. She had yelled an ear-piercing “quiet.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/23/australia/worlds-loudest-person-guinness-record-intl-hnk
The moment of truth is just about here. The Strait of Hormuz has reopened, for now, and Middle Eastern countries that shut off their oil wells during the war (the term is actually “shut in”) are about to turn those valves back the other way and find out what they’ve got. It could be a gusher. Or, if President Donald Trump’s predictions were accurate, a series of underground explosions could cause the oil wells to deliver a trickle.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/24/business/exploding-oil-restarting-production
For decades, leaders of Arab nations in the Persian Gulf viewed their relationship with the United States as a strategic partnership. Donald Trump often saw it differently. “King, we’re protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military,” Trump said in 2018, speaking of the Saudi monarch and encapsulating a more transactional vision of a relationship that Gulf leaders had long regarded as a cornerstone of their security. A year later, Saudi Arabia suffered the biggest attack on its territory in decades when strikes on key oil facilities temporarily knocked out roughly half of the kingdom’s crude production, sending global oil prices soaring. While Washington blamed Iran and condemned the attack, Gulf states were left with lingering questions about the extent of American willingness to confront Tehran on their behalf.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/24/middleeast/trumps-gulf-allies-iran-agreement-disastrous-intl