What started as an online joke has now spilled onto the streets of India’s capital. Since Saturday, Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the satirical Cockroach Janta Party, has been camped out in the heart of New Delhi, leading a crowd of protesters who are refusing to leave until the country’s education minister resigns over a national exam system mired in scandal. “We are here for the long haul, no matter how many days it takes,” Dipke told CNN from the protest site on this week, as dozens gathered around him in support. “We are going to be here until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/26/india/india-cockroach-janta-party-delhi-protest-intl-hnk
An event permit has been requested. Streets are set to be blocked off. Invitations have even been issued, per one source. But even the legions of staff who work at and around Madison Square Garden — the massive sports arena in the heart of Manhattan where Taylor Swift is rumored to be celebrating her wedding next weekend — aren’t so sure. “She’s a glamorous girl,” said one NYPD officer positioned outside the Garden. “She wouldn’t get married here.” Indeed, the Garden is a far cry from the venues that have seen celebrity nuptials in the past — think Jeff Bezos taking over Venice to wed Lauren Sánchez or even Dua Lipa in Sicily. The arena is a behemoth hunk of metal in the most tourist-packed part of the city, whose floors have absorbed the sweat and tears of hundreds of athletes and music fans.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/25/entertainment/taylor-swift-msg-travis-kelce-wedding
A small aircraft appeared to have struck the tallest building in China’s capital on Friday afternoon, in a shocking incident in one of the world’s most fortified cities. Dramatic footage from Beijing posted on social media showed debris falling from the 109-story CITIC Tower, also known as China Zun, as well as a tail section of the plane and a broken window of a taxicab on the ground. A CNN journalist witnessed people evacuated from the skyscraper gathering on the streets near the entrance, along with firetrucks, police cars and an ambulance.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/26/china/small-plane-crashes-into-beijing-skyscraper-intl
The big news is that the United States and Iran are no longer openly at war. That is, in itself, a win that likely saved lives a week after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding in France to halt the fighting. That pause was never a given, considering a half-century of hatred between Washington and Tehran and a regional history of eviscerated peace deals. So far, the MOU, a 14-point framework for talks on a permanent peace, has also survived the suspicions of many US lawmakers that it enshrines an American defeat.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/26/business/america-iran-agreement-one-week-later
Iran struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, forcing a pause on evacuations of stranded seafarers and demonstrating its continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States. A US official told CNN the vessel was attacked by an Iranian drone, but did not provide further details. While Iran has not claimed responsibility, Thursday’s attack came hours after its powerful revolutionary guards warned that vessels would only be given safe passage via Iranian routes, challenging the Trump administration’s claim that the strait is free and open once more.