worldisfullofinterestingstories

The bronze figure of shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt by the Köpenick town hall serves as a reminder of the famous 1906 scam
But who was this guy? A war hero? A famous general? Why did he become a symbol of the area?
"The Captain still exists as a symbol of Köpenick and as a legend," says German actor Max Hopp, who grew up in the area. "I heard this story back in my childhood, it wasn't part of the school curriculum - it's just something everyone knows."

Founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, has become a co-owner of one of the most decorated football clubs in the world. A group of investors with his involvement agreed to buy around 33% of the English “Liverpool” from Fenway Sports Group. The deal values the Premier League club at more than $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources.

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) called for an independent review of the actions of the president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), Gianni Infantino, amid a scandal surrounding his plan for the partial privatization of international tournaments, which was later decided to abandon. An open letter from the three organizations was published on Monday, August 10, on the UEFA website.

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) threatened to boycott all tournaments under FIFA’s auspices, including the World Cups. The boycott was supported by all 55 UEFA members, including the reigning world champion — the Spain national team. The decision was made at an emergency meeting of the organization on 30 July.

The judge scheduled the start date of the trial against former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro for 01.06.2027 in a drug trafficking and drug-terrorism case in the United States. The hearing was Maduro’s first appearance in court since March.
U.S. Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein set the trial date during a hearing in an overcrowded courtroom in Manhattan. According to the prosecution, Maduro, captured by U.S. forces on 03.01.2026, played a key role in a conspiracy aimed at smuggling cocaine into the territory of the United States.

On Thursday, June 11, the match between the national teams of Mexico and South Africa kicks off the World Cup. The main tournament of the number one sport will last over a month and wrap up with the final in East Rutherford, New Jersey on July 19. Key facts about the host countries and participants of the 2026 World Cup, the political context, changes in rules, and ticket prices - available at DW.

The court in Katowice placed the head of the Polish Olympic Committee, Radosław Pesevich, in pretrial detention, thereby granting the prosecution’s request for a three-month arrest. Earlier, the sports official was detained in a case involving the cryptocurrency exchange Zondacrypto, linked to fraud and money laundering.

In 1937, the first transfer of a billion-dollar fortune by inheritance took place. After the death of the legendary founder of Standard Oil and the richest man on Earth, John Davison Rockefeller, his assets passed to his son. And although he failed to grow his father’s capital, his fortune continued to be held in family funds and passed from generation to generation.

In August, a scandal erupted in the economic arena: The Economist magazine published a scathing piece about the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Daron Acemoglu, provoking him to respond with an equally harsh rebuttal. Acemoglu’s theories have long faced criticism for the somewhat general nature of their claims (prosperity or poverty depends only and exclusively on the quality of public institutions) as well as for statistical inaccuracies. But thanks to The Economist’s publication, the conflict reached a new level, and no small role here was played by differing attitudes toward the process of adopting new technologies. Eran Yashiv, a professor of economics at Tel Aviv University, in an expressive piece for Project Syndicate explained what underlies the attacks on Daron Acemoglu—and what the role of AI is in it.

August 31 Tim Cook will step down as CEO of Apple, a position he has held since 2011. Shortly before taking office, the company became the most valuable in the world by market capitalization, surpassing Exxon Mobil. Under Cook, its capitalization grew more than 13 times, to $4.7 trillion. Today, Apple is second only to Nvidia.

The Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, criticized a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to rename Lake Ontario—the smallest of the five Great Lakes—located on the border between the two countries—"America Lake." The order to change the name of the body of water was signed by the American leader at the White House on Thursday, July 27,—a few days after the collapse of trade talks with Canada.

Brazil created 58,568 net official jobs in July, according to data published by the Ministry of Labor on Friday. The figure was significantly below economists’ forecast, who expected 112,000 new vacancies.
The ministry reported that during the month 2,262,888 jobs were created, while 2,204,320 positions were closed.

High Court in London ordered the tech giant Samsung Electronics to pay watchmaker Swatch Group $11.6 million, Bloomberg and the Financial Times report. The case involves damage caused to the Swiss company due to the placement in the Galaxy app store of watch faces for smartwatches that imitated the design of luxury brands such as Breguet, Longines, and Omega. All these brands are owned by Swatch.

For entrepreneur and venture investor Andrey Doronichev, reinventing himself has become a necessity more than once. “Andrey the Computer Guy,” who earned extra money by installing Windows in the 1990s, a Russian businessman and creator of the ringtone shop “Tapok,” creator of a mobile YouTube and a top manager at Google, and now a startup cofounder in Silicon Valley, who uses AI to find a cure for cancer—all of this is Doronichev. In his new book, “New Version: Change Yourself Without Changing Who You Are,” he explains how to organize personal or career transformation by applying a product mindset. With the author’s permission, Oninvest publishes an excerpt from the book.

A U.S. federal judge on Friday overturned the Trump administration’s policy that had suspended the issuance of immigration visas to applicants from 75 countries, ruling that Secretary of State Marco Rubio exceeded his lawful authority, Reuters reports.
U.S. Circuit Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan characterized the State Department’s policy as “clearly unlawful” and ruled that it conflicts with federal immigration law.

The U.S. securities regulator — the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — has charged former senior investment banker at Bank of America (BofA) Jason Satsky. According to the regulator, he passed confidential information about an upcoming deal to his longtime friend and former colleague, enabling him to earn illegal profits of $18.5 million, Reuters reports.

The Pentagon dismissed senior executives of the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes, including the editor-in-chief and a longtime publisher, Reuters reported on Friday, citing statements and a source familiar with the situation.
The editor-in-chief, Erik Slavin, said he received a notice with a charge of insubordination after telling CBS News that any hypothetical censorship of materials for service members would cross his personal "red line".

LLC "VK" filed a lawsuit on August 19 with the Moscow Arbitration Court against three Apple entities: the American Apple Inc., the Irish Apple Distribution International Ltd., and the Russian LLC "Apple Rus".
According to VK’s press service, at the end of June Apple, without prior notice, removed the company’s apps from the App Store unilaterally, depriving Russian users of the ability to download and update them on Apple devices. In the lawsuit, VK seeks to restore the apps in the store, return users’ access to notifications, and also recover a penalty in case the court ruling is not complied with, Interfax reports.

In July, the authorities of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made a sensational proposal: residents who invite guests into the country during the period from July to October are promised discounts worth about $800 (slightly more than €680). In this way, the government responded to the fact that most foreign governments continue to warn their citizens about the travel risks to the UAE due to the war with Iran.

In early August 2026, the U.S. regulator the FDA approved o?veporex?ton (Orzeyful) from Takeda — the first-ever drug that treats pathological sleepiness, type 1 narcolepsy, not just its symptoms but its cause. Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that the potential market for such drugs will grow to $16 billion by 2035, The Economist reports. However, the potential applications for drugs of this kind are much broader: scientists hope they can also help treat other sleep disorders, as well as common conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression. Potentially, this could be a breakthrough comparable to the discovery of weight-loss drugs based on GLP-1, such as Ozempic. Who should we watch in this race?