RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/June 2025

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June 2025[edit]

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44ItalyUnited States Jeff Bezos' lavish wedding takes place in Venice amid protests, including the words "No Kings, No Bezos" being projected onto the belltower in St. Mark's Square and the unfurling of a giant banner that read, "If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax." Protest group No Space for Bezos claims it forced Bezos to change the location where the wedding ceremony was held.
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29the WorldPeople are being institutionalized as a result of ChatGPT-induced psychosis.
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24the WorldA NASA satellite that's been defunct for nearly sixty years recently sent a mystery radio signal back to Earth.
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37HungaryGay Pride Flag.svg ~100,000 people defy ban on LGBT pride march in Hungary. Viktor Orbán's government purported to have outlawed the event.
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33IsraelPalestine Israeli soldiers admit they were ordered to deliberately fire on Palestinian civilians waiting for humanitarian aid.
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26United StatesFor the Christian persecution crowd: ICE is going after church leaders and Christians fleeing actual persecution.
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25PakistanUnited StatesThe Pakistani government nominates Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Then condemns him for bombing Iran a day later.
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21United States US Supreme Court rules that states can block Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood clinics that were used for contraception and cancer screenings. The case was not directly about funds for abortion procedures.
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37United States Criminals keep impersonating ICE, made possible by the way ICE agents have been operating.
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20Iran Crackdown on political opposition to the Iranian government has ensued following a ceasefire with Israel.
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25United States Medical associations are forming their own vaccine advisory groups since the US federal government's equivalents are run by anti-vaxxers now.
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22United KingdomGay Pride Flag.svg British politicians complain in Parliament about political parties being barred from Pride events this year. The decision was made by LGBT pride events in certain cities as a protest in solidarity with trans people and against the current policy stances of these parties. MPs from Labour and the Conservative Party spoke in Parliament against the decisions; Green Party MP Siân Berry said she supports the decisions by the pride groups.
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20European Union Tesla sales continue to drop in Europe, in protest of CEO Elon Musk's politics, such as his support for the Alternative for Germany party.
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21United States Study finds school shootings are economically disruptive on the local level. Well, now we're listening!
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12United States HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the US will defund the international vaccinations group Gavi. Junior cites manufactured uncertainty created by the anti-vaccination movement.
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22United StatesNew York. New York plans to build their first nuclear power plant in decades.
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16United KingdomEnglandWales UK House of Commons passed a bill to legalize assisted suicide in terminally ill patients in England and Wales.
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19the World Scientists modified bacteria so they convert plastic waste into pain relief drugs.
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20United StatesIsrael Trump says Benjamin Netanyahu should be pardoned from corruption charges since he blew up a bunch of stuff in Iran.
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16United StatesIsraelIran Trump put together a fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel that appears to be holding for now. The ceasefire initially failed, before Trump pressured Israel not to respond to what it alleged were ceasefire violations by Iran. Despite some intelligence assessments to the contrary, Trump insists Iran's nuclear program has been destroyed, but says he'd be open to conduct further strikes on Iran if they rebuilt it. Oh, and "Bomb Iran" made a comeback.
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19United States Non-existent studies cropping up at the HHS again, presumably due to generative AI usage again. This time it's at the CDC, where an anti-vaxxer was giving a presentation against thimerosal.
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17IndiaTrans flag.svg Court in India recognizes transgender women as women. Specifically, the court "rejected arguments that tie womanhood exclusively to reproductive capacity". It's noteworthy context that a British court recently made an opposite ruling; India was historically a colony of Britain, and gender-variant people there were targeted under the Criminal Tribes Act.
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24United KingdomTrans flag.svg Narrator of all the Harry Potter audiobooks and national treasure Stephen Fry finally condemns J. K. Rowling's transphobia, says she has been "radicalized by TERFS" and is a "lost cause". J. K. Rowling has responded by saying that Stephen Fry was never a friend of hers anyway.
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18United StatesThe infamous "Big Balls," who was a key operative in Elon Musk's ironically-named "Department of Government Efficiency," has resigned from his service in the government. Update: He now works at the Social Security Administration.
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20United StatesWashington. The Trump DOJ is suing Washington State over a law requiring Catholic clergy to report sexual abuse.
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22NorwayUnited States A 21-year-old Norwegian tourist was detained, searched and refused entry into the United States, after a CBP officer found a copy of the JD Vance baby meme on his smartphone.
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22United StatesThe SPLC is suing the "Goyim Defense League."
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23IranUnited StatesQatar The Iranians have symbolically bombed the al-Udeid American airbase in Qatar, for retaliation for the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites.
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27United StatesIran US enters war with Iran
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34United StatesMahmoud Khalil has been released from ICE detention.
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16Netherlands A traditionalist Catholic group, TFP Europe has demanded that the Rijksmuseum remove the recent display of an early 19th century French condom, with a picture on it that shows a nun and three clergymen engaging in a sexual act with each other.
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26MoldovaFlag of Transnistria (state).svg The Russian-backed breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria has openly admitted it is in a complete crisis mode; with all of its monetary reserves completely empty, and has completely run out of energy supplies, due its gas supplies being completely cut off since January.
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21United KingdomUnited StatesThe BBC threatens legal action against US-based AI firm Perplexity, accusing it of reproducing its content verbatim.
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25United States Tech corporation executives from Palantir, Meta/Facebook, and OpenAI sworn in as lieutenant colonels by the US Army.
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20United States Trump administration wants to dismantle the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
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29United StatesIsraelIran US intelligence assessments contradict Israel, Trump, and US Central Command on whether Iran was rushing to get a nuclear bomb. (The director of US national intelligence is currently Tulsi Gabbard.) Trump dismisses the assessments by Gabbard and the US intelligence community. If you squint, this all looks a bit familiar.
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24United StatesIsraelIran US military forces relocated to the Middle East as Trump mulls intervening in the Israel–Iran conflict. Few people actually want him to, at least according to a YouGov survey.
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18China Chinese scientists raised into adulthood a mouse born from two male parents.
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16the World AI scraping bots are breaking open libraries, archives, and museums.
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29United States New VA rules allow for doctors and other healthcare providers to refuse care based on political beliefs and marriage status.
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26United States Trump is shuttering the only federal agency that investigates industrial chemical explosions.
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51United States While Trump threw a military parade to celebrate his birthday, millions of participants took part in hundreds of protests against him and his regime across the US.
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30United StatesMinnesota. Gunman dressed as a police officer kills one Minnesota state representative and her husband and injures another and his wife. Update: Preliminary reports indicate that the perpetrator, who reportedly moonlighted as a missionary evangelical pastor, had a list of many other targets, which included Democratic politicians, abortion providers, and pro-choice advocates.
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33United Statesthe District of Columbia. Tennessee. CCM star Michael Tait, founder of DC Talk, frontman of Newsboys, and singer of "God's Not Dead", has basically admitted to sexually assaulting numerous men.
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19United KingdomScotlandSir Geoff Palmer, Scotland's first Black professor, a "courageous voice for justice and equality" and winner of the American Society of Brewing Chemists Award of Distinction ("the Nobel prize of the beer world"), dies at age 85.
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27IsraelIranIsrael has engaged in an act of aggression and war and attacked Iran's missile and nuclear sites and assassinated multiple top military officials and countless civilians.
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24United StatesICE has been given the go-ahead to conduct warrantless arrests.
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29United StatesNew York. A retrial of Harvey Weinstein has found him to be guilty of sexual assault.
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17United StatesDisney and Universal are suing the AI image-generation company MidJourney for copyright infringement.
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26the WorldTrans flag.svg Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the global transphobic movement.
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19United KingdomSpainGibraltarEuropean UnionBritain and Spain agree to a post-Brexit deal that would allow for the free travel of goods and people between Gibraltar and the Schengen Area.
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16United StatesUnited KingdomAustralia According to the FT, the Pentagon is considering scrapping AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.
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21United Kingdom A Daily Telegraph hit piece on the application of adding 20% VAT on private schools, has been discovered to be completely false and AI was used to create the profile of the family in question.
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28United StatesRobert F. Kennedy Jr. breaks his confirmation hearing promise to senators and fires all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC on vaccine scheduling. Update: Eight replacements have been named; predictably, this includes the alternative medicine promoting conspiracist Robert W. Malone and the fringe epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff.
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16AustriaGunman kills 9 in Austria school shooting. Update: The tally is now eleven, including the killer himself, a 21-year-old former student, who used his own weapons.
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19IsraelAustraliaUnited KingdomCanadaNew ZealandNorwayAustralia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Norway have jointly sanctioned Israeli cabinet members Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, due to "repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities" and statements made supporting the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
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19the WorldChatGPT is down.
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15United Kingdom The UK's Financial Conduct Authority issues new guidance warning mortgage borrowers about firms pushing freeman on the land defences.
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15United Kingdom Former midwife turned COVID-19 denialist and anti-vax conspiracy theorist Seana Kerr struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
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33United States Protests against ICE raids began in the Los Angeles area and have spread throughout the country after Trump and Pete Hegseth deployed the National Guard. The US Marines have also been deployed. SEIU labor union leader David Huerta was arrested by ICE, now released on $50,000 bail; some solidarity protests in other cities, like the one in Boston, have significant SEIU presence.
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29United Statesthe District of Columbia. Cop who leaked information to the Proud Boys has been sentenced to prison.
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23PalestineIsraelIsrael has intercepted the Freedom Flotilla aid ship that was bound for Gaza. Greta Thunberg and the others onboard have been detained.
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21United KingdomTrans flag.svg Hillary Cass, the doctor behind the infamous Cass Review, is getting sued.
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13United States Court rules in favor of Trump in case brought by the Associated Press, who were compelled to say "Gulf of America" instead of "Gulf of Mexico" if they wanted White House press pool access. The case may be appealed.
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31United Kingdom In a timely development, British scientists have created the world's smallest violin.
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42United States Trump and Musk to have a nasty divorce, fight over kids. Musk claims Trump is in the Epstein files, Trump threatens to sell the sports car scrap SpaceX contracts, and Elon pre-empts him by announcing he will smash it himself the dismantling of the Dragon capsule.
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38RussiaUkraineUkraine launches massive drone strike deep in Russia, damaging Russia's nuclear bomber capabilities
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22BulgariaEuropean UnionRussia And now there are 21 countries. The European Commission has given the green light for Bulgaria to join the single European currency on the 1st January 2026, replacing the lev with the euro. However, it has also been revealed that Russians have been acting as agents provocateurs in anti-euro protests in the country's capital, Sofia.
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26Russia Russia lists the video game company that owns World of Tanks as an "extremist organization". (The Taliban was recently de-listed.)
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22the World AI chatbots are suddenly driving a bunch of people crazy in a very specific way, making them think they're a god or they created a god.
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20United States Elon Musk calls Trump's spending bill a "disgusting abomination". One of his main contentions is it would raise the national debt. According to ABC, Musk is privately upset at a number of other recent decisions by the Trump administration and allies in Congress. Rand Paul is with Musk, and Trump isn't happy.
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20IsraelPalestine Israel labels the roads to aid stations "combat zones".
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10United StatesGay Pride Flag.svg Defense Secretary Hegseth orders Navy to strip name of gay rights icon Harvey Milk from ship.
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27United StatesPuerto RicoNon-binary Pride Flag.png Puerto Rico Supreme Court allows people to change the gender marker on their birth certificate to "X".
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38United Kingdom Due to littering and issues with targeting teenagers, single-use vapes such as Elfbars and Lost Marys have been banned in the UK.