👋 Da'anzho!*
Welcome to Tuesday, where Bangladesh sets up an interim government after dissolving parliament, a U.S. judge rules that Google’s search engine monopoly is illegal, and Colombia mulls banning souvenirs linked to its famous drug lord Pablo Escobar. Meanwhile, Laura Sophie Jung for Germany’s Die Zeit unpacks the disturbing reason why ubiquitous smartphones aren’t in our dreams.
[*Eastern Apache]
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This is our daily newsletter Worldcrunch Today, a rapid tour of the news of the day from the world's best journalism sources, regardless of language or geography.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“Uprising in Bangladesh, army takes control.” Delhi-based newspaper Rashtriya Sahara dedicates its front page to the unfolding political situation in neighboring Bangladesh. After a month of student protests, during which nearly 300 people have been killed, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India on Monday. Parliament was dissolved on Tuesday, as demanded by the student protest leaders, while the country’s top military commander said an interim government would soon be formed to preside over new elections.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Bangladesh parliament dissolved, former PM Zia freed. The country’s President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved parliament on Tuesday, paving the way for an interim government to be formed, one day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India. Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister of Bangladesh and key opposition leader, has also been released from house arrest. Student protest leaders are calling for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus to lead the interim government.
• Eight Palestinians killed in West Bank by Israeli fire. Another seven people were wounded during military raids in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said Tuesday, amid rising tensions in the Middle East. Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on a village in Lebanon's south killed four people. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of Israel-Palestine war here.
• Attack on Iraq military base leaves at least five U.S. personnel injured. Two Katyusha rockets were fired at the Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq on Monday, with one falling inside the base. It is unclear who is behind the attack, but it comes amid rising tensions following last week’s killing of senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah. U.S. President Joe Biden met his national security team as concerns of a possible Iranian retaliatory attack on Israel grew.
• Venezuela launches criminal probe against opposition leaders. Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced a new criminal investigation against the opposition’s presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and its leader Maria Corina Machado for inciting police and military officials to break the law. This follows the publication of a letter posted on social media platform X by Gonzalez and Machado in which they urged the country's security forces to “stand by the people” protesting President Nicolás Maduro's contested victory in the July 28 presidential election. For more on the election, we offer this recent piece from Argentine daily Clarín, Western Pressure On Maduro? It's The Venezuelan Military That Will Decide, translated from Spanish by Worldcrunch.
• U.S. judge rules Google has illegal monopoly over internet search. The tech giant was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice over its control of about 90% of the online search market. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his ruling on Monday. The landmark decision is the first major success for U.S. authorities taking on the market dominance of Big Tech.
• Local hero Kauli Vaast claims Olympic surfing gold in French Polynesia. The 22-year-old Tahitian who grew up in Teahupo'o surfed a long tube for a near perfect 9.5 out of 10, winning gold for France and leaving Australia's Jack Robinson with silver. In the women’s event, U.S. Caroline Marks added Olympic gold to her 2023 world title with a tight victory over Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb (with a whale making a surprise guest appearance during the semi-finals). More on the Paris Olympics here.
• Pablo Escobar souvenirs could be banned in Colombia. The country’s congress will consider a bill this week to ban souvenirs depicting the late Colombian drug lord. The proposed bill includes fines of up to $170 for vendors selling this merchandise to tourists, who have criticized the move. Cristian Avendaño, a representative from Colombia’s Green Party who drafted the bill, said it was time for the country to “find other symbols.” From the Worldcrunch vault, we offer this El Espectador article on Medellin’s struggles to deal with Escobar’s legacy.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
6.25 meters
Sweden’s Armand Duplantis won gold at the Paris Olympics, sailing over a bar raised to 6.25 meters at the men’s pole vault final on Monday, breaking his own world record set at 6.24 meters in April. It is the ninth time the 24 year-old U.S.-born Swede has broken the record. Duplantis is also the first man to retain the pole vault title since American Bob Richards in 1952 and 1956.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Never seen your smartphone in a dream? Here's the disturbing reason why
Despite hours of scrolling, smartphones hardly play a role in our dreams. Yet their absence may actually demonstrate our dependence on them, writes Laura Sophie Jung in Germany’s Die Zeit.
😴 On average, we each spend more than two hours every day on our phones: scrolling, typing, posting, liking and sometimes calling people. Even when we aren’t using it, our smartphone is still in our hand, or at least within reach. It has become an extension of our bodies. But smartphones very rarely appear in our dreams. Analysis of an English-language database containing almost 16,000 dreams from a variety of people showed that the words phone or smartphone appeared in only 2% of dreams.
📱 Some researchers argue that their absence from our dreams actually suggests we are far too dependent on them during the day. If we started to miss our phones, they might feature more prominently in our dreams, psychotherapist Brigitte Holzinger says, noting that “we dream about our partner more often when they are away." So if we never dream about our phones, that doesn’t mean we’re not addicted to them. In fact, it’s the opposite: “Alcoholics dream about alcohol more when they are going cold turkey,” she says.
🧬 Another theory goes that we dream in order to prepare ourselves to face dangers in the real world. Finnish neuroscientist Antti Revonsuo calls dreams an “installation program” for our genetic software. He argues that our bodies use dreams to transfer survival mechanisms encoded in our DNA into our memory. This means that if someone dreams about running away from a bear, their brain will react more quickly if they encounter that same situation in real life.
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📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
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📣 VERBATIM
“It was a cowardly act.”
— In an interview published by Russia’s state news agency RIA, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran on July 31 “a cowardly act and a dangerous development in Israeli politics.” He said the incident would “have a negative impact on the ongoing negotiations to end the aggression and withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza,” and that “there is no doubt the purpose of Haniyeh’s assassination is to prolong the war and expand its scope.” Check this recent piece on Arabic-language news website Al-Manassa, translated by Worldcrunch: Why Hamas Is Destined To Grow Only More Radical Without Haniyeh.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Trump's Plans To Undo The Western Alliance Is A Death Sentence For American Power — CLARÍN
• Le Vele Chronicles: The Mob And Urban Ideals Mix In A Naples Housing Complex — LA STAMPA
• Intersecting Identities: The Struggle Of Being Both A Dalit And Queer In India — THE WIRE
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet and Laure Gautherin
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