20: The United Kingdom today commemorates the 20th anniversary of the suicide bombings on London’s public transport services that killed 52 people and injured over 700 more. The four perpetrators were all UK citizens. Two had trained with al-Qaeda the previous year.
1,000: The Japanese government is warning of more earthquakes this July after 1,000 tremors rattled islands in the Kagoshima prefecture, including a 5.5-magnitude quake Saturday on the island of Kyushu. Authorities have stressed that none of this is related to the popular manga series, “The Future I Saw,” whose prediction of a catastrophic Japanese quake went so viral that it dented tourism – the number of visitors from Hong Kong fell 11% in May compared to the same month last year.
$4 million: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) staff reportedly did $4 million worth of work modeling the costs of relocating Palestinians from the Gaza strip, and supported the launch of the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). BCG has since disavowed its involvement and emphasized that the company “was not paid for any of this work.”
$1.5 billion: The River Seine in Paris reopened to the public this weekend, following a $1.5 billion clean-up project commissioned ahead of the Olympics last year. Swimming in the Seine has been banned for more than 100 years due to concerns over pollution and river traffic.
1: Suriname’s National Assembly elected Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, 71, as the country’s first female president on July 6. A doctor by profession, Geerlings-Simons has promised to meet the needs of young people and will oversee Suriname’s impending oil boom, which is set to start in 2028 with a major offshore project.
