Bitcoin exchange QuadrigaCX made headlines in February when the founder’s mysterious death overseas left all funds completely inaccessible. Now, investigations by the agency overseeing the exchange’s bankruptcy have revealed that the funds only Gerald Cotten could access may have been mismanaged while he was alive. Nearly 200 million dollars were effectively lost after Cotten’s death, as only he held the password needed to access the encrypted laptop on which he ran his entire business. Investigations launched after the exchange went silent revealed that supposed storage accounts had been emptied before…
The ruling party in Turkey was dealt a major setback on Sunday as the re-run of Istanbul’s mayoral election showed the same result they had previously contested. The AKP, party of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had contested and annulled the surprise victory by opposition party CHP’s candidate Ekrem Imamoglu in March. Imamoglu’s victory in March, over former prime minister Binali Yildirim of the AKP, had a narrow margin of 13000 votes, and the electoral authority held that the election was invalid due to issues in the staffing at ballot…
A petition to cancel the television miniseries Good Omens accumulated more than twenty thousand signatures, but has been met with mockery after the discovery that it was directed at the wrong production company. Good Omens, which is based on a novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett, is a production of Amazon Studios which involves an angel and a demon working together to prevent Armageddon. A petition by the Christian group Return to Order, decrying the show as blasphemous and demanding its cancellation, was erroneously directed at Netflix.…
An interesting test of the current Supreme Court’s views on religious freedoms occured when the court declared on Thursday that a “peace cross” monument located on public land and dating back to World War I does not constitute a government establishment of religion, as prohibited by the First Amendment. The 7-2 ruling stated that the cross can have both secular and religious meanings, and that the government cannot presume to know the intentions of the monument’s builders. However, the decision was highly fractious when it came to reasonings, with seven…
Around ten thousand protestors surrounded the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi on Thursday, in response to a visiting Russian lawmaker being allowed to deliver a speech from the seat of the parliament speaker. More than sixty police and protestors were hospitalized as the rally was repulsed with tear gas and rubber bullets to prevent the protestors from storming the parliament. Opposition MPs called the protests, which in turn call for speaker Irakli Kobakhidze’s resignation. Tensions have been high between Georgia and Russia for over a decade, since the regions of…
As India deals with a deadly drought that has cost hundreds of lives, its sixth largest city faces the prospect of running dry as the reservoirs supplying drinking water are depleted. Chennai, capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, has been in this state for weeks, with the city’s water company cutting water supplies even as temperatures spike above 40C (104F). Indian courts have accused the state government of negligence in its response to the crisis, and specifically of intending to merely wait for the seasonal monsoon rather than take…
Ohio’s Oberlin College and its dean of students have been ordered to pay a total of $33 million in punitive damages, in a defamation case sparked by an act of shoplifting. Three African-American Oberlin students attempted to shoplift wine from Gibson’s Bakery on Nov. 9, 2016, resulting in a scuffle with the store clerk and the students’ arrests. The result: two months of protests by Oberlin students, directly supported by the college and dean, according to the accusations placed by the Gibson family. Protestors, including Dean Meredith Raimondo, accused the…
In a strange end to the events that began in 2013, Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s former president who was ousted by a military coup, has died during his own trial on Monday. Morsi was kept within a soundproof glass cage at the trial, and collapsed after addressing the court on the espionage charges of which he was accused. He was pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital. While the Egyptian prosecutor reported no signs of injuries related to Morsi’s death were found, the question immediately rose whether Morsi’s treatment…
On Sunday, a massive power failure originating in Argentina caused a blackout spanning multiple countries. All of Argentina and Uruguay were affected, along with parts of Paraguay and Brazil. Argentina exports energy to its three neighbors, enabling the wide reach of the power failure. The power went out at 7:06 a.m. local time, according to the Uruguayan National Administration of Power Plants and Transmissions. In Argentina, this coincided with citizens preparing to head out and vote in local elections. In total, some 48 million persons were left without power by…
Restaurant chain Whataburger has long prided itself on being Texas-based and family-owned, but is now making a change as majority ownership is sold to a Chicago investment firm. BDT Capital Partners will be acquiring majority interest through its affiliated funds, according to a Friday press release. The chain’s current chief financial officer, Ed Nelson, will be promoted to president, while the current president Preston Atkinson and Board Chair Tom Dobson will continue on the board of directors. The announcement was not taken well by many Texans, who have long viewed…