Picture: Ggia/CC BY-SA 4.0

The Covid-19 measures, along with the outbreak of racist police violence, have led to protests against state power, which could lead to riots or waves of emigration in the post-pandemic world, according to one study

In the U.S., with the gruesome killing of George Floyd by a police officer in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, protests against police violence have spread like wildfire across cities, also expressing long-pent-up resentment of U.S. President Donald Trump in the election year. Trump is playing with the use of the army and firearms, and he is doing a lot of cleaning up for his right-wing clientele "Law Order", refers to the demonstrators as "Anarchists" and "terrorists" and seems to accept or even want to provoke an outbreak of riots and their subsequent suppression by violence by stirring up the conflict in the USA, which is already torn apart politically for the election campaign.

Unlike other EU countries, the German government has moved ahead with plans to introduce biometric IDs despite criticism

Passports with biometric features were to be a condition for obtaining visa-free travel first until 2004, then until 2006. The U.S. now appears to be backing away from that condition, as the Sunday Times reports. For this reason, Ireland is now postponing the introduction of the new biometric passports. In Germany, on the other hand, not only the dates but also the costs are already fixed.

Those who want to participate in the visa waiver program should be able to present a passport that is not only machine-readable but also has biometric features as of October 2004. This was the decision of the USA and already in June 2003 the EU decided to introduce appropriate travel documents as soon as possible.

OECD countries. Dark blue: Basic members. Middle blue: Other members. Map: Cflm001 / Emuzesto / Simon Eugster / Vardion. License: CC BY-SA 2.0

Finance officials from developed countries to help developing countries raise revenue

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on 13. July in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa the initiative "Tax Inspectors Without Borders" (TIWB) presented. In their framework, helpers from the 35 OECD countries (and from other countries, as UNDP points out to Telepolis) travel to developing countries, where they are supposed to help the local tax authorities to increase tax revenue.

Artistic representation of Kepler-186f. Image: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

The moon journeys proved that living beings are able to leave their world and to reach other heavenly bodies

It is difficult to decide which is more astonishing: the sensational results of the space research or the restrained echo in the public. So far astronomers have discovered over 1800 alien worlds. They are called exoplanets or extrasolar stellar companions. These are planetary stars like the Earth, but orbiting other suns. Almost weekly there are more. The consequence of the results is obviously misjudged. Otherwise the milestones of the research had to cause quite a stir.