Natasha Frost

Domestic sex trafficking of minors in the US and Canada usually doesn’t resemble Hollywood’s dungeons-and-handcuffs nightmare.

For the tens of thousands of desperate asylum seekers in Libya, Europe offers the possibility of safety, security, and refuge. But getting there is a treacherous endeavor: of the roughly 2,300 people who have attempted to cross to Italy from northern Africa since the start of the year, about 15% have died en route.

Microsoft is America’s most valuable company—and it isn’t even close. After shares surged Friday (June 7), the software company’s market capitalization is now well above $1 trillion. For now, second- and third-place Amazon and Apple both remain around the $880 billion mark. A Microsoft rally led its share price to rocket nearly 10% in the past four days to a record level.

June 4, 1989, was just another day for the citizens of Beijing. That, at least, is the takeaway to be found from all but the most ingenious searching of the Chinese internet. Facebook, English-language Wikipedia, the New York Times, Quartz, and dozens of other potentially controversial news sites have been inaccessible for some time. Now, the Guardian and the Washington Post join that illustrious list.

The Iranian capital of Tehran is down 547 restaurants and cafés following a severe police crackdown on establishments found to be flouting “Islamic principles”—playing illegal music, posting “unconventional advertising in cyberspace,” or otherwise permitting “debauchery.”

Minutes into an otherwise humdrum “fireside chat” with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the tech company’s inaugural Re:MARS conference today, there was a commotion. A female protester, later identified as a member of animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, stormed past security and onto the stage, where Bezos had been in the middle of answering questions about space from his Amazon colleague, Jenny Freshwater.

The earliest prosthetics were decidedly “dumb” devices: a 3,000-year-old wooden toe, found in Egypt; a knife in the place of a hand in medieval Italy; a 16th-century “Tin Man” arm, fashioned out of iron.

Whose heart has not sunk at when Amazon estimates delivering your package in a week, or even a couple of days?

Customers like to shop. They do not, however, like to wait.

Boston Dynamics’ faintly terrifying quadruped dog robot—SpotMini—was first announced in 2016 and is expected to go on sale later this year. The robot has a whole lot of whizzy sensors and cameras, spindly mechanical legs, a creepy grabber arm that opens doors, and mind-bogglingly impressive robotics technology. (It’s expected to carry a five-digit price tag—a fitting sum to bring the uncanny valley direct to your home.)

For more on lab-grown meat, check out the eight episode of our Should This Exist?  podcast, which debates how emerging technologies will impact humanity.

Europe’s biggest economy isn’t running quite as smoothly as it used to. For the first time since 2013, the German unemployment rate rose: the ranks of the jobless made up 5% of the labor force in May, a tiny nudge up from 4.9% the month before. In absolute terms, the number of jobless Germans rose by 60,000 in the month, versus expectations for a fall of 8,000.

Keen watchers of US politics may find themselves months deep into Beto O’Rourke fatigue. Whether it was the Vanity Fair shoot; the strange campaign video with his completely silent wife, Amy Sanders, or the sudden realization that no one actually knows what his policies are, the polls are bleak. Most show him in fifth or sixth place, with no more than 6% of the vote.

Five members of Amnesty International’s leadership team are on their way out, following a damning report about what’s been described as the human-rights organization’s “toxic” culture.

Britain had voted to leave the European Union, and Nigel Farage was almost speechless with disbelief.

Metronidazole is an antibiotic commonly prescribed to treat infections such as pelvic inflammation or other vaginal diseases. It can cause side effects that include seizures, numbness, and diarrhea, and should not be used while pregnant or during breastfeeding. It’s perfectly safe—provided it’s taken as prescribed.

The giant panda is vanishingly rare, with fewer than 2,000 specimens left in the wild. But these black-and-white beasts look positively commonplace compared to their albino cousins, one of whom was caught on camera last month.

There is something of the circus to Boris Johnson. The bombastic, tow-haired British Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, who served as London’s mayor until 2016, is the current favorite to be Britain’s next prime minister. He loves a photo op, grinning like a schoolboy on a bike; suspended in mid-air clutching Union Jack flags; playing rugby in a tie. He’s as colorfully British as his choice of vocabulary: piffle, mugwump, ker-splonked.

The Jacksons in your wallet should be turning into Tubmans next year. In 2016, Jacob Lew, then secretary of the US Treasury, announced that the $20 bill would be redrawn to feature the abolitionist and political activist Harriet Tubman. The new version was set to be unveiled in 2020, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which led to women’s suffrage.

The French widow of a man killed in the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crash is seeking $276 million in damages from Boeing, with her lawyer arguing that the plane manufacturer “acted recklessly, willfully and with conscious disregard to the safety of its passengers.”

The world’s credit card providers want people to be using contactless payment systems—and they’re hoping public transportation can help kickstart that switch.

Shrinking budgets and staff at the Internal Revenue Service means the US’s tax collector is auditing returns at the lowest rate in more than 15 years, according to new data released by the agency today. For America’s wealthiest families—families with adjusted gross income of more than $10 million—audit rates were at their lowest since records began in 2008, at 6.66%, less than half the rate of last year. Households with incomes between $5 million and $9.9 million had an audit rate of just 4.2%, down from 8% last year.

Investors in Luckin Coffee, a Beijing-based company that hopes to topple Starbucks, have grounds for celebration today. Luckin started trading on the Nasdaq, where it opened at $25 a share, well above the company’s IPO price of $17. Shares have since settled around $22.

Executive coach Dawn Metcalfe’s go-to stage outfit isn’t a dress, or a suit, or trousers, or even a skirt. Instead, it’s all of them at once. The garment is somewhere between rust and maroon in color, with t-shirt-length sleeves and a faux-skirt over three-quarter length trousers. Its divided hems curve like petals over Metcalfe’s legs.