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Children in gowns and mortarboards run with smiles during their kindergarten graduation ceremony in a kindergarten in Handan, Hebei province, China June 20, 2017. China Daily via REUTERS
Cyber Risk Major technology companies, including Cisco, IBM and SAP, are allowing Moscow to have access to closely guarded product security secrets a Reuters investigation has found. The requests, which have increased since 2014, are ostensibly done to ensure foreign spy agencies have not hidden any "backdoors" that would allow them to burrow into Russian systems. But those inspections also provide the Russians an opportunity to find vulnerabilities in products' source code - instructions that control the basic operations of computer equipment - current and former U.S. officials and security experts said.
North Korea
North Korea’s foreign spokesman told the state media that the death of U.S. university student Otto Warmbier soon after his return home was ‘a mystery to us as well’ and dismissed accusations that he died because of torture and beating during his captivity as "groundless."
Washington
President Donald Trump said he had not obstructed the FBI's probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and had not recorded his conversations with former FBI chief James Comey. Shortly after dismissing Comey, Trump mentioned the possibility of tapes in a Twitter post. "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump tweeted on May 12. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said Trump still had to answer for his tweet: "If the president had no tapes, why did he suggest otherwise? Did he seek to mislead the public? Was he trying to intimidate or silence James Comey? And if so, did he take other steps to discourage potential witnesses from speaking out?" Senate Republicans unveiled legislation that would replace Obamacare with a plan that scales back aid to the poor and kills a tax on the wealthy, but the bill's fate was quickly thrown into question as four conservative lawmakers said they could not support it in its current form, leaving Republicans short of the votes they need for passage. Democrats are united in opposition. 
An injured opposition supporter is helped by volunteer members of a primary care response team during clashes with riot security forces at a rally against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela June 22, 2017. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
Middle East The likelihood that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed is close to 100 percent, Interfax news agency quoted the head of the defense committee in Russia's upper parliamentary house as saying. A week ago Russia said it believed it may have killed Baghdadi when one of its air strikes hit a gathering of senior Islamic State commanders on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa. But armed groups fighting in the region and U.S. officials say they have no evidence that Baghdadi was killed, and many regional officials have said they are skeptical about the information from Moscow. Wealthy, political and supporting Islamic State Four Arab states boycotting Qatar over alleged support for terrorism have sent Doha a list of 13 demands including closing Al Jazeera television and reducing ties to their regional adversary Iran, an official of one of the four countries said. Doha's independent-minded approach, including a dovish line on Iran and support for Islamist groups, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, has incensed some of its neighbors who see political Islamism as a threat to their dynastic rule. Commentary: In Qatar and Saudi Arabia’s fight, Iran’s the real winner
South China Sea
Japan's largest warship steamed into the South China Sea this week in defiance of Chinese assertiveness, with Asian military guests on board to witness helicopters looping over the tropical waters and gunners blasting target buoys.
UK
Britain said it had ordered an immediate examination of a Hotpoint fridge freezer model after police said a deadly London apartment building fire began in one such appliance.
Theresa May said her offer to fellow EU leaders to guarantee the rights of their compatriots living in Britain after Brexit was "very fair and very serious" but her peers sounded skeptical, with Belgium's leader calling it "particularly vague."
Business
London-based startup Blockchain has raised $40 million (31.5 million pounds) in a fresh round of funding as the software company rides a wave of enthusiasm for digital currency technology. The financing round, the largest for a financial technology company since Brexit, was led by the venture capital arm of Alphabet Inc and Lakestar, Blockchain said.
World stocks struggled to hold onto earlier gains and were poised for a flat end to the week following another wobble in energy shares, while a tentative bounce in oil prices helped commodity-related currencies gain against the dollar. Crisis-wracked Toshiba Corp suffered further indignities today, estimating bigger losses for the past financial year and getting demoted to the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. | 
