Estonia's culture funding debate misses a fundamental issue. If the current system leaves orchestras, museums, magazines and artists perpetually underfunded, perhaps the problem is not simply a lack of resources, but the way those resources are allocated, writes Scott Diel, originally in Edasi.

Telia is cutting several low-viewership TV channels from its packages without lowering monthly fees, citing changing viewer habits with streaming and bundled services.

Estonia's rising debt burden reflects years of decisions by every major ruling party, not just the current coalition, says Bank of Estonia economist Kaspar Oja.

Former Reform Party leader Siim Kallas says the party needs a fresh direction and a clear platform ahead of the upcoming election and that the coalition will reach a consensus and elect Estonia's next president in the Riigikogu in early September.

Telia is cutting several low-viewership TV channels from its packages without lowering monthly fees, citing changing viewer habits with streaming and bundled services.

In what officials say is a first for Estonia, a Tallinn court fined plaintiffs over false academic references generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in a legal filing.

Autoralli MM-hooaja kaheksas etapp peetakse kivistel Kreeka teedel. Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) haaras esimese tõsise võistluspäevaga ohjad, kui teda hoiab tugeva surve all Sebastien Ogier (Toyota). WRC2-klassis võitleb võidu eest Robert Virves. Postimees vahendab rallit otseblogis

USA üksused andsid reedel löögi Iraani raketi- ja drooniladude ning rannikualade radaripositsioonide pihta pärast seda, kui Washington süüdistas Teherani kaubalaeva ründamises. Iraan vastas sellele rünnakutega USA sihtmärkidele Pärsia lahe piirkonnas.

Germany's highest ever temperature of 41.3C is recorded provisionally in Saarbrücken, over the border from France.

A nine-year-old and five women were killed when Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen drove into the market in 2024.

The US president says "Numerous European countries" have been discussing bringing in such a levy.

King Charles paid £12.9m in tax for 2024-2025 - here's what we know about his unique tax situation.

The Trump administration on Friday partially rescinded its export ban on Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence model — deescalating a confrontation that has caused confusion across the American AI industry. The release clears the way for a select group of more than 100 companies and agencies to gain access to the Mythos 5 model, two weeks after the administration imposed restrictions amid fears that the software could be used to launch cyberattacks. But a second advanced Anthropic model, called Fable 5, remains blocked. Meanwhile, pressure from the White House led Anthropic’s leading competitor, OpenAI, to limit the release of its most advanced model this week because of similar cyber concerns. The series of back-and-forth actions on AI, from an administration that has promised to unleash American companies to dominate the technology, has caused concerns in the industry about how heavy a hand President Donald Trump plans to take in overseeing what kinds of products U.S. developers can release to the market. It’s been less than four weeks since Trump signed an executive order rejecting mandatory federal controls on AI, instead asking leading tech companies to submit new models to a voluntary government review before making them widely available. Conversations between Anthropic and the administration are expected to continue through the weekend on restoring access to Fable, according to a person who was granted anonymity to describe the private discussions. The conversations have also focused on determining a standardized framework to evaluate cases of suspected security bypasses in the future, the person said, beyond just addressing the recent episode. POLITICO reported last week on discussions of a technical assessment that would create ground rules for these kinds of disputes. “Since the issuance of my June 12 letter, Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the Covered Models,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote in a Friday letter to Anthropic’s chief compute officer Tom Brown, obtained by POLITICO. “These efforts have yielded significant progress.” Semafor first reported on the new letter Friday night. Anthropic, which has disputed the concerns about its cyber controls, issued a statement later Friday welcoming the administration’s turnabout.“We received notice from the U.S. government that Mythos 5, our strongest cybersecurity model, can be redeployed to a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers,” the company said. “We are working to provision the approved set of providers and restore their access to Mythos 5 as quickly as possible. We are pleased to see this progress and continue to work with the government to expand access to Mythos 5 and make Fable 5 available for general use again.” But others across the industry have expressed a desire for more clarity about the administration’s long-term intentions. Those included OpenAI, which announced Friday that, at the administration’s request, it is making only a limited release of three versions of its new GPT‑5.6 model. “We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” OpenAI said in a blog post Friday. “It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them.” Friday’s reversal on Mythos came after Anthropic staff and senior White House officials met over the last two weeks to discuss ways to defuse the dispute, including technical questions about whether the company had done enough to prevent its AI products from being used to launch cyberattacks. The action allows the company to restore access to its Mythos 5 models to a list of more than 100 “trusted partners,” including companies and federal agencies approved by the government, an administration official familiar with the move granted anonymity to discuss it said. “In just two weeks, we have worked diligently to ensure America remains the global leader in AI while safeguarding our security,” said Benno Kass, a Commerce Department spokesperson. The administration had slapped the export restrictions on Fable and Mythos, banning their use by foreign nationals, after a series of tense calls with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about whether the company’s safety guardrails were as solid as promised. Anthropic then announced it was cutting off access “for all our customers to ensure compliance” — while insisting that “we believe this is a misunderstanding.” Amodei and Trump later sat across from each other during a G7 lunch with allied leaders and AI executives last week in Évian-les-Bains, France. The administration’s frantic effort to address the safety issue raised a host of questions about how it would deal with future security concerns in the rapidly evolving AI industry, as well as whether Trump’s aides were unfairly singling out Anthropic after previous clashes with the company. It also left U.S. allies in Europe and Canada abruptly unable to use the new Anthropic models to identify and patch their own cybersecurity vulnerabilities, renewing calls for the EU to lessen its reliance on American technology. Meanwhile, reports of rapid advances in Chinese AI technology have raised worries across the industry about whether U.S. companies will lose their competitive advantage while waiting for administration approvals.

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to bless its massive expansion of ICE detention — a policy that federal district courts have overwhelmingly rejected. Solicitor General John Sauer is urging the justices to resolve whether people residing in the U.S. without incident for years — sometimes decades — may be subject to mandatory ICE detention while their deportation proceedings play out. It’s a fight that could determine the fate of millions of people, and it could also help define the reach of due process rights for those accused of being in the country illegally. The U.S. Justice Department is asking the justices to sign off on a policy that has been overwhelmingly rejected by federal district court judges across the country, who have described it as a draconian violation of the law and constitutional due process rights. Judges have delivered more than 9,300 rulings against the administration’s unprecedented policy, which targets people who have resided in the U.S. for years and requires them to be detained without the opportunity for a bond hearing while their deportation proceedings are underway. Despite the lopsided result in district courts, Sauer described an “untenable divide” at the appeals court level. Five appellate circuits have ruled on the issue, breaking 3-2 against the administration. A divide among appeals courts typically makes the Supreme Court more likely to intervene. The matter is still pending in another six circuits and could result in additional rulings at any moment. The Trump administration is appealing a ruling of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the administration’s approach last month and also found people subject to the administration’s new view of mandatory detention have a constitutional due process right to a bond hearing. “Especially given the volume of cases involved, this Court should grant review and resolve this case as swiftly as practicable,” Sauer wrote in a brief urging the court to take up the issue. The result of the administration’s new policy, adopted on July 8, 2025, has been a tsunami of emergency lawsuits filed by people swept up by the new policy. Those cases have inundated courts in every corner of the country, straining the judiciary, inflaming tensions between judges and the Justice Department, and exposing ruptures between DOJ lawyers and their counterparts at ICE. The cases have spiked amid enforcement crackdowns like Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota and Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, which have coincided with broader, sometimes violent encounters between anti-ICE demonstrators and law enforcement. Since Congress updated immigration laws 30 years ago, the modern system has required detention primarily for people apprehended crossing the border or soon after. Those with established roots in the country — often with spouses and children who are U.S. citizens — have been afforded bond hearings in immigration court, a chance to prove they can live safely in their communities while their deportation proceedings pend for months or years. But the Trump administration adopted an unprecedented reinterpretation of the law, treating people apprehended anywhere in the country — no matter how long they’ve lived here — as though they had just crossed the border, subjecting them to mandatory detention without bond. At its essence, the fight is over what it means to “seek admission” to the U.S.. Immigration law labels nearly anyone who arrives in the country without permission as an “applicant for admission.” And it says any “applicant for admission” who is “seeking admission” to the country must be detained without bond. Most judges who have rejected the administration’s approach say the phrase “seeking admission” underscores that the policy was meant to apply to border crossers, as opposed to those in the interior of the country who are no longer “seeking” to get inside. Each of the last five presidential administrations — including Trump’s first — viewed the law this way, they note. And the Supreme Court, in a 2018 ruling by Justice Samuel Alito, described the availability of bond hearings as the “default” rule for “aliens already present in the United States.” But the Justice Department contends that the phrase “seeking admission” is a largely superfluous description of “applicant for admission,” drawing no distinction between people arriving at the border and those who crossed it years earlier. And DOJ attorneys argued Friday in a letter to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the Supreme Court may have tipped its hand in the Trump administration’s favor with a ruling Thursday in a case about the administration’s policy on asylum for people arriving at the border.

Suspect was stopped at Bangkok's main airport as he allegedly tried to fly home.

Several countries including the UK and Switzerland have posted record June temperatures, with deaths reported in France.

Forecasters say hottest conditions are now spreading into central and eastern Europe, including Poland and the BalkansThe UK is set to get some respite from this week’s record-breaking heat over the weekend, but much of the rest of Europe remains in the grip of an intense heatwave as it shifts eastwards.Germany provisionally recorded its highest ever temperature yesterday with 41.3C near the city of Saarbrücken close to the French border. Forecasters say the hottest conditions are now spreading into central and eastern Europe, including Poland and the Balkans, over the weekend. Continue reading...

Activists aim to repeat disruption of Jeff Bezos’s wedding when billionaire Tilman Fertitta drops anchorProtesters in Venice are planning to disrupt a visit by the billionaire US ambassador to Italy in his 117-metre superyacht, which they fear he plans to dock in the lagoon city.“We ruined the party for Jeff Bezos’s wedding last year – this year let’s ruin the ambassador’s tour!” said Stella Faye, a 28-year-old researcher and activist, at a meeting of about 40 demonstrators on Thursday. Continue reading...

Activists have been arrested, journalist accreditations denied and public assemblies banned before July meeting

Talks about the phaseout stalled after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sparked concerns of an energy supply crisis