World Events
100 verified facts in this category.
- A news organization published a copy of a draft Supreme Court opinion in a pending case, as stated in a press release issued the following day.
- The FBI seized ballots and election materials in Georgia and, most recently, Arizona as part of the Justice Department's examination of Trump's claims about the 2020 election.
- Yoon Suk Yeol served as President of South Korea and declared martial law in an attempted authoritarian takeover.
- In SEC v. Panuwat, a jury found the defendant liable for insider trading for using nonpublic information about Pfizer's impending acquisition of his employer, Medivation, to buy short-term, out-of-the-money call options on Incyte Corporation rather than securities of Medivation.
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill in December 2012.
- The most recent comprehensive analyses of detailed U.S. marriage and divorce data are the Advance Report of Final Marriage Statistics, 1989–90 and the Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989–90.
- In 2021, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld the FDA's voluntary GRAS notification rule in Center for Food Safety v Becerra, ruling companies were not required to publicly disclose the basis for self-GRAS determinations.
- GRAS affirmation petitions approved during 1987–1996 took an average of 87.2 months to be approved by the FDA, despite manufacturers being allowed to market the substances while awaiting FDA action.
- In early 2007, four children under 36 months of age died from choking while trying to swallow albendazole tablets during a deworming campaign in Ethiopia.
- U.S. Labor Department revisions showed the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year ending March 2025, reducing average monthly job gains from 147,000 to fewer than 71,000, with monthly job creation slowing further to 53,000 since March.
- Canada lost its measles-elimination status on November 10, 2025, after more than 12 months of continuous transmission and more than 5,300 confirmed or probable measles cases.
- When the amended whistleblower protection bill returned to the Senate for a final vote, a single senator placed an anonymous hold on it, effectively killing the legislation.
- A ProPublica-Seattle Times investigation found that field records from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, needed to document combat injuries and disability claims, were never kept, were destroyed, or simply cannot be found.
- According to ProPublica's investigation, the USDA and chicken companies were aware of a dangerous salmonella strain in chicken products, yet contaminated meat continued to be sold to consumers.
- Lucy Letby was a nurse who was on trial in October 2022 accused of murdering babies.
- Justice Samuel Alito declined to recuse himself from the Trump immunity case despite reports that flags similar to those carried by Jan. 6 rioters had flown above his homes, including an inverted American flag in January 2021 and an 'Appeal to Heaven' banner in summer 2023, which he attributed to his wife Martha-Ann Alito.
- Trump's proposed restrictions on birthright citizenship would have applied not only to children of people in the country illegally but also to children of people legally present in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards.
- On the seventh day of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri's harsh interrogation, after he asked interrogators to clean his fingernails, a security team forcibly shaved his head and beard and placed him back inside a confinement box.
- CIA psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen designed the 'enhanced interrogation' program used against Abu Zubaydah and later other detainees at CIA secret prisons worldwide.
- MDR requesters who disagree with an Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) decision have no further recourse and cannot pursue federal court litigation.
- The SEC received 45,130 tips, complaints, and referrals in fiscal year 2024, including more than 24,000 whistleblower tips, of which more than 14,000 were submitted by just two individuals.
- The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate titled 'Iran's Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities' judged with 'high confidence' that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003.
- In 2010, the most left-leaning Republican senator voted more often to the right than the most conservative Democratic senator, according to National Journal voting-record analysis by Ron Brownstein.
- No other country with an established hepatitis B birth-dose vaccination policy had previously retreated from that recommendation before the U.S. ACIP vote.
- The OceanX team suggested their sonar image showed an object with unusual features of seemingly non-natural origin.
- Between mid-January and early March 1999, Brazil's real lost 45 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar, reaching 2.2 reais per dollar.
- The United States suspended collection of detailed marriage and divorce data beginning in January 1996 due to limitations in state-collected information and budgetary considerations.
- In October 2023, California banned four substances permitted in food by the FDA—red dye no. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben—from being used as ingredients in food sold or manufactured in California.
- In 2021, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld the FDA's voluntary GRAS notification rule in the case Center for Food Safety v Becerra.
- In Japan's 2011 food additive withdrawal list, tannin (extract) retained conditional additive authorization as long as it was not derived from chestnut astringent skins or tamarind seed coats.
- Three weeks after the 113th Congress began, 82 percent of Americans disapproved of it, the highest disapproval rating for a new Congress since The New York Times and CBS News began asking the question two decades earlier.
- The HBSC 2022 survey found that fewer than 10% of adolescents get at least one hour of daily physical activity, the amount recommended by the World Health Organization.
- According to the Italian Antitrust Authority's document, substituting the cheaper drug with the more expensive one could cost Italy's national health service (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale) approximately 400 million euros per year.
- The Turkish government's Southeastern Anatolia Project is a $32 billion scheme to build 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric plants on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
- The Haditha Dam near the Syrian border supplies 30 percent of Iraq's electricity.
- A group of dairy truck drivers sued their employer, Maine-based Oakhurst Dairy, for over $10 million in unpaid overtime.
- The Supreme Court confirmed that the leaked draft opinion document was authentic.
- Gail A. Curley stated that, based on the investigation, she did not believe it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits.
- U.S. imports fell at a 29.3% annual pace in the second quarter of 2025, adding more than 5 percentage points to GDP growth for that period.
- During the 2025 shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it would reduce air traffic beginning Friday in major markets due to worsening shutdown-related effects.
- The Senate confirmed more appellate-level judges during President Donald Trump's first two years in office than during any president's first two years going back at least to Harry S. Truman.
- House Democrats investigating the COVID-19 pandemic response found that Trump adviser Peter Navarro pressured federal agencies to award pandemic-related contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Justice Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from Trump's immunity case even though his wife, Ginni Thomas, attended Trump's Jan. 6, 2021, rally, called the 2020 election result a 'heist,' and exchanged messages with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to stand firm with Trump.
- Donald Trump became the first former U.S. president convicted of a felony in May 2024, when a New York court found him guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment during the 2016 presidential election.
- Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that she saw 'no plausible argument' for barring prosecution of Trump's alleged effort to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Joe Biden, though the majority sent that issue back for additional analysis by the trial court.
- Trump's birthright-citizenship executive order would have affected more than one-quarter of a million babies born in the United States each year, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University's Population Research Institute.
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected the majority's constitutional ruling on birthright citizenship but joined the result because he concluded that a federal law broadly grants birthright citizenship, meaning a future Congress could restrict it by changing that law.
- According to a McClatchy report, the CIA used interrogation methods that had not been approved by the Justice Department.
- Then-CIA Director Michael Hayden preempted The New York Times' planned report on the interrogation tapes by sending CIA employees a letter describing the tapes and stating they had been destroyed 'in the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them.'
- Saudi Arabia relies on imports for up to 80% of its food consumption needs.
- The Under Secretary of Transportation for Security could issue an emergency regulation or security directive without notice, public comment, or prior approval from the Secretary of Transportation, and such a measure could remain effective for no more than 90 days unless ratified by the Transportation Security Oversight Board or rescinded.
- Cora Currier and her colleagues at The Intercept publicly released the FBI's confidential rulebooks.
- Intercept reporter Cora Currier received leaked copies of the FBI's confidential rulebooks.
- ProPublica found that Hawaii property owners received more than 230 exemptions between 2000 and 2020 from state and local laws restricting seawalls, including approvals to retain existing shoreline structures or build new ones.
- The Chicago Police Department's gang database contained approximately 128,000 records but included no names or identification, listing only details such as gang affiliation, race, age, first arrest or system-entry date, and police beat.
- A Senate intelligence report found that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was waterboarded at least three times while held in Thailand.
- The FBI may treat the existence of classified records concerning foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, or international terrorism as exempt from FOIA disclosure requirements.
- Under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the deliberative process privilege does not apply to interagency or intra-agency memorandums or letters created 25 years or more before the date the records were requested.
- Agencies have one year to respond to a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request, compared with 20 working days for an initial FOIA response (with up to 10 additional working days allowed in unusual circumstances).
- Under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(E), Intelligence Community agencies are prohibited from disclosing records in response to FOIA requests made by any foreign government or international governmental organization, whether directly or through a representative.
- J.P. Morgan received an $18 million civil penalty for a standalone violation of the Dodd-Frank whistleblower-protection rule, the largest penalty on record for such a violation.
- Since December 2021, the SEC's recordkeeping enforcement initiative had charged more than 100 firms and imposed more than $2 billion in penalties.
- Approximately 56% of the SEC's $8.2 billion in fiscal-year 2024 financial remedies came from the monetary judgment against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon following the SEC's jury-trial victory.
- The World Bank's low-income threshold is based on the operational threshold for 'civil works preference'.
- NOAA Fisheries recovery plans are legally nonbinding guidance documents, and public and private parties are not obligated to implement actions in them beyond existing legal requirements.
- More than 20 countries experienced intrastate or civil conflicts involving insurgent groups in 2024, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program.
- The NSA's UFO collection includes records from the lawsuit Citizens Against Unidentified Flying Objects Secrecy v. NSA, identified as Civil Action No. 80-1562, including an "In Camera" document and multiple parts of Communications Intelligence (COMINT) reports.
- The NSA's UFO collection includes records concerning a reported UFO sighting in Iran on September 19, 1976, including a Joint Chiefs of Staff report and a routing slip from Louis E. Foster of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
- The 2007 NIE's judgment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program was reported even though Iran was testing missiles that could serve as delivery systems and had announced the resumption of uranium enrichment.
- Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper said China had become the world's largest navy by numerical count, with more than 350 ships and submarines.
- China's naval fleet exceeds 350 vessels.
- China has the world's largest navy by number of ships and submarines.
- AARO assessed that alleged reverse-engineering programs either did not exist or were misidentified authentic national-security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology.
- About four in 10 personal explanations from House members involved 'suspension of the rules' votes, and absences on such votes accounted for 36 percent of all House votes missed between 2007 and October 2015.
- There were 20 instances in which the number of explained missed House votes exceeded the final margin by which a House measure passed or failed, and half of those instances involved amendments.
- Since 2007, ProPublica collected 5,058 'Personal Explanations' from House members covering 21,176 missed House votes, with only one in six absences explained.
- The congressional maps initially produced by North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature were projected to give Democrats only 3 of the state's 14 congressional districts, or 4 in a good year, while Republicans would win 10 or 11.
- Jeff Merkley said after his 22-hour speech that he had gone without a bathroom break or food due to dehydration and not having eaten beforehand.
- Sen. Cory Booker's more-than-25-hour Senate speech surpassed the previous record set by Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina during a 1957 filibuster against the advance of the Civil Rights Act.
- Sen. Cory Booker's Senate floor speech in April lasted more than 25 hours, making it longer than Jeff Merkley's 22-hour speech.
- Sen. Jeff Merkley spoke on the Senate floor for more than 22 hours straight, from 6:21 p.m. Tuesday to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday.
- There are no video recordings of Supreme Court oral arguments.
- The team that discovered the Baltic Sea anomaly suggested the sonar image showed an object with unusual features of seemingly non-natural origin.
- The Baltic Sea anomaly was discovered while the OceanX team was treasure hunting on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea.
- Israel, India, and Pakistan have never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- The euro began operation on January 1, 1999, with an initial value of $1.16675, but by July 1999 it had declined to about 13 percent below that starting value.
- The FDA is revoking or proposing to revoke 52 food standards, including standards for canned fruits and vegetables, dairy products, baked goods, macaroni products, and other foods.
- In 2019, Black STEM workers in the U.S. earned a median of $61,100, or 78% of what White STEM workers earned.
- The National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990 required the Secretaries of the USDA and HHS to issue a Dietary Guidelines for Americans report at least every 5 years and required federal food- and nutrition-related policies and publications to be consistent with it.
- Gail A. Curley stated that none of the credible leads implicated any Supreme Court Justice or any Justice's spouse.
- In May 2023, Japan restricted exports of 23 types of chipmaking equipment to China.
- Australia's time use survey was not revived until 2020-21, during which physical diaries were replaced with online diaries without an expectation they be completed in real time.
- In 2013, the scheduled five-yearly update of Australia's time use survey was shelved to make budget savings.
- President Donald Trump is demanding that the voting bill largely ban mail-in voting, with exceptions for people who are disabled, serving in the military, or in other situations.
- The House-approved SAVE America Act would require voters to present a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote.
- Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender high-school track-and-field athlete from Bridgeport, West Virginia, placed third in discus at the 2025 state championship and was the only person in West Virginia who had sought to compete in girls' sports as a transgender athlete.
- Declining business inventories reduced U.S. second-quarter 2025 GDP growth by more than 3.4 percentage points, while residential investment fell 5.1%.
- In 2016, opposition lawmakers in South Korea's National Assembly conducted a filibuster to delay passage of an anti-terrorism law.
- In April 2018, in a derivative suit on behalf of CBS, the Delaware Court of Chancery let a waste and bad-faith fiduciary claim against CBS's other directors proceed over salary paid to Sumner Redstone, and an unjust-enrichment claim against Redstone proceed over his Chairman Emeritus salary, while dismissing the challenge to his $9 million 2014 bonus.
- The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence conducted a four-year investigation into the CIA's rendition and interrogation program following the CIA videotape revelations.