REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta
A Sadhu or a Hindu holylam, with his face covered with ash, prays before registering for the annual pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave shrine, at a base camp in Jammu, June 30, 2016.
1. Former London mayor and avid Brexit supporter Boris Johnson announced on Thursday he will not be entering the race to become the next Conservative leader of Britain. Johnson was the early favourite to take over from the outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron.
2. US federal investigators are looking into the first death potentially caused by a self-driving car. The May crash occurred when a tractor-trailer cut across a divided highway in front of Tesla's 2015 Model S, which was in Autopilot mode, and the car did not apply the brakes.
3. Hedge fund legend George Soros said that Britain's decision to leave the European Union has "unleashed a crisis" as bad as 2008. Soros was speaking to the European Parliament about the dangers of a Brexit.
4. Iraqi and US-led airstrikes this week may have killed more than 250 ISIS militants fleeing Fallujah. If the figures are confirmed, these would be the single most successful strikes yet in the air campaign against ISIS, Reuters reports.
5. A Brazilian judge froze $6.07 million in Facebook funds after WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, refused to turn over messages sent and received by suspected members of an international cocaine smuggling ring. The judge froze funds owned by Facebook because WhatsApp has no bank accounts in Brazil.
6. Italy, Colombia, and the US seized 11 tons of cocaine and arrested 33 people from a mafia-linked drug ring. The ring refined the cocaine in Colombia and shipped it to Europe and the US in containers of tropical fruit.
7. Hershey on Thursday rejected a takeover offer from snack-food giant Mondelez. Mondelez, which was spun out of the unit of Kraft Foods in 2012, valued the American candymaker at $107 per share.
8. Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam is under huge pressure as shares in the bank have plunged more than 50% since he took up his new post exactly one year ago. "At the beginning everyone thought he could walk on water. Nowadays everyone thinks he struggles to swim," Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst Andreas Brun told Reuters.
9. July 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme. Somme, estimated to be the bloodiest in World War I, lasted for five months and killed upwards of 1.25 million soldiers.
10. Professional golf player Adam Scott, who ranks eighth in the world, is skipping the Rio de Janeiro Olympics next month because he is unhappy with the current format. "Just having another 72-hole golf tournament with a weaker-than-most field doesn't really pique my interest," Scott told the media.
And finally ...