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Exactly 10 years ago, I joined 136 people from 43 countries at a naturalization ceremony in a courtroom in downtown New York to proclaim our allegiance to the country that had embraced us as its own. Overcome by the emotional charge of the occasion, we struggled to keep our voices steady — and our eyes dry. Even Janet Napolitano, administering her final oath as secretary of homeland security, teared up as she welcomed us as “my fellow citizens.” I was flanked by a young woman from Ukraine and a middle-aged man from Peru; she worked on Wall Street, and he was a cab driver. As we told each other of the journeys that had brought us to that magical moment, her English was heavily accented; his was liberally interspersed with Spanish. At one point, we talked about what had been the final hurdle on the path: The citizenship tests. She’d found the civics quiz quite stressful; he, like me, thought it had been easy-peasy. We didn’t talk about the other test — the one that judged our English skills. More than likely, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services officers who had interviewed us skipped over that part of the process in order to move things along. In my case, the examining officer had said something along the lines of, “You’ve made it this far. There’s no need to waste our time on this.” The Biden administration, which is proposing to make the English test harder, apparently does not understand what my USCIS examiner had come to recognize, from some combination of intuition and experience: If you want to be an American and have lived in this country long enough to qualify, then a language test is entirely redundant.

Mohamed Al Fayed, the flamboyant Egypt-born businessman whose son was killed in a car crash with Princess Diana, has died, his family says

One family in central Mexico is struggling to preserve the production of cochineal

(Reuters) — London Stock Exchange Group (LON:LSEG) is looking into using blockchain to build what it described on Monday as «an end-to-end digital market ecosystem to raise and transfer capital across asset classes».

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.__________

Labor Day 2023 in the US seems to have become fruitful for Sony and Escape Artists' «The Equalizer 3» as the movie made a spectacular global debut, raking in $60.6 million, marking the franchise's most impressive opening to date. Notably, the film's international box office performance, which amounted to $26.1 million across 49 markets, set a new record for the Denzel Washington-led series, as per a report. Among the initial suite of releases, the top five markets contributing to this success are the UK ($3.5 million), France ($2.8 million), Germany ($2.4 million), Spain ($1.7 million), and Saudi Arabia ($1.6 million), according to a report by Deadline.

The United Kingdom released its five “ambitions” for its global artificial intelligence (AI) safety summit on Sep. 4, with a big focus on risks and policy to support the technology. 

SME IPO of Basilic Fly Studio is receiving a stellar response from investors with the overall subscription at 110 times on the second day of the bidding process. The issue, which opened on September 1, comprises fresh equity of up to Rs 60.5 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of 6 lakh shares. The company plans to raise about Rs 66 crore from the IPO, which closes tomorrow. According to NSE data, the issue has received bids for 56 crore shares worth Rs 5,507 crore on the second day against just 50.96 lakh shares on offer. Basilic Fly Studio is a visual effects (VFX) Chennai-based studio with subsidiaries operating in Canada and the UK, which specialises in creating visual experiences that captivate audiences around the world. It holds proficiency in the VFX industry and has delivered high-quality VFX solutions for movies, TV, net series, and commercials. According to market sources, the company's shares are commanding a huge premium of Rs 270 in the unlisted market. The company is offering shares for a price band of Rs 92-97 apiece, and investors can bid for 1,200 shares in 1 lot. About 50% of the offer is reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 15% for non-institutional investors and the rest 35% is set aside for retail investors. For the year ended March 2023, the company has recorded revenues of Rs 78.95 crore and net profit of Rs 27.74 crore. The net proceeds from the public offer will be used to set up a studio in Hyderabad, adding infra to strengthen existing facilities and general corporate purposes. GVR Capital Advisors is acting as the lead manager for the issue, while Purva Sharegistry is the registrar. The final allotment will likely be made on September 8.

Rishi Sunak on Monday strongly defended his record in government, dubbing allegations that he cut education funding as «completely and utterly wrong» amid an ongoing crisis over a light-weight concrete that is causing school closures in England and Wales. Thousands of pupils face disruption at the start of a new term this week after over 100 schools face full or partial closure because of concerns about reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which is prone to collapse. A former senior civil servant in the Department for Education (DfE) alleged that it was under Sunak's term as Chancellor that the UK Treasury failed to properly fund school rebuilding schemes. «I think that is completely and utterly wrong.

Olivia Dean, the rising British music star known for her exceptional debut album, «Messy,» has exciting news for her fans across the UK and Europe. She's embarking on a headline tour in spring 2024, aptly named the "Messy Tour," to celebrate her album's remarkable success and its well-deserved Mercury Prize nomination.

By Maggie Fick

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is exploring the potential for using blockchain to offer extensive trading of traditional financial assets, a company executive told the Financial Times on Monday.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) — Leaders of the world's richest and most powerful countries will attend the two-day G20 Summit in India's capital New Delhi starting September 9.

MUNICH (Reuters) — Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng (NYSE:XPEV) plans to expand into more European markets, including Germany, Britain and France in 2024, president Brian Gu told reporters on Monday at the IAA (NYSE:IAA) Mobility motor show in Munich.

Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas have shocked showbiz. The Game of Thrones actor and the Jonas Brothers singer was one of the most loved up couples in Hollywood, and also have two daughters together. Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas were blessed with a baby girl – their first child together – in July 2020. She was named Willa. The couple welcomed their second baby girl in July 2022, whose name is not known yet. Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner have been married for four years, after a surprise wedding in Las Vegas in 2019. But now, as reported on TMZ, the couple has been having some “serious problems” for the last six months. Their two daughters have mostly been with Joe Jonas on tour with the Jonas Brothers, and he has been taking care of them “pretty much all of the time”. Sophie had also joined Joe on tour for some time and was seen with sister-in-law Priyanka Chopra Jonas at the concert. Page Six confirmed the news of Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner’s divorce, adding that “Joe is exploring the best options for his future”. Fans had recently spotted both Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner without their wedding ring and assumed something was wrong between the couple.

According to the FT, Murray Roos, head of capital markets at the LSE Group, spoke to it had decided to press forward with the venture after 12-months of internal debate on the potential for a blockchain-powered trading venue.

'Working with P1 allows us to launch as a nimble startup but with the support and resources of a larger firm.'

Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, born on September 5, 1888, in a small town in the erstwhile Madras Presidency, was a distinguished philosopher and a renowned teacher.

Amitabh Bachchan's distinctive voice. Initially available in Hindi and English, PhonePe has planned to extend this industry-first celebrity voice feature to other languages in the near future. Vivek Lohcheb, Head of Offline Business at PhonePe, expressed his enthusiasm about this new feature in a press release, stating, «We are delighted to launch a unique celebrity voice feature for our SmartSpeaker for merchant partners across India. Mr. Bachchan’s voice has an instant and universal recall, and it resonates with millions of Indians across the country.» «Being a popular Indian app used by one in four Indians, we believe this collaboration will further elevate the popularity of the PhonePe SmartSpeaker for merchants and customers alike,» added Lohcheb.

The National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) — an initiative led by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and 247 Indian banking companies — is on the lookout for a seasoned blockchain technologist to head and investigate opportunities for blockchain in current-day payment systems.

A global survey featuring respondents from 15 countries indicates that Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, has the most cryptocurrency-aware population in the world.