The United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) launch the AI for Good Global Commission, a new body that places heads of state, technology executives and UN agency chiefs in a single governance forum.

Copper prices are trading close to record highs at the end of June 2026, while gold drifts lower from the peak it reaches in January.

Image credit: Sony. Sony released the Xperia 1 VIII in Europe on 19 June, and the phone stands out for an unusual reason. It keeps a set of features that almost every other flagship brand has dropped.

Fox Corporation has agreed to acquire the streaming platform Roku. The deal would make the combined business the third largest player in US television by share of viewing and is expected to close in the first half of 2027.

Image: NASA/Bill Stafford. NASA names the four astronauts assigned to Artemis III and confirms the mission has been redefined as a 2027 Earth-orbit test of docking with commercial lunar landers, with the crewed Moon landing now planned for 2028.

The FIFA World Cup has always been a showcase for the world's best football talent, but in 2026 it is also emerging as a showcase for some of the world's most advanced technologies.

Brazil is pushing to become a major supplier of rare earths and other critical minerals for the energy transition, but its mining regulator it's unable to keep pace with a surge in exploration interest.

Image credit: Nvidia. At the Computex trade show in Taipei on 1 June, chief executive Jensen Huang unveils the RTX Spark, the company's first processor built to run a personal computer rather than a data centre.

Image credit: Nasa. NASA's experimental X-59 aircraft breaks the sound barrier for the first time, a milestone that could help overturn a decades-old ban on supersonic flight over land.