Basically the bare minimum amount of data is stored in Postgres. Many of the locations are stateless, or it's okay if they are wiped on server restart (like NPC shop inventories, since they can just be regenerated on server startup, so they only exist in server memory). And most of the game world is just included in the large static bundle (item names and descriptions, dialogue, etc.).
The main data stored in Postgres are things that must be durable, like your items, currency, unlocked avatars, friends list, gallery, garden, guilds, friendship levels with villagers, profile information, personal shops, and things like that. But even in these cases integer identifiers are used (for things like item IDs and avatar IDs), so the tables remain very lean.
What do you mean by classical update style? I'm not sure if you're still referring to Postgres or if you're talking about the minigames (like does the update loop run at a fixed internal?), or maybe something else entirely?
from a surface level personal research the money is not eaten by farmers, that in reality make a pittance but from a "rice consurtium", a middlemen that should represent farmer interest but in reality is basically a monopolistic corporation.
all benefitted, dem aligned media benefitted even more in crusading against Trump as it brought headlines and attention to opinion pieces. Ironically this reinforced Trump and allowed him to present himself as a victim of a witch hunt
TLDR: some scammers impersonating the difense minister got 1 or more entrepeneurs to send them big payments quickly. The public discourse is around the "normalcy" of private entrepeneurs about sending money to elected officials
The situation was a bit more complex: the "minister" asks help to transfer some money in an Hong Kong bank account to release some Italians detained somewhere. Also logos of Bank of Italy was used.