British health officials believe that eggs imported from Ukraine could be responsible for a major salmonella outbreak in the UK, The Telegraph has reported, citing a source.

A total of 259 people in the country have been infected with the bacteria over the past year, with one of them dying, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said in a statement on Thursday.

The agency stressed that the exact source of the contaminated products has yet to be established, but added that the outbreak “could all be associated with imported eggs.”

However, a senior official involved in the investigation of a salmonella outbreak in the Netherlands, where over a hundred cases have been registered, told The Telegraph that the “working hypothesis” among his British counterparts is that the unsafe eggs were of Ukrainian origin.

Almost half of the victims, ranging from babies to people in their 90s, required hospitalization, the statement read.

Salmonella causes intestinal infection, typically resulting in diarrhea, vomiting, fever, and abdominal cramps. While most patients recover without specific treatment, the disease can be life-threatening for people with weakened immune systems.

Investigators believe the people were infected after consuming eggs served in “small cafes, restaurants, and takeaway businesses,” rather than eating at home, UKHSA said.

The UK produces most of its eggs at home, with UKHSA assuring that they are perfectly safe. The country imports only 11% of its eggs, with Ukraine being the largest supplier, accounting for almost a third of them.

The exemption from tariffs on Ukrainian eggs exported to Britain, introduced after the escalation between Ukraine and Russia in February 2022, will remain in place until 2028, despite the EU reimposing barriers last year.

In July, EU health authorities linked Ukrainian-made instant noodles to a salmonella outbreak that affected more than 100 people across over a dozen member states.

A few months before that, Azerbaijan’s food safety agency reported discovering the bacteria in a 4.9-ton batch of frozen chicken coming from Ukraine.

A US court has struck down the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic, ruling that it illegally sanctioned the AI developer for refusing to let its Claude model be used for certain military operations.

In a 59-page ruling issued on Thursday, US District Judge Rita Lin said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority by designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security.” She also argued that the move amounted to unlawful retaliation under the First Amendment and deprived Anthropic of due process under the Fifth.

“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote.
Lin said the government had sought to make a public example of Anthropic for its “arrogance” in criticizing Washington, adding that Hegseth’s supply-chain designation violated the statute invoked by the Pentagon and was “arbitrary and capricious.”

However, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued in February that while he supports the use of Claude for military ends, it should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or guiding fully autonomous weapons because its current frontier models are not reliable enough for the latter task.

Anthropic vowed to challenge the designation, saying such treatment had historically only been reserved for US adversaries. It sued in March, alleging that Washington had retaliated against its protected speech and denied it a chance to contest the allegations before imposing the sanctions.

Hegseth, however, stood his ground, comparing Anthropic’s red lines to “Boeing giving us airplanes and telling us who we can shoot at,” and calling Amodei an “ideological lunatic.”

In the ruling, Lin stressed that the Pentagon “is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice” and remains free to abandon Claude if Anthropic’s conditions do not meet its requirements. Yet the Pentagon itself had been reluctant to lose access to the model, with one defense official telling Axios in February that “the problem for these guys is they are that good.”

A separate lawsuit from Anthropic is also pending in Washington, DC over a supply chain risk designation that could lead to its exclusion from civilian government contracts.

Norway’s King Harald V has died at the age of 89, the royal palace announced on Friday.

The monarch, who had reigned since 1991, died peacefully at an Oslo hospital, the palace said.

Harald will be succeeded by his only son, Haakon VIII, 53, with his wife, Mette-Marit, becoming Norway’s new queen.

The succession comes after the king’s final years were overshadowed by a series of scandals involving members of his family. Mette-Marit faced scrutiny over her past ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, while her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, was convicted of rape.

The kimg had been hospitalized with a blood disorder on August 17. His health deteriorated during treatment, with the palace describing his condition as “extremely serious” on Thursday.

Members of the royal family canceled their official engagements and gathered at Harald’s bedside during his final days, while members of the public laid flowers outside the palace, according to local media.

Despite the controversies surrounding his family, Harald remained a popular figure in Norway and was credited with helping modernize the monarchy, including by marrying a commoner and increasing transparency around royal spending.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has argued that he should not be seen as tainted by past association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The billionaire addressed his links with the late financier as a source of reputational baggage in an interview with Axios on Thursday, insisting people should not let the controversy overshadow his current positions on major issues, such as AI and global health.

“I made mistakes. I’ve changed,” Gates said. “I do think the record is clear, and people can just judge me on the record.”

Gates has denied involvement in Epstein’s criminal activity and told Congress that the infamous pedophile later attempted to blackmail him over extramarital affairs.

The tech mogul called his dealings with Epstein a “huge mistake,” insisting they were limited and motivated by an attempt to raise money for philanthropic projects.

This week Gates also released a sweeping essay on the coming “turbulent AI era” and the shift in his attitude to the technology. Artificial intelligence could become either “the greatest equalizer ever invented” or “the worst source of injustice,” he wrote, warning that governments remain dangerously unprepared for the social and economic upheaval ahead.

He acknowledged his “potential bias” and conceded that he has “benefited enormously” from the tech industry, retains financial ties to the sector and works with Microsoft and other AI companies through the Gates Foundation.

Gates is now warning that AI could unleash disruption on an entirely different scale. Unlike previous technological revolutions, he argues, it can substitute directly for human cognition and rapidly replace workers across law, medicine, customer service, software and manufacturing. Without the right policies, he predicts, there will still be some new jobs, but “far fewer than exist today.”

Eventually, Gates cautioned, the danger may come from the machines themselves: increasingly powerful systems “could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control.”

It is not the first time Gates has sounded the alarm about a looming global threat. In a widely viewed 2015 TED talk, he warned that the world was badly unprepared for the next major epidemic.

This time, Gates argues there may be even less room to slow down. While saying he would support a credible international plan to restrain AI development, he concluded that “geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead.”

US President Donald Trump has officially renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” as trade-related tensions between Canada and the United States continue to escalate.

The premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, told Trump to “kiss my a**” this week and threatened to cut electricity supplies to the US.

“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately, to Lake America,” Trump declared in the Oval Office on Thursday before signing an executive order that requires federal agencies to use the new name on government maps, contracts, documents and communications.

The change was swiftly put into effect, with Trump sharing a letter from the US Geological Survey confirming that the federal Geographic Names Information System had already been updated.

The renaming caps a bitter week in which the trade dispute between Washington and Ottawa rapidly descended into personal insults and threats. The confrontation erupted after negotiations collapsed and Washington imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian imports.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded almost immediately, threatening to withhold or sharply raise the price of oil, potash and uranium exports and saying Ontario was prepared to revive a surcharge on electricity sent to the US, or even cut power exports altogether.

“Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!” Trump fired back. Ford, who was holding a press conference at the time, doubled down, saying: “I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has insisted that his countrymen will continue to use the historic name, noting that “Ontario” derives from an Indigenous word predating both countries. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has likewise said her state would not adopt “Lake America.”

Washington cannot force Canada or international organizations to recognize the change, but it can dictate terminology across the US federal government.

On his first day back in office in January 2025, Trump similarly ordered the Gulf of Mexico renamed the “Gulf of America” for federal purposes – and suggested Thursday that another geographic rebranding could be next.

“We have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,” he said. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has instructed its employees not to refer to the 9/11 attacks as “terrorist,” according to several media reports.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. According to the official account, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger airliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and a third into the Pentagon outside Washington, DC. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew attempted to wrest control from the hijackers.

The attacks prompted then-US President George W. Bush to launch the ‘war on terror’ and send American troops into Afghanistan, beginning a conflict that would last two decades.

The Toronto Sun reported on Wednesday that CBC Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust Basem Boshra had circulated a confidential memo instructing reporters and editors not to “refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”

“The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed,” the memo reportedly stated.

The spokesperson said the memo was a routine reminder of CBC policy on the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’, which journalists may use when attributed to government officials, authorities, experts, or politicians.

CBC News editor in chief and general manager Brodie Fenlon has previously explained that the broadcaster “does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism,” arguing that the terms are so politically and emotionally loaded that they “can end up being impediments to our journalism.”

The reported guidance comes as relations between Canada and the US have deteriorated amid an escalating trade war. On Tuesday, Ottawa announced retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on around 700 American products after US President Donald Trump imposed a new round of duties on Canada and threatened further punitive measures.

British state broadcaster the BBC this week ran a major story drumming up the alleged Russia threat and supposed looming retaliatory attacks on UK drone factories supplying Ukraine. The chilly warning purportedly came from a top Russian official – except that the individual in question has not been one in over three decades.

At first glance, the piece titled “UK drone factories may face attacks from ‘unknown sources,’ says Kremlin adviser” looked legit, based on comments made on BBC Newsnight by Andrey Fedorov. The broadcaster presented the interviewee as a heavyweight Russian official, describing him as a “Kremlin adviser” and “Russia’s former deputy foreign minister.”

The latter is partially true: Fedorov was the deputy minister in the RSFSR, the Russian republic of the USSR, between October 1990 and October 1991 prior to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. The other claim, however, is completely false. Fedorov used to be an adviser to Russia’s vice president until late 1993, the same year the vice president position was abolished, and has not held any public office since. Over the past decade, he has been best known as a political commentator and a media personality, frequenting assorted Russian political talk shows.

BBC tries to hide fake news

The piece survived for around five hours on the BBC website before it was quietly amended. Fedorov was ‘demoted’ to a “pro-Kremlin commentator who frequently appears on Russian television,” yet no official retraction of the initial claim was made. The description, while still debatable, given that Fedorov is known for frequently spelling doom and gloom for Moscow, citing his purported high-ranking sources at home and overseas, is not explicitly untrue.

The BBC also did not do a particularly good job of purging the fake, which survived on several of its platforms. A BBC Newsnight Facebook post on the matter still cryptically describes Fedorov as a “President Putin ally” at the moment of the publication, while its post on X claims the commentator “advises President Putin.”

Fake spills all over British media and beyond

The BBC interview with Fedorov was spread across British media alongside his false depiction as a “Putin adviser.” Unlike the source, outlets that reprinted the fake news never bothered to amend it.

Some outlets even managed to outperform the original. The Express, for instance, described Fedorov simultaneously as a “high-ranking Kremlin official” and “high-level Kremlin insider.”

HuffPost UK also described the political commentator as a “presidential adviser” and even ‘promoted’ him to a “key ally to Vladimir Putin.”

The fake also spread beyond the UK media, making it to Al Jazeera with minimal amendments. Following the BBC, Al Jazeera falsely described Fedorov as “an adviser to the Kremlin and a former deputy foreign minister.” 

It also made it to Ukrainian media, which generally takes its British counterparts at face value and attempts no independent fact-checking.

Are the fakes bound to roll on?

This was actually not the first time the BBC falsely presented the Russian political commentator. In January of this year, Fedorov made remarks to the BBC’s Radio 4 on the US military hunt for the Marinera oil tanker and was presented as a “Kremlin adviser and former Russian deputy foreign minister.”

The comments spread widely across British media at the time, apparently without any fact-checking, and remain readily available in news articles from major outlets such The Times and The Independent.

Dozens of immigrants who disappeared from UK asylum hotels as children in 2023 are still unaccounted for, a parliamentary report released on Thursday has found.

Some 472 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children – some as young as 12 – went missing from Home Office-run accommodation for migrant minors.

According to the Director of Children’s Social Care at the Department for Education, Helen Waite, 432 have since been located, leaving 40 unaccounted for. Most have since turned 18, but two remain underage.

The committee “welcomed” that most had been found but said it remains “extremely concerned” about those still missing. It urged the Home Office to detail efforts to locate them, demanding updates every three months. Angela Eagle, then border security and asylum minister, told the committee last year that some of those found were “located in exploitative situations and may have been trafficked.”

At its peak in June 2023, more than 51,000 asylum seekers were housed in over 400 Home Office hotels across the UK. Human rights groups argued the facilities were unsuitable for children. In 2024, the High Court ruled that placement of unaccompanied minors in hotels was unlawful, and dedicated facilities were subsequently closed.

Immigration has become an increasingly contentious political issue in Britain amid continued Channel crossings, protests over asylum accommodation, high-profile migrant-linked crimes and renewed scrutiny of the country’s grooming-gangs scandal. The controversy contributed to mounting pressure on former Prime Minister Keir Starmer before his resignation earlier this summer. His successor, Andy Burnham, has pledged to stop small-boat crossings but declined to set a deadline.

Pentagon investigators reviewing the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan have uncovered classified documents that they say were deliberately hidden from previous probes. The discovery comes amid long-running accusations that the administration of former US President Joe Biden concealed failures surrounding the operation.

Sean Parnell, chairman of the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel, said on Wednesday that his team had recovered “highly relevant classified documents” that “should have been disclosed.”

The material had been “stashed and hidden away in safes where they would not be found,” Parnell said in a video statement on X, five years after the deadly bombing of the Abbey Gate entrance to Kabul airport.

“After the team reviewed these documents, it became clear why someone tried to hide them,” he said.

Parnell did not disclose what the documents actually contain, who allegedly concealed them, or whether they relate to any specific decisions made by Biden or his officials.

However, he said his panel would follow the evidence “wherever it leads and to whoever it touches,” and promised veterans and the families of those killed “the full picture” of how and why decisions were made during the disastrous withdrawal.

Images of desperate Afghans clinging to a departing US military aircraft became emblematic of the withdrawal, which ended a 20-year American military presence with the Taliban back in power.

Republicans have since repeatedly accused Biden officials of ignoring or downplaying warnings that a complete US withdrawal could trigger the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and security forces, and of waiting too long to launch a full-scale evacuation.

House investigators have also consistently raised concerns that potentially relevant photographs, video, and other material from the evacuation were missing, deleted, or otherwise unavailable during subsequent probes. They have accused Biden-era officials of withholding information and frustrating congressional attempts to establish exactly how key decisions were made.

Biden administration officials have denied any cover-up and argued that the unexpectedly rapid collapse of the Afghan government severely complicated the evacuation.

Denmark will pay around $47,000 to each Greenlandic woman who can attest to having been implanted with a contraceptive device without consent while Copenhagen controlled the island’s healthcare system. Around 4,500 women may qualify under the scheme.

The Danish parliament approved the payout of 300,000 kroner by a large majority on Thursday, with the compensation to be made tax-free regardless of the contraceptive method used or the number of incidents.

To receive the money, the claimant should make a sworn statement and provide enough detail to make the incident plausible under the scheme. Providing medical records is not required because many of the alleged incidents occurred decades ago and the relevant documentation may no longer exist.

The inquiry also collected testimony from 354 women describing 488 contraceptive incidents. Of 410 IUD incidents in those testimonies, 300 involved either no consent or no clear consent, 47 involved consent, and 63 contained insufficient information. The testimony also included 185 girls who had been under 18 at the time.

According to the inquiry, another reason for the “spiral scandal” was Denmark’s drive to impose its ideas about family planning on Greenlandic society. While Denmark has favored small nuclear families, Greenlandic society has to a large extent relied on large family and kin networks.

Greenland’s former Prime Minister Mute Inequnaaluk Bourup Egede has described Denmark’s actions as “genocide.” While Copenhagen has not agreed with the characterization, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen apologized on Denmark’s behalf last year, admitting that Greenlandic girls and women had suffered “systematic discrimination” because they were Greenlanders while calling the controversy a “dark chapter” in the country’s history.

The US has announced Operation Economic Outcast, which it calls “an unprecedented, whole-of-government, economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran” and compares to D-Day in its effort to end “the Iranian threat.”

The US Treasury has expanded the scope of potential secondary sanctions across five areas of the Iranian economy, including digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. At the same time, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has added nearly 60 companies, individuals, and vessels to its sanctions lists over alleged links to Iranian oil revenue, procurement for missile and nuclear programs, cyberoperations, and the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Five tankers have been designated as blocked property, while several licenses covering certain remittances and educational and cultural exchanges have been suspended.

Despite the forceful rhetoric accompanying the announcement, Washington has not imposed a comprehensive ban on all trade with Iran. The new sectoral determinations do not mean that every foreign company conducting a transaction with an Iranian counterpart will automatically be sanctioned. Rather, they provide the US administration with legal grounds for future enforcement, while specific penalties will continue to be imposed selectively. Washington is building a mechanism for more sustained pressure and preparing to direct that mechanism increasingly against Tehran’s foreign partners.

At the same time, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program has renewed attention to its offer of up to $10 million dollars for information on senior IRGC leaders and associated members of the Iranian establishment, including Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The reward was first announced in March 2026 and has now become part of a revived psychological and intelligence campaign against Iran’s leadership and security apparatus.

The turn towards economic warfare comes after nearly six months of fighting. American and Israeli strikes inflicted substantial damage on Iran, destroyed parts of its military infrastructure and weakened elements of its regional network, but they failed to force Tehran to surrender or change its policies. Iran has retained missile and drone capabilities, the ability to threaten installations across the Gulf, and, most importantly, considerable influence over maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The military campaign has imposed a heavy cost on the US. According to the Pentagon, direct expenditure had reached at least $37.5 billion dollars by July. Sources and estimates by American analysts suggest that the US expended around 65% of its Patriot interceptor stockpile during the first five months of the war, while the number of available THAAD interceptors fell by at least 38% and the use of Tomahawk cruise missiles approached half of the national inventory. Domestic support for the war, meanwhile, remained low at approximately 35%.

With this in mind, the economic offensive doesn’t look like a demonstration of Washington’s confidence anymore – rather, it is an acknowledgement that further military action is getting unsustainable. The US needs time to rebuild its weapons stocks, reduce domestic political costs, and find an instrument capable of sustaining pressure without another expensive air campaign. Sanctions offer such an instrument because much of their immediate burden falls on foreign companies and the Iranian population, while Washington retains the ability to raise or lower the pressure at will.

Iran understands this as well. If Tehran concludes that a prolonged pause will allow the US to close its commercial and financial channels one by one, the Iranian leadership may attempt to deny Washington the time it needs through limited military escalation, renewed pressure on shipping or further strikes against regional infrastructure. Such a decision would carry enormous risks because it could once again unite the Gulf states against Iran, yet retaining control over the tempo of the crisis remains one of Tehran’s most important advantages.

Many Iranian organizations are already isolated by previous rounds of sanctions, and the new operation’s threat is directed mostly at Iran’s foreign partners. Companies and banks involved in the five designated sectors could face the freezing of assets under US jurisdiction, prohibitions on transactions with American citizens and entities, restrictions on correspondent accounts, and effective exclusion from the dollar clearing system. For an international bank, that threat can be more dangerous than a direct fine because losing access to dollar infrastructure could paralyze a substantial share of its global business.

China, however, throws a wrench into the American model. In 2025, Chinese buyers imported an average of around 1.38 million barrels of Iranian oil per day, accounting for more than 80% of Iran’s seaborne oil exports. The trade has been sustained through independent refineries with limited exposure to the US, intermediaries, yuan settlements, and schemes that obscure the origin of individual cargoes. By August 2026, deliveries had fallen to approximately 534,000 barrels per day from 1.57 million in February, although this decline resulted more from the war and naval blockade than from Beijing’s voluntary compliance with American sanctions.

Washington has already sanctioned individual Chinese technology suppliers and smaller refiners, but the new package does not target China’s largest banks. Sanctioning them could disrupt US-China negotiations, provoke retaliation, interfere with supplies of critical goods, and accelerate the movement of bilateral trade into payment systems beyond the dollar. The answer to the question of secondary sanctions against China is deeply contradictory. The US threatens Beijing with consequences, but it remains reluctant to adopt measures capable of inflicting comparable damage on the American economy itself.

Iran’s other partners do not form a united front. The United Arab Emirates, which accounted for roughly 30 percent of Iranian imports worth about $21 billion in 2024, has already suspended financial and commercial dealings with Tehran. Türkiye, however, whose annual trade with Iran amounts to around $5 to $6 billion, has given no indication that it intends to sever economic relations, particularly since Iran provides approximately 13% of Türkiye’s gas imports. Trade between Iran and Iraq exceeded $10 billion in 2025, while Baghdad pays Tehran an estimated $4 to $5 billion annually for natural gas used in electricity generation. Abandoning these supplies quickly would risk serious domestic disruption.

Pakistan and Oman are also important. Informal trade between Iran and Pakistan is estimated at approximately $4 billion, while the two governments have set a target of $10 billion. Trade with Oman reached around $1.5 billion in 2025. India has reduced its turnover with Iran to $1.63 billion, although most of that trade consists of food and other goods that New Delhi considers humanitarian. These countries may reduce overt operations and their banks will become more cautious, but they are unlikely to abandon commerce that supports energy security, supplies border regions, and preserves strategically important transport links.

Iran began preparing for prolonged isolation long before the current war, building its response around a gradual dispersal of trade and logistics. In the oil sector, the Goreh-Jask pipeline is particularly important because it carries crude to the Gulf of Oman and permits exports without passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Its designed capacity is 1 million barrels per day, although its effective capacity is estimated at closer to 300,000 barrels and actual shipments through Jask remained far lower before the war. The route cannot yet replace the terminals of the Persian Gulf, but it can preserve a portion of Iranian exports during a blockade.

The port of Chabahar provides access to the Arabian Sea for non-oil trade, while overland crossings connect Iran with Iraq, Türkiye, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. After the crisis began, Pakistan opened six designated road routes linking its cities of Karachi and Gwadar, as well as Port Qasim, with the Iranian border crossings at Gabd and Taftan. Gas pipelines to Türkiye and Iraq allow part of Iran’s energy exports to continue without tankers, while border trade, barter, and settlements in national currencies reduce dependence on major international banks.

Maritime exports are simultaneously moving deeper into the grey economy. The methods include ship-to-ship transfers, the disabling of automatic identification systems, repeated changes of flags and ownership, the relabeling of crude oil, and long chains of intermediary companies. Digital assets and gold cannot support the entire foreign trade of a large country, but they can be used for individual payments, component procurement, and the preservation of reserves. The new sanctions will increase the cost of every such operation, but they are unlikely to eliminate a system that has been developing for decades.

When economic coercion undermines its own foundation

America’s capacity to impose secondary sanctions rests on the central role of the dollar in global trade. According to the International Monetary Fund, the dollar accounted for 57.13% of disclosed global foreign exchange reserves in the first quarter of 2026. Neither the yuan, the euro nor the existing BRICS platforms currently provide a comparable combination of liquidity, legal infrastructure and financial market depth.

Yet the dominance of a currency is not invulnerable, especially when access to it is increasingly used as an instrument of coercion. Every new threat against a foreign bank, tariff imposed on a trading partner, or attempt to force a third country to abandon an economically necessary contract increases the value of alternative mechanisms. Settlements in national currencies, central bank digital currencies, gold, regional clearing arrangements, and projects such as BRICS Pay remain fragmented, but sanctions are giving them both a political purpose and growing commercial demand.

The resilience of Iranian society, shaped by the war with Iraq, more than four decades of sanctions, repeated currency crises, and the constant threat of external pressure, should not be discounted either. Iranians have learned to adapt economic life to inflation, shortages, and instability, while the state has developed mechanisms for allocating scarce resources, using informal markets, and transferring much of the burden onto the private sector.

This does not mean that the new sanctions will be painless. They may accelerate inflation, reduce employment, restrict access to technology, and deepen public discontent. Yet declining living standards will not automatically lead to political revolt. External pressure often strengthens the authorities’ narrative, allows them to attribute the crisis to a foreign enemy, and increases the population’s dependence on state-controlled systems of distribution.

Even if implemented with maximum severity, Operation Economic Outcast is unlikely to weaken Iran rapidly or provoke an immediate mass uprising against its leadership. A prolonged struggle is far more probable, with Washington raising the cost of Tehran’s foreign relations while Iran expands alternative routes, exerts pressure in the Strait of Hormuz, and encourages its partners to adopt new settlement mechanisms.

Residents of the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta tore down makeshift migrant shelters as police fired rubber bullets during escalating protests over the migration crisis, videos posted online purport to show. Thousands of migrants remain in the territory nearly a month after a record mass crossing from neighboring Morocco, with many seeking asylum in the EU.

The crisis erupted in late July, when around 72,000 people crossed or attempted to cross into Ceuta, many by swimming around border barriers. Most were returned, but Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has said around 5,000 remain. Ceuta President Juan Jesus Vivas has put the figure as high as 9,000.

Thousands of residents took to the streets on Wednesday for a second day of protests, demanding faster deportations and criticizing Madrid’s handling of the crisis. Demonstrators carrying Spanish flags marched toward government buildings chanting “No invasion – expulsion.”

Protesters later headed toward El Trampolin beach, where migrants had erected makeshift shelters. Police intervened to keep the groups apart and fired rubber bullets as tensions escalated, according to media reports. Several shelters were torn down during the confrontation.

The influx has strained the resources of the tiny Spanish territory with a population of roughly 84,000 people, with thousands sleeping on beaches, in forests, and on the streets. Local authorities have struggled to provide accommodation, food, and sanitation while processing asylum claims and determining who can be returned.

Ceuta’s government has accused Madrid of failing to do enough to resolve the crisis. Police cleared about 1,500 migrants from a beach last Thursday and transferred them to temporary facilities, but hundreds reportedly returned within hours amid fears of deportation.

The mass crossing has also left scores of migrants dead. At least 88 bodies recovered following the influx were being buried at Ceuta’s Muslim cemetery last week, with only nine identified, according to media.

Ceuta, along with Melilla, forms the EU’s only land border with Africa and has long been a destination for migrants seeking to reach Europe. The latest influx was fueled by economic hardship in Morocco and viral claims that Spain had effectively opened its border.

Spanish and Moroccan authorities have blamed smugglers and online misinformation for encouraging the crossings. Morocco has since reinforced security around Ceuta, while Madrid has moved to speed up asylum decisions and the return of migrants with no right to remain.

A Turkish-owned cargo vessel carrying fresh vegetables to Russia has been struck by drones in the Black Sea, leaving five crew members injured, according to Turkish media.

Ukraine intensified drone attacks on Russian commercial traffic in the Black Sea last month as part of a failed campaign intended to exert economic pressure on Moscow and force it to accept Kiev’s terms in the conflict.

The Cameroon-flagged Lider Bordo Mavi was struck by three drones off the Russian port of Tuapse, sparking a fire on board, according to Turkish media reports. Some news outlets suggested the overnight strikes were part of Kiev’s campaign against Russian maritime trade.

The ship belongs to a ten-vessel fleet operated by the Trabzon-based shipping company Lider Gida and departed the Turkish city port of Samsun on Tuesday. It was carrying fresh vegetables and had diverted to Tuapse from its original destination, the Russian port of Novorossiysk.

Türkiye “tested” by attacks on cargo ships

Erkut Celebi, head of the Trabzon Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the incident was the latest in a string of drone attacks on Turkish commercial vessels in the Black Sea and called on Ankara to provide financial support to affected companies.

“Türkiye is clearly being tested,” Celebi told reporters, warning that the attacks were threatening Black Sea trade and placing mounting pressure on Turkish exporters and shipowners.

Türkiye has remained largely neutral in the Ukraine conflict and maintained commercial ties with both Russia and Ukraine, drawing criticism from Kiev’s Western backers.

Ankara played a major role in negotiating safe passage for ships through the Black Sea since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. The arrangement largely held, despite occasional attacks on vessels in neutral waters that Moscow attributed to Ukrainian operations.

Russian officials warned that Kiev was playing with fire by attacking other countries’ commercial vessels. After the latest escalation, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of opening Pandora’s box. Russian retaliatory strikes have effectively cut off shipments through Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Moscow has indicated that it does not intend to restore the previous arrangement.

“Our Turkish colleagues are once again proposing that some form of agreement be reached so that shipping is not subjected to attacks. Yet it was not us who initiated these hostilities,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

A catastrophic flash flood on Wednesday morning wreaked massive destruction upon Nepal’s northern mountainous region, bordering China. The torrent of water, rock, and mud wiped out entire villages, washed away roads and destroyed power infrastructure and dams.

Thousands of people are missing, Nepalese Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal has said, among them pilgrims to Mansarovar in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus. “Town after town has been wiped out within hours,” he said. Nearly 400 of the 579 tourists missing are Indians.  

Nepal’s army has pressed in helicopters to rescue people trapped in mud and in buildings that survived the deluge, and deliver emergency supplies. More than 100 people have been rescued so far, including foreigners. 

In China, where the border customs post at Gyirong Port was wiped out by the rushing water and rocks, 558 people are missing – 260 of them foreigners. However, rescue efforts are hindered because of the lack of road connectivity and the thick mud covering the area.

Iranian businesses are increasingly turning to discounts and installment payments to keep customers shopping, as sanctions and the economic fallout from the US-Israeli war squeeze household budgets, RT’s Salman Khujuri reports.

The trend comes nearly six months after the US and Israel launched the war against Iran in late February. Large-scale fighting has subsided under a series of temporary agreements, but efforts to reach a lasting settlement have stalled as Washington ramps up economic pressure on Tehran.

Businesses in the Iranian capital are adapting to soaring prices and falling purchasing power, with some allowing customers to spread purchases over several payments.

Bobak Shirpour, who runs a large clothing retail business in Tehran, told RT on Thursday that worsening economic conditions after the war and years of sanctions prompted his company to seek suppliers offering better prices and quality. With many larger families unable to pay in cash, the retailer also introduced discounts and installment plans.

Shoppers interviewed by RT said installment plans have become increasingly useful as household budgets come under pressure. “They allow people to buy things they can’t afford to pay for in cash and pay in four installments instead. It gives people some peace of mind and helps them meet some of their basic needs despite these difficult circumstances,” one customer said.

Iranian households have been cutting spending on food and other essentials as inflation and the falling rial erode purchasing power, according to recent media reports. Installment shopping has also expanded to Iranian companies offering deferred-payment services as consumers struggle with the rising cost of living, the Financial Times reported earlier this month. 

Watch RT’s full report below:

Two employees at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport have died in a rare malaria outbreak caused by infected mosquitoes believed to have been accidentally brought in by plane from a malaria-endemic country.

The outbreak began in early July, according to the Frankfurt Public Health Department. The first worker died shortly afterward, with the malaria diagnosis confirmed posthumously. Authorities traced the outbreak to the airport, where operator Fraport set traps and captured several mosquitoes, sending them for genetic analysis to determine their origin. Staff were advised to seek medical attention if symptoms developed.

In mid-July, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s federal disease-control agency, confirmed four cases among airport employees.

“The affected individuals fell ill between July 4 and 6, 2026,” the RKI wrote in its Epidemiological Bulletin. “It is assumed that the infection was transmitted by an infected Anopheles mosquito imported by plane.”

On Wednesday, Frankfurt health authorities announced that a second infected worker had died. They insisted, however, that “for the population of Frankfurt, the risk is considered very, very low.”

“The disease is not transmissible from person to person but is always transmitted by mosquitoes,” the authorities said in a statement to German media. They did not confirm the total number of cases but said those affected were receiving treatment.

Frankfurt health chief Peter Tinnemann similarly sought to reassure residents, telling DPA news agency that “the risk to the Frankfurt population is insignificant.”

The disease is concentrated mainly in tropical regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. The latest WHO data shows an estimated 610,000 people died from malaria worldwide in 2024 out of roughly 282 million cases – around 9 million more infections than the previous year. More than half of the deaths occurred in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Niger.

The Landesweingut Kloster Pforta, one of Germany’s oldest wineries, faces insolvency by 2027, according to an expert report commissioned by the state government. Its troubles, from an unsustainable business model to high staffing costs, come amid a wider German wine slump driven by falling consumption and cheaper imports.

Owned by Saxony-Anhalt, Kloster Pforta is one of Europe’s oldest continuously operating wineries. Cistercian monks founded the monastery in 1137 and planted the Pfortenser Koeppelberg vineyard in 1154. The state took ownership after German reunification in 1993, but the estate still grows rare historic varieties, including Weisser Heunisch and White Elbling, alongside Riesling, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Gris.

An independent report by auditing firm Ecovis, cited by the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday, found that the winery can no longer secure credit or maintain liquidity on its own.

Auditors blamed high payroll costs, inefficient vineyard use, and weak sales and marketing, compounded by a disastrous 2024 harvest and the wider wine-market slump. To avoid bankruptcy, Kloster Pforta now plans to halve its vineyards, cut staff, and receive a €2 million injection under a four-year restructuring plan.

German wine has been in decline for years. German Wine Institute (DWI) data earlier this year showed that annual consumption fell from a Covid-era peak of 24.3 liters per adult to 21.5 liters – below pre-pandemic levels.

Cheap imports add to the squeeze: Spanish bulk wine, for example, enters Germany at just €0.91 ($1.06) per liter, making it difficult for domestic producers to compete at the €1-to-€3-per-bottle end of the market.

Wine woes mirror Germany’s wider slump

The winery’s troubles come amid a broader German slump, with near-zero growth, high energy costs, and business insolvencies at a 20-year high. Since moving away from Russian energy in 2022, Germany has turned to costlier supplies, while major manufacturers have closed factories amid weaker demand.

Germany is considering pouring funds into Britain’s nuclear program as European NATO nations grow increasingly hesitant to rely on the US nuclear umbrella, the Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

German officials are discussing financial and industrial support for Britain’s Trident submarine nuclear weapons program rather than pursuing a national arsenal, with one source citing Germany’s World War II guilt as a factor, the newspaper said.

“We have a very strong interest that the existing nuclear powers in Europe extend their capabilities,” one well-placed source told the newspaper.

Berlin is reportedly exploring whether German money or industry could contribute to the next generation of British nuclear submarines, missiles, or uranium enrichment for future warheads. One British defense source, however, questioned whether German companies possess the highly specialized experience needed to build and maintain Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet, which has been reeling under maintenance and manpower issues.

“Policymakers are waking up each morning and asking themselves what the hell the Americans are going to do tomorrow,” a German diplomatic source told The Telegraph.

Rather than respond by seeking a national nuclear weapon, Berlin has increasingly looked for ways to bind Germany into the British and French deterrents, the article says.

Germany remains a non-nuclear-weapon state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is formally barred from manufacturing or controlling atomic weapons. The 1990 Two Plus Four Treaty, which paved the way for German reunification, also prohibited foreign nuclear weapons and their carriers from being stationed in the territory of the former East Germany.

Berlin nevertheless already takes part in NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements and is believed to store 20 US B61 bombs at Buchel Air Base in western Germany under US custody, with German aircraft assigned a potential role in delivering them during a potential NATO nuclear operation.

Last month, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported that at least one NATO country raised “concern about the active research and development work being carried out in Germany that has a nuclear weapons focus.”

It added that NATO specialists believe Germany could produce the necessary fissile material “within one to three months” and build a functioning nuclear explosive device “within a year” without conducting a full-scale test.

Moscow has warned that any NATO plans to buttress its nuclear umbrella are a “direct strategic threat” to Russia.

The US-Canada trade war is reaching the bathroom, with tariffs on paper products threatening to push up prices for toilet paper and other everyday essentials for Americans.

Trade talks between the two neighbors collapsed last Friday, with both sides accusing the other of making last-minute changes to a proposed comprehensive deal. US President Donald Trump immediately imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, including wine, cement, plywood, and clothing. Not to be outdone, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed to respond “dollar for dollar,” with Ottawa announcing duties of up to 50% on around 700 American products on Tuesday.

Paper products are among the hardest hit, with Canada targeting toilet paper and facial tissue with 25% duties, along with paper towels and napkins at 50%. Chemical wood pulp used to make such products also faces a 50% tariff.

Canada is the main source of US toilet paper imports, supplying $383.4 million worth in 2025 – about two-thirds of the imported total – according to US International Trade Commission data. Mexico was a distant second at $63 million. Canada is also the main foreign supplier of wood pulp to the US, including northern bleached softwood kraft pulp (NBSK), a key material in toilet paper and paper towels. Canadian pulp reportedly accounts for around 30% of US toilet paper and 50% of paper towel production.

Toilet paper is far from the only potential casualty of the trade war. Canada’s measures mirror many products targeted by Washington, with higher duties covering everything from fish, cheese, clothing, and cosmetics to steel and aluminum goods, motorcycles, smartphones, and exercise equipment. Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly said that the counter-tariffs were aimed primarily at protecting businesses while also applying political pressure ahead of the November 3 US midterm elections.

“That gives us this week. It gives us next week,” Christopher Sands, head of the Center for US-Canada Studies at Johns Hopkins University, told AP on Wednesday. “Time to take a breather and talk about how to avert an all-out trade war.”

The US has accused Chinese hackers it described as “state-backed” of breaking into NASA, the Federal Reserve, and other sensitive government networks, just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump.

Beijing rejected the allegations. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said China “opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks” and urged the US to “stop using cybersecurity issues to smear or discredit China.”

The Justice Department and FBI announced on Wednesday that they seized three internet domains linked to two hacking platforms allegedly operated by a Chinese group known as QTFY. The US authorities claimed the operation targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Senate, and several government departments, as well as hospitals, telecommunications providers, power companies, financial institutions, and defense contractors.

The latest accusations come little more than a month after Trump accused Beijing of meddling in US elections, claiming China illicitly acquired 220 million American voter files during the 2020 election cycle in what he called the “largest compromise” of election data in US history.

China dismissed that allegation as “groundless” and “entirely fabricated.” Trump’s assertions of election hacking were met with skepticism even among some of his supporters, as the documents released by the White House only showed Chinese interest in collecting publicly available or commercially obtainable American voter information.

“We spy like hell on them too,” Trump told reporters. “We do a lot of stuff to you that you don’t know about,” Trump said he told Xi, describing the two countries’ espionage activities as a “double-edged sword.”

Beijing has made similar accusations against Washington, claiming last October that the NSA conducted a years-long cyberattack on China’s National Time Service Center, which supports critical sectors including finance, energy, transportation, and defense. The NSA did not confirm or deny the allegation.

The renewed cyber accusations come ahead of Xi’s expected visit to the US on September 24. Trump said he plans to host the Chinese leader following their talks in May in Beijing, as the two sides seek to manage disputes over trade, technology, and cybersecurity, as well as the sanctions threats against nations that continue trading with Iran.

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has warned that AI and social media are eroding people’s ability to think and feel, while powerful interests exploit technology, politics, and war for profit.

Speaking to RT on Wednesday, the legendary musician welcomed Australia’s decision to bar fully AI-generated songs from its music charts, saying streaming platforms have already gutted musicians’ livelihoods with minuscule royalties while concentrating ownership and profits in the hands of Big Tech.

“So that piracy has almost destroyed everything. But if they are then allowed to use AI to produce fodder for their very tame audience who pays so much a month to get any music that they want from anywhere… Unfortunately, we know that a large number of that audience won’t be able to tell the difference between AI and Pink Floyd, or Neil Young, or Bob Dylan, or The Beatles or anything else.”

“It reduces the size of your brain and your capacity to think and your capacity to feel,” Waters said. “In fact, it reduces everything human about anybody who goes in that direction.”

“So where do you draw the line? I’m not sure,” he added. “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a factual, you know, a sort of fact-based library, if that’s all there was? But it’s not. It’s controlling our political motivations and our feelings and our emotions, and also releasing dopamine.”

“We live in a world that is controlled now by gangsterism,” he said. He cited Israel’s destruction of Palestinian communities in Gaza and the occupied territories, as one example, while accusing Washington of openly stealing Venezuela’s oil wealth through coercion.

Turning to Ukraine, Waters blamed the failure to implement the Minsk agreements and the collapse of the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, accusing Western governments of preventing a negotiated settlement.

Waters warned that the Ukraine conflict has since escalated “in a very, very dangerous way” and increasingly resembles the future of warfare, dominated by drones and missiles.

“Just who gets killed, nobody cares anymore,” Waters said, “because all they’re interested in is making money.”

Watch the full interview below

Iran has praised China for rejecting US threats to impose sanctions on countries that continue to trade with the Islamic Republic, with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf saying on Wednesday that Tehran’s strategic partnership with Beijing “needs no one’s permission.”

Ghalibaf welcomed China’s “principled statement” rejecting “illegal sanctions against Iran” in a post on X.

“The Iran-China comprehensive strategic partnership is rooted in mutual respect, win-win cooperation, and a shared vision for a multipolar world,” he wrote. “This relationship needs no one’s permission.”

His remarks came after Beijing strongly rejected Washington’s threat of secondary sanctions against countries and companies that continue doing business with Iran. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Beijing firmly opposes sanctions that have no basis in international law or authorization from the UN Security Council.

Washington unveiled a new round of economic measures against Tehran on Monday as part of what the Trump administration described as an effort to further isolate Iran from the global economy. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced sanctions against nearly 60 individuals, entities, and vessels and warned foreign countries and companies that they could face penalties for maintaining financial ties with Tehran.

The measures targeted companies based in mainland China and Hong Kong but stopped short of sanctioning major Chinese financial institutions. Beijing has been the biggest buyer of Iranian oil for years, although flows have been severely curtailed since Washington resumed its blockade of Iranian ports in mid-July.

Iran has denounced the expanded sanctions as a violation of international law and argued that Washington’s attempt to force other countries to sever economic relations with Tehran amounts to interference in their sovereignty.

The US has labeled Palestine Action a terrorist group, marking the first time that a British left-wing organization has been targeted by US terrorism sanctions. The US Treasury also blacklisted two other left-wing groups.

Palestine Action was added to the US’ list of Specially Designated ​Global Terrorist organizations on Wednesday, according to a statement posted online by the US Treasury Department. Under the department’s sanctions, the group will have any of its bank accounts or property in the US frozen, while its members could be barred from entering the country.

Formed in the UK in 2020, Palestine Action’s stated goal is to end “global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.” Its members have vandalized British military aircraft and factories owned by or linked to Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer.

The British government declared Palestine Action a terrorist organization last July. Since the designation, four of its members have been sentenced as terrorists for causing criminal damage to an Elbit Systems plant, while more than 3,500 of its supporters have been arrested and 480 charged with terror offenses for endorsing the group.

Today, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control took action to counter the growing threat posed by violent far-left terrorist groups. Globally networked and politically motivated terrorists—particularly far-left terrorists—are increasingly embracing organized, deadly violence…

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) August 26, 2026

“Today’s action complements the UK’s proscription,” the Treasury Department stated, adding that Palestine Action was being sanctioned “for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism.”

The Treasury also sanctioned Masar Badil, a Palestinian revolutionary movement allegedly run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Autistici Inventati, described by the department as “an Italy-based entity that supplies specialized digital architecture, tools, and services for Antifa cells and other violent far-left extremists.”

The 2026 US Counterterrorism Strategy identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as one of the top three terror threats facing the US, along with transnational drug cartels and Islamist terrorists. In late 2025, the US State Department designated four European ‘Antifa’ groups – including a German group that attacked right-wingers with hammers in Budapest in 2023 – as terrorist organizations.

Meta has reached a settlement in a landmark lawsuit filed by multiple US states that accused it of deliberately designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children and teenagers.

The social media giant has faced allegations of encouraging compulsive use among young people, misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms, and improperly collecting personal data from children under 13.

Meta previously estimated that the claims could have exposed it to penalties of as much as $1.4 trillion, while the states were also seeking sweeping changes to how Facebook and Instagram operate.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it had reached an approximately $18 billion settlement with 52 attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia, effectively ending the case without a jury ruling on the allegations and without Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stand.

Teens will face a two-hour daily limit across both apps unless a parent allows them more time, while access will be blocked from midnight to 6 AM and most notifications muted during school hours.

Meta said it will also offer teenagers the option of a non-algorithmic feed, allow autoplay to be disabled, hide like counts by default, and strengthen age checks and parental controls. Most of the measures will remain in place for ten years.

The tech giant has further demanded that rival tech giants TikTok and YouTube also face certain restrictions. Meta said it would pay out 30% of the settlement, or $5.3 billion, only if the two companies adopt similar safeguards and make matching payments.

The settlement came during the second week of a federal trial in Oakland, California involving claims brought by 29 states, which based their accusations on Meta’s own internal research and communications.

Internal messages revealed that some of the figures were deliberately removed from a presentation to company leadership, following advice from Meta’s lawyers, to avoid creating a paper trail back to Meta’s top brass. Instagram product design director Francesco Fogu admitted that he agreed to scrub the statistics from the presentation because “at the end of the day, I didn’t care.”

Meta has denied wrongdoing throughout the case, insisting that it has worked to protect children and teenagers online. It has also rejected the idea that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately made addictive, arguing that “social media addiction” is not even a recognized psychiatric condition.

Despite the settlement, Meta, along with other social media companies, continues to face thousands of separate lawsuits from individuals, families, and school districts over alleged harm to young users.

Hungary considers Russia a “threat to Hungary, Europe and the global order,” according to a foreign policy directive published by the country’s new pro-EU government. The statement marks a dramatic shift from the pragmatic relations pursued by former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Signed by Prime Minister Peter Magyar on Tuesday, the document states that “Hungary condemns Russian military aggression and fully supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, and recognizes Ukraine’s right to self-defense.”

“Russia’s behavior poses a threat to Hungary, Europe and the global order, and also puts the Hungarian minority living in Transcarpathia in serious danger, therefore we support all efforts aimed at initiating negotiations towards sustainable peace and long-term security guarantees,” it continued.

Hungary had not formally designated Russia a “threat” at any point since 1945.

Since taking office in May, Magyar has worked to align Budapest’s foreign policy with Brussels’. He has ended Hungary’s opposition to EU accession talks with Ukraine, backed the bloc’s 21st package of anti-Russian sanctions, and lifted Budapest’s veto on a €90 billion loan package to Kiev.

Magyar’s predecessor, Viktor Orban, condemned Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. However, he also condemned the “war policies” of the West that provoked the conflict, and refused to help arm Kiev, arguing that Ukraine cannot hope to defeat Russia and should seek an imperfect peace deal instead. Orban argued that the EU’s self-imposed embargo on Russian energy would “kill off the European economy,” and lent support to its sanctions packages only after securing exemptions that would allow Hungary to continue purchasing Russian oil, gas, and nuclear fuel.

Hungary still imports energy from Russia under Magyar. Andrey Kolesnik, a member of Russia’s State Duma committee on defense, Andrei Kolesnik, suggested that Russia could cut these supplies in response. 

Orban’s government viewed Kiev, not Moscow, as the most pressing threat to Ukraine’s Hungarian minority. Under Vladimir Zelensky’s rule, ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia have had their language rights restricted and been subjected to brutal forced conscription. 

In June, Magyar struck what he called a “formal agreement” with Zelensky to protect the rights of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarians. However, no documents concerning the agreement have been published to date, making it completely unclear what protections Zelensky has agreed to.

AP and Reuters have demanded answers from Israel over last year’s strike on Nasser Hospital in Gaza, which killed more than 20 people, including five journalists.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, marking the first anniversary of the August 25, 2025 attack, the news agencies said Israel had yet to provide the “clear answers and accountability that an incident of this gravity requires.” They stressed that the journalists were killed at a hospital, a site protected under international law and a key location for news coverage from Gaza.

The victims included Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, visual journalist Mariam Dagga, who worked for AP and other outlets, and Moaz Abu Taha, a freelancer who collaborated with Reuters. The other two reporters slain in the attack were Al Jazeera photographer Mohammad Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, who worked for the Quds Feed Network and several other media outlets.

Reuters also renewed its demand for an explanation over the October 2023 death of visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed by Israeli tank fire while reporting in southern Lebanon.

The IDF acknowledged carrying out the ‘double-tap’ strike on Nasser Hospital. It later said it regretted harm to “uninvolved individuals,” denied deliberately targeting journalists, and promised an inquiry.

The attack came two weeks after four Al Jazeera journalists were killed in an Israeli strike near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Israel has repeatedly faced accusations of targeting reporters since launching its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023.

In February, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Israel was responsible for two-thirds of the 129 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2025. It described Gaza as the deadliest assignment for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.

CPJ also said that Israel had conducted few transparent investigations and that no one had been held accountable in the cases it examined.

The IDF has “strongly” rejected the allegations that it intentionally targets journalists or their families.

Palestinians in the West Bank village of Madama say they fear further violence after Israeli MP Zvi Sukkot smashed a local memorial with a sledgehammer as IDF soldiers stood by. The military later insisted the incident was neither authorized nor anticipated.

A far-right lawmaker known for confrontations with Palestinians and a member of the ultranationalist Religious Zionist party, Sukkot traveled to Madama, south of the city of Nablus, on Tuesday, ostensibly for a tour.

Videos he later posted online instead showed him pulling out a sledgehammer and defacing a memorial to Palestinians killed in conflicts over the past century. He claimed the memorial “glorified terrorism” and “must be removed,” arguing that children who grow up seeing it could be encouraged to become terrorists themselves. His IDF escort could be seen standing meters away and not intervening as he struck the memorial.

Locals, however, reject the suggestion that the soldiers were innocent bystanders, pointing to repeated confrontations with Israeli troops and settlers. One said army patrols had passed through Madama just hours before Sukkot arrived, firing tear gas and stun grenades and waking residents.

RT correspondent Charlotte Dubenskij spoke to Madama residents about why they dispute the IDF’s account and what they fear could come next. Watch her full report below.

Israeli forces shot and wounded a Palestinian teen during a raid on a UN-run training center in East Jerusalem, local officials have reported.

The moment the boy was shot was caught on camera, with footage published by Middle East Eye and other media outlets on Tuesday showing him collapsing as gunfire rings out.

The Jerusalem Governorate said the boy sustained a minor gunshot wound to the shoulder from live ammunition as Israeli forces raided and seized the Qalandiya Training Centre, a key UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) facility in Kafr Aqab in East Jerusalem.

VIDEO | The moment a Palestinian child was struck by live ammunition fired by Israeli occupation forces after they raided and seized the Qalandiya Training Centre, a key facility operated by the UNRWA, in the town of Kafr Aqab, in occupied Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/D8xRucHqp1

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 25, 2026

More than 50 Israeli security personnel and at least four armored vehicles entered the facility while around 20 UNRWA employees were inside, according to the agency. Staff were forced from the premises during the operation.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined the raid, saying “there is no place for the agency in Jerusalem and Israel.” He later posted an image from the compound on X declaring: “UNRWA in our hands.”

UNRWA “unequivocally” condemned the raid, saying the center is UN property protected under international law. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also hit out at the “unlawful” entry and said Tuesday’s operation was the fifth unauthorized Israeli incursion into the facility since May.

The incident comes amid rising violence in the Palestinian territories. Days earlier, Israeli settlers shot dead 17-year-old Karim Sanad Shalaldeh near Hebron, while Israeli troops killed 58-year-old Fathi Khazem in Jenin in a separate incident. The IDF said Khazem had attempted to attack a soldier with a knife.

Russia has repeatedly said a negotiated two-state solution is the only viable way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moscow supports an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, coexisting peacefully with Israel.

Israel will continue building illegal settlements in the West Bank in preparation for a “major” wave of Jewish immigration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. Israel’s most recent settlement expansion triggered rebukes from its Arab neighbors and Western partners.

“Today, many of our brothers and sisters around the world understand: This is our land and it will remain ours,” Netanyahu said in Jerusalem on Tuesday. “And when I say our land, every Jewish man and every Jewish woman, the door is open. We are waiting for you. We are preparing the door for major Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel).” 

It is unclear whether the “major Aliyah” predicted by Netanyahu is actually coming. Israelis have emigrated in growing numbers since Hamas’ 2023 attack and the subsequent war on Gaza. More than 150,000 Israelis left the country from 2024 to 2025, according to a report by 972 magazine.

The Israeli prime minister spoke at an event organized by the Binyamin Regional Council, which governs 47 Jewish settlements in the West Bank. All of these settlements, which are located outside Israel’s 1967 borders, are considered illegal by the UN, and Israel’s transfer of population to them has been deemed a breach of the Geneva Convention by the International Criminal Court.

“It isn’t easy, it’s never easy,” he continued. “The land of Israel is acquired through suffering. Sometimes also through smiles, sometimes also through arguments, but it is being acquired by us. We are not giving up, we have a vision, this is our land, and it will remain ours.”

Last week, Israel opened bidding for the construction of more than 1,200 homes in the E1 settlement project, located east of Jerusalem. Named after its designation on Israeli planning maps, the project will comprise more than 3,400 homes, and was green-lit by Netanyahu’s government last year.

The E1 plan will establish a land corridor between East Jerusalem and the existing settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, both of which are built on Palestinian land. It will also sever road links between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, located to the north and south of Jerusalem, respectively. 

“The E1 settlement will undermine the prospect of the two-state solution by driving a wedge through the West Bank,” they said in a statement last Thursday. “At a time of grave instability in the West Bank with unprecedented levels of violence by settlers against civilians, and serious restrictions on the Palestinian economy, this decision is even more concerning.”

Netanyahu has suggested for years that he intends to annex the entirety of the West Bank, describing the option as “on the table” even as he signed peace accords with Arab states in 2020. Netanyahu’s hardline coalition partners have been more explicit, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich urging the prime minister in June to “apply sovereignty here in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] before the elections” in October.

US President Donald Trump has reportedly submitted a landmark nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia for congressional review and renewed demands that Riyadh normalize relations with Israel as part of the deal.

According to US media outlets, citing unnamed administration and congressional sources, the document was sent to Congress on Monday. The White House has yet to publicly confirm the move.

Lawmakers now have 90 session days to review the US-Saudi pact. If they attempt to block it, Trump is expected to use his veto powers to push it through. A two-thirds majority in both chambers would be required to overrule the president.

The agreement was originally signed last month and aims to allow American companies to play a major role in developing Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear energy program. The 30-year deal is expected to involve the construction of US-designed nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia and could be worth tens of billions of dollars.

Riyadh says it wants nuclear power to meet the growing domestic energy demand, reduce the amount of oil consumed at home, and free up more crude for export.

However, the deal has raised concerns over nuclear proliferation. Unlike a similar US deal with the United Arab Emirates, the pact does not permanently bar the kingdom from reprocessing nuclear fuel or enrichment, which could potentially be used to make weapons.

Trump has also tied the nuclear agreement to Saudi Arabia formally joining the Abraham Accords and establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. The condition was unexpectedly announced by Trump late last month after the agreement had already been negotiated and signed.

An administration official cited by Reuters on Wednesday said Trump’s position on the issue “has not changed.”

The Abraham Accords, brokered during Trump’s first term, established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco.

The US has also pushed for Saudi-Israeli normalization, but the efforts have stalled since the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said it will not normalize relations with Israel without an irreversible path toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin set foot on Iturup Island, the largest of the Kuril Archipelago and known in Japan as Etorofu, on August 13 and walked its length as if he were simply visiting home.

He toured a local fish plant, spoke with residents who praised the island’s clean air, friendly neighbors and quiet charm, and smiled for the cameras.

Japan, which has claimed ownership over the islands since they were incorporated into the USSR after World War II, reacted swiftly and sharply. The Russian ambassador was summoned to receive a formal protest, while Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the visit “absolutely unacceptable” and said it had hurt the feelings of the Japanese people. Moscow answered in kind by summoning Japan’s ambassador in Russia.

The diplomatic exchange, while predictable, revealed how little room remains for compromise between the two countries right now.

Ukraine and the Kuril red line

The deterioration of relations cannot be separated from Japan’s full-throated support for Ukraine after 2022. Tokyo adopted Western sanctions, revoked Russia’s most-favored-nation trade status and has increasingly discussed ways of supporting Ukraine’s military effort. From Moscow’s perspective, this is not simply an expression of Japanese solidarity with Kiev, but part of a wider alignment against Russia.

Putin’s visit served as a direct and measured response. It showed that while Japan supports Ukraine and participates in the pressure campaign against Russia, Moscow has no intention of making territorial concessions to Tokyo with regards to the Kurils.

Interestingly, Tokyo’s current confrontational stance, while symbolically forceful, has not produced a corresponding escalation of concrete measures over the territorial dispute itself. That restraint may reflect two realities. Washington has little incentive to become directly involved in a bilateral quarrel with Moscow, while Tokyo must also consider the consequences of pushing Russia, China and North Korea into even closer alignment.

The disputed territories have considerable practical value. They provide access to rich fishing grounds that once sustained extensive bilateral economic activity and may contain valuable mineral resources.

The Kurils also occupy a strategically critical position in the North Pacific. For Russia, control of the island chain provides a natural defensive buffer and helps protect access routes for its Pacific Fleet, energy infrastructure and maritime trade. For Japan, meanwhile, Russian control of the territories represents the unresolved legacy of the Second World War and an enduring challenge to its territorial claims.

The fishing issue illustrates just how complicated this relationship has been. Tokyo until relatively recently paid Russia for access to fishing grounds around the disputed islands. Whatever the legal and political arguments surrounding sovereignty, such arrangements demonstrated a degree of practical recognition of Russian administrative control and jurisdiction.

Today, those same waters remain economically important to Russian coastal communities.

That practical reality helps explain why Moscow sees the Kurils not simply as bargaining chips but as part of its national security perimeter.

A warning about militarization

Putin’s visit came against the backdrop of Japan’s military buildup and Tokyo’s increasing involvement in supporting Ukraine’s war efforts.

From Moscow’s perspective, these developments reinforce longstanding fears of strategic encirclement. Japan’s proximity to Russia’s Far East makes its military posture particularly sensitive to Russian planners. Moscow sees military exercises, missile deployments and discussions about providing military assistance to Ukraine as part of a pattern.

The Kremlin’s response has likewise included naval drills and missile exercises in the region, moves that Tokyo has condemned as provocative.

Overall, Putin’s visit wasn’t some new threat aimed at Japan – it was a public reaffirmation of an existing position and realities on the ground.

During the 2010s, parallel negotiations under Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe created genuine expectations that the two countries might finally resolve their territorial dispute and conclude a formal peace treaty.

Neither side approached those negotiations as a simple exercise in defending maximalist claims. Both governments understood that a compromise would require concessions and that a durable settlement could produce economic and strategic benefits.

The 1956 Moscow Declaration had already established the basic framework for one possible compromise: Moscow agreed in principle to transfer the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty, while leaving the larger islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri under Soviet control.

For a time, it seemed that formula could become the foundation for a settlement. However, the political environment has since changed dramatically.

Why the Kurils are only one thread in a complicated story

The territorial dispute is a symptom of deeper tensions that have shaped Russo-Japanese relations since the 19th century.

The 1855 Treaty of Shimoda established a border between Etorofu and the island of Urup, also part of the archipelago. The 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg subsequently transferred the entire Kuril chain to Japan in exchange for Japanese recognition of Russian control over Sakhalin. The 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth then reshaped the regional balance following the Russo-Japanese War.

These agreements demonstrate that sovereignty over the islands has never existed outside a shifting regional balance of power.

The events of 1945 transformed that balance again. Amid the ongoing war in the Pacific in 1945, the Soviet Union acted with the blessing of the United States as far as the Kuril islands were concerned. Under the secret Project Hula – launched in 1945 – American warships and training helped the Soviets take control over the Kurils.

This history provides Russia with a strong historical argument: the islands were taken from Imperial Japan with allied consent. Japan’s postwar renunciation did not bind Moscow, and decades of Soviet and now Russian administration have simply created a fait accompli.

Tokyo, however, maintains a fundamentally different interpretation of the postwar settlement and continues to describe the southern Kurils as its ‘Northern Territories’.

The result is a dispute in which both sides possess deeply rooted historical narratives – and neither is prepared to abandon them easily.

The Kuril dispute is not inherently insoluble. What makes it appear so today is the wider deterioration of the relationship.

The experience of the 2010s showed that negotiations can advance when both governments regard compromise as more valuable than rhetorical victory. It also showed that progress requires political courage: neither side can expect to obtain everything it wants.

Japan’s position has hardened alongside its Ukraine policy. Russia, meanwhile, has become increasingly resistant to territorial negotiations with states it regards as participating in an adversarial Western coalition.

That leaves the two countries trapped in a familiar cycle. Japan demands recognition of its territorial claims. Russia responds by emphasizing its sovereignty and military presence. Each side then interprets the other’s position as evidence that compromise is impossible.

But this need not be permanent. A future settlement would require Japan to reconsider whether confrontation over Ukraine and maximalist positions on the Kurils are advancing its long-term interests. Russia, for its part, would have to recognize that a stable relationship with Japan could offer benefits that perpetual confrontation cannot.

A statement of reality

Putin’s visit to Iturup was not, in itself, a threat. It was a statement of fact as Moscow sees it: Russia controls the islands, considers them strategically vital, and has no intention of surrendering them under political pressure. Japan is equally clear that it has not abandoned its claims.

The choice facing both countries is therefore not between victory and defeat, but between permanent paralysis and pragmatic diplomacy.

The unresolved dispute over the Kurils remains one of the most visible in the Pacific. But it also presents an opportunity. The same pragmatic approach that once brought Moscow and Tokyo to the negotiating table could do so again – if both sides decide that managing their differences is more valuable than allowing the wider geopolitical confrontation to define their entire relationship.

At least fourteen newborn babies have been killed after a fire tore through a nursery at a major government hospital in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, according to the city administration and hospital officials.  

The fire broke out at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) early on Wednesday on the third floor of PIMS’ Mother and Child Health ward. Rescue officials said it began at around 6:45am local time after the compressor of an air-conditioning unit apparently exploded inside the nursery, although the precise cause has not yet been established. Firefighters brought the blaze under control and began cooling operations.  

Initial reports gave conflicting casualty figures, with Reuters citing Geo TV as saying 15 of 16 newborns had died. The Islamabad administration later confirmed 14 deaths, while PIMS said 15 babies had been in the nursery. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered an immediate investigation and called for anyone found responsible to face punishment. “A tragedy involving children is an irreparable loss,” he said, adding that those responsible should be identified and face the “strictest possible action.”  

A fact-finding committee has been set up to determine the cause of the fire and examine whether the hospital’s safety systems and emergency response were adequate.  

The blaze comes months after authorities identified widespread fire-safety shortcomings across Islamabad and follows another recent tragedy involving children. In June, 14 children were killed when the roof of a tutoring center collapsed outside Lahore.  

The Capital Development Authority said in January that most of the 6,500 public and private buildings it inspected lacked approved fire-safety plans or relevant certificates. The survey covered 300 government buildings.

Scientists at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU) have developed a way to make 3D-printed cookies using genetically engineered yeast to produce protein and nutrients from plastic and agricultural waste.

The project aims to tackle two of the planet’s crises: plastic waste accumulation and food insecurity.

The team first set out to develop ways to make use of waste plastics, Lahiru Jayakody, an associate professor of microbiology at Southern Illinois University said in an interview with the American Chemical Society (ACS) published on Monday.

“We thought, why not focus on making food? Because plastic is carbon and food is carbon,” he said.

The process starts by breaking down plastic and plant waste with water and oxygen under high temperature and pressure. Genetically engineered yeasts then consume the resulting compounds and produce proteins, fats, and acids. With the addition of fiber, starch, and sweetener, the resulting mix is fed into a 3D printer which molds the paste into any desired shape.

With this technology, the scientists created small protein-rich cookies they dubbed “µBites” or “microbites.” They are waiting for the safety go-ahead from their university to actually taste-test them, however.

The novel technology could be useful in hostile environments, according to Jayakody.

SIU researchers have been developing the technology since 2021, when their µBites concept was selected for NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge.

The news comes as scientists are paying closer attention to how plastic already unintentionally enters the human food chain.

The particles could pose health risks, with studies linking exposure to inflammation, oxidative stress, cell death, and disruptions to metabolism and immune function. However, researchers say more evidence is needed to determine the effects of long-term exposure in humans.

Darline Graham has won South Carolina’s Republican Senate primary runoff, putting the political novice in a strong position to secure a full six-year term in the seat held for more than two decades by her hawkish late brother, Lindsey Graham.

Graham defeated five-term Congressman Ralph Norman on Tuesday, taking 52% of the vote against his 48%, according to preliminary results. She will face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in the November 3 general election. Republicans are heavily favored in South Carolina, which has not elected a Democratic US senator since 1998.

The 62-year-old was appointed to the Senate by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster in July following her brother’s sudden death, which came just hours after the veteran lawmaker returned from a visit to Kiev.

She had never held elected office before, previously serving as commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind and in a communications role at the state Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

Graham finished first in the initial ten-candidate Republican primary on August 11 with around 33% of the vote, while Norman took 25%, forcing Tuesday’s head-to-head contest because neither secured a majority.

Her victory came despite an awkward debate performance last week that raised questions about her readiness for the Senate. Asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea constitute national security issues for Washington, Graham struggled to answer before acknowledging that she is “not that informed on national security.”

The admission presented a striking contrast with Lindsey Graham, who made foreign policy one of the defining features of his 23 years in the Senate. He was a vocal supporter of Kiev, pushed for sweeping sanctions against Russia, and advocated an aggressive US posture toward Iran and other foreign adversaries. At his funeral last month, Trump described Graham as “extremely hawkish,” adding that the senator “never saw a war that he didn’t like.”

Trump’s endorsement proved decisive in the runoff, overcoming attacks from Norman and his allies, who questioned Graham’s experience and accused her candidacy of amounting to political nepotism.

A US Army Black Hawk went down during a training flight in Colorado on Tuesday, just a day after CNN reported that Apache attack helicopters are crashing at a historically high rate amid persistent mechanical problems.

The Black Hawk went down on the east side of Thorodin Mountain in Gilpin County, west of Denver and near Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Four people were aboard, but no injuries were reported. Emergency crews also found no fuel leak or fire and said there was no danger to the surrounding community.

Footage and aerial images from the scene show the helicopter sitting upright among trees with its rotor blades heavily damaged.

A U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter has crashed in Colorado while carrying four crew members. The status of the crew and the cause of the crash are currently unknown. pic.twitter.com/0EWyqvLMqD

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) August 25, 2026

The Black Hawk had flown from Fort Campbell, Kentucky and belongs to the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers. The Army described the incident as an “aviation mishap” during routine training operations and said an investigation is underway.

The unit suffered a deadly crash last September, when an MH-60M Black Hawk went down during nighttime training near Summit Lake in Washington state, killing all four soldiers aboard.

A far more devastating Black Hawk disaster thrust Army aviation into the national spotlight on January 29, 2025, when an Army UH-60L Black Hawk collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 as the passenger jet approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, killing all 64 people aboard the airliner and all three soldiers in the helicopter.

More recent Army data suggests that the problem has not gone away. On Monday, CNN reported that AH-64 Apache attack helicopters are crashing at a historically high rate, with five Class A flight mishaps recorded so far in fiscal 2026. Based on internal Army safety data and flight-hour figures supplied by the service, the outlet calculated a rate of around 6.24 major crashes per 100,000 flying hours.

Global fertility may have fallen below replacement level for the first time in human history, putting the world population on course for decline within roughly one generation, a new study has warned.

The paper, Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World, published earlier this month by economics professor Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University researcher Patrick Norrick, warns that prolonged low fertility could shrink workforces, rapidly age societies, and strain economies and welfare systems.

The researchers estimate that humanity is likely already below replacement fertility – the average number of children per woman needed for each generation to replace itself. The global threshold is around 2.2, while the study puts the current rate at no higher than 2.19, suggesting the world may have only just crossed it.

The analysis covers 236 countries and territories from 1950 to 2023, with fertility declining in 219. On average, countries have lost around 0.062 births per woman annually, and there is little evidence the trend is leveling off, authors note.

The global population is not shrinking yet because large generations born in previous decades are still having children, but the researchers estimate this effect could sustain growth for only another three decades, with population peaking at around 9 billion in 2056 before declining.

The economic consequences of the looming population decline could be far-reaching, the study warns. Smaller generations mean fewer workers supporting growing elderly populations, straining pensions, healthcare, and public finances while slowing growth. In the US, the authors estimate that 2% annual productivity growth combined with a 0.5% contraction in the workforce would reduce long-term GDP growth to roughly 1.5%.

The world’s population crossed the 8 billion mark in 2022, according to UN estimates, and currently stands at approximately 8.3 billion.

Musk weighs in

US tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has repeatedly warned about falling birth rates, reacted to the study after an X user described its findings as an “existential crisis.” “I’ve been warning about this for years,” he wrote.

I’ve been warning about this for years https://t.co/kHFPFjNkE7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2026

Musk, who has 13 children, has repeatedly described declining birth rates as one of the greatest threats to civilization. In 2022, he wrote that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” Last year, he warned that “Low birth rates will end civilization” and called for the issue to be treated as a national emergency, while suggesting Europe could “die out” unless birth rates recover.

Last weekend, commenting on a paper outlining ancient Rome’s attempts to boost its population, Musk wrote: “The reason Rome fell was because they stopped making Romans.”

Russia’s demographic challenge

Russian officials have long warned about the country’s demographic challenges. According to state statistics agency Rosstat, Russia’s total fertility rate fell to around 1.305-1.374 children per woman last year, alongside some of the lowest monthly and quarterly birth figures in modern Russian history. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed the importance of improving economic and social conditions in order to promote larger families and make parenthood a widely supported choice. He has backed a national family support service and established a presidential council on family and demographic policy in 2024.

Two people have died of measles in Pennsylvania, decades after the disease was considered eradicated. Measles is currently making a resurgence in the US, with cases at a 35-year high.

The two victims were residents of Lancaster County, a largely rural county west of Philadelphia, state health officials announced on Tuesday. No additional details were provided, except that neither victim was vaccinated.

Fatal cases of measles are exceedingly rare in the US, but infections are rising. 2,289 cases of the disease were recorded in 2025, the highest number since 1991, when 9,643 cases were recorded. Last year’s number was surpassed by this July, and as of August 20, 2,777 cases have been recorded this year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Outbreaks have occurred in 47 US states and territories, with 94% of cases occurring among the unvaccinated.

Dr. Adam Ratner, an adviser to the CDC, told the JAMA medical journal last year that skepticism about Covid-19 vaccines has “bled over” into other vaccines, due to the Covid shots becoming “this insanely polarized political thing” from 2020 onwards. 

“Once there was that kind of hesitancy out there and that kind of divisiveness, it’s not surprising that it has bled over into people thinking about vaccine mandates and childhood vaccines in general,” Rather said.

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, has vouched for the safety of the combined measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, but noted “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”

A vaccination rate of around 95% is required to prevent measles outbreaks. In November, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), will meet to determine whether the US and Mexico can still claim to be “measles free” after recent outbreaks.

The trial of six members of a Pakistani ‘grooming gang’ has quietly restarted in Manchester. The retrial hasn’t made the headlines, and looking at the sordid details of the case, it’s clear the British establishment wants to keep it that way.

The six suspects were alleged members of the Rochdale grooming gang – a group of Muslim men, predominantly Pakistani, who trafficked, sexually abused, and raped underage white British girls in the northern English town between the 1980s and 2010s. More than 75 men have been charged and 53 convicted since Greater Manchester Police began investigating the gang in 2010.

What are the men accused of?

The suspects have been charged with 46 counts of rape, sexual assault, and ‘assault by penetration’, with two of the men facing more than a dozen charges each.

• Tahrir Rashid, 53, 12 counts of rape, 3 counts of indecent assault, 1 count of assault by penetration

• Mohammed Saleem, 46, 8 counts of rape

• Sucklane Shah, 46, 2 counts of rape

• Itfaq Hussain, 45, 3 counts of rape

• Arshad Mohammed, 55, 5 counts of rape

• Amjad Mahmood, 53, 12 counts of rape, 2 counts of indecency with a child, 1 count of indecent assault, 2 counts of assault by penetration

All of the suspects’ alleged offenses took place between 2003 and 2008, and involved two girls who were as young as 13 when they were “passed around” between the gang, according to prosecutors. Rashid, the alleged ringleader, is also accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.

What happened in the first trial?

The six men were tried last year, but the trial collapsed with no explanation in December. When reporting restrictions were lifted a month later, it was revealed that the jurors had formed a WhatsApp group to discuss the case, and had shared documentaries on the subject of grooming gangs. 

Before the trial collapsed, the court heard how the group abused two girls in the “most humiliating and degrading way imaginable.” One of the victims, identified only as ‘Girl C’, was collected from school by Rashid, plied with alcohol, and raped repeatedly by the gang. ‘Girl C’ was raped a dozen times by Shah over several months, prosecutors alleged.

Mohammed told the other victim, ‘Girl A’, that he ran a modeling agency as a ruse to take nude photographs of her. She was allegedly raped by at least three members of the gang.

Both girls were described by the prosecution as “very vulnerable children with chaotic home lives,” which made them “easy prey for men with an unhealthy interest in having sex with children.” All six suspects pleaded not guilty.

Why do the British authorities want this kept quiet?

The proliferation of grooming gangs – or ‘rape gangs’, as right-wing politicians label them – is a national embarrassment for all levels of the British state. Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police were warned of the gang’s activity in Rochdale as far back as 2007, but refused to investigate allegations of organized rape by Pakistani gangs until 2012, for fear “of being tarnished with a race brush,” according to an independent review published in 2024.

A 2014 report on rape gangs in Rotherham found that social workers, youth workers, and police officers ignored reports that 1,400 children had been abused by the gangs, partly for fear of being seen as racist. A nationwide audit published this year concluded that authorities in 50 towns and cities were reluctant to investigate the gangs due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators were of Pakistani origin.

The most shocking report, funded by Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe and published in June, found that Pakistani rape gangs operated in 149 of the UK’s 317 municipalities. The report determined that a “bare minimum” of 250,000 women and girls had been raped by grooming gangs since the year 2000, and that senior politicians helped the gangs escape prosecution. 

In Parliament, reading the testimonies of rape gang survivors provided to our inquiry.

Please watch, listen and understand. pic.twitter.com/C7dyIL46ga

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) June 17, 2026

These politicians included London Mayor Sadiq Khan, of Pakistani descent, who denied the existence of grooming gangs in the British capital, despite having evidence proving otherwise, and former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, let 13,000 pedophiles off with warning letters instead of prosecuting them.

It detailed a litany of crimes committed against white girls, with one victim “raped by between six and seven hundred different men over the course of three years,” and others raped by dogs, cut with knives, and “subjected to penetration with objects.” Lowe’s report, and earlier government-backed reports, found that some children were trafficked to Pakistan by the gangs.

Starmer’s ruling Labour Party voted en masse against a Conservative motion calling for a national statutory inquiry into the gangs last year. Starmer’s party eventually backed down under public pressure and opened a probe earlier this year, which is ongoing.

Are there more trials to come?

The six suspects currently on trial were charged in 2023 as part of Greater Manchester Police’s ‘Operation Lytton’. Active since 2015, Operation Lytton is aimed at arresting and prosecuting suspects who were overlooked by earlier investigations. The operation has resulted in 32 convictions to date.

#JAILED | Seven men jailed for 174 years after grooming two girls in #Rochdale (2001–2006).

Thanks to survivor bravery & GMP’s CSE team, justice has been served.

Op Lytton: 32 offenders jailed for 474 years so far.

Time is no barrier to justice.

More: https://t.co/SzwzGHTode pic.twitter.com/DolFSd1kBv

— Greater Manchester Police (@gmpolice) October 1, 2025

Fourteen suspects are currently awaiting trial, according to the most recent information from Greater Manchester Police.

Outside the greater Manchester area, six other large-scale grooming gang trials resulted in convictions this year. In Bradford, where 20% of all residents are of Pakistani descent, 15 men were sentenced in June for 88 rape offenses against the same 14-year-old girl. 

Eight men in south Wales have been charged with raping eight children, with their trial due to begin in early 2028.

A far-right Israeli MP smashed a memorial to Palestinians killed in the conflict with Israel in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. He committed the act under IDF escort, which has been condemned by the army and politicians in Israel.

Zvi Sukkot, a member of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s ultranationalist Religious Zionist party, said he went to the West Bank village of Madama to remove a monument that “glorified murderers of Jews.”

Video of the incident circulating online shows Sukkot and one other man taking sledgehammers to the monument while an Israeli soldier with an assault rifle watches nearby.

Footage of the aftermath captured by an RT correspondent shows the memorial defaced, with tiles around its stone base partially smashed.

The IDF said Sukkot had received permission to conduct a military-escorted “tour of monuments” in the West Bank, but “acted deceptively” and without authorization in damaging the monument.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stressed that “taking the law into one’s own hands, particularly by public figures, is unacceptable.” The statement did not mention Sukkot by name.

“He lied to and misled the IDF and its commanders, harmed security, and tarnished the State of Israel as a whole,” the former military chief said on X.

Sukkot’s ultranationalist Religious Zionist party has been at the forefront of Israel’s recent push for more settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law by the UN and most of the international community.

Last week, West Jerusalem opened bidding for the construction of more than 1,200 new homes in the area as part the settlement expansion, which was unveiled in July. Critics stress that the project threatens to effectively cut the West Bank in two if completed.

The settlement push has been condemned internationally, with the leaders of more than a dozen European countries denouncing it as “unacceptable” in a joint statement on Thursday.

Earlier this month, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia called on Israel to cease its “creeping expansion” into the occupied Palestinian territories and to take measures to “curb settler violence.” Moscow has long said that the only way to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to rest is to implement a two-state solution.

The Canadian government has announced that it will impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on around 700 American products, after US President Donald Trump hit Canada with a round of tariffs and threatened further increases. 

American steel and aluminum will be tariffed at 50%, according to a statement on the Canadian Finance Department’s website, while other goods – including dairy products, appliances, and farm equipment – will face tariffs of 25%. The measures will cover around $20 billion in US imports, and will come into effect on September 8, the statement added.

“Canada will match the United States’ tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate,” Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at a press conference on Tuesday. The tariffs, he added “are designed primarily to provide protection for Canadian industry impacted by US tariffs.”

Trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed on Friday, with both sides accusing the other of making last-minute changes to a proposed comprehensive trade agreement. Trump immediately imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, including wine, cement, plywood, clothing, and hockey equipment.

Trump accused Canada of “ripping off the United States of America for years,” highlighting Ottawa’s protectionist tariffs on American agricultural produce. The system, he said, is “not sustainable.”

“On January First, 2027, Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%,” Trump announced. The move will double the current 25% tariff on Canadian auto imports. “Build in the US and there are ZERO TARIFFS,” the president added, saying Canada would no longer be treated “like a State” and calling it “among the worst nations in the world to deal with.”

At the core of Trump’s grievance is the trade deficit with Canada. He claims this figure stands at $60 billion, but Trump’s own trade representative puts it at $48.3 billion. While Trump views this deficit as evidence that Canada is taking advantage of the US, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has argued that the deficit only exists because the US imports so much oil, gas, and electricity from Canada. “I don’t think they want us to stop sending it,” he commented in an address on Saturday.

Trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa date back to Trump’s first term, but reignited when he returned to office last year and launched a sweeping tariff campaign against major trade partners, including China, the EU, Japan, and Mexico.

“We’ve been under no illusions,” Carney said on Saturday, referring to his dealings with Trump. “We recognized from the start that America has changed.”

The administration of US President Donald Trump is preparing to revoke the visas of up to 200,000 foreigners, AP reported on Tuesday, citing State Department documents and two US officials familiar with the plan. The reported move, which targets business and tourism applicants who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum, could be the largest mass visa revocation in US history.

US President Donald Trump has pursued a sweeping immigration crackdown since returning to office in January 2025, including increased deportations, expanded detention efforts, and tighter restrictions on visa applicants.

The visa revocation process, which has not yet been finalized and could be challenged in court, is expected to begin in the coming weeks and would target B1 business and B2 tourist visas issued since 2016, AP said.

“We are coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the US claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told AP.

Pigott did not provide an estimate of how many visas could be affected, adding that the process would remain ongoing and the number of cases could change.

As part of its broader immigration campaign, the Trump administration has taken a series of measures to tighten controls on foreign nationals seeking to enter or remain in the US.

Earlier this month, the State Department said it revoked more than 175,000 visas since Trump returned to office. The affected individuals include people who violated visa terms or were accused or convicted of crimes. AP reported that the total also includes people who have publicly criticized US policies.

In January, the department imposed an indefinite pause on immigrant visa processing for nationals of 75 countries while it reassessed screening and vetting procedures.

The Trump administration has also moved to tighten rules for work visas for highly skilled professionals. A new DHS proposal would impose an additional $103,265 fee on cap-subject H-1B petitions filed by US employers. DHS estimates that around 85,000 petitions annually would be subject to the proposed fee.

A rare and violent tornado has run rampant through the village of Pomas in southern France, injuring 39 people, including two critically, and damaging around 300 homes, according to the local authorities.

The tornado struck the village in the Aude department on Monday evening, with footage showing a large funnel swirling over the settlement, with gusts of violent winds wreaking havoc, ripping apart roofs, and smashing windows.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called it a “tornado of rare intensity” while praising firefighters, security forces, and volunteers involved in the response.

Rescue operations continued through the night, the prefecture said on Tuesday, with 75 firefighters deployed alongside specialist reinforcements to check damaged buildings and search affected areas.

Residents forced from their homes were sheltered in a multi-purpose hall with help from the Red Cross, while others were temporarily relocated with relatives or to neighboring communes.

🌪️Eyewitness footage recorded from the village of #Verzeille captured a #tornado forming and swirling beneath a violent supercell thunderstorm south of the southern French city of #Carcassonne. https://t.co/tL5GfNBnxLpic.twitter.com/oGurjJdrxi
📌Authorities reported at least 26… pic.twitter.com/U5AVlVP0iw

— ⚡️🌎 World News 🌐⚡️ (@ferozwala) August 25, 2026

While no people were reported killed or missing, among the injured was a pregnant woman who was hurt when her house collapsed on her, according to AFP.

The storm also battered electricity infrastructure across southern France. Grid operator Enedis said about 21,000 households were without power across the south on Tuesday morning, including around 1,600 in Aude. The prefecture later put the number still without electricity locally at about 1,400.

The tornado appears unusually powerful by French standards. Emmanuel Wesolek, president of the Keraunos severe-weather observatory, told HuffPost that an initial assessment indicated “gusts of more than 200 kph” and potentially as high as 240 kph.

The tornado would likely rate somewhere between the upper end of EF2 and the lower end of EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, he added.

According to Meteo-France, while not as frequent as in the US, a few dozen tornadoes occur in mainland France in an average year, and most are of low intensity. According to figures cited by HuffPost, EF2 tornadoes occur only once or twice annually, while an EF3 is recorded roughly once every four years.

The EU is highly reluctant to revive plans to steal more than $200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign reserves and hand them over to cash-strapped Ukraine, EurActiv reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

On Monday, European leaders flocked to Kiev in a show of solidarity for Ukraine, which marked its 35th Independence Day, but the talks quickly turned to the country’s numerous issues, including a substantial budgetary deficit. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky told European officials that his government still faces a €23.5 billion ($27.4 billion) shortfall on top of EU funding already promised and urged Brussels to accelerate the next instalment of its €90 billion support loan.

According to EurActiv, while the EU’s attention once again pivoted to the idea of confiscating around €210 billion of Russian funds immobilized in EU institutions, mostly in the Belgian-based Euroclear, “there is little sign the issue is about to return to the table in Brussels.”

Russia has condemned the asset freeze as “theft,” ruled out paying any reparations to Ukraine, and has warned the EU of harsh retaliation if it confiscates the funds one way or another.

However, the scheme – which was championed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – met fierce opposition from a number of EU members, most notably Belgium. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever argued that the plan would leave it uniquely exposed to legal and financial pushback from Russia.

“Taking [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s money and leaving the risks with [Belgium]. That’s not going to happen,” he said last year.
Euroclear also vehemently opposed the seizure plot, at one point warning that it could sue the EU if the bloc tries to confiscate the assets. Several other EU leaders also raised concerns that confiscating Russian assets would erode international law and tarnish the bloc’s reputation and standing among investors.

Gaza rescue crews have been searching the enclave’s ruins for thousands of Palestinians believed to remain buried beneath buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes, some dating back to the first months of the war.

Recovery work continues amid a fragile ceasefire and an unresolved dispute over a peace roadmap unveiled last month by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which calls for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza in exchange for Israel withdrawing from the enclave. Israel has rejected the proposal, insisting Hamas must first disarm, while Israeli strikes have continued, further complicating recovery operations.

Gaza’s Civil Defense estimates that around 8,000 Palestinians killed during the war remain buried beneath the rubble. A chronic shortage of excavators and other heavy machinery has hampered recovery efforts, often forcing crews to search collapsed buildings with basic tools. Some families have waited years for the remains of relatives to be recovered for burial.

Watch Almughari’s full report on the recovery struggle below.

Norway will continue developing oil and gas fields in the Arctic, Energy Minister Terje Aasland has said, despite EU calls for a moratorium on drilling in the region. The bloc should no longer see his country as Europe’s “green battery,” he added.

EU Arctic policy aims to keep fossil fuels in the ground, cut black carbon and accelerate the green transition, citing claims of the region’s unusually rapid warming.

Brussels seeks to influence energy policy in Norway, which is not a member of the EU, but is the bloc’s largest gas supplier following the decision to reject cheap gas from Russia.

“In today’s geopolitical and security environment, and given the resource situation, I believe continued activity in the Barents Sea serves both Norwegian and European interests,” Aasland said in a Reuters interview on Monday, the opening day of ONS, Norway’s four-day energy conference in Stavanger.

The minister explained that Norway would develop the areas, but leave it to the EU to decide whether to impose a moratorium on buying the resulting oil and gas. He added that Norway aims to maintain petroleum production and exports at roughly the current levels until at least 2035, with production in the Barents Sea key to that goal.

Aasland called the long-standing idea of Norway serving as “the green battery” of Europe “flawed,” stressing that “the Arctic must be part of that discussion” if the country “is to remain a long-term supplier of oil and gas to Europe.”

According to the European Commission, Norway has supplied roughly 30% of the EU’s gas imports in recent years after Brussels rejected Russian energy in the wake of the Ukraine conflict. The country’s petroleum revenues have since reached record levels, boosted by its growing share of the European gas market and a surge in oil and gas prices after the loss of Russian supplies.

In 2025, the country’s gas production remained near the previous year’s record high, while oil output reached its highest level since 2009. Official Norwegian forecasts, however, show output could fall sharply after 2030 unless new fields are developed.

Fifteen years ago, it appeared that Russia-Japan relations were improving to the extent that Japan could become, for Russia, an eastern version of Germany as a former enemy turning into a major economic partner in a relationship where Russian resources were traded for the other partner’s investment and advanced technologies. With frequent and seemingly productive summit meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it appeared that the issues remaining after World War II would finally be resolved and that a firm and lasting foundation would be laid for a qualitatively new relationship between what were sometimes called distant neighbors.

Over the years, the Russo-Japanese negotiations on a peace treaty to finally draw a line under the war had advanced considerably. However, there was still one stumbling block that refused to go away, and that was Tokyo’s defense and foreign policy subservience to Washington. Moscow simply could’t trust the Japanese to stand up to American political and military demands, given the US overlordship of Japan. That attitude proved prudent, because when the Ukraine crisis came, Tokyo had to fall in line with its senior ally. Germany, one might add, did even worse, given Berlin meekly allowed its economy to be deprived of the unique advantage it had enjoyed, cheap Russian gas, and watched its vast and lucrative business relationship with Russia be destroyed.

The cases of Japan and Germany taught Russians an important lesson. Countries that are US allies cannot be regarded as genuinely sovereign, since Washington has enough leverage to make them follow the American lead. Of course, Germany and Japan are more dependent on the US than some other allies, given the long and continuing military occupation of both and the wholesale Americanization of their elites and societies, but the general finding is still true in that an alliance with America is a form of bondage.

Japan isn’t there yet, but its Defense White Paper has already named Russia as a threat, while Tokyo’s already impressive defense budget is on the rise and restrictions on its naval activities are being eased, as are the rules governing Japan’s military exports. At the same time, US missile deployments in Japan threaten not only China and North Korea, but Russia as well. Tokyo is also strengthening its ties with NATO, so, as a result, Russia has to pay more attention to its Far Eastern flank. President Putin’s recent visit to Russian Pacific Fleet maneuvers and his trip to the island of Iturup in the South Kurils testify to that.

There are also other useful lessons to be learned from Northeast Asia. North Korea stands out as an example of a medium-sized and largely isolated country that has been able to ensure its sovereignty and security in a complex and challenging environment. All the talk of an impending collapse of the regime in Pyongyang, so common for years, has long since ceased. Unlike many other countries, the nuclear-armed DPRK is being courted, not threatened, by the US. For Moscow, Pyongyang has become a valuable military ally whose soldiers actually fight alongside their Russian comrades. The Russia-DPRK alliance substantially complements the Moscow-Beijing strategic partnership in bolstering security in the region.

There’s no question that the Republic of Korea is intently observing these developments and considering their implications. President Donald Trump’s recent abrupt decision to cut short joint military exercises to put pressure on Seoul over trade and investment issues has also been a useful warning. At the end of the day, South Korea’s security lies in its own hands. That security doesn’t rest solely on military and technological power, considerable as it is, and, thus, investing more in diplomacy with neighboring countries, including China and Russia, should be a priority. 

US President Donald Trump has warned schools across the country against promoting gender identity and transition, touting his administration’s efforts to purge what he calls “transgender ideology” and “far-left extremism” from classrooms.

Speaking at a White House back-to-school event on Monday, Trump said schools could face legal and financial consequences for telling children they are “trapped in the wrong body.”

“Every public school in America is now on notice that if they tell a child that they’re trapped in the wrong body, they are committing child abuse,” he said.

The president accused his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration of “weaponizing” education and imposing “extreme ideologies,” including critical race theory and “transgender insanity,” on children as young as four or five. He said schools had neglected basic education for gender identity issues, leaving the US near the bottom among leading nations despite spending “more money on education than any other country in the world by double.”

President Trump just issued a MAJOR WARNING to American schools:

"Every public school in America is now on notice that if they tell a child that they're trapped in the wrong body, they are committing child abuse"

🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/bls7ASN6FS

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 24, 2026

Trump stated his return to office meant reversing course, citing his measures targeting transgender policies and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in education.

Speaking alongside Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration had cut billions in DEI funding at schools and universities, redirecting it toward teachers, classrooms, and academic efforts, including workforce training. She warned that schools that continue promoting gender-related changes could lose funding altogether.

“If they subject children to radical experiments and sideline parents, they will lose their federal funding,” McMahon stated. “Children belong to their parents, not the federal government.”

Trump attacked the promotion of gender transition even before returning for his second term, vowing to “stop” gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated with “child sexual mutilation.”

Trump has also pursued a broader DEI crackdown, which his administration views as discriminatory and incompatible with merit-based policies. He ordered federal agencies to dismantle DEI programs, including in the military and Foreign Service, and reversed Biden-era workforce equity initiatives. The campaign has extended beyond government, with DEI funding cut and federal contractors and other institutions pressured to abandon race- and gender-conscious policies.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is trying to “neutralize” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio by establishing a direct channel with President Donald Trump, CNN Brasil reported on Monday, citing sources.

Rubio previously excluded Brazil from the group of countries he described as friendly and attacked Lula over trade. The Brazilian president accused him of being “anti-Latin America.”

Tensions between the US and Latin America’s largest economy have been soaring for months, as Trump fiercely backed former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro during his trial over a plot to overturn his 2022 election defeat and keep himself in power.

The two countries are also locked in a trade dispute. The US imposed an additional 25% tariff on certain Brazilian goods in July after a trade investigation accused Brazil of a litany of unreasonable practices.

According to CNN, Lula complained for weeks about Rubio, a vocal critic of Brazil’s government, before calling Trump and seeking to weaken the secretary’s influence over bilateral relations. During a call last week, Lula reportedly told Trump that contact should proceed “without intermediaries.”

Following the conversation, Lula said talks with Trump were “very civilized and very respectful,” while lamenting that the “second tier” of the US government was taking “unthinkable” actions. “I sometimes get the impression that Trump is much better at political relations than his advisers.” 

Rubio also accused Lula of failing to negotiate in good faith, and said he “put his own ego” ahead of securing a trade deal, adding that the tariffs were “the price for that.” Lula has called Rubio “anti-Latin America” and “a mortal enemy of Cuba and several Latin American countries.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Iran attempted to assassinate one of his sons, making the explosive allegation without saying which of his children was targeted, when the supposed plot took place, or how close it came to being carried out.

The bombshell came almost in passing during a telephone interview with Israel’s Channel 14 on Monday about security arrangements for Netanyahu’s political rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief who is challenging him ahead of the October 27 general election.

“This is an unbelievable case. Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to murder him, tried to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu said, arguing that round-the-clock protection for Eisenkot was “not a luxury” and warning that without it, the Iranians “will succeed.”

Netanyahu has two sons, Yair and Avner. He did not identify which one he was referring to, nor did he say where or how Iran planned to attack him.

The claim comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult reelection campaign. Successive surveys have put his governing bloc short of the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority, while polls have shown Eisenkot competing closely with or overtaking Netanyahu and his Likud party. Reuters reported in July that surveys were pointing to a defeat for Netanyahu’s coalition, although the fragmented opposition also lacks a straightforward path to forming a government.

US President Donald Trump also claimed that Tehran has tried to kill him – even before the initial salvo of US-Israeli strikes on February 28 killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During the NATO summit in Türkiye in July, Trump was secretly removed from Air Force One and transferred inside a catering truck to another military aircraft after Israel relayed intelligence about another alleged Iranian assassination threat. The extraordinary operation was concealed even from some members of his traveling party.

US intelligence reportedly assessed the Israeli-supplied information with “low confidence,” while Tehran has denied broader accusations that it sought to assassinate Trump or other American officials.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has threatened to cut electricity and critical minerals to the US if President Donald Trump continues to escalate his trade war with Canada, drawing an angry response from Trump.

The exchange came hours after Trump announced that tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel would rise to 50% on January 1, 2027. The move followed the collapse of trade talks last week and a separate 50% tariff that took effect Saturday on around $20 billion worth of Canadian imports.

“Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes,” Ford told AP on Monday, saying Ontario could raise electricity prices or halt exports altogether.

“We power 1.5 million homes and businesses,” he added, warning that if Trump keeps trying to dismantle Canadian manufacturing, “he better have a pack of batteries.”

Trump fired back on Truth Social, dismissing Ford’s comments as “bluster” and personally attacking the premier before warning Canadian leaders to “fall in line.”

“Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!” Trump wrote, again referring to Prime Minister Mark Carney as “Governor Carney.” He said the US is “far bigger, richer, and stronger” and claimed that Canada “couldn’t survive” without its southern neighbor.

“I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass,” Ford shot back at a press conference on Monday.

Canada's Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Trump:

I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so Trump has a lot of room to kiss my ass. pic.twitter.com/nP8MLVxfbI

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 24, 2026

Ford said Ottawa should consider progressively stronger retaliation, including restrictions on oil, potash, and strategic minerals. Quebec Premier Christine Frechette, whose province is a major hydroelectricity supplier, said she is not currently pursuing Ford’s approach but would not exclude it as Canada enters a “new phase” of the dispute.

However, the exposure is far more concentrated in border states such as New York, Michigan, and Minnesota, where a stable supply of Canadian power can be particularly important during periods of peak demand.

Meanwhile, the AI boom is placing additional pressure on regional power grids as tech companies race to build massive, power-hungry hyperscale data centers. In July 2026, New York imposed a one-year moratorium on state discretionary environmental permits for new hyperscale facilities while it develops new regulations intended in part to protect grid stability and ratepayers.

Ontario has used the electricity threat before. In March 2025, Ford imposed a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the three states before suspending it after Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

Appointing Darline Graham to simply finish her brother Lindsey’s Senate term was one thing, but having her run for the next term, with Donald Trump’s support, is simply bonkers. Or does Trump know something we don’t?

Darline’s political inexperience was on full display during last week’s debate against her run-off opponent, Rep. Ralph Norman, when she was unable to answer an elementary question on national security involving China and Taiwan.

Graham was simply asked if Taiwan and the South China Sea are national security issues for the US. Incredibly, she even failed to at least respond with a “yes” or “no.”

Clearly unprepared for the big night, Graham began by requesting for the question to be repeated. It didn’t help her. Following the second reading she admitted defeat, saying, “I’m just going to be honest here – I’m not, on national security, that – I’m not that informed on national security. So...”

After her voice quivered for a moment amid rumbling from the debate audience, Graham dug her hole deeper with a non sequitur: “But I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years, so I will do everything I can to support the military. My dad was in the army.”

Following Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sudden death on July 11, Gov. Henry McMaster appointed his sister Darline to finish up the remaining months of his tenure. What began as a sentimental gesture inexplicably morphed into a White House endorsement, with Trump pushing the inexperienced woman to enter the primary race with a chance at serving a six-year term that will begin in January. Feelings for her brother aside, Darline Graham has never held an elected office. Until this summer, she was commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, and earlier held a communications role in the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

Trump’s endorsement notwithstanding, Graham only received 33% of the vote in the special August 11 ballot, forcing her into an August 26 runoff against Ralph Norman, who came in second place with 25% of the vote. “Her lackluster showing reflected South Carolina Republicans’ deep unease with Trump trying to turn one of their Senate seats into an inheritance for someone with a joke of a political resume,” ZeroHedge quipped.

Darline’s egregious debate failure drew comparisons to Miss South Carolina’s famous response to a question in the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant.

The question she was asked to answer went as follows: “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?”

It is an apt comparison and it would be funny if we weren’t dealing with a position that has the power to actually influence America’s foreign policy.

Having driven her own performance off a cliff, the next day Graham attempted to cover her losses by admitting to Trump attack dog Sean Hannity that she “tripped up on one question.” Brushing aside the importance of her inability to answer the question, Graham told Hannity, “I’m not a politician, certainly not a career politician, I don’t speak politician.”

In a separate interview with reporters, Graham said: “I tripped up on one question last night, regarding Taiwan. I don’t speak politician. I was just honest. Of course, Taiwan is our friend. But I think people in South Carolina are more worried about boys in girls’ sports.” Too bad Darline didn’t say that on the debate stage.

Thus, perhaps it can be argued that Darline Graham’s embarrassing lack of knowledge over foreign affairs might be just what the MAGA camp wants – a lot less Lindsey and much more Darline. They may be willing to forgive Darline’s inability to find Taiwan on a map so long as she focuses congressional attention on critical domestic issues, like LGBTQ curricula in schools, soaring costs, and crumbling infrastructure.  

On Tuesday, South Carolina Republicans will cast a vote that either continues in the blood-soaked shoes of Lindsey Graham or opts for a change in the person of his sister that keeps the attention on the American homeland.

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has barred Russian teams from returning to the Chess Olympiad next month, prompting prominent names in Russian chess to accuse its leadership of politicizing the sport and making “Russophobic” decisions.

FIDE suspended the Russian and Belarusian national teams from its competitions in 2022, although players from both countries were allowed to compete individually under neutral status. The federation lifted all restrictions on Belarusian athletes last month.

On Sunday, the FIDE Council ruled that Russian teams would remain excluded from the 46th Chess Olympiad, which is scheduled to take place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from September 16 to 27.

Russian Chess Federation chief Aleksandr Tkachev said the decision had undermined FIDE’s own motto, “We are one family,” and accused members of the Council of putting their personal interests ahead of chess. Since 1991, Russian players  have won six gold medals in the Open Chess Olympiad (and multiple silver and bronze medals), and three gold medals in the Women’s Chess Olympiad. 

“There are people who prioritize the game over politics and don’t worry about their own careers. But there are also people who prioritize personal interests, and they currently predominate on the Council. This time, they prevailed,” Tkachev told TASS on Monday.

He claimed the decision had been initiated by acting FIDE President Viswanathan Anand, who took over last month after his Russian predecessor, Arkady Dvorkovich, was forced to step aside after he was placed under EU sanctions.

“There is only one explanation for this decision – the FIDE leadership has gotten out of control. The decisions being made are Russophobic,” Karpov told TASS. “Let’s hope the situation changes after the elections in September.”

FIDE is due to hold its presidential election in Uzbekistan on September 26-27, alongside the closing stages of the Olympiad.

The ruling means Russia will miss its third consecutive over-the-board Olympiad after being absent from Chennai in 2022 and Budapest in 2024.

Russian players nevertheless remain prominent internationally under the FIDE flag. They won four medals – one gold, two silvers and one bronze – at the Asian rapid and blitz championships in Hong Kong last month.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned restrictions imposed on Russian athletes by international sporting bodies as politically motivated. President Vladimir Putin has argued that comparable measures have not been applied to athletes from other countries involved in armed conflicts.

Russia just pulled its ambassador to the UK, as British Prime Minister Andy Burnham doubles down on open involvement in the Ukraine conflict. The risk of open war has never been higher, but Burnham is writing checks that he can’t cash.

Relations between Russia and the UK are at an “unprecedentedly low level,” Moscow’s embassy in London said in a statement on Sunday, after it emerged that ambassador Andrey Kelin had left his post in late July and would not be immediately replaced. In a follow-up statement to the Sunday Times, an embassy spokesperson said that Kelin had made “considerable efforts to preserve contacts and channels of communication” between the UK and Russia, but the UK had clearly chosen a “path of confrontation.”

☝️ Russia-UK relations across all areas have deteriorated to an unprecedentedly low level entirely on London's initiative.https://t.co/ddib4uE1B4 pic.twitter.com/BrdJAyk4bO

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) August 23, 2026

“He left Britain in the hope that a more constructive and respectful dialogue could eventually be restored, should the UK reconsider its policies towards our country,” the spokesman added.

How did Russia-UK relations get this bad?

Well, firstly, Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and of course David Cameron and their anglophonic media bullhorns. 

On August 17, the Russian Embassy in London warned Britain that “the deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added that Moscow has “every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails.”

Neither statement seems to have deterred Burnham. Later that day, the British PM proclaimed that the UK would continue “to support Ukraine 100%.” Six days later, his office announced that it would provide Ukraine with classified information enabling it to produce Storm Shadow cruise missiles on Ukrainian soil. Burnham followed this up with a visit to Kiev on Monday, where he compared the conflict to Britain’s struggle against Nazi Germany in World War II, and promised to supply Ukraine with anti-air missiles to repel Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure.

Is pulling the ambassador a sign of war?

The withdrawal of Kelin is an unprecedented move. Diplomatic relations between Moscow and London have been strained on multiple occasions during the post-Soviet period, Russia’s response has typically been restrained. When FSB agents caught British spies hiding a listening device outside the Russian Embassy in 2006, the Kremlin named and condemned the agents responsible. When the UK expelled four Russian diplomats after Moscow refused to extradite a suspect in the alleged poisoning of double agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2007, Russia responded in kind. 

At no point during these incidents did Russia withdraw – or threaten to withdraw – its ambassador. However, with relations already in the gutter since 2022, Moscow’s lack of urgency in replacing Kelin most likely does not herald military action against the UK. Instead, it is an acknowledgement of just how badly relations have deteriorated.

What will Russia do to neutralize the UK’s Ukraine missile threat?

Russia’s kinetic response to Burnham’s missile data sharing plan is straightforward. In a statement to reporters on August 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “our armed forces are carrying out the relevant work and obtaining the necessary data in order to identify the production sites for such missiles and other military equipment, and are taking measures to destroy these locations.”

Destroying missile production sites in Ukraine is a far easier task for Russia now than at any point since 2022. Ukraine has no ammunition for its Patriot air defense batteries left, nor does Kiev have any money to buy more. In a post on X on Sunday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky admitted that his military used all of its 2026 budget in the first six months of the year buying and building drones to attack civilian infrastructure in Russia. 

As a result, Russia has been dismantling weapons plants, ports and ships used to import arms, and energy targets across Ukraine with impunity since July.

How far can Britain escalate against Russia?

Burnham has little more to offer. The US is unwilling to share its dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles with Ukraine, even if the UK offers to buy. Three out of five weapons packages donated by the UK to Ukraine this year included other models of defense missiles – a total of more than 2,500 missiles – but these have apparently been used up by Kiev’s forces.

Given the potential consequences, some figures within the British defense establishment have called for restraint. Former Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin – who once urged Britain to prepare to fight Russia in space – and his successor, Richard Knighton, have both reportedly sought contact with Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in order to limit the threat of naval escalation. Another former British defense chief, Field Marshal Lord David Richards, has called for peace talks with Russia since 2022, arguing last year that Ukraine “cannot win” the conflict with anything short of full-scale NATO intervention.

Even former defense attache John Foreman – who has encouraged Ukraine to strike Russia with British-made missiles – told The Times on August 15 that Britain should reopen “strategic dialog” with Russia, calling London’s suspension of military-to-military communications in 2024 “daft.”

'Good to speak to @edvaizey today about the need to hold our noses and re-establish mil to mil ties.

We can continue to support Ukraine. But at the same time, we can talk to the Russians'. Cutting military communication with Russia was a 'daft decision'.

With Russian forces…

— John Foreman CBE (@John_ForemanCBE) August 15, 2026

These calls have also come from the UK’s typically hawkish circuit of ‘Russia experts’. Among this group is Mark Galeotti, an academic with rumored links to British intelligence. In an interview with former British diplomat Ian Proud in mid-August, Galeotti conceded that “behind closed doors,” many British diplomatic and security officials now believe that “we’ve reached the stage where we need to be pushing both sides to some kind of resolution.”

“After years of spouting these empty mantras of ‘as much as it takes, for as long as it takes’, etc etc, who’s going to turn around and say ‘actually, come to think of it, this is not in our interests’,” he told Proud. 

Will Burnham step back?

After his speech in Kiev on Monday, Burnham chaired a meeting of the ‘coalition of the willing’ – a 34-nation group put together to pool military aid for Ukraine. In his opening remarks, Burnham called on the UK’s allies to “dig into our own stocks and help others dig into their stocks” to keep the Ukrainian military fighting.

However, should the UK continue supplying long-range missiles and drones to Ukraine, and should these munitions be used to kill Russian civilians, Russia is running out of diplomatic means of deterring London.

Britain has scoffed at every polite warning from Moscow to date, but with Kelin’s office vacant, there are fewer civilized options available to Russia. The “consequences” threatened by Lavrov could be far more catastrophic than a formal demarche.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced new sanctions against Iran, and threatened to boot any country dealing financially with Tehran out of the US dollar system, in a bid to make Iran an “economic outcast.”

The new sanctions target nearly 60 entities, individuals, and vessels in multiple jurisdictions that allegedly trade in “illicit nuclear and missile technology” with Iran, aid Iran’s “cyber operations,” and move Iranian oil, the US Treasury Department said in a statement on Monday. More than a third of the sanctioned entities and individuals – 21 – are based in China.

The Treasury also said it had identified digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping as areas for potential secondary sanctions.

Speaking at a press conference later on Monday, Bessent went further, announcing the beginning of “Operation Economic Outcast,” which he described as “an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe.”

In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections… pic.twitter.com/1fLyobUucu

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 24, 2026

Bessent explained that the US would penalize any country refusing to sever its economic ties with Tehran. “Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system,” he said, adding “the clock just started ticking.” 

Iran exports goods to 147 countries, and imports from 114, according to the most recent data from the World Bank. Asked how the US intends to force three quarters of the world’s nations to cease trade with Iran, Bessent said that US President Donald Trump phoned multiple world leaders over the weekend “with specific requests to cease their interactions” with Iran, and that every country had been given “a defined timeline” to comply with his demands. 

“We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy. And we are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are,” he replied, adding “no-one is above the reach of US sanctions.”

Bessent’s threats were shrugged off in Tehran. “Americans know that no one buys their bombast,” senior Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X after the treasury secretary's press conference.

“The United States is not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries,”he explained. “Iran’s trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don’t take these statements into account anywhere.”

Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned on Sunday that “not a single drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz” if the Gulf states join the US’ economic pressure campaign. If US President Donald Trump “wants to do something, we will retaliate in a seismic manner,” Rezaei added.

Last week, Trump threatened to inflict what he called “Economic D-Day” on Iran, after a 60-day window for negotiating peace with Tehran expired with no breakthrough. Trump ruled out a return to negotiations, but Pakistani Chief of Defense Forces Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on Monday in an attempt to revive the talks. 

The massive influx of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta has shown that Germany would be better off outside the Schengen zone, Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-chair Alice Weidel has said.

The EU’s “borderless” travel system poses a threat to Germany as long as the bloc’s external borders remain largely unprotected, the leader of Germany’s most popular party told ZDF broadcaster on Sunday.

Some 72,000 people illegally entered Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, within hours in late July. The influx led to severe overcrowding and inadequate sanitation, with local authorities reporting a subsequent outbreak of disease.

At least 15 rape cases were also reported in the migrant-swamped enclave. Although most of the arrivals were quickly sent back, city authorities estimated that as many as 10,000 remained in Ceuta as of last week.

“When I see something like what’s happening in Ceuta, then [I say] we’re leaving Schengen,” Weidel said. “We have to start [acting] preventively, we can’t just let everyone in unchecked.”

Germany must “close” its borders because the EU is failing to uphold its commitments on external border security, she argued.

“We will leave Schengen so that people like those from Ceuta can no longer come to us,” she added.

The AfD holds just over 23% of seats in the Bundestag, making it the largest opposition faction. However, it remains largely unable to influence legislation because of the so-called “firewall” policy, under which Germany’s other major parties refuse to cooperate with it.

Weidel has argued that this could change after the next parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2029, which she believes the AfD could win.

The Ceuta crisis has already sent shockwaves through the EU. Several European leaders have called for Spain to be excluded from the Schengen zone, while Italy introduced temporary border checks on travelers arriving from Spain on August 1. Madrid responded with reciprocal measures.

Germany has long been the EU’s leading destination for asylum seekers. It received more than 163,000 applications in 2025, accounting for roughly one in five claims across the bloc’s 27 member states, according to the EU Agency for Asylum.

The country also has the EU’s largest foreign-born population in absolute terms, with nearly 17 million people born abroad, or around 20% of the population.

Berlin has already expanded checks along its borders with other EU countries and increased the number of migrants turned away in an effort to curb illegal migration.

US President Donald Trump has announced a 50% tariff on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts starting next year, escalating a bitter trade war with Ottawa after negotiations collapsed last week.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump accused Canada of “ripping off the United States of America for years” and imposing excessive tariffs on American farmers. He claimed that bilateral trade has left the US with a “$60 billion deficit.”

“Not sustainable, and NOT ANYMORE! On January First, 2027, Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%,” Trump announced. The move will double the current 25% tariff on Canadian auto imports.

“Build in the U.S. and there are ZERO TARIFFS,” Trump added, saying Canada would no longer be treated “like a State” and calling it “among the worst nations in the world to deal with.”

“WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.

The announcement comes just two days after a separate package of 50% US tariffs took effect on around $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, including wine, cement, plywood, clothing and hockey equipment.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the US terms “unfair” and “uneconomic” and pledged to match Washington’s tariffs “dollar for dollar” to protect Canadian workers and businesses.

Ottawa’s retaliatory measures, which are set to take effect on September 8, will target US goods including steel, dairy products, appliances, and electronics.

Trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa, which date back to Trump’s first term, reignited after he returned to office last year and launched a sweeping tariff campaign against major US trade partners. These include Canada, Mexico, China, the EU, and Japan, who Trump has accused of unfairly benefiting from access to the US market.

There is one feeling I often recall from having lived and worked in Ukraine – to be precise, in its most nationalist, full-of-itself city, Lviv – for a total of five years in the 2000s: Thank God, at least there’s no violence!

That is what I, some other foreigners, and quite a few Ukrainians, too, were thinking and even saying then. The country was politically and even culturally polarized, extremely corrupt, and a sham ‘democracy’ even more fake than most of the rest.

It was dominated and bled dry by a greedy, hypocritical, and – despite all the cheap talk, the pious singing-of-anthems-hand-on-heart, and the cheesy peasant braids and stitched shirts – deeply unpatriotic establishment of typically post-Soviet turncoats, thieves, liars, and sell-outs. There was no rule of law, the courts were a bad joke, and the police was a racket.

And yet, while the usual business-crime complex took its toll and there was the occasional state murder of a journalist, there was no large-scale violence. There was bitter grumbling galore, including about Crimea, all the time. But there was no civil war – as the almighty US intelligence services had infamously as good as predicted in the even darker 1990s – and no one was reaching for a gun either to leave an unbearable country or keep others in it by force.   

While the Americans were busy thinking about the possibility – and perhaps opportunities – of Ukrainians killing each other in large numbers, their British cousins were considering another kind of doom. For them, more than three decades ago, the most interesting question was whether Ukraine and Russia would go to war, specifically over Crimea. There, British spooks back then warned with unusual honesty, “most of the population is Russian,” and things might become less than cordial if Kiev didn’t watch its steps.

They literally hunt and, in effect, sell their subjects as cannon fodder, so that they can profit and the West can have its slaughterhouse war against Russia, in an insane, evil, and futile attempt to eliminate Moscow as a power to be reckoned with. This is the reality of “busification,” and nothing remotely like it happened before Zelensky and his accomplices took over. Those who do not readily submit to being treated as combat cattle regularly die mysteriously from ‘falls’ or maybe just blowing their nose.

The Ukrainian mass media have never been remotely clean, objective, or reliable. But the zombified and self-zombifying propaganda machine created under Zelensky is unprecedentedly awful. Those who openly resist the national brainwashing are incarcerated by kangaroo courts, tortured, and killed.

Or consider basic demography: Ukraine’s real population has almost halved since the end of the Soviet Union, and the future looks even worse. And while part of this catastrophe is due to the current war, much of it has been produced by the ceaseless class-war-from-above of injustice, exploitation, and hopelessness that Ukraine’s ‘elites’ have waged on their own subjects for a third of a century while blabbing sanctimoniously about nation this and nation that.

Yet it was not. Indeed, Ukraine’s short post-Soviet history is, among other sad things, a record of at least sleepwalking and, more frequently, proactively provoking this twin catastrophe. But Ukrainians – or rather their rotten establishment – did have plenty of help in getting it so wrong. Take, for instance, the mean-spirited and asinine obsession with suppressing the Russian language to eradicate Ukraine’s windfall advantages as a mostly bilingual country of Russian and Ukrainian speakers.

That perverse and self-harming pursuit – recalling Freud’s hunch about nationalism as neurosis – was obstinately cultivated by both a narrow-minded but hyperactive and arrogant minority of ukrainier-than-though nationalists at home and descendants of run-away World War II nationalists, mass murderers of Poles, and Nazi collaborators from the West who were eager to infest post-Soviet Ukraine with their hoary bigotry.

Personally, I remember being naïve enough back then in the 2000s to ask Lviv acquaintances why Ukraine couldn’t just codify its own variant of Russian (comparable to the way American English is different from British English) and also promote Ukrainian (I know both languages, as it happens), and then focus on actually important matters. Blank stares were the answer, at best.

Entitled, patronizing exile nationalists projecting their selfish tunnel-vision fantasies on, and throwing their Western hard currency at, desperate people freshly shell-shocked by ultra-predatory ‘transition’ capitalism were one noxious outside influence vitiating Ukraine’s post-Soviet trajectory. But it was far from the only one. Indeed, as time went on, the West as a whole – its politicians, intellectuals, and mainstream media – became ever more interested in and vastly detrimental to Ukraine.   

To be fair, the first yet already extremely harmful steps the West took to, ultimately, ruin Ukraine had very little to do with it: When Washington decided – not once but repeatedly – to cheat and humiliate Russia and break clear promises not to expand NATO eastward, it was first Germany, then multiple Eastern European countries that were at the center of attention, but not Ukraine. Yet, ironically, even while neglecting it, the West’s reckless expansion already set the stage for phase two of putting Ukraine in the crosshairs.

That was reached in 2008, when, at an infamous summit in Bucharest, the high and mighty of the West, led by the indispensably destructive US, artfully maneuvered Ukraine into the very worst position imaginable: by making a promise of NATO membership for Ukraine sometime in the future, they inevitably poked Russia in the eye once too often. By keeping the reckless promise vague, they left Ukraine completely exposed, as if baiting Moscow to intervene. The whole mad scheme took willfully ignoring the clear warnings issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Munich one year before and multiple equally explicit warnings produced by not Russians but widely acknowledged Westerners such as George Kennan and, back then, even William ‘Bill’ Burns.

Indeed, it doubled down on it. If only the West had dropped Ukraine the way it dropped Georgia in 2008, many Ukrainians would still be alive and the country would have lost none or far less territory. Instead, the West got involved ever more deeply, offering a poisonous EU association agreement and the shaping a regime-change coup in 2014. After that, it bound Ukraine so closely into official and black-ops NATO structures that formal membership looked increasingly irrelevant, while helping Kiev sabotage the last realistic chance to return to peace and avoid large-scale war, the Minsk II agreement of 2015. Meanwhile, demagogic public intellectuals, such as Tim Snyder and Anne Applebaum did their worst to pour oil into the fire by a mix of silly nationalism-by-proxy and nasty Russophobia.

Finally, the West almost nonchalantly refused to seriously consider Moscow’s, as it turned out, last pre-February-2022 offer to return to substantial diplomacy and compromise. Once the war had greatly escalated, the West sent Britain’s most evil clown to kill an excellent opportunity to make peace quickly produced by the Istanbul talks of spring 2022.

Since then, since locking Ukraine into a devastating, perfectly unnecessary, and futile yet deliberately provoked war to weaken Russia, things have only gotten worse and worse, and there seems no end in sight. Indeed, as a remarkably sane former German general has just explained, Kiev is still eager to drag all of Western Europe (at least) into an open shooting war with Russia. In Europe, many establishment figures seem all too willing to go along. Ukraine has become the outstanding example of how the West risked and then destroyed the opportunities of the post-Cold War period. Ukraine could have been a prosperous country profiting from links to both East and West. Instead it’s a ruin.

The joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of eight Arab and Muslim countries was one of the clearest diplomatic signals of recent weeks. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates did more than condemn Israel’s E1 settlement project. They demanded that the plan be halted, the decisions approving it reversed, and sanctions considered against individuals and entities involved in settlement expansion. The signatories also reaffirmed that an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, remains the only viable path toward a lasting settlement, according to an official statement released by the UAE Foreign Ministry.

This was not just another communiqué intended to register concern over unfolding events. The reference to possible sanctions suggests that even the region’s more cautious governments are beginning to adopt a tougher stance. Israeli leaders apparently assume that normalization with certain Arab countries has become irreversible and that their objections can therefore be safely ignored. The E1 project, however, may reveal just how badly mistaken that calculation is.

The plan calls for the construction of more than 3,400 homes in the strategically important corridor between East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. If implemented, it would effectively split the West Bank into northern and southern sections while cutting East Jerusalem off from the main territory of any future Palestinian state. In other words, E1 would reshape not only the demographic but also the political geography of the conflict. This is not a routine expansion of an existing settlement. It is a step that could deprive the “two states for two peoples” formula of its territorial foundation.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has made no attempt to conceal the project’s political purpose, openly presenting it as a way to finally “bury” the idea of Palestinian statehood. E1 received final approval in 2025, and the publication of construction tenders in 2026 transformed it from a political threat into a plan moving toward practical implementation.

It is still too early to suggest that Abu Dhabi is abandoning the Abraham Accords. Rather, the UAE is changing the terms on which it is prepared to support normalization and reminding Israel that establishing diplomatic relations did not amount to endorsing every subsequent action taken by the Israeli government. For the Emirates, normalization has always been an instrument of statecraft – not a commitment to follow Israel unconditionally.

The annexation of Palestinian territory is a matter of principle for the UAE leadership. In 2020, Abu Dhabi justified its decision to normalize relations by arguing that its agreement with Israel had halted the annexation of Palestinian land and preserved the possibility of a two-state solution. This was intended to reassure Arab audiences that the Emirates had not abandoned the Palestinian cause but had instead chosen a different way of influencing Israel: direct dialogue rather than a boycott. The latest demarche should therefore be seen not as a repudiation of that earlier policy, but as an attempt to restore the Abraham Accords to their originally stated purpose.

The Israeli government’s actions, however, are steadily making that argument harder to sustain. If normalization does not restrain annexation, halt settlement expansion, or preserve the prospect of Palestinian statehood, it becomes increasingly difficult for Abu Dhabi to explain what political purpose its special relationship with Israel actually serves.

There is also a broader strategic calculation at work. Israel is becoming politically toxic even for Arab governments that embraced normalization only a few years ago. The problem is not Israel’s existence or the need to maintain working relations with it. What has become toxic is the course pursued by the current Israeli government, which openly rejects Palestinian statehood, continues to expand settlements, and expects its Arab partners to quietly accept the new reality.

Put bluntly, the Israeli leadership has lost its sense of proportion. It behaves as though the economic and defense interests of Arab countries allow it to disregard their position on Palestine indefinitely. But there are limits to that approach. Israel cannot expect to deepen its relations with the Arab world while systematically destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state.

For the UAE, association with this policy carries growing reputational costs. Abu Dhabi has no intention of sacrificing its standing in the Arab and Muslim world to pay for the radicalism of members of the Israeli cabinet. The Emirates understand that, as the regional order is reshaped, they must maintain stable relations first and foremost with their neighbors and the leading powers of the Islamic world.

The presence of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan in this group is particularly important. Shortly before the statement was issued, the three countries formed the Mecca Defense Pact, which has already been described as a prototype for a “Muslim NATO.” The UAE did not join the alliance, and it would be wrong to portray it as a member. Yet the joint demarche over E1 shows that Abu Dhabi does not want to find itself outside the emerging Arab-Islamic political alignment. The Emirates are signaling that they can coordinate their position with the core members of the Mecca alliance while continuing to cooperate with Israel and the United States.

At the same time, the criticism of Israel was carefully calibrated. The eight countries cited not only international law and UN resolutions, but also Donald Trump’s peace plan and its rejection of West Bank annexation. This framed the Israeli government’s actions as a challenge not only to the demands of Arab countries but also to Washington’s own stated position. It allows the UAE to increase pressure on Israel without turning its demarche into an anti-American gesture.

For now, it is difficult to imagine Abu Dhabi opting for a complete break with Israel, although that possibility cannot be ruled out entirely. The cooperation built since the signing of the Abraham Accords has proved too valuable to the Emirates, particularly in the economic, technological, and security spheres.

At its core, the latest demarche is a warning, not a rupture. The UAE is making clear that normalization is not a blank check and does not give Israel the right to ignore the interests of the Arab world. The Israeli leadership has become far too confident that economic cooperation has permanently separated the Palestinian issue from its relations with Arab governments.

The E1 project proves otherwise. Normalization has political limits, and the Israeli government is moving dangerously close to crossing them.

Iran has denied reports that it has been invited to join the Mecca defense pact comprising Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan, while confirming that proposals have been made for talks with the three countries on regional security.

The clarification comes after Mehdi Rahimi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s Khaneh Mellat news agency, told Al Mayadeen on Saturday that Tehran had received an invitation to become a member of the Mecca pact and was considering it.

On Monday, however, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected the claim, stating that no formal invitation had been received in Tehran. At the same time, he said that discussions with the pact members concerning broader regional security have been proposed and are under consideration.

The three founding members of the pact had previously repeatedly said the alliance could eventually expand to include other regional states, with Egypt being publicly mentioned as a possible candidate. Pakistan has also said it would have no objection to Iran joining.

The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which was signed on August 7, brings together Türkiye, which possesses one of NATO’s largest militaries and a rapidly growing defense industry, Saudi Arabia, which features enormous financial resources and ambitions to shape the Arab political order, and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with one of the largest militaries in the Muslim world.

Tehran initially said it had “no reason for concern” over the agreement, with spokesman Baghaei noting that its creation reflected a growing desire among regional states to develop their own security mechanisms.

Some observers have dubbed the new grouping an “Islamic NATO,” although experts have cautioned against treating it as a fully-fledged military bloc. Gulf Research Center chairman Abdulaziz Sager has said the pact could strengthen the members’ combined diplomatic and defense weight and contribute to a more regionally driven security system.

Israel, meanwhile, has responded to the pact with alarm, raising concerns that a bloc built around Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and nuclear-armed Pakistan could emerge as a counterweight to its own military dominance in the region.

The Mecca pact members, however, insist that the agreement is defensive, is open to other countries in the region, and is not directed against any other states.

Singapore has launched the world’s first independently operated data center using living human brain cells for some computing tasks, the medical school of the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) has said. The system consumes a fraction of the power of traditional computing hardware. The neurons are fed every three days and sustained by dedicated life-support equipment.  

NUS Medicine announced the prototype earlier this month in partnership with Singapore-based data center operator DayOne and Australian biotech firm Cortical Labs. Housed at the university, the system is described by its developers as the world’s first independently operated biologically integrated server rack.  

Cortical Labs founder and CEO Hon Weng Chong said the prototype moves biological computing “from research to commercial application,” arguing it could complement AI where “data is sparse” and conditions change. He pointed to potential uses in drug discovery, humanoid robotics, cybersecurity and fraud detection.  

Unlike conventional data centers packed with power-hungry servers and cooling systems, biological computers could operate on a fraction of the electricity by harnessing the natural processing capabilities of living neural networks.  

Keeping the “computers” running looks more like maintaining a laboratory than a server room. Technicians feed the cells a mixture of sugar, micronutrients and pH buffers every three days, while a gas system supplies carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen.  

The power difference is particularly relevant for Singapore, which temporarily halted construction of new data centers in 2019 because of concerns over their electricity and water consumption. Data centers accounted for around 7% of the country’s electricity use in 2020.  

The technology is not intended to replace silicon, which Chong said remains “far superior” for the fast, repeatable calculations behind large language models such as ChatGPT. Biological systems, however, can learn from fewer examples and adapt to changing conditions.

Japan does not plan to supply Ukraine with weapons, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara has said. At a press briefing on Monday, he told reporters that Tokyo “is not considering any deliveries” of defensive or offensive weapons “at this time.”

Kihara was responding to Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky, who asked Japan on Sunday for anti-ballistic missiles, in an interview with Kyodo News.

“I would like to kindly ask one and only thing... anti-ballistic missiles,” he was cited as saying. “It’s the most important thing we need... I very much hope and count on your country.”

Koretsky took office in July and was reportedly close to disgraced businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky who fled to Israel amid a corruption scandal.

“At this time, the government does not consider transferring weapons under the Self-Defense Forces Law to Ukraine,” Kihara said, referring to an overhaul in April of Japan’s defense-export policy that lifted restrictions limiting transfers to non-lethal categories and opened the door to lethal weapons exports.

Japan’s stance on the Ukraine conflict has been marked by contradiction. Tokyo has publicly sided with Kiev, condemning Russia’s military operation and taking part in the Western sanctions. However, it has stopped short of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine, and unlike some Western nations, has retained stakes in key Russian energy projects, citing their importance to domestic energy security.

Over the past few months, Ukraine has increasingly sought new military hardware from its Western backers to counter severe battlefield shortages amid the steady advance of Russian forces. Last month, Russia announced the capture of the key Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka in northwestern Donbass before launching an offensive toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last two major cities in the region still under Ukrainian control. Over the past week, Russia has liberated six settlements in Donbass.

Russia has long accused Western weapons suppliers of enabling Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign. A Sunday Times report last week claimed that Ukraine has used British-made drones for long-range attacks inside Russia over the past six months. Moscow maintains that this aid makes Kiev’s foreign backers direct participants in the hostilities and only serves to prolong the conflict. Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia will adopt “much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine.”

UN special rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has called for the deployment of an international protection force in the Palestinian territories in response to a rise in attacks by Israeli settlers.

“An International Protection Presence in West Bank/east Jerusalem and Gaza is absolutely URGENT,” Albanese wrote in a post on X on Monday.

“Third states have an obligation, per the ICJ, to act to end Israel’s unlawful occupation,” she said, using the acronym for the Hague-based International Court of Justice. She called on the offices of the UN secretary-general and the General Assembly to help bypass the “paralysis” of the organization’s Security Council, where the US has vetoed a number of resolutions critical of Israel.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law by the UN and most of the international community. Israel disputes this. The settlements are also widely viewed as an obstacle to establishing a viable Palestinian state. In 2024, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion saying Israel should end its occupation of Palestinian territory “as rapidly as possible.”

Israel has taken an increasingly hawkish stance since the war in Gaza began with a Hamas attack in October 2023, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying last year that “there will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River.”

More Israeli outposts have since been approved in the West Bank, which far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich hailed as “a revolution” in settlement expansion.

Settler violence has also surged. There were around 190 attacks against Palestinians per month in the first months of 2026, according to UN data cited by The Guardian. A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and another wounded by gunfire on Friday during an altercation with settlers.

Britain is directly participating in the Ukraine conflict and actively working to prolong it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, after London announced it would grant Kiev access to classified technical information needed to assemble long-range cruise missiles domestically.

The UK government has authorized European defense manufacturer MBDA to release classified information concerning British-made components for SCALP, the French-produced version of Britain’s Storm Shadow. The air-launched missiles use shared French and British technology and have a range exceeding 250 km.

The move was confirmed by Downing Street on Monday and by Prime Minister Andy Burnham personally during his visit to the Ukrainian capital on the same day.

“The UK was the first to gift long-range weapons to Ukraine back in 2023,” he said, referring to deliveries of Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles. “I am pleased to confirm today that I have approved” Kiev’s request to share the missile-production technology as well, the prime minister added.

Responding to the announcement, Peskov said Britain is “participating in this war on the side of the Kiev regime” and is “methodically and regularly adding fuel to the fire and scheming to prevent any development of the peace settlement process.”

London said the decision to release the information would allow “the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile.”

“The Ukrainian people should be in no doubt: The UK is behind you today and for as long as it takes,” Burnham said ahead of his visit to the Ukrainian capital, where he met with Vladimir Zelensky and chaired his first meeting of the ‘coalition of the willing’, established by Britain and France under his predecessor, Keir Starmer.

Moscow has maintained that the UK and other suppliers of weapons to Kiev are directly responsible for the deep-strike campaign, which it says has frequently hit civilians.

In a statement last week, the Russian Embassy in London called the UK “an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks” committed by Ukraine. It warned that “the deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that London will face consequences if it continues supplying drones used by Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia.

“We have every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails,” Lavrov said.

A rapidly spreading human-caused wildfire in Nevada has injured at least six people and forced around 42,000 people to evacuate; tens of thousands more have been warned to prepare to leave.

The Hawk Fire broke out northwest of Reno on Saturday and had spread across more than 15,000 acres (61 square kilometers) by the following day. Three civilians and three first responders were injured, and several structures were destroyed.

The ‘GO NOW’ evacuation zone has expanded to the edge of the University of Nevada, Reno, and another 45,000 people in an adjacent ‘GET SET’ zone have been urged to leave and prepare to stay away for several days.

WATCH: Human-caused Hawk Fire explodes to 10,500 acres near Reno, Nevada; 42,000 evacuated pic.twitter.com/d95enUHNKM

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) August 23, 2026

Shifting and strengthening winds caused the fire to change direction rapidly and reportedly jump over fire trucks, preventing crews from reaching some hot spots as people attempted to flee.

“It was extremely confusing,” Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam said, describing how the winds repeatedly sent the flames in different directions and urging residents in evacuation-warning zones to leave. “Please get out if you can right now,” he added.

The Hawk Fire has consumed most of Mount Peavine here in Reno, NV. Many people in the north valleys area lost their homes and businesses were destroyed including a Copart warehouse and storage facility. I am located roughly 1.8 miles from the evacuation zone.@nyprepper1 pic.twitter.com/ifR9GXjpG4

— Mopar🇺🇲Man1152 (@SSecurity93929) August 23, 2026

Officials have determined that the fire was human-caused but have not disclosed how it started or whether it was accidental or deliberate, saying the precise cause remains under investigation.

VIDEO: Nevada Army Guard drops water on Hawk Fire, Aug. 23, 2026. #hawkfire pic.twitter.com/aDSQzeleK9

— Nevada Guard (@NVNationalGuard) August 23, 2026

Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo has declared a state of emergency in Washoe County. The National Guard has sent two helicopter crews and 60 troops to support firefighting operations and protect evacuated neighborhoods. Two hospitals have moved patients to safety, and the authorities are monitoring whether the county jail will also need to be evacuated.

JUST IN: Human-caused Hawk Fire spreads toward neighborhoods in northwest Reno, Nevada, burning homes and injuring at least 6 people, according to press conference. pic.twitter.com/rLJ16jK6wt

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) August 23, 2026

Nearly 60,000 customers initially lost electricity, although that figure had fallen to around 10,000 by Sunday. Parts of US Route 395 were also closed.

The Hawk Fire comes as months of dry weather and record-low snowfall last winter fuel fires across the western US. Fifteen new fires erupted across Nevada on Saturday alone. Earlier this month, wildfires near Spokane, Washington forced around 60,000 people to evacuate, while three separate fires north of Reno displaced more than 13,000 people.

A Turkish sailor who survived a drone attack on one cargo ship was killed when the vessel that rescued him was struck as well, near Russia’s Black Sea coast. Ukraine has been escalating long-range strikes against Russian ports and civilian logistics.

According to multiple Turkish news reports on Saturday, Ilker Lazoglu was the cook on the San Marino-flagged bulker Necibe. The vessel was reportedly struck by drones at Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse on Tuesday, where it was scheduled to load 20,000 tons of wheat.

Along with 17 other crew members, he was evacuated to the Ural, a Turkish-owned and Cameroon-flagged vessel, Türkiye Today and Hurriyet reported. However, that ship was reportedly hit near Novorossiysk, which has faced numerous attacks by Ukrainian drones in recent months.

For several months, Ukrainian long-range strikes have been targeting Russian ports and international shipping that Kiev suspects of transporting Russian cargoes. Russian officials have warned that Ukraine is “playing with fire” by attacking other countries’ civilian ships in the Black Sea and have condemned the strikes as terrorist acts.

Moscow has retaliated by targeting Ukraine’s key Black Sea ports and shipping it says are handling imports for the Ukrainian military, effectively cutting off the country’s main export route.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was booed on Saturday during a visit to North Rhine-Westphalia, which had been hit by devastating wildfires. The heckling comes as Merz’s approval rating has fallen to a historic low amid growing public dissatisfaction with his performance.

The wildfire in Germany’s Eifel region was described as the largest in the region’s history and prompted the evacuation of around 2,000 people. Firefighting efforts, completed earlier this week, were complicated by the presence of possible unexploded World War II ordnance.

Merz’s speech, in which he thanked emergency services for bringing the fires under control, was repeatedly interrupted by shouts and whistles from some of those gathered, while several farmers also honked their tractors’ horns.

Bild reported later in the day that around 200 people attended the event, with some holding signs bearing slogans critical of Merz. The gathering marked the chancellor’s return to the public eye after a 23-day vacation; he last appeared in public on July 29, the tabloid noted.

Mit Buhrufen und Pfiffen ist Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (CDU) am Samstag in Hürtgenwald-Gey empfangen worden. Merz reagierte gelassen: Er lasse sich von denen, die herumschreien, nicht beeindrucken. pic.twitter.com/XIo6Hzw5oT

— WDR (@WDRaktuell) August 22, 2026

Approval ratings for Merz’s coalition, comprising the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party, have declined steadily since it took office in May 2025. The government has faced criticism over continued economic stagnation and its failure to deliver on pre-election promises.

On Sunday, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported, citing the latest YouGov poll, that most Germans expect the chancellor to be replaced before the next scheduled election in 2029.

Last month, Der Spiegel cited sources as saying that CDU was discussing Merz’s possible departure as chancellor amid a botched cabinet reshuffle and growing discontent within the party.

A small-scale British power plant was taken offline because of a cyber attack, with UK authorities blaming an Iranian-linked hacking group, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.

In the UK, dozens of small-scale power plants are connected to the national grid, many of them gas-fired facilities that operate for just a few hours a week.

The newspaper did not specify which facility was targeted but noted that it was out of operation for four days in July.

The authorities reportedly notified the National Cyber Security Centre, a public-facing branch of the Government Communications Headquarters, held emergency briefings for energy company executives and sent businesses guidance on strengthening security measures.

According to The Telegraph, the incident coincided with a series of cyberattacks targeting water infrastructure in the US that affected facilities in 12 states. Earlier this month, CBS News cited sources as saying that more than 30 community water systems had been impacted and that the attacks might be linked to Iran-backed hackers.

Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly claimed that critical national infrastructure and government bodies face a constant threat from hackers in Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia – allegations that the authorities in each country have dismissed. Moscow says that the West habitually cites the supposed threat of external aggression to justify a massive military buildup and the development of offensive cyber capabilities.

A US court has overturned a Trump administration rule that suspended the issuing of immigrant visas to people from 75 countries.

The State Department announced the restrictions in Janurary, which did not apply to tourist or student visas, saying they were needed to prevent the entry of those who would “take welfare and public benefits.” Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Albania, Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, and Pakistan were among the nations covered by the policy.

Judge Jeannette Vargas of Manhattan said in her ruling on Friday that US consular staff had been ordered to reject visas for all applicants from the blacklisted countries even if they were able to support themselves.

Under American laws, an immigrant’s application can only be turned down if the person is determined likely to become a “public charge” by a review of their finances, health, and skills.

Vargas, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, also found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have the authority to impose the visa ban.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by immigrant rights groups, along with applicants for immigrant visas and American citizens whose relatives had been denied visas to the country. The Trump administration can still appeal.

A sweeping clampdown on immigration, which the White House says is needed to improve domestic security, led to nationwide protests after the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal agents in Minnesota in January.

Besides imposing visa restrictions, the US government has stepped up deportation of illegal aliens, with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo saying earlier this week that some 2,300 Mexican nationals had been flown to his country from the US since the start of year, despite objections by Mexico.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also faces scrutiny over conditions in its detention centers. At least 52 people died in the agency’s custody during the first 500 days of Trump’s second term, according to a report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights.

Iran has said that not “a single drop of oil” will leave the Persian Gulf and threatened to attack alternative export routes if neighboring states take part in the US economic pressure campaign against Tehran.

The warning comes after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday called on Washington’s allies and other countries to choose sides and stop doing business with Iran, as the US prepares what he touted as “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.”

In an interview with state broadcaster IRIB which aired on Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, urged other countries not to participate “in the economic war with America,” saying that otherwise Tehran would treat them as enemies.

“If the countries surrounding Iran join the Americans in the economic war, not a single drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and we will also target other routes through which oil is exported from the Persian Gulf,” he said.

On Thursday, Trump announced what he called the “most crushing economic operation against Iran,” describing it as an “Economic D-Day” and calling on US allies “to stand with the United States of America to isolate and defeat the Iran threat.”

The announcement came after a 60-day window for negotiating a peace agreement with Tehran expired on Monday without a breakthrough, prompting Trump to declare that the talks had ended.

Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG trade, shortly after the US and Israel launched their joint bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic on February 28. The US Navy imposed its own blockade on Iranian ports in April and has since been guiding ships along routes that Tehran considers illegal.

Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, bringing traffic to around 20% of pre-war levels, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center.

Kpler data showed that more than 80% of liquid cargo vessels crossing the strait over the past two weeks either used a US-backed route through Omani waters that Iran considers illegal or switched off their tracking systems, likely to use the same corridor. Five vessels were struck by Iranian projectiles during the past week, resulting in two reported casualties. All five ships were reportedly damaged but not lost.

Denmark plans to stop issuing temporary residence permits to Ukrainian refugees from regions least affected by the conflict with Russia, the EU nation’s immigration minister, Morten Bodskov, has said. The announcement follows a wider trend among European nations to cut benefits to those fleeing the conflict with Russia and strip protections for military-aged males from Ukraine.

In June, the government in Copenhagen presented a bill aimed at preventing military-aged men from Ukraine, who do not have an official exemption from service, from receiving asylum.

In a statement on Saturday, Bodskov said that Denmark wants to further tighten the rules for those who escaped the fighting, despite prolonging the Ukraine Special Act that allows them to stay in the country until March 2028.

Denmark has accepted 47,600 displaced Ukrainians since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, according to the minister’s data.

In order to relieve the municipalities, “the government will now adjust the rules so that only the Ukrainians who need protection the most can be granted a residence permit under the relaxed rules,” Bodskov said.

This means that people from 14 “less war-torn” regions in western and central Ukraine, including Lviv, Transcarpathia, Ivano-Frankovsk, Zhytomir and others, will not be able to apply for a residence permit, he added.

Norway and Switzerland previously introduced similar restrictions, which led to a drop in the number of applications, the minister stressed.

In early August, the EU announced that it is ending its temporary protections for military-aged Ukrainian men. Starting from this week, the bloc obliges all refugees from the country to provide proof that they aren’t dodging the draft.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for military-age men to return from abroad due to severe troop shortages and continued setbacks on the front line with Russia. Vladimir Zelensky said in April that it would be “a matter of justice.”

In order to replenish the ranks of its armed forces, Kiev has resorted to so-called “basification,” in which draft officers ambush men on the streets, often using force against those who resist.

Moscow has accused Kiev’s Western backers of being willing to wage a proxy war against Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

US far-right influencer Jake Lang, known for his Quran-burning stunts, has been arrested on suspicion of rioting after clashes with counterprotesters outside Minneapolis City Hall.

Lang spent four years in prison over the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, before being pardoned by US President Donald Trump. This week, he announced what he described as a “crusader freedom of speech rally” in Minnesota’s largest city on Saturday.

The event was billed in support of Shiloh Hendrix, a white woman found guilty last month of disorderly conduct following a viral video showing her using a racial slur against an autistic black child at a playground in Rochester. She was fined $1,000, given a stayed 90-day jail sentence and one year of supervised probation, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

Mayor Jacob Frey called on Lang’s opponents not to attend the “lame-a** racist rally” and urged them to avoid confrontation. “We don’t need to take the bait,” he said in a message on X on Thursday. Nevertheless, an angry crowd formed in anticipation of the event.

BREAKING: Chaotic scene in Minneapolis as Jake Lang rides in the bed of a pickup truck outside city hall pic.twitter.com/fjvMqUIh4A

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 22, 2026

Lang’s two vehicles drove onto the sidewalk in front of City Hall, while Lang stood in the back of a pickup truck holding a large sign that read, “Jake Lang loves black people but hates n***ers.” One of his associates held a tall white cross.

WATCH: Protesters PEPPER SPRAYED as they Smash Up Jake Lang's truck, while he drives through the side walk outside Minneapolis City Hall.

Lang crew was seen hovering in the back by the end of the drive as police struggled to keep crowds away.

Originally promoted as "N March",… pic.twitter.com/O3RtJwZV3W

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) August 22, 2026

Counterprotesters attempted to block the vehicles and clashed with Lang as police tried to separate the groups, resulting in chaotic scuffles.

According to 5 Eyewitness News, police arrested all seven occupants of the vehicles, including Lang, and later arrested four other individuals in connection with the clashes. A message on Lang’s official X account said he was “brutally assaulted” and taken “as a political hostage.” 

In November 2025, Lang attempted to burn a copy of the Quran in Dearborn, Michigan, home to a large Muslim community, but was stopped by a counterprotester. He tried setting another copy of the Quran on fire outside a Dearborn mosque in May but was again stopped when someone sprayed it with a fire extinguisher.

In January, Lang held a demonstration outside the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC in Washington, DC, with a banner reading “Make Jerusalem Christian Again,” and threw chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil.

The Pentagon has fired senior employees of its official newspaper Stars and Stripes after they publicly criticized what they called government interference in its editorial policy.

First published during the US Civil War in 1861, the newspaper has served as a voice for American troops and reaches about 1.4 million readers daily online and through its overseas print editions.

Although partly funded by the Pentagon, it is legally required to maintain editorial independence. The paper recently criticized US tactics in the war against Iran and reported on numerous problems facing the military during the campaign.

Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte each received a notice of separation on Friday citing insubordination.

Slavin told AP that he was fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.”

“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies,” he added.

Lederer, who had served as publisher for 19 years and was due to retire in September, wrote in his resignation letter on Tuesday that his understanding of the newspaper’s “value and mission” differed “in fundamental ways” from the Pentagon leadership’s plans.

In an interview published on July 5, the journalists criticized a push to rid the paper of what the Pentagon termed “woke distractions that siphon morale,” as well as changes to regulations guaranteeing its independence. Slavin said his team had been barred from publishing news from paid wire services such as AP, making it “more difficult for us to cover breaking news.”

Jacqueline Smith, the publication’s ombudsman responsible for safeguarding its editorial independence, was fired in January after writing an article critical of Pentagon press restrictions. She later sued the US Department of War, alleging that her dismissal was retaliatory.

Stars and Stripes was among the first outlets to report on deteriorating living conditions and low morale aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which spent more than 200 days operating near Iran without port calls.

It also reported on ammunition shortages and published an op-ed earlier this month by retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, who argued that “America’s war against Iran has already been lost at the strategic level.”

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused media outlets of spreading “fake news” and sued several of them. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has vowed to push “woke culture” out of the military and revive “the warrior spirit.”

Six EU nations want the bloc to introduce a windfall tax on oil companies’ “excessive profits” linked to price hikes caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran, several media outlets reported on Saturday, citing a joint letter from the countries’ finance ministers.

Oil prices have repeatedly topped $100 per barrel this year due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG trade.

Global crude benchmark Brent futures reached $102 per barrel last month, with Goldman Sachs predicting that prices could exceed $120 in the fourth quarter and average $100 next year if disruptions in the strait continue through 2027.

The initiative, reportedly led by Germany, seeks to “tackle the issue of high energy prices by discussing an EU-wide framework to tax excess profits.” The group demanded that the issue be placed on the agenda of the bloc’s next meeting of economic and finance ministers, scheduled for mid-September.

Oxfam, a network of anti-poverty NGOs, estimated last month that the combined profits of BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies amounted to nearly €40 billion ($46.6 billion) between April and June and could reach €147 billion ($171.2 billion) by the end of the year. The charity called for a permanent windfall tax of at least 50% on profits exceeding a 10% return on investment.

According to the European Commission, Russian oil accounted for 27% of the bloc’s crude imports, while Russian gas covered 45% of the EU’s needs in early 2022. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged last month that the loss of these imports had contributed to the country’s current energy problems, while refusing to change Berlin’s stance on anti-Russian sanctions.

The EU has meanwhile continued to set records for Russian LNG imports despite Brussels’ goal of ending them entirely. Belgium, in particular, relied entirely on Russian supplies of the fuel last month, Bloomberg reported in early August.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has fined US ride-hailing company Uber €825 million ($964 million) for using automated systems to suspend drivers suspected of fraud or given low customer ratings without adequate human review.

The watchdog found that Uber’s use of automated decision-making to suspend drivers between 2018 and 2022 violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Tensions are mounting between Washington and Brussels over multi-billion-dollar fines imposed on American tech giants, with US President Donald Trump recently threatening tariffs in response to what he has described as unfair treatment of US firms.

In a statement on Friday, the AP said Uber had violated EU privacy rules by using a fully automated system to suspend drivers suspected of fraud or those who received low customer ratings.

“Uber has committed serious infringements,” AP vice president Monique Verdier said in the statement. Drivers were summarily suspended and had their incomes cut off, she said.

The AP said it launched the investigation following a complaint from French human rights advocacy group LDH. The Dutch watchdog handled the case because Uber’s European headquarters is located in the Netherlands.

Uber denied that it permanently deactivated driver accounts without human intervention and said it would appeal.

Trump has repeatedly threatened the EU with economic retaliation over penalties imposed on American technology companies. In July, he said the US would launch a trade investigation after the bloc fined Google approximately $1 billion for violating competition rules, warning that it could lead to new tariffs on EU imports.

US Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has allowed work on President Donald Trump’s controversial White House ballroom to continue despite a pending lawsuit. On Friday, the judge issued an administrative stay of lower courts’ rulings that would have halted construction.

Last month, an appeals court supported a decision by a federal district court judge stating that the project requires congressional approval and that work must stop until it is given. Trump then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court.

Trump argued that work on the 90,000-square-foot addition to the White House needed to continue for the sake of national security and the president’s own safety. The construction includes a five-story underground military complex that would include shelters and a hospital to protect senior officials in case of an emergency, the Washington Post reported, citing court filings. According to the paper’s estimates, the overall project could cost $600 million.

Roberts’ decision is reportedly aimed at giving the Supreme Court more time to assess the emergency appeal. It is unclear how long the administrative stay might last. According to the Washington Post, such injunctions usually stay in place for days.

Trump praised the development on Truth Social, stating he was “grateful” and calling the project “vital for National Security.” He also vowed to make the ballroom “the greatest of its kind.” On Saturday, he also claimed that the project was “under budget, and ahead of schedule” and would cost taxpayers “zero dollars.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer blasted the judge’s decision by accusing what he called the “MAGA Supreme Court” of “rubber stamping Trump’s vanity-driven, gilded corruption.” He also claimed that the administration was “wasting money” on Trump’s “pet projects.”

The ballroom started being built in October 2025. A section of the East Wing of the White House was torn down to make space for the addition, expected to seat 650 people – more than three times the space in the East Room, the largest event space in the White House. The Democrats were quick to slam the project as a “disgrace.”

According to the Washington Post, officials told the Supreme Court this month that construction was about “65% complete,” with some 250 people supposed to be working on it 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

Israeli settlers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Palestine’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday. In a separate incident the same day, the IDF killed a retired Palestinian man in Jenin, according to Al Jazeera.

Karim Sanad Shalaldeh, 17, was shot dead by Israeli settlers during an attack on the town of Sa’ir, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. A 70-year-old man was also wounded by the gunfire, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israeli troops were sent to the area after Israelis “present in the area without advanced authorization” were injured by thrown rocks, the IDF said. A “security official” then opened fire, causing Palestinian casualties, it said, adding that Israeli police are investigating.

The shootings came just days after Israel opened a tender for the construction of more than 1,200 homes in the occupied West Bank as part of a controversial settlement expansion unveiled in July. Critics say the construction will effectively cut Palestinian territory in two if completed.

Rising violence in the Palestinian territory has also drawn a warning from the US. Israeli settlers who take West Bank property belonging to Palestinian-Americans could face sanctions, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Reuters.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Around three million Palestinians live there along with more than 600,000 Israeli settlers. Under the internationally backed two-state solution, the West Bank would form part of a future Palestinian state together with East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Imagine you are a Chilean who’s lived in America – the so-called “Land of the Free” – for decades in peace and tranquility. Suddenly, one humid day in late October 2025, in your adopted home of Fort Myers, Florida, you are snatched in broad daylight then imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Your capture remains completely unknown to the outside world until January the next year, when the US Department of Homeland Security names you among the “worst of worst criminal aliens” arrested by ICE to date. You are accused of committing “homicide” almost 50 years ago. Your incarceration makes international headlines, and comes as a personal shock. But not because you’re innocent. 

What role precisely Fernandez Larios played in Letelier’s murder, which also took the life of his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, is still not fully clear. He has told a variety of stories about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did and did not do regarding the event. But Fernandez Larios was a key operative.

It seemed in 2025 ICE had gotten their man, in a huge win for immigration enforcement and international justice. But this March, Fernandez Larios was released from jail. Court documents obtained by the National Security Archive show he launched a legal action, accusing the US government of “breach of contract” by violating a plea deal he cut in 1987.

That agreement saw Fernandez Larios provide information to US prosecutors on Letelier’s assassination, in return for an extremely light prison sentence and promise the government “would neither seek to deport [him] to Chile nor to cooperate in his extradition to Chile.” Rather than let Fernandez Larios’ action go to court, ICE freed him. Presumably, he’s sunning himself in Fort Myers right now.

The CIA connection

A huge archive of declassified documents related to Letelier’s assassination analyzed by RT Investigates, including secret statements made to US officials by Fernandez Larios, sheds shocking light on the case. They show that in mid-1976, Fernandez Larios was tasked by Pinochet’s regime with obtaining fake passports and US visas to fly to Washington DC.

Fernandez Larios was joined by Michael Townley, Pinochet’s US-born lead hitman and CIA double agent. They secured visas from Chile’s US embassy, after claiming to be on a secret mission to meet with CIA deputy director Vernon Walters at Langley headquarters in Virginia. Fernandez Larios traveled to Washington first, to conduct surveillance on Letelier’s movements in advance of his assassination. 

A militant anti-Fidel Castro Cuban exile group, CNM was founded by veterans of the CIA’s failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, and worked closely with the CIA. Experts at explosives, the bomb was planted without detection then detonated as Letelier, Moffitt and her husband Michael were driving to work in downtown DC. Michael was sole survivor of the bombing.

In April 2010, it was revealed that only days before Letelier was killed, a State Department warning due to be sent to Chile, against carrying out “the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures,” was cancelled at the behest of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. His department had been extremely worried about Pinochet carrying out killings outside Chile.

“We are trying to head off a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved,” Kissinger had been informed by aides, but he was unmoved. A close confidante of Pinochet who’d personally assisted his bloodstained rise to power, did Kissinger know Letelier was due to be killed?

The coverup and polygraph test 

In the aftermath of the assassination, Fernandez Larios participated in an extensive cover-up orchestrated by Chilean officials, including Pinochet himself. After being identified by the US media along with Townley as a lead suspect in Letelier’s murder, he deceived military investigators, gave false testimony to the Chilean Supreme Court, and lied to FBI and Justice Department investigators.

By 1985 though, Fernandez Larios was open to talking, having back-channel discussions with the US about testifying on Letelier’s assassination. In return for defecting and providing what he knew – or claimed to know – about the killing, and Pinochet’s intelligence operations generally, Fernandez Larios would receive extreme leniency, then be allowed to stay in the US, safe from extradition.

A late January 1987 State Department cable on what to do with Fernandez Larios however disregarded the polygraph tests, shockingly stating he was “not a murderer or party to a conspiracy to murder.” The memo judged his information on the Letelier-Moffitt case to be of “limited value”, but stated “foreign policy benefits” to providing him a generous plea deal were “substantial.”

In February 1987, Fernandez Larios pleaded guilty to being an “accessory after the fact” to Letelier’s assassination. Within just five months, a State Department legal advisor wrote to the US Parole Commission, praising Fernandez Larios’ “character” and “his willingness to come forward and pay his debt” over his role in the crime. He was paroled in autumn 1987.

The “Caravan of Death”

In keeping with “consistent signs of deception” when discussing his foreknowledge of Letelier’s assassination, Fernandez Larios also did not tell US officials about many violent atrocities he personally committed as a member of Pinochet’s elite military unit, the “Caravan of Death.” 

Following Pinochet’s seizure of power this deadly Caravan flew around Chile kidnapping local officials who remained loyal to Salvador Allende, who died in contested circumstances during the coup. Approximately 72 dissidents were executed or “disappeared.”  Fernandez Larios was identified by multiple witnesses as one of the most ruthless members of the military death squad.

After Pinochet’s fall in 1990, investigations into his regime’s many atrocities were opened in Chile. In several cases, substantial evidence against Fernandez Larios as a personal perpetrator of appalling crimes was found, leading to Santiago launching legal proceedings. In accordance with his plea deal though, Fernandez Larios remained at liberty in Florida.

Numerous Chileans identified Fernandez Larios as a participant in the torture and executions of prisoners in multiple municipalities. One witnessed him personally slashing Cabello to death with a knife. The three-week trial ended in October 2003, Fernandez Larios found liable for extrajudicial killings, torture and crimes against humanity. Cabello’s family was awarded $4 million in damages. 

That sum remains uncollected, and Fernandez Larios is once again a free man after his recent spell in prison, despite him truly being the “worst of the worst” captured by ICE. A strong case for his deportation to a country other than Chile remains. He has not been granted a special “snitch” visa protecting foreign informants from deportation. 

US President Donald Trump has broken into a scornful tirade against conservative journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson, as well as his other allies-turned-critics, including former Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, he branded the trio a bunch of “losers” having little to no chance in US politics and incapable of bringing any meaningful change.

Trump’s rant particularly targeted a meeting between Carlson, Massie, and Greene earlier this month, which was followed by the journalist unveiling a political manifesto claiming that the American political system is “totally incapable of responding to reality” and suggesting a reform involving “a third party or multiple parties.”

The journalist also repeatedly criticized Washington’s war on Iran, arguing that the US betrayed its own national interests by acting on Israel’s behalf. “I think America lost its sovereignty many years ago,” he told RT last month. Speaking on Sanchez Effect last week, he also called the US political system a “fraud,” accusing both Republicans and Democrats of “collusion against the American people.”

Carlson himself has repeatedly denied personal political ambitions but says he would back any attempt to create a third party.

The president also branded Massie a “failed politician, and a real JERK” voting “No” on “everything” and accused Greene of going from an “ultra conservative to a liberal ‘fool’" in weeks simply because he allegedly did not answer her calls.

“What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!” the president wrote, telling them to “join the Radical Left Dumocrats.”

The rendezvous in early August was treated by the US media as a step towards potentially creating a third party to contest the 2028 election, although no official statements were made. Greene did say that “the movement has begun” in a post on X featuring a photo from the meeting.

The former congresswoman also responded to Trump’s post in a lengthy statement of her own, calling Trump “a neocon puppet of Israel” and blaming his tirade on his own “bad polling.” Massie claimed on X that the president was “weeks away from failing his midterms in November” while stating that he “should have listened to” him, Greene, and Carlson.

Washington’s clash with the International Criminal Court exposes the contradictions between supranational legal claims, American exceptionalism, and the rise of multipolar sovereignty.

The latest clash between Washington and the International Criminal Court says more about the structure of the present world order than about Tomoko Akane or Abdoulaye Seye. On August 18, 2026, the United States imposed sanctions on Akane, the Japanese president of the ICC, and Seye, a Senegalese senior trial lawyer in the Office of the Prosecutor. The measures freeze assets subject to American jurisdiction and restrict access to the American financial system. The ICC answered by calling the sanctions a “flagrant attack” on the independence of the court. Nine of its 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, a former prosecutor, and another staff member now face American sanctions. Washington says the court has exceeded its mandate by pursuing officials from states that never accepted its authority, above all the US and Israel. This dispute raises the oldest political question in a new form: who has the right to judge whom? The liberal international order promised an answer based on universal law. The American response supplies another answer based on sovereign power. A multipolar view has reason to distrust both claims when either seeks authority over civilizations and states that never freely granted it.

The American position contains a genuine question of sovereignty, even when Washington applies that principle selectively. The US never became a party to the Rome Statute. Israel also remains outside the court. From the American perspective, an international tribunal created by a treaty cannot simply acquire authority over American soldiers, officials, or allied leaders without American consent. The ICC answers that its jurisdiction can arise through the territory on which alleged crimes occurred, including territory belonging to states that accepted the Rome Statute. This is the legal basis behind some proceedings involving nationals of countries outside the court. Lawyers can argue over jurisdiction, territorial consent, complementarity, admissibility, and treaty interpretation, but that us beside the point of the political issue in question here. A multipolar order begins from the existence of several sovereign centers of power, each possessing its own history, institutions, political traditions, and conception of justice. Any institution claiming authority above these centers carries an immense burden of legitimacy. A tribunal with universal ambitions must either possess genuine universal consent or depend upon political power to enforce its judgments. The ICC possesses neither a world state behind it nor universal membership. The US, China, Russia, India, Israel, and several other important powers stand outside its system. Such a court can aspire to universality, yet aspiration alone cannot create a universal political community.

The ICC itself deserves scrutiny from the same multipolar standpoint. The answer to American domination cannot consist of transferring ultimate authority from Washington to The Hague. The court arose during the high tide of the post-Cold War order, when Western political ideas increasingly appeared under universal names. Liberal democracy became “democracy.” Western doctrines of rights became “human rights.” Western political assumptions became “international norms.” Institutions created within that historical climate often inherited the same universal language. The moral appeal is easy to understand. Genocide, mass killing, torture, and deliberate attacks upon civilians are terrible acts, and societies naturally seek ways to punish those responsible. The difficulty begins when moral judgment becomes a permanent supranational machinery claiming jurisdiction across radically different political worlds. International criminal law then enters the sphere of geopolitics. Prosecutors depend upon evidence supplied by states. Courts depend upon governments to arrest suspects. International bodies depend upon funding, diplomatic backing, banking systems, travel access, and political cooperation. Enforcement follows the distribution of power. A defendant from a weak state may find himself in The Hague. A leader protected by a great power may remain beyond its reach. The language remains universal while the ability to enforce it remains unequal. That gap between universal principle and political reality has haunted international justice from its beginning.

Japan’s reaction adds another layer. Tokyo has long stood among Washington’s closest allies, yet the Japanese government called the sanctions against Akane “very unfortunate” and reaffirmed its support for the ICC and for the prosecution of serious international crimes. This dispute cuts across the familiar division between the West and its geopolitical opponents. Japan supports the American alliance system while also defending an institution that Washington now seeks to weaken. Such disagreements will become more common as the unipolar age recedes. States will increasingly refuse to place every question of law, trade, security, technology, culture, and diplomacy inside a single geopolitical hierarchy. They may cooperate with Washington in one field, Beijing in another, Moscow in yet another, and regional institutions in still another. This fluidity lies near the heart of multipolarity. Multipolar politics does not require every country to join an anti-American bloc. Such a bloc would merely reproduce bipolar logic. It means recovering the capacity to judge particular questions according to national interests, treaty obligations, civilizational traditions, and regional realities. Japan’s criticism shows how an allied state can maintain its strategic relationship with Washington while publicly rejecting an American measure that conflicts with another part of its foreign policy.

A mature multipolar position therefore has little reason to choose between worship of the ICC and worship of American sovereignty. The better principle is sovereign equality joined to negotiated international responsibility. Great crimes require mechanisms of judgment, yet those mechanisms gain strength through broad consent, reciprocity, clear jurisdiction, regional legitimacy, and rules applied to powerful and weak states alike. International law will command deeper respect when it grows from agreements among civilizations instead of presenting the political inheritance of one historical era as the final constitution of mankind. The same standard must apply to Washington. America may defend its sovereignty, but that defense becomes credible only when it respects the sovereignty of others. The ICC may defend judicial independence, but its claim to authority becomes stronger when its structure reflects a genuinely plural distribution of global power. The dispute over Akane and Seye therefore marks another stage in the breakdown of the old order. The future will contain fewer institutions capable of speaking unquestioned in the name of “the international community.” That phrase once concealed a hierarchy. Multipolarity brings the hierarchy into view. From there a different order can emerge: several great political spaces, several legal traditions, and several centers of power negotiating common rules without granting any capital, court, or ideology the right to tower above humanity as its final judge.

International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane has warned of what she described as the erosion of international law after US authorities imposed sanctions on her and another senior ICC official.

The Hague-based institution was created in 2002 under the Rome Statute to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. So far, 123 countries have ratified the treaty and are full members of the court. However, major global powers including Russia, China, India and the US have either not signed or not ratified the agreement.

“I had anticipated these sanctions against me to some extent, so I am not surprised,” she said in a comment included in a social media post on Friday by Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju, which had published her book. “What is important is not to let this become the beginning of the end of the international rule of law.”

On Tuesday, Washington sanctioned Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the institution as a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

The ICC said on Wednesday that it “strongly rejects” the new designations, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.”

The White House has accused the court of targeting citizens of states that have neither consented to its jurisdiction nor ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC previously investigated alleged crimes by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan despite Washington not being a member.

Israel has also rejected the court’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. US President Donald Trump later condemned the warrants in an executive order signed in February 2025.

The court has also faced criticism elsewhere, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad moving to withdraw from the ICC this summer, accusing it of disproportionately targeting African countries.

Russia has likewise rejected the court’s authority. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 over the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Moscow called the warrants legally void, rejected the allegations and said it had evacuated unaccompanied minors from the war zone while taking steps to return them to their legal guardians upon request.

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a US government lawsuit accusing the social media platform of illegally collecting children’s personal data.

The out-of-court settlement, announced by the US Department of Justice on Friday, ends the case without the allegations being tested at trial and without any determination of liability.

The case was brought in 2024 under the Biden administration by the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission. The government accused TikTok of knowingly allowing millions of children under age 13 to create regular accounts and collecting and retaining their personal information without parental consent.
It also alleged that TikTok frequently failed to delete children’s accounts and data when requested by parents.

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March 2024, referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Trump has feuded with Meta for years, accusing Facebook of political bias and censorship even before it suspended his accounts following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The feud intensified after the suspension, with Trump repeatedly accusing the company of interfering in US elections.

The tone of Friday’s DOJ announcement also contrasts sharply with that used when the case was launched. In 2024, the department described TikTok and ByteDance as “repeat offenders” operating “on a massive scale.” The Trump administration’s DOJ, by contrast, highlighted “significant changes” to TikTok’s ownership, management, compliance and privacy practices.

The delays were controversial, as the law provided for one extension of up to 90 days under specified conditions, while Trump repeatedly directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

Ottawa will introduce reciprocal “dollar-for-dollar” measures in response to the 50% tariffs the US has imposed on Canadian goods, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement on Friday, after trade talks with Washington broke down.

The latest round of intense negotiations lasted three days and was aimed at wrapping up months of talks between Washington and Ottawa, with mutual tariffs threatening to escalate into an all-out trade war.

“Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” the statement reads.

The prime minister stressed that “last-minute changes in the US-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a rarely used provision that allows the head of state to impose duties of up to 50% on imports from countries deemed to have subjected US commerce to unequal or discriminatory treatment.

The tariffs, which came into effect just after midnight on Saturday and cover about 5% of Canada’s US-bound exports, target goods ranging from plywood and cement to wine and hockey sticks, Western media outlets have reported.

Earlier this week, Trump delayed the 50% levies, originally scheduled to take effect on August 19, to give negotiators additional time to reach a deal.

At the time, Trump said Washington and Ottawa had agreed to revive the Keystone XL pipeline project, which was intended to transport Canadian oil to the US, while Carney noted significant progress made by the two sides in trade talks.

AP has cited a senior Trump administration official as saying that Canada had been seeking concessions from Washington on tariffs previously imposed by the US president on steel, aluminum, automobiles and lumber, but the US has so far shown no willingness to make such concessions.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement shortly after midnight that despite the US offer to give Canada “the best treatment of any major exporter to our market,” new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Ottawa had “upended the careful balance” reached in recent days.

Carney has, however, pledged to introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days, as well as to diversify the country’s partnerships abroad.

South Korea has launched its first trial container ship voyage to Europe via the Northern Sea Route (NSR), as disruption to traditional shipping lanes drives growing interest in Russia’s Arctic trade corridor.

The NSR stretches roughly 5,600 km along Russia’s Arctic coast, mostly through waters under its jurisdiction. The route relies on domestic port and navigation infrastructure. State atomic energy corporation Rosatom oversees its development and operates the world’s only nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet.

The PanStar Acro departed from Busan New Port on Saturday and will sail through the NSR before calling at Felixstowe in the UK, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Gdansk in Poland.

The ship is expected to reach Felixstowe in around 18 days. The journey between Busan and Rotterdam via the Arctic is around 13,000 km, 35% shorter than the roughly 20,000 km route via Suez, with South Korean estimates suggesting the NSR could cut around ten days from a typical Asia-Europe voyage.

According to Reuters, Western diplomats have raised concerns over South Korea’s plan, which involved consultations with Russia and permits for the ship’s passage. The agency cited a European diplomat as saying Western governments want to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, not pursue “engagement” with it.

The country’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries has said it aims to establish a new trade corridor, with the voyage marking the country’s return to the Arctic after a decade-long hiatus and its first use of a container ship on the NSR.

South Korean companies conducted five trial voyages along the NSR between 2013 and 2016, but regular services did not follow due to limited cargo volumes and a less developed route. Russia has since significantly expanded its Arctic infrastructure and navigation capabilities.

Moscow has sought to turn the NSR from a corridor primarily serving its Arctic projects into a major international trade artery linking Asia and Europe. China has already launched a regular container service to Europe via the NSR, while India is considering sending its first cargo vessel along the route in 2027 and Japan has shown interest as well.

The meeting between the Russian and US presidents in Alaska last year caused a sensation in both form and substance. Expectations were so high, whether expressed as hope or alarm, that the Anchorage summit was almost certain to disappoint.

The conflict surrounding Ukraine is too deep and complex to be resolved at a single meeting, even one involving the leaders of Russia and the United States. Negotiations to end the Vietnam War dragged on for years, despite both sides understanding from the beginning that the conflict would eventually have to end.

The real question was whether Anchorage could provide the starting point for a peace process; it didn’t. Much has since been said about why, although the conditions for such a breakthrough probably didn’t exist in the first place. Yet rather than dismissing the summit with the usual sarcasm about the “spirit of Anchorage,” it’s worth considering what the meeting did achieve.

First, it exposed the widening divergence between the United States and Western Europe as the old world’s leaders remain committed to seeking a military victory over Russia, but Washington, by contrast, doesn’t want to become directly involved in pursuing that objective.

Donald Trump’s claim that the United States is merely a mediator rather than a participant is plainly disingenuous, given that Washington remains deeply involved, but American involvement could be far greater, even allowing for the apparent limits on its resources and its growing obligations elsewhere.

Anchorage also demonstrated that the United States isn’t all-powerful, as Trump was unable to secure from Western Europe and Ukraine what he wanted at the time. In that instance, Washington’s failure worked against Moscow, but the broader recognition that American power has limits should be regarded as a positive development.

Taken together, these lessons show that the West is becoming more diverse and internally divided, so its remaining unity must increasingly be maintained by political pressure and institutional inertia. Russia must therefore develop a more sophisticated and flexible policy towards Western countries, exploiting their growing differences rather than continuing to treat them as a single bloc.

Finally, Anchorage offered a revealing model of modern diplomacy, in which personalities increasingly matter more than institutions, and character more than principles. There are no longer any “magic” agreements and a gentleman’s agreement lasts only until another gentleman arrives with different priorities.

That disappointment returned everyone to the reality of the conflict in that no outside power can impose its resolution. During the year since Alaska, the Russian-Western European military confrontation has acquired a clearer direction and an internal logic of its own and it’s within that logic that Russia must seek a way to end the present war and prevent the next one, without waiting for magical solutions or grand bargains imposed from abroad.

This article was first published by Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.

Officials in Spain’s Murcia region have demanded an explanation from authorities in Madrid after dozens of illegal migrants arrived by boat on a crowded beach in broad daylight.

The immigration crisis was thrust back into the spotlight late last month when more than 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, prompting scrutiny of the left-wing government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and accusations of lax border security.

On Wednesday, a black inflatable boat carrying 62 migrants reached Cala del Barco, a tourist spot near Cartagena. The migrants began jumping into the water as the vessel approached the shore, startling beachgoers.

Arrivée réelle d’un bateau transportant environ 60 envahisseurs sur la plage de Cala del Barco, complexe touristique La Manga Club (Murcie, Costa Cálida, Espagne), le mercredi 19 août 2026 vers 13 h!
Doit-on accepter cela ? Je dis non !!!

pic.twitter.com/EPebPXR4jf

— Jean Bemfair (@JBemfair) August 21, 2026

Officials said the group consisted of 45 adult men, 15 boys, and two adult women, all believed to be Algerian. All 62 have since been located, examined by the Red Cross, and handed over to police.

🔴Des dizaines de migrants sont arrivés en bateau sur la plage de Cala del Barco, en Espagne ; les autorités ont indiqué que la Guardia Civil est parvenue à localiser 62 personnes pic.twitter.com/VB5YzYuVIP

— 75 Secondes 🗞️ (@75secondes) August 21, 2026

🔴 Los inmigrantes desembarcados en la Cala del Barco de Cartagena se dispersan a pie por el complejo de La Manga Club. https://t.co/uvlzwtAKEY pic.twitter.com/ZkzHMEEsjb

— La Bandera (@labanderaes) August 19, 2026

Murcia regional president Fernando Lopez Miras argued that the arrival appeared to have been “organized” and demanded answers from the government.

He added that the migrants brought “fear and insecurity” to the area and that there was “no information, cooperation or coordination” between the central government and the regions.

Cartagena Mayor Noelia Arroyo said the situation “cannot become normalized,” and called for a “serious, orderly and secure” migration policy.

“If a migrant boat can reach a cove like this, disembark in full view of citizens and then leave, we have to ask ourselves how our maritime borders are being controlled,” she said.

Sanchez condemned the mass crossing into Ceuta as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and pledged to strengthen border controls, while blaming the influx on the activity of human-smuggling networks and the spread of “fake news” on social media.

He also condemned what he described as the “selfish, polarizing, and illegal” attitude of European countries such as Italy, which suspended border-free travel with Spain in response to the Ceuta crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has lashed out at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Ankara announced that it’s seeking an Interpol Red Notice for the controversial leader on genocide charges. The war of words comes amid broader tensions between the two US allies after Türkiye was angered by recent IDF airstrikes on an airbase in Syria.

An Interpol Red Notice is a request to police worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a wanted person pending extradition.

In a statement on X on Friday, Netanyahu’s office labeled Erdogan “an antisemitic dictator, who has massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him.”

The Turkish leader “now seeks to extend his aggression against Israel into Syria. Israel will not tolerate it,” it stressed.

Earlier on Friday, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said on X that Netanyahu was among 35 defendants wanted over “an attack” on the activist-operated Global Sumud Flotilla, which sought to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. The charges include genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, deprivation of liberty, hijacking a transport vehicle, and property damage.

“We categorically reject the notion that the Netanyahu government, which is pursuing a policy of genocide in Gaza, is untouchable and cannot be held accountable,” Gurlek said.

The Israeli Navy has boarded several convoys in international waters sailing for Gaza, most recently in May, when more than 400 activists were detained aboard around 50 boats. The activists were deported to Greece and alleged mistreatment while in Israeli custody.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at the time that all participants in “the provocative flotilla” were unharmed.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has warned Erdogan against dragging his country “into dangerous adventures in Syria” after Ankara strongly condemned the strikes on the Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18. The attack caused no casualties but damaged recently built runways.

Both Syria and Türkiye denied Israel’s claim that Turkish troops were set to be deployed in the area. US presidential envoy to Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack also condemned the Israeli strikes as an unnecessary escalation.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently considering South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Separately, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is heading home from its extended deployment, multiple media outlets reported on Thursday, citing officials.

The carrier’s tour of duty began in late November last year and was originally scheduled to end in May, but it was repeatedly extended due to its participation in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The vessel now holds a modern US Navy record for the longest consecutive, uninterrupted period at sea, with roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard and more than 260 days spent largely without port calls.

The deployment has reportedly been plagued by supply and maintenance issues, including shortages of food and basic supplies, a lack of hot and potable water, and plumbing problems. Crew members’ families have raised alarm over what they described as collapsing morale, burnout, and mental health issues. Several crew members reportedly attempted to jump overboard.

Reports about the troubled deployment have prompted calls for the dismissal of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who dismissed concerns raised in the media as “completely misrepresented.”

Last week, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth “must be fired immediately” over the USS Abraham Lincoln situation.

”When Pete Hegseth was nominated, everyone knew he was completely incompetent. Now our brave sailors are paying the price in a horrific and unfathomable way,” the Democratic leader said.

The politics of Vladimir Zelensky’s Ukraine remain a smelly swamp, producing a ceaseless seepage of scandals occasionally percolating to the surface in big, toxic bubbles that pop with a noxious stink. Recently, for instance, the returning ambassador to the US – no less – has become the subject of a corruption case bad enough to require bail equivalent to $130,000.

The very latest Zelensky regime stink bubble to burst, however, is centered on a former double minister. Before ending up at the center of yet another big pile of dirt, compliments of Zelensky and cronies, Herman Galushchenko had served as minister of energy and then of justice. And if you know Kiev’s political culture – for want of better terms – you won’t be surprised to hear that, in the end, he ended up arrested under suspicion of very large-scale corruption.

To be precise, Galushchenko is one of the main suspects in the massive scandal featuring the Energoatom, aka Mindich-Gate after Timur Mindich, an intimate friend of Zelensky who, clearly tipped off about his impending arrest, has long fled to Israel. Galushchenko, too, tried to run, but was not fast enough, or more likely, lacked the same level of premium protection, namely from the president himself, and got caught at the border.

Yet if the story had ended there, this would not be Ukraine.  Now we are into the sequel, and it’s at least as bad as the first part. Because in essence, Galushchenko in a cell was a thought that Zelensky and his crew could not tolerate. Surely out of sheer mafia-like camaraderie! Perish the thought – they were afraid of any deals the former minister might strike and names he might name. But getting Galushchenko out was expensive: Here as well the court had set bail, and as Mindich-Gate was a $100-million case, the bail wasn’t cheap.

Central to this operation and the highest-ranking official to have lost her position at this point is Irina Mudraya, the deputy head of Zelensky’s very own office, as well as a former deputy minister of justice. But the circle of suspects is much wider, as always in Ukraine where corruption is the passionate national sport of those running and ruining the country, while its ordinary citizens are hunted by military press gangs in broad daylight.

Also officially under suspicion and investigation are Maksim Mikitas, a former parliamentary deputy; Vadim Stolar, a currently serving parliamentary deputy; Viktor Dubovik, another high official from Zelensky’s presidential office; Elena Ferens, a deputy minister of justice; Nikolay Gladishchenko, Oleg Stupak, Liudmila Snygur, all three high up in the management of state-owned Sens Bank, which served as the financial vehicle for the launder-and-pay-for-Galushchenko scheme.

Then we also have “businessman,” a “person linked to Mikitas,” the director of the Metrostroy company, a driver who also happens to run Montazh Servis (a construction company by the name of it – good for concrete foundations to bury the talkative), and a bodyguard who doubles as the director of a firm calling itself The Philosophy of Development.

These, in sum, are typical pillars of the Ukrainian establishment as it really is. Suffice it to say that, in 2018, high-flyer Irina Mudraya, trained at Lviv University, received a ‘Best Legal Adviser in Banking and Financial Law’ award (sure, just be honest next time and call it ‘Best Consigliere in Mafia Ukraine’). In 2021, she won ‘Women Leaders who have Influenced the Development of the Legal Community’ (and unfortunately, she probably has). And just two years ago, Business Woman magazine honored her achievements in “Politics and Diplomacy.”

Yet one man who may be looking at an uncertain near-future in conjunction with ‘Operation Forrest Gump’ – the code name for this investigation – is the current head of Zelensky’s administration, Kirill Budanov. Formerly mostly busy with black ops, lies, and terrorism, Budanov has taken his office as Zelensky’s top manager only recently. His predecessor Andrey Yermak, another very close, intimate friend of Zelensky, had been forced out because of his deep involvement in Mindich-Gate. Or probably, really due to both his own crimes and those of Zelensky himself that needed a fall guy.

As caught by eavesdropping, Mudraya reminded an accomplice that “he says that corruption needs to be organized and controlled; we must not fight it.” According to Ukrainska Pravda, the mysterious “he,” the real author of that arrogantly direct and brashly cynical statement, was her boss Budanov.

It is intriguing, as another Ukrainian publication has pointed out that it is precisely Ukrainska Pravda that has dared name Budanov. For the outlet is among the supporters of Mikhail Fedorov, the tech whizz kid and former minister of defense, who has turned from a Zelensky regime insider into a challenger by calling for presidential elections even during wartime. That is, in reality, for calling for an end to the Zelensky regime, because the incumbent, polls show, can be beaten.

The swamp that is Ukrainian politics keeps festering. The greed and cynicism of Kiev’s ‘elite’ knows no limits. At the same time what may be even more tragic for Ukraine is that any attempt to reign in the rampant corruption by finally holding everyone accountable, no matter how high up, is not only unlikely to succeed but dishonest too.

Naming Budanov? Yes, but not because he should face scrutiny and accountability but because he needs to be weakened so that another ambitious establishment representative has a better chance at beating him at coming elections. In Kiev, stories of messianic redeemers are popular again and again. Zelensky was once the most enthusiastically endorsed of them all. And yet it is his regime that has become the very worst. Why would Fedorov be any different? Or for that matter, anyone else. Ukraine does not need personnel change; it needs a massive reset.

Dozens of Ukrainian soldiers have deserted while undergoing military training in Germany, Die Zeit has reported, citing interviews with ten men who fled their units.

Kiev has increasingly relied on forced mobilization as it struggles to replenish battlefield losses. Videos regularly circulate online showing recruitment officers detaining men in public places and forcing them into vehicles, sometimes after violent confrontations. The practice has become widely known in Ukraine as “busification.”

Die Zeit reported on Wednesday that during the early years of the conflict, Ukrainian troops sent to Germany for training were generally experienced and highly motivated. More recently, however, many of those arriving have been newly mobilized recruits.

In Saxony-Anhalt alone, the regional Interior Ministry has recorded around 80 cases of Ukrainian soldiers deserting, while the nationwide total is believed to run into the hundreds, according to the weekly.

Among those interviewed was Vladimir Shulgin, a 39-year-old former pianist from Dnepr. He told Die Zeit that after Ukraine intensified its mobilization campaign, he largely avoided leaving home while his wife supported the family.

According to his account, he initially had no intention of deserting. He changed his mind after allegedly being physically abused by Ukrainian superiors and threatened with death upon his return to Ukraine.

After a German military doctor referred him to a hospital in Berlin, Shulgin did not return to the training facility. He has since applied for asylum and is living in a refugee shelter.

Another deserter interviewed by Die Zeit said he had fled because he did not want to kill or be killed.

“I simply don’t want to die, and I don’t want to kill. Not at the front, and nowhere else. Is that enough?” he said.

Their prospects of obtaining asylum are “likely slim,” however, according to the newspaper.

Similar desertions have occurred during Ukrainian training programs elsewhere in Europe. In late 2024, Ukrainian media reported that around 50 soldiers from the 155th Mechanized Brigade had deserted during training in France.

The Ukrainian authorities have acknowledged tens of thousands of desertion and unauthorized-absence cases since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

Russia has accused the leadership in Kiev and its Western backers of being willing to fight “to the last Ukrainian.”

The US Navy is reportedly considering whether to rename an upcoming aircraft carrier honoring World War II black hero Doris Miller after President Donald Trump in an unprecedented move.

The ongoing discussions were first reported on Friday by CNN, citing three sources familiar with the matter. The report was corroborated by CBN News, with two unnamed US officials confirming to the broadcaster that deliberations have been going on.

The USS Doris Miller is set to become the fourth Ford-class aircraft carrier and is expected to be commissioned in the mid-2030s. Under the first Trump administration, the US Navy announced the decision to name it after Miller, who distinguished himself during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The sailor, an enlisted cook with no appropriate training, managed to shoot down at least one incoming Japanese aircraft during the attack, becoming the first black recipient of the Navy Cross for his feat.

The navy is now reportedly weighing renaming a different warship after Miller, as well as posthumously recommending him for the Medal of Honor, the top US decoration for military valor. The sailor was killed in 1943 in the Japanese torpedoing of the USS Liscome Bay, which remains the deadliest carrier sinking in US Navy history, with over 700 crew lost.

A recent Trump executive order, in which he tasked the Pentagon and US Navy to come up with a plan to replace electromagnetic aircraft launch systems on carriers with old-school steam and hydraulic catapults, also referred to the ship only by its hull number.

The US president has shown a great interest in shipbuilding during his second term. In December last year, Trump announced plans to construct a ‘Golden Fleet’ of massive, aptly named Trump-class battleships that would be “100 times more powerful” than any ever built. Trump said he approved building two ships to start, with plans for up to 25. 

The ‘Golden Fleet’ affair reportedly resulted in the downfall of Navy Secretary John Phelan, who was sacked this April for allegedly failing to deliver a plan to build the Trump-class battleships on a “nearly impossible timeline.”

As more US police departments deploy Flock cameras to monitor traffic and track criminals, public backlash has grown. In San Diego, a protester dressed as Darth Vader showed up to a city council meeting to portray Flock as a tool for tracking “rebel scum.”

There are now more than 130,000 Flock cameras dotting the US, with law enforcement departments in at least 4,000 cities erecting the AI-powered surveillance devices on intersections, parking lots, and public land. Flock Technologies says the cameras have helped police stop burglaries, carjackings, and homicides, but opponents say they encroach on civil liberties.

At a meeting of the San Diego City Council on Wednesday, a man dressed as Star Wars villain Darth Vader shared his opinion on the technology, approaching the podium with his character’s signature mechanical breathing.

“The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilising Flock technologies so that we can surveil the rebel scum,” he declared. “As they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers, they are following children.”

Darth Vader comes out in favor of Flock cameras pic.twitter.com/YL3jaiwIEx

— Orwell Day (@OrwellDay) August 20, 2026

Flock is best known for its Falcon ALPR (Automated License Plate Recognition) cameras, which capture still images of passing vehicles. However, the company’s Condor PTZ video cameras can be used by police departments to track the movement of individuals across multiple cameras with AI, and search for people via description.

Flock’s Falcon ALPR cameras have already been used by more than 50 police officers to stalk women – including ex-wives and partners – without their consent, the Washington Post reported earlier this month. Vulnerabilities in Flock’s software have also left images of children, recorded with the company’s video cameras, exposed online. 

“I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend,” ‘Darth Vader’ told the city council meeting. “This technology will help us find Luke Skywalker as he traverses the universe in his X-Wing.”

The rollout of Flock cameras began at scale in 2020, but the process has not been smooth.  Flock cameras have been shot, spray-painted, cut down, and obstructed across the country. According to FlockStats, a website that counts confirmed incidents of vandalism against the devices, at least 162 have been destroyed nationwide. 

As the cameras have proliferated, so have their detractors. Republican Representative Thomas Massie is among the highest-profile opponents of the technology, introducing a bill last month that would withhold federal funding from police departments deploying the cameras. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has also ordered cities to pause the installation of Flock cameras until the state develops new privacy legislation. 

Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18 unexpectedly turned what might otherwise have looked like another familiar episode of Israeli military activity inside a neighboring country into something far more dangerous.

This time, the real recipient of Israel’s warning was neither Iran nor Hezbollah, but Türkiye, which has emerged as one of the principal political and military partners of Syria’s new leadership since the fall of Bashar Assad. Eight strikes hit the airbase, located roughly 70 kilometers from the Turkish border, damaging runways and military infrastructure.

Israel said the operation was intended to prevent Syria from allowing Turkish forces to establish a presence there, while US and Israeli officials indicated that one of the objectives was also to disrupt the delivery of advanced Turkish weapons systems to the facility. Shortly before the attack, Mossad chief Roman Gofman had reportedly discussed with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Shaibani the expansion of Türkiye’s military footprint, arms sales to Damascus and the possible transfer of drones to the Syrian armed forces.

Turkish-Syrian military cooperation itself is hardly a secret. As early as August 2025, Ankara formally agreed to assist the reconstruction of Syria’s armed forces through weapons, military equipment, logistics, training and advisory support, and over the past year, the two governments have steadily deepened that relationship. What remains unconfirmed, however, is whether a new shipment of Turkish weaponry was physically delivered to Syria on August 20. Yet the issue goes beyond that particular shipment.

Israel increasingly views the transformation of Turkish assistance from a reconstruction program into a permanent military infrastructure as a strategic shift in the regional balance. It is especially concerned about drones, electronic warfare systems, radar networks and, above all, the eventual deployment of modern air-defense systems that could restrict Israel’s long-standing freedom of action in Syrian airspace.

The escalation between Türkiye and Israel is advancing at a remarkable speed. For the moment, the confrontation remains largely rhetorical, diplomatic and indirect, but Syria has created the very real possibility of a proxy conflict between two states that both possess modern armed forces, sophisticated defense industries and competing visions of the regional order. Syria could become the arena in which those visions collide via the arming of allies, the destruction of military infrastructure and attempts to enforce rival red lines. Such a scenario could become the point of no return.

The most important change is that post-Assad Syria is no longer merely a battleground for Israel’s campaign against Iranian influence. For years, Israel operated within a relatively predictable framework. Airstrikes targeted assets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, weapons depots and supply routes serving Hezbollah, Syrian air-defense systems and other infrastructure capable of restricting Israeli operational freedom. Türkiye was not directly a part of that equation.

Now, Ankara has acquired the opportunity to rely not only on its long-standing military presence in northern Syria and on armed groups historically aligned with it, but increasingly on the central government in Damascus itself. Syria’s new authorities need investment, reconstruction, military training, infrastructure and international political backing, all of which Türkiye is well placed to provide. For Ankara, this represents an unusually favorable strategic opening, allowing it to convert years of costly involvement in the Syrian conflict into lasting influence over the political and military architecture of the neighboring state.

Israel sees the Turkish presence as a threat. If the Syrian army remains weak, fragmented and technologically backward, Israel can preserve near-unrestricted operational freedom across large parts of Syrian territory. But if Türkiye helps Damascus rebuild a centralized army, restore airfields and radar networks, acquire drones and eventually field modern defensive systems, Israel could face a fundamentally different Syria within several years. More importantly, that Syria would no longer be backed by a sanctions-battered Iran, but by a NATO member with a rapidly expanding defense-industrial base.

The attack on Abu al-Duhur is an attempt to establish a preventive red line. Netanyahu said after the strike that Israel would not tolerate a Turkish military presence in Syria that threatened Israeli security, adding that an earlier message had apparently not been understood clearly enough. Türkiye replied by accusing the Israeli prime minister of pursuing an “expansionist and destabilizing policy,” while Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against testing Israel’s determination.

Even Israel’s allies in Washington are concerned. US envoy Tom Barrack described the strike as an unnecessary escalation, while the US has accelerated efforts to create a deconfliction mechanism between Israel, Türkiye and Syria. The very fact that such a mechanism is now considered necessary shows that Washington is increasingly treating an accidental or deliberate confrontation between two of its most important regional partners as a scenario that requires technical safeguards rather than as an abstract possibility.

Yet it would be a mistake to think that Israel is solely pursuing military goals. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 27, and the campaign has already transformed Israel’s foreign policy into one of the central arenas of domestic political competition.

For Benjamin Netanyahu, this may be one of the most difficult election campaigns of his career. For decades, he built his political brand around two propositions – that he alone could guarantee Israel’s security and that he possessed a unique ability to manage relations with Washington and other world powers. Both claims are now under scrutiny. The October 7 attack shattered much of Netanyahu’s long-cultivated image as Israel’s ultimate guarantor of security. Years of war and mobilization have not produced an uncontested political outcome; relations with allies have grown more complicated, and domestic tensions have been intensified by disputes over ultra-Orthodox military service, the confrontation over the judiciary and Netanyahu’s continuing criminal trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, all of which he denies.

His problem is compounded by shifts within the electorate itself. Netanyahu must simultaneously recover more moderate right-wing voters and prevent the radical wing of the nationalist camp from drifting toward politicians such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and other parties positioned to the right of Netanyahu’s Likud party. That creates almost ideal conditions for a return to one of Netanyahu’s most effective political instruments – the politics of the besieged fortress.

The more threatening the external danger appears, the easier it becomes to move the election away from questions about Netanyahu’s personal responsibility, his court cases, the social cost of prolonged mobilization and economic pressures, and instead turn it into a referendum on who can be trusted to lead Israel against a growing circle of enemies.

That strategy has become explicit in Likud’s campaign messaging. Billboards have placed Erdoğan alongside Iran’s supreme leader, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, beneath the slogan that they all want Netanyahu to lose. Erdoğan is no longer a difficult foreign leader or an unreliable partner, he now stands among Israel’s traditional adversaries and is being used as part of domestic electoral mobilization.

Netanyahu’s critics are attacking him from opposite directions. Naftali Bennett, himself hardly a dove, argues that Israel’s international position has deteriorated dramatically under Netanyahu and has proposed the creation of a special public-diplomacy body to fight for Israel’s image abroad. Bennett’s criticism carries weight: There is no fundamental disagreement between him and much of the Israeli right over the need to confront hostile regional forces. The disagreement is over method and results. According to Bennett, Israel possesses enormous military power but has failed to efficiently convert it into diplomatic clout.

Ehud Barak, by contrast, has attacked Netanyahu for moving too far in the opposite direction. He described the strike on Abu al-Duhur as “reckless and foolish” and argued that it carried a strong political flavor of manufacturing security fears before the election. Barak’s position is that Türkiye is not Iran and not Assad’s Syria, and that the tensions with Ankara can still be managed through discreet channels coordinated with Washington.

Netanyahu now finds himself squeezed between those that demand he prove that Israel can still impose its will on the region, and those accusing him of turning foreign policy into an extension of his election campaign. In this tight spot, backing down before Ankara may carry almost as much domestic political risk as escalating further.

The situation in Türkiye’s domestic politics is similar in some aspects, but different in others. The next scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections are formally due in 2028, yet the possibility of an early vote remains a recurring subject in Turkish politics. The issue is especially relevant for Erdoğan because constitutional limits complicate another presidential run unless the legal and electoral framework changes or early elections are triggered under specific conditions. At the same time, the government continues to promote the idea of a new constitution, a project that the opposition views partly through the lens of Erdoğan’s political future.

Türkiye is also approaching the next electoral cycle from a position of persistent economic and political strain. Inflation remains high, purchasing power has been severely eroded, and the cost of housing and food continues to shape everyday voter sentiment. Even as Ankara has adopted more orthodox economic policies and rebuilt parts of its financial credibility, the social consequences of years of inflation remain politically toxic.

The political environment is also tense. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most formidable long-term rival, has been imprisoned, while the main opposition party CHP has endured a severe internal crisis and leadership struggle. Turkish authorities reject accusations that legal proceedings against opposition figures are politically motivated, but the struggle over the country’s post-Erdoğan future, or perhaps Erdoğan’s continued political dominance, has already begun well before the formal campaign.

Confrontation with Israel offers Erdoğan several political advantages. It appeals simultaneously to religious-conservative and nationalist constituencies, allows Türkiye to present itself as a state capable of shaping the Middle East, and turns foreign policy activism into proof that Ankara remains an autonomous center of power despite its economic problems.

By backing the government in Damascus, Türkiye can embed itself in Syria’s future security and political architecture, weaken Kurdish armed formations, expand markets for its defense industry and deepen its political presence all the way to the Mediterranean. Erdoğan has already argued that Israeli military activity in Syria and Lebanon has reached a stage where it threatens Türkiye’s own security.

This creates a problem similar to Netanyahu’s. Once Ankara publicly presents itself as a state capable of protecting its partners and influencing the regional balance, retreating after a direct Israeli strike on an object associated with Turkish-Syrian cooperation becomes politically costly. The more Türkiye’s regional strategy depends on the perception that it can defend its interests, the harder it becomes to ignore Israeli attempts to define the limits of Turkish involvement by force.

On August 7, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a defense agreement in Mecca. The pact reportedly includes principles of mutual protection, political and military coordination, joint exercises and cooperation in defense production, including drone manufacturing, electronic warfare and emerging technologies. Riyadh has emphasized that the arrangement should not be understood as a sectarian bloc or as an alliance directed against any particular state.

The agreement brings together Türkiye, which possesses one of NATO’s largest militaries and a rapidly growing defense industry, Saudi Arabia, which features enormous financial resources and ambitions to shape the Arab political order, and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with one of the largest militaries in the Muslim world.

From an Israeli perspective, this is the kind of development that feeds concern over the emergence of a new Sunni axis. What matters is not whether the three countries have formally created an anti-Israel alliance. They have not. Their interests differ, their relationships with Washington are distinct, and Saudi Arabia in particular has reasons to avoid being locked into an overtly anti-Israeli structure. But Israeli strategists are increasingly focused on the possibility that Turkish military power, Saudi financial weight and Pakistani strategic capabilities could gradually become parts of a broader political-security architecture capable of limiting Israel’s freedom of maneuver.

This concern is not limited to Netanyahu’s camp, either. Bennett has previously warned of the danger of Türkiye becoming a kind of “new Iran” and of a hostile Sunni strategic framework emerging with the involvement of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Once Saudi Arabia is added to that picture, the implications become even more uncomfortable for Israel, especially because normalization with Riyadh was for years regarded as one of the top strategic objectives of Israeli diplomacy. After decades of confronting what Israeli strategists described as an Iranian-led “Shiite crescent,” Israel may now be facing the early outlines of a very different regional center of gravity – one that conflicts with the idea of Israel as the uncontested dominant power of the region, and potentially with the nationalist expansionist vision of ‘Greater Israel’ itself.

For Ankara, on the other hand, the Mecca pact is another opportunity to evolve from an autonomous regional player into one of the architects of a new Middle Eastern security order. It allows Erdoğan to deepen strategic ties with the largest Arab economy, reinforce relations with a nuclear power, consolidate influence in Syria and demonstrate to Turkish voters that, despite domestic economic difficulties and political tensions, Türkiye is capable of shaping events far beyond its borders.

The current Turkish-Israeli confrontation is about more than Erdoğan and Netanyahu, or even about Syria itself. It is the product of two processes occurring simultaneously. At home, both leaders have powerful incentives to demonstrate strength amid electoral pressure, economic problems and social polarization. Abroad, competition for regional leadership and military-political influence is intensifying rapidly in a Middle East where the old post-Assad balance has already begun to disappear.

Neither Ankara nor West Jerusalem appears to want a direct war – yet if Türkiye continues to arm and train the Syrian military while Israel systematically destroys the infrastructure created with Turkish assistance, a de facto proxy conflict will already exist. But if Turkish servicemen are killed in a future strike, or if Israel deliberately destroys a major Turkish military asset inside Syria, the domestic political cost of restraint for Erdoğan would rise dramatically. Conversely, if Syrian forces using Turkish-supplied systems were to shoot down an Israeli aircraft, Netanyahu would face exactly the same political dilemma, particularly only weeks before the October election.

When foreign confrontation starts to define a leader’s domestic political legitimacy, the space for compromise contracts much faster than the space for military action.

Escalation was the name of the game this week, as the full extent of British involvement in Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russia was revealed, and as US President Donald Trump laid claim to the Strait of Hormuz and shifted to a policy of subjecting Iran to long-term economic strangulation.

Trump declares ‘D-Day’ for Iran

Instead, the US president took to social media to declare the Strait of Hormuz “new US territory,” before promising to inflict “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” on Iran by punishing any country doing business with the Islamic Republic. However, despite Trump’s declaration of “ECONOMIC D-DAY,” the balance of power in the Persian Gulf has not changed.

Iran retains its veto on shipping in the vital waterway; a mere six ships transited the strait on Tuesday, despite the Pentagon leaking information about a ‘secret shipping corridor’ via the Israeli military’s favorite reporter, Barak Ravid. Iran also maintains a formidable arsenal of missiles and drones, and has threatened to “escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region” if diplomacy fails and Trump refuses to lift his blockade on Iranian ports.

pic.twitter.com/FSYX32KR8d

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 19, 2026

Iran and Oman are the only players in the region making diplomatic progress right now, with the two reaching an “understanding” on a future shipping regime in the strait, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday. Trump’s response? If Oman strikes a deal that doesn’t satisfy Washington, “we’ll bomb the sh*t out of them.”

Russia warns Britain of ‘consequences’

As the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence approaches on Monday, the country is in the most perilous position it’s been in since the fall of the USSR. Vladimir Zelensky spent the week continuing to beg for non-existent air defense missiles from his Western backers; this was to no avail as Russia continued to pound military, industrial, and energy targets across Ukraine with impunity.

We need missiles for Patriots, and only our partners can provide them. We ain’t talking about gifts. Ukraine is ready to buy the weapons we need. What matters is that decisions be made, first and foremost in the U.S. I am grateful to everyone who is helping Ukraine save lives. pic.twitter.com/OImT18CGwM

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 20, 2026

For as long as Kiev keeps up its campaign of terror-bombing Russian cities, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Thursday, “the Russian Armed Forces will respond proportionately.” For Ukraine, this means more ballistic missiles, more blackouts, and more burning weapons factories in Kiev and beyond.

Zelensky wasn’t the only participant in the conflict to receive a stark warning from Moscow. After the Sunday Times revealed that Ukrainian forces have used British-made drones for long-range attacks inside Russia for the past six months, Moscow’s embassy in London stated that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the point even more directly:

[Russian President Vladimir Putin] has warned that we have the right to act in any part of the world’s oceans if anyone encroaches on our interests or our property. Likewise, we have every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails

Coming after Russia dismantled Ukraine’s port infrastructure with missiles, and began its winter campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure a month early, it’s a warning that London would be wise to heed.

Zelensky feels the squeeze

Zelensky’s friends in London have vowed to stick with the Ukrainian leader “100%” of the way, but at home in Kiev, opposition is rising. Fired by Zelensky last month, former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov made a bid for power on Tuesday, releasing a campaign-style video blasting the corruption and “systemic crisis of governance” in Kiev, and upping the ante by calling for a wartime election.

Fedorov’s drone-centric model of warfare won him support from a public hungry for the illusion of victory, and his glad-handing with the new military-industrial elite in Silicon Valley made him powerful friends abroad – even if, as RT explored in our ‘Wired for War’ series, he turned the Defense Ministry into a glorified sales office for Palantir.

To mark the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, RT is launching a dedicated series that provides a snapshot of Ukraine’s present, and warnings about its future. Watch for banners on Sunday on rt.com. 

Meta’s trillion-dollar trial begins

Zelensky is a once-untouchable titan facing his most serious challenge to date. If there’s anyone who knows the feeling, it’s Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Meta went on trial on Tuesday, accused by four US states of designing its platforms to keep children and teenagers scrolling for as long as possible, with all of the ensuing mental health consequences. 

Whatever the result, 25 other US states have signed on to the lawsuit, meaning Zuckerberg’s legal problems will only compound from here on.

However, as the old military adage goes, “shoot the archer, not the arrow.” Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are merely tools in the hands of an elite hellbent on building a decadent society, French-Russian analyst Matthieu Buge wrote for RT this week. Defanging Meta won’t stop people craving the dopamine hit that tech offers, he argued, concluding that “whoever wins the Meta trial, the masses will remain willing slaves.”

Another crisis threatens the EU

Every EU headline these days seems to involve a crisis of some sort: the energy crisis, economic crisis, political crisis, and the migrant crisis, the latter of which degenerated this week with multiple rapes in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. The latest emergency looming over the bloc is a potentially existential one – a food crisis. 

This was one of our top stories this week, and we’ll be keeping an eye on the crisis throughout the fall. Meanwhile, here’s what we’ll be monitoring next week: 

What to watch out for

The on-again, off-again talks between the US and Iran are seemingly dead in the water, and with all parties escalating, we’ll be watching who signs on to Trump’s sanctions regime. China is already out, and the Europeans are staying quiet. If the sanctions plan crumbles and Trump refuses to walk away, a return to open war may be in the cards.

Expect more punishing Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, and more long-range attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure from an increasingly desperate Zelensky. The embattled Ukrainian leader hasn’t publicly responded to Fedorov’s challenge yet, and he’ll likely use his Independence Day speech on Monday to project an image of control and stability.

We’ll also stay tuned to the Meta trial and keep you posted on just how hard Zuckerberg and his colleagues worked to hide the insidious design of their platforms. Stick with rt.com for all these stories, and watch our banners for our special deep-dive into Ukraine’s tragic, fascinating three decades of independence.

Israel has warned Türkiye against expanding Ankara’s military involvement in Syria, days after striking a Syrian airbase it claimed was being prepared for Turkish forces.

West Jerusalem attacked the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northwestern Syria on Tuesday, damaging the facility but causing no reported casualties.

“[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is dragging Turkey into dangerous adventures in Syria,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on X on Thursday.

Katz went on to accuse Erdogan of making “empty and delusional” anti-Israel speeches and warned him against testing the country’s determination to defend itself.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Damascus was about to violate a security “status quo” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there. Syria and Türkiye denied any such deployment was planned.

Middle East Eye reported this week, citing Turkish government insiders, that Ankara views the Abu al-Duhur strike as a challenge to its credibility as a regional security partner. It came less than two weeks after Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, under which an attack on one is considered an attack on all three, potentially raising the stakes of any direct military confrontation involving Türkiye.

According to MEE, Israel also did not use its military hotline with Türkiye before the strike, raising the risk of an unintended confrontation.

US Ambassador to Türkiye and Syria envoy Tom Barrack called the attack an “unnecessary escalation” and urged the sides to avoid further military incidents.

Israeli warplanes carried out a new wave of strikes around Nabatieh, a major city and administrative hub in southern Lebanon, early on Friday, with footage showing powerful explosions lighting up the night sky.

The attacks come despite a US-brokered framework agreed in June aimed at ending fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group. The deal envisages a progressive Israeli withdrawal alongside Lebanese Army deployments and Hezbollah’s disarmament but has stalled over which should come first.

🚨🇱🇧 🇮🇱 Israeli airstrikes are hitting Kfar Rumman alongside the Ali al-Taher Heights

-Both targets sit in the same corridor just outside Nabatieh in southern Lebanon

-Israel struck the ridge yesterday with airstrikes and heavy mortar fire, and again on Saturday

-Ali al-Taher…

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 21, 2026

Reports from Lebanon: Israeli airstrikes are pounding the Ali al Taher hills pic.twitter.com/au05A7rAKW

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 21, 2026

The overnight strikes targeted the town of Kfar Rumman on the outskirts of Nabatieh and the nearby Ali al-Taher Heights, according to Lebanese media. Israeli artillery also struck several other locations across the south.

Watch the moment Israeli fighter jets strike the town of Kfar Roummane in southern Lebanon.

Follow Press TV on Telegram: https://t.co/kG3YhfM6RO pic.twitter.com/pQRMubK7ir

— Palestine Highlights (@PalHighlight) August 21, 2026

The Ali al-Taher Heights, which overlook the Nabatieh region and roads leading into the city, have emerged as a focal point of Israel’s military campaign. The Israeli military claims Hezbollah maintains underground infrastructure in the area and has repeatedly targeted the heights in recent weeks.

The latest bombardment comes less than a week after one of the deadliest Israeli attacks in Lebanon since fighting subsided under a June truce. Eleven people were killed in attacks in the south on August 15, according to Lebanese officials. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.

RT correspondent Steve Sweeney recently returned with DD Geopolitics reporter Christopher Helali to the damaged Qasmiyeh Bridge over the Litani River, where he and cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on March 19. Sweeney shared a first-hand account of the strike as he returned to the scene.

The conflict in Lebanon is closely tied to Israel’s confrontation with Iran. Hezbollah, Tehran’s longtime ally, resumed attacks on Israel in March following the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, prompting a major Israeli air and ground campaign. Fighting subsided following the Israel-Lebanon truce in June, but Israeli strikes have continued.

Lebanon has condemned the attacks and demanded that Israel withdraw from its territory. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called last week’s deadly strikes “extremely dangerous” and said any Hezbollah military infrastructure on Lebanese soil should be dealt with by the Lebanese state, not Israel.

An adult-content creator was presented as a potential ambassador for the memory of Poland’s 1944 Warsaw Uprising before public outrage forced a reversal, according to local media reports. The campaign commemorating the revolt’s 82nd anniversary has the honorary patronage of the Polish Culture Ministry.

Monika Laskowska, known in Poland as an OnlyFans creator, appeared in a photo published by the Warszawa44 Association wearing a T-shirt commemorating the uprising and was presented as an ‘Ambassador of Remembrance’, multiple media outlets reported on Thursday. OnlyFans is a subscription platform widely associated with adult content.

The Warsaw Uprising was launched by the Polish resistance against Nazi German forces on August 1, 1944, in an attempt to liberate the capital as Soviet troops approached. The revolt was crushed after 63 days of fighting, leaving much of the Polish capital destroyed and an estimated 150,000-200,000 civilians dead.

Laskowska has also interviewed celebrities associated with Poland’s so-called “freak fights” – combat events that typically pit influencers and other internet personalities against each other – and has herself participated in such bouts.

The choice quickly drew backlash on social media, with users questioning whether an adult-content influencer was an appropriate figure to promote the memory of one of the most significant events in modern Polish history.

Polish media personality Karolina Korwin-Piotrowska, whose father fought in the uprising, also blasted the campaign for chasing social-media reach with controversial figures. She sarcastically suggested that organizers recruit even more provocative personalities.

Sebastian Meitz, an expert at Poland’s Sobieski Institute, publicly questioned Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska over the campaign and asked whether Laskowska had received the title under “culture” or “national heritage.”

The Culture Ministry rushed to distance itself from the decision, saying on Thursday that the list of ambassadors “was not consulted with the Ministry.” While the project had received its honorary patronage, the ministry stressed that it provided neither funding nor organizational support.

Warszawa44 president Dariusz Michalak confirmed that Laskowska was their own choice. The association, however, reversed course after the controversy erupted, suspending her ambassador role and removing her photo from Instagram.

Pakistan has vastly expanded the powers of Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Asim Munir through two new laws passed on Thursday.

The Defense Forces Act, 2026, and the amended National Command Authority Act, 2010, expand the statutory role of the CDF, an office that was created only last year.

The Defense Forces Act allows the CDF to exercise powers and perform functions necessary for “multidomain integration, operational cohesion, coordination and oversight of all matters which have joint, tri-services and strategic implications for the Armed Forces and national security of Pakistan.”

These also give Munir the power to retire, release, accept or reject the resignation of, or retain in service, any person – except for posts where the appointments are made by the president on the advice of the prime minister, such as those of the army, navy and air force chiefs.

He can also relax the age or service limit of retirement for any military personnel.

Pakistan’s constitution requires the CDF to also be the army chief – considered the most powerful role in the country, thus practically giving Munir control over the army, navy and air force. The CDF is also the senior military adviser over Pakistan’s nuclear command.

The latest changes give Munir considerable influence over the careers of military officers. By making the CDF the prime minister’s senior military adviser, the laws also consolidate the military leadership’s role in decision-making.

The bills, drafted as a follow-up to the 27th Constitutional Amendment, then passed amid a walkout by the opposition.

Last year’s 27th Constitutional Amendment reorganized the Pakistani military command, creating the roles of CDF and commander, national strategic command. The amendment gave Munir immunity from arrest or prosecution regarding official or personal actions tied to his tenure and rank.

Munir was promoted to the rank of field marshal on May 20, 2025, becoming only the second officer in Pakistan’s military history, after Ayub Khan, to receive the rank.

China has refused to join a US plan to “squash” Iran’s economy, rejecting Washington’s push to be part of the “toughest sanctions in history” against the Islamic Republic.

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on American allies and other countries to choose sides and stop doing business with Iran, as Washington prepares what he touted as “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.”

In an interview with CNBC, Bessent described the plan, expected to be unveiled on Monday, as “a one-two punch” combining a naval blockade with “the toughest sanctions in history.” He claimed it would “squash” the Iranian economy and “collapse this regime.”

Beijing, however, has rejected Washington’s call.

“Regarding the Iran issue, sanctions and pressure do not help resolve the problem,” Reuters quoted a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington as saying. “China calls on the relevant parties to take responsible actions and resolve the issue through political and diplomatic means.”

China has also rejected that threat. In response to a question by Bloomberg on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said “sanctions and pressure tactics are not the solution” and called for a “political and diplomatic approach.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has also dismissed the threat.

“Doubling down on failed policies will only bring further defeat,” Araghchi wrote on X on Thursday. “US economic terrorism threatens global economy and sovereignty worldwide.”

China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, having purchased more than 80% of the country’s shipped crude in 2025, according to Kpler data cited by Reuters.

Bessent argued that Beijing has a strong interest in cooperating with US sanctions because of its reliance on energy supplies passing through the Strait of Hormuz, claiming China gets “50% [of their] energy from inside the Gulf.”

Around 30% of China’s LNG imports came through Hormuz in 2025, but Beijing also sources LNG elsewhere and receives substantial pipeline gas from Russia and Central Asia.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been transferred back to prison after a brief visit to an Islamabad hospital following a court order.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court had on Tuesday ordered that the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party – one of cricket’s all-time greats – be moved to the private Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad within 48 hours, and kept there until September 16.

The authorities took him to the hospital just after midnight early Friday morning, past the court deadline. The PTI had threatened to file a contempt of court petition against the government.

“A team of qualified doctors, including an ophthalmologist, a cardiologist, and a physician, conducted a detailed examination of him and declared him medically fit,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X about Khan. “After the completion of this entire process, he was transferred back to Adiala Jail.”

❗Imran Khan Back In Jail After Hospital Check-Up (Reports)

Doctors have found former Pakistan PM Imran Khan fit to remain in custody after examining him at a hospital in Islamabad. (Reports)

Khan was taken to the hospital from Adiala Jail amid concerns over his deteriorating… pic.twitter.com/5DdeBBHDpT

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 21, 2026

Khan only spent a few hours in the hospital before being returned to Rawalpindi prison, where he has been incarcerated since 2003. 

His lawyers had said his health had deteriorated in prison, and that he had lost significant vision in his right eye.

The government had appealed to the top court to review and recall its order on Khan, saying medical reports showed he had no condition that required immediate treatment.

His supporters lined the route and cheered as the convoy passed despite the late hour.

Khan has been convicted of selling state gifts, a charge he denies. The former PM and his political allies have maintained that the cases against him are politically motivated and intended to prevent his return to politics.

The PTI, which retains a large support base, was stripped of its ability to participate in elections ahead of the 2024 vote.

The Russian Navy has carried out a successful missile test near the country’s Kuril Islands, the Pacific Fleet has said.

The test comes a week after Japan vigorously protested Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first-ever visit to the archipelago, which is partially claimed by Tokyo.

The missile test, which took place near the southern Kurils, involved the Varyag guided missile cruiser, the Omsk nuclear-powered submarine, and a ground-based Bastion surface-to-ship missile system, the Russian Pacific Fleet said in a statement on Thursday.

They fired several types of munitions at a target simulating enemy vessels at a distance of around 300 km (186 miles), with targeting data provided by naval aviation, the fleet said.

Objective control data confirmed the destruction of all targets, it stressed.

Kyodo news earlier reported that Japan had lodged a protest with Russia after Moscow notified it of the upcoming missile test last week.

On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Tokyo’s ambassador to Moscow to express a strong protest over “anti-Russian statements” by the Japanese leadership.

After Putin traveled to Iturup, the largest of the Kuril Islands, on August 13, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the trip “absolutely unacceptable” and said it “hurts the feelings of the Japanese people.” Motegi also issued a statement, claiming that the four southernmost islands of the archipelago “are an inherent part of Japan’s territory both historically and under international law.”

“Any attempts by the Japanese side to directly or indirectly call this obvious reality into question are categorically unacceptable and illegitimate,” it added.

Moscow “reserves the right to take appropriate countermeasures” in response to Japan’s adherence to Western sanctions against Russia and its support for Ukraine, the ministry warned.

The Kuril Islands, stretching from Kamchatka to Japan’s Hokkaido, came under Soviet control following Tokyo’s defeat in World War II and were subsequently incorporated into the USSR. The Japanese authorities, however, continue to claim the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the Habomai – which they call the “Northern Territories.” The dispute has been the main obstacle to Moscow and Tokyo signing a formal peace treaty in the eight decades since the conflict.