Minimalist News

A Tour Of America's Blue-topias Authored by Spyridon Andrews via the Abstract Truth Substack , I lived in Massachusetts for a number of years and even at one time owned a home there. The home was in a town called Cotuit, on the Cape, a small, pretty town that recalled the atmosphere of the television show Lost or the novel Lord of the Flies . There was an equivalent feeling of desolation and desperation and the strange notion that cannibal zombies ran the town. We determined that it was not the place we wanted to spend our free time, even

Trump: 9 Months At Sea For USS Lincoln 'Not Nearly Long Enough' President Trump shrugged off mounting concerns over the welfare of 5,000 sailors aboard the USS Lincoln on Friday, denying that family members were worried and telling reporters that nine months at sea was "not nearly long enough." His remarks came on the same day that he promised an audience that he would declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory, and that higher gas prices were a small price to pay so that a "very evil country" wouldn't obtain "a nuclear weapon." The media's questioning of the US

Are China's Surveillance Exports Turning Nations Into Digital Dictatorships? Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times, Is Beijing hoping to turn other authoritarian societies into digital Chinas? China’s rise as the world’s leading exporter of surveillance technology is yielding some disturbing results. Beijing’s surveillance export packages comprise an entire technological architecture that can give governments an unprecedented ability to see, identify, and track their populations. Those technologies include cameras, artificial intelligence, telecommunications networks, cloud computing, facial recognition, license-plate recognition, and centralized command systems. Many mid-sized countries are becoming or are already customers. Turning Other Nations Into ‘Little Chinas’ Turkey

Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Judges? Authored by Matthew Andersson via AmericanThinker.com, There is growing interest in whether an “ai” or, artificial intelligence judge can make better rulings than a human one. This is understandable as many legal decisions are either wrong or flawed in some critical way. Partisan politics and “lawfare" also continue to corrupt the legal system to a degree that has undermined its fundamental credibility, including public trust. No one knows better than President Trump who was maliciously prosecuted as a civilian. Down in the trial courts where legal arguments start, many of the facts of a

"Won't Be Short-Lived": JPMorgan Warns Next Global Food Crisis Could Erupt Next Year JPMorgan is the latest institutional research desk to warn that the next global food crisis may already be taking shape , driven by what its analysts describe as the "Five Ws": War, Weather, Warehousing, Water, and Waste. In a new report titled Food Security Is National Security: A Compounding Storm , a team led by London-based senior global economist Nora Szentivanyi warned that disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz and the emergence of a potentially historic El Niño could weaken crop yields, constrain agricultural production, and keep

Fauci In Hiding As ABC Censorship Bombshell Explodes Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News , Dr. Anthony Fauci just refused a private transcribed interview with Sen. Ron Johnson's subcommittee. The same week, a former ABC News correspondent revealed that the network gutted a 2021 Wuhan lab leak investigation after the script was sent to Fauci for review. The pattern is unmistakable. Stonewall. Censor. Invoke privilege. Repeat. On Friday, Fauci's attorney notified Sen. Ron Johnson that the former NIAID director would not appear for a closed-door, transcribed interview as part of the ongoing investigation into the failed COVID response. ?

More Than Half Of Gen Z Investors Have Moved Money Into Sports Bets A growing share of young Americans is folding sports gambling into their long-term financial plans , according to new research from the investment platform Betterment. In an online survey of 1,000 U.S. retail investors conducted in late March and early April and released this week, 52% of Gen Z investors said they had shifted money originally set aside for stocks or other investments into sports wagers over the past year. Only about one-third of Gen Z participants reported no involvement in sports betting at all, compared with

Rage Politics: Hakeem Jeffries Will Take A Baseball Bat To The Supreme Court Authored by Jonathan Turley, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has struggled to pander to the mob to secure power in the midterm elections, including brandishing a baseball bat on social media to show his radical bona fides. With Democratic Socialists chanting “you’re next” when seeing Jeffries, he continues to struggle to stay in front of the mob. This week, he doubled down on his pledge to throw the Supreme Court to the mob if they make him the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. After the

Woke 2.0 Will Be Worse Authored by Spencer Klavan via AmericanMind.org, Readers familiar with Dr. Seuss’s classic, The Cat in the Hat , will remember the twin chaos agents Thing 1 and Thing 2. “‘These Things are good Things,’” the Cat reassures the children whose mother has inexplicably left them under the supervision of a fish. “‘They are tame. Oh, so tame! / They have come here to play.’” The Things briefly feign innocence, then quickly reveal themselves to be marauding imps, knocking over nightstands and ruining the linens. “I do not like the way that they play!” says the

Ukraine Hits Key Russian Space Facility With Flamingo Cruise Missiles Ukraine's long-range drone attacks have frequently targeted military bases and oil refinery and energy sites of late, and more recently warehouses of major Russian online retailer Wildberries - but on Saturday a new target has been added: space facilities. Ukrainian forces have touted that they've struck the Progress Rocket and Space Center in Russia's Samara region . The facility focuses on the manufacturing and operation of space launch vehicles. Illustrative: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Space.com/NASA Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X that Ukraine hit the space manufacturing center with FP-5 Flamingo

Somali Piracy Surges Amid Hormuz Blockade Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com, The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced hundreds of commercial ships onto longer routes around Africa, and Somali pirates are moving quickly to exploit the sudden increase in traffic off the continent’s eastern coast. Oil tankers MT Honour 25, MT Eureka and MT Asana were hijacked in the Gulf of Aden and off Puntland between April and July 2026, the largest attacks by Somali pirates in years. The Iran war has now delivered these groups more targets, spread across thousands of miles of ocean, while

Democratic Socialist Leaders Squirm When Asked About Cuba, Venezuela, And Nicaragua's Dictatorships Mexican journalist and Miami-based news anchor Jorge Gilberto Ramos Ávalos had one of the most revealing exchanges yet with the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America . Ramos repeatedly pressed the socialists' national DSA co-chairs on whether Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua should be classified as dictatorships. Neither of the far-left extremists could provide a direct answer . Ramos asked Ashik Siddique, co-chair of the DSA: But help me understand the difference between the kind of democratic socialism that you support and what's happening in Cuba and in

Record Highs: Should You Chase The Rally? Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Pinned and Stretched There is nothing bearish about the tape, and the overall trend could not be much cleaner. The S&P 500 sits above every major moving average and above a rising 200-day line it has not closed beneath since April. That is a healthy, intact uptrend, and it deserves respect. The problem is not the direction, but the distance from the longer-term trend, which is more concerning. As is always the case, deviations above the long-term trend eventually “revert to the mean.” We see it almost

Lutnick Draws Red Line: "Great American Companies" Shouldn't Use Chinese Memory Chips One week after The Wall Street Journal reported that Tim Cook's Apple was testing memory chips from China's CXMT, a company blacklisted by the Pentagon over alleged ties to the People's Liberation Army, the outlet published a follow-up story with an interview with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick , who publicly urged Apple not to proceed. The standoff comes as the AI data-center buildout absorbs global memory supplies, driving prices sharply higher and forcing consumer-electronics manufacturers to explore alternative sources. " The Trump administration is not in favor of

The Gold Tax Surprise: When Gold Profits Get Taxed At 28 Percent Authored by Adam H. Douglas via The Epoch Times , If you bought gold during its 2023- 2026 rally , you may be sitting on a large profit and a tax rule you have never heard of. Gold’s tax treatment can surprise investors, especially when selling after a major rally. Nattapon Saisaard/shutterstock The IRS classifies physical gold, and even the popular bullion-backed gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as collectibles , a category shared with art, stamps, and antiques. That classification changes the tax bill when you sell . Most

Hawaii Braces For Direct Tropical Storm Hit On Big Island Hawaii's Big Island is under a hurricane warning as Tropical Storm Lala is expected to make landfall on Saturday local time , according to the National Hurricane Center. " This is a very serious storm ," Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told reporters late Friday night. " We have not had a hurricane make landfall in quite some time. So none of us really have experienced this really in, you know, the last couple of decades ." Friday August 14, 2026, 10:10 PM: Lala is about to become a full-fledged hurricane

Socialism Simplified: A System Where Government Uses Your Money To Solve Everyone Else's Problems Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, They are coming for your money, and they have a ton of momentum right now . Democratic Socialists are winning election after election by promising free stuff, but of course free stuff is never actually free. Somewhere along the way, someone has to pay for it. If you find yourself protectively reaching for your wallet as you read this, I don’t blame you one bit. Socialism is a system where the government uses your money to solve

Influential Wife Of Anthropic CEO Pitched Post-Conviction Epstein On 'Luxury Porn' Company, And Claude Has No Idea Anthropic has filed confidentially for what could be the largest public offering in history . Yet, one of the most influential voices shaping its chief executive holds no official position at the company, appears in no regulatory filings, and has been quietly scrubbed from the internet. She also pitched a porn company to Jeffrey Epstein - less than two years after he got out of prison for sex trafficking minors. Her name is Cami Clark, wife of CEO Dario Amodei . According to

Post-Maduro Venezuela Wants Its $4BN In Gold Back From England Venezuela wants its gold back. And now with Maduro having been removed and Caracas being essentially a puppet of Washington influence and interests, it has a much better chance at this than ever before. Venezuela’s government and opposition are teaming up to wrest back $4 billion in gold bullion currently locked in the Bank of England’s vaults , according to a Friday report by the Financial Times . Bank Of England/Shutterstock A freshly issued joint statement confirmed they are actively working "to recover Venezuela's international reserve assets held in the

Racist Plan For Berlin's 'Blacks-Only' Swimming Pool Day Canceled Over 'Safety Concerns' Via Remix News, A planned event at the temporary publicly funded “Volksbad” pool in front of Berlin’s Volksbühne theater has been canceled following an alleged surge of online hostility and threats. The initiative, organized in collaboration with the association Each One Teach One (Eoto), was set to reserve the public bath exclusively for Black children and young people for a six-hour window on Friday before opening to the general public. The organizers are claiming that they could no longer protect participants. According to a statement from the Volksbühne,

Win is significant for region’s premier, Doug Ford, who blames protected zones for city’s traffic ills The Ontario government is now free to rip out Toronto’s bike lanes on its busiest streets after the region’s top court ruled in favour of the province on Friday, overturning a lower court’s decision that decreed removal would violate constitutional rights. The win is significant for Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, and his government, who have long railed against Toronto’s bike lanes, blaming the protected zones for the city’s traffic ills . Continue reading...

Grifols, which runs private chain of clinics, to temporarily stop taking donations after new government investigation A chain of private plasma donation clinics in Canada has said it is pausing collections after the deaths of two donors and a new government investigation into potential unsafe practices. Grifols, a Spanish healthcare company which runs 17 clinics in Canada and is the country’s only private clinic for plasma donation, said it informed Health Canada of its decision to temporarily pause collections on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Move will be one of first large-scale foreign investments in country since US ousted leader Nicolás Maduro in January BP has answered Donald Trump’s call for oil companies to help rebuild Venezuela’s fossil fuel industry with new plans to develop a large offshore gasfield. BP will partner with two oil firms with close links to the Trump administration to develop the second phase of the Loran gasfield, in one of the first large-scale foreign investments in Venezuela since the US ousted its leader Nicolás Maduro in January. Continue reading...

Ángel Aguirre indicted in case that rocked Mexico and became symbol of its brutal cartel violence The former governor of Guerrero state in Mexico has been formally charged over his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, a case that has become a symbol of the country’s brutal cartel violence and government impunity. Ángel Aguirre, who was arrested last week , is accused of forced disappearance and obstruction of justice for ordering the destruction of surveillance tapes that may have shed light on what happened to the students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college on the night

Female staff alleged company failed to maintain safe workplace, after allegations of sexual assault against pilot The Canadian airline WestJet has agreed to pay C$4.5m (£2.4m) to settle a decade-long sexual harassment class action lawsuit levelled by its female flight attendants, who alleged the company failed to maintain a safe workplace. The suit followed allegations by Mandalena Lewis, a former flight attendant, that a pilot had sexually assaulted her and a colleague, but that WestJet kept the pilot flying, thereby putting other employees at risk. Continue reading...

Discussions to focus on Australia’s acquisition of Mogami-class frigates as Japan plays down Albanese’s podcast comments Japan’s defence minister will visit Canberra this week, the highest level engagement with Australia after controversy over Anthony Albanese’s comments about a gift of melons from prime minister Sanae Takaichi. The defence minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, will meet his counterpart and deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, on Tuesday, with discussions focused on Australia’s acquisition of Japan’s Mogami-class frigates and enhanced security cooperation. Continue reading...

Searchers dig through collapsed buildings and debris after 7.7 magnitude quake killed at least 51 people Rescue crews dug through collapsed buildings and landslide debris in eastern Indonesia on Sunday as they searched for bodies and possible survivors a day after a powerful earthquake killed at least 51 people, injured more than 100 and displaced thousands. At least 24 people died in Manggarai regency and 17 in neighbouring East Manggarai, with additional fatalities reported in Sikka, Ngada and Ende regencies, the national disaster management agency said. Rescuers were still searching for people feared buried beneath landslides triggered by the quake

Quake struck Flores region early on Saturday, prompting thousands to seek higher ground for fear of a tsunami A 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck eastern Indonesia has killed at least 47 people, causing widespread panic and collapsing buildings and homes in a region prone to deadly seismic events. Rescuers have yet to reach Nagekeo, the area closest to the epicentre, because roads were blocked by landslides and communications disrupted. Continue reading...

Evacuation orders issued for 400,000 after flooding, landslide warnings and power outages in Chiba prefecture At least five people have died in eastern Japan after “unprecedented” heavy rain that left nearly 7,000 stranded at Tokyo’s Narita airport and forced thousands to take refuge in government buildings. The torrential rains hit Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo, on Thursday night, triggering landslide warnings and power outages. Evacuation orders were issued for more than 400,000 people in Chiba and other areas, and about 45,000 homes lost power, as 115mm of rain fell hourly, approximately the same amount usually recorded for the whole month

Blaze fuelled by hot, dry and windy conditions comes within metres of West Kalimantan rehabilitation centre Orangutans rescued from wildlife traffickers face a new threat from the record number of fires that have broken out in Indonesia in recent weeks. Flames have come within metres of an animal rehabilitation centre in West Kalimantan as hot, dry and windy conditions have been amplified by a powerful El Niño and the human-driven climate crisis. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Anthony Albanese has just been speaking alongside the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns , about the state’s gun buyback scheme agreed in response to the Bondi terror attack. The prime minister said: Australians are quite rightly proud of our gun laws but the fact is there are more guns in Australia today than there were at the time of dealing with the Port Arthur gun buyback that occurred under the Howard government. These arrangements are available to every state and territory, and

‘There’s male, there’s female, and then there’s mental illness,’ Tyron Whitten says on YouTube show Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast One Nation senator Tyron Whitten has claimed parents supporting their children who identify as transgender are engaging in “child abuse”, telling a fringe YouTube show: “there’s male, there’s female, and then there’s mental illness”. Guardian Australia has unearthed several incendiary comments from Whitten and fellow One Nation senators Pauline Hanson and her longtime lieutenant Malcolm Roberts, about transgender Australians. Continue reading...

Proud Widjabul Wiyebal woman of the Bundjalung nation recognised posthumously with the lifetime achievement award Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast One of Australia’s greatest cultural ambassadors has been recognised posthumously for dedicating her life to sharing, preserving and promoting First Nations culture through language, dance and ceremony. A proud Widjabul Wiyebal woman of the Bundjalung nation, Rhoda Roberts died in March aged 66. On Saturday night in Alice Springs, she was posthumously awarded the lifetime achievement award at the Naidoc awards. Continue reading...

Authorities confirm first Australian death of species found with virus near where it attracts crowds to a ‘penguin parade’ Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Australia’s first case of the deadly H5 bird flu in a little penguin has been confirmed on Victoria’s Phillip Island, only days after the state government announced it would begin vaccinating the species. Confirmation of the virus in the little penguin will spark a race to vaccinate thousands of birds, with the government announcing on Saturday it would begin the rollout on Monday. Continue reading...

Hundreds gathered with flashes of pink to farewell the five-year-old girl, who was allegedly murdered in April Warning: This story contains references to Indigenous Australians who have died Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A sombre funeral service for Kumanjayi Little Baby has been attended by hundreds of people from the Alice Springs community and surrounds. Wearing pink and some dressed in T-shirts bearing the face of the five-year-old girl, the crowd gathered under grey skies in the red centre capital on Saturday. Continue reading...

Another 10 people in serious condition after bus veers off motorway and overturns Twelve people have died after a bus carrying a group of Polish tourists overturned on the M3 motorway in Hungary on the way back from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Local police said the bus crashed near the town of Mezőkeresztes after it “went off the straight road into a ditch and overturned” at 1am local time. Early reports suggested the driver had probably fallen asleep. He survived the crash and was taken into custody. Continue reading...

Kyiv launches what may be its largest attack wave of war, with fire breaking out at warehouse near Russian capital Ukraine has launched one of its largest drone attacks since the start of the war, causing a fire at a distribution warehouse near Moscow and killing at least six people overnight, according to Russian authorities. Russia’s defence ministry said it had shot down 822 drones, while the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, reported that 600 drones were flying towards the capital’s region, of which 201 were destroyed. Continue reading...

The Guardian travelled 100 miles along the EU’s longest river, where some residents are struggling to secure drinking water For centuries, the rock was seen as a warning. When it began to emerge from the Danube, beneath Gellért Hill in Budapest, it meant the river had fallen so low that floating mills could no longer operate, crops were probably failing, and hunger would almost certainly follow. That is why, in the Hungarian capital, where over time the boulder became little more than a legend, it was named Ínség-szikla – the Rock of Starvation. Today, amid record-low water levels on the

Fraudsters use pictures posted on Instagram or Facebook to create emails seeking bank account details You are on a short break in Porto and post some pictures of your family on Instagram or Facebook. With a small section of the Douro river in the background, you think it could have been taken anywhere. A few days later, you get a text saying that your card was compromised. “We detected unusual activity while you were travelling in Porto – please verify immediately,” says the message. Continue reading...

Family paid tribute to Bristol University geology student, 18, after being notified by Avon and Somerset police A body has been found in the search for an 18-year-old British man who went missing last year while hiking in Romania, UK police said. George Smyth, a geology student at the University of Bristol, went missing in November. Continue reading...

Rescue services search for survivors and bodies after airstrikes hit homes in Ansar and Deir al-Zahrani Eleven people have been killed, including three children, and 19 injured in two Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon, the worst toll since deals in June brought a lull in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes bombed a home on the outskirts of the village of Ansar, killing seven people and flattening the building early on Saturday morning. Rescue services were working at the site to try to find survivors and locate bodies. Continue reading...

Seriousness of remark made in New York on Friday, and whether it signaled new policy ​position, not clear Donald Trump has threatened to declare the strait of Hormuz as “a territory of the United States” as his administration struggles to conclude the war with Iran. During a speech at a police academy on Long Island, New York, on Friday, the US president said he would “pretty soon” designate the waterway – a crucial chokepoint for global trade, through which about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil supplies typically pass – a US territory. Continue reading...

Palestine’s vice-president calls plan ‘flagrant violation of international law’ and a step towards full Israeli annexation Israel’s defence minister wants to transfer law enforcement powers for Israelis in the occupied West Bank over to the police, a plan that Palestine’s vice-president described as a “flagrant violation of international law” and step towards full Israeli annexation. Israel Katz announced that he had ordered the military to draw up plans for the handover of responsibility for policing Israeli settlers amid domestic and international criticism of the army’s failure to tackle militants besieging three Palestinian families . Continue reading...

Israeli PM criticised by political rival for attacking an international ally and overseeing ‘horrific diplomatic failure’ The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” in a podcast interview, where he also described the country as the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon”. His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population. Continue reading...

Former PM of Israel calls events ‘concerted and meticulous attempt at ethnic cleansing’ against Palestinians Israeli troops have forced two Palestinian families to leave their besieged West Bank homes, the day after a top Israeli commander personally promised he would end a violent settler campaign to drive them out. Israeli soldiers also took over eight other homes in Qusra early on Thursday, telling the village’s mayor, Abdul Azim Wadi, that the buildings were needed for a days-long operation to remove the settlers. They later relinquished six. Settlers still roam the village. Continue reading...

Campaigners fear deeper diplomatic contacts are undermining demands for improvements in human rights The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses. Five years after the Taliban took power , an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare. Continue reading...

Kyaw Zwar Minn was ousted for declaring loyalty to Aung San Suu Kyi after 2021 coup but refused to leave his home Myanmar’s ousted ambassador to the UK has gone on trial on trespassing charges for refusing to leave a diplomatic residence after being unceremoniously locked out of the embassy in 2021. Shortly after Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021, triggering mass protests that spiralled into a civil war, Kyaw Zwar Minn was locked out of the embassy for declaring his loyalty to the deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Continue reading...

The wild capture and release of a female big cat into a nature reserve is the first step towards reintroducing a population that hasn’t been seen for 70 years On 31 July, “Umit” – which means hope in Kazakh – was released into a nature reserve on the edge of Lake Balkhash after more than a decade of careful planning to return the caspian tiger to the region. With this release, Kazakhstan became the first country to restore its tiger range after they had been thought extinct, with the last reliable sighting in the country recorded more than 70 years

An Amnesty International report reveals that the country is now a key part of Israel’s weapons supply chain. Plus, Assam floods, student anger spreads and a song to put in rotation • Don’t get This is India delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Hello, and welcome back to This Is India. For this week’s newsletter, I’m looking at India’s evolving relationship with Israel, and how it has deepened as conflict swept across the Middle East. Why is it that India has formed an even closer bond with a country that has faced mounting international isolation and backlash over a

Demonstrators accuse authorities of failing to tackle irregularities in exams for sought-after civil service jobs Thousands of angry young job-seekers clashed with police in Jharkhand, one of India’s poorest states, on Monday as a weeks-long protest over alleged irregularities in recruitment drives for coveted government jobs escalated into a march on the state legislature. Police fired water cannon and teargas and swung batons as they tried to stop flag-waving demonstrators from clambering over barricades and surging towards the assembly in Ranchi, the state capital. Some of the protesters responded by dancing and cheering as jets of water drenched the crowd.

Housing secretary says developers will have to prove there’s no way to save pub, as she prepares planning shakeup All pubs will get protection from being turned into housing or offices under a shake-up of planning laws in England to be presented by Angela Rayner this week. The housing secretary will publish a new national planning policy framework aimed at loosening planning laws even further to help build 3m homes by the end of the parliament. Continue reading...

Sale of one of UK’s top collections overseas prompts call new rules to help keep items in country One of UK’s best fossil collections sold in ‘loss to the nation’ An MP has called on ministers to change export controls so that significant fossils can be classed as national treasures after one of the UK’s best collections, unearthed on Dorset beaches, was sold overseas. Last week, a Guardian investigation revealed that an unparalleled collection of fossils from the UK’s Jurassic Coast, comprising hundreds of specimens including ichthyosaurs, had been sold to the Natural History Museum in Abu Dhabi for what

Molendotech will collate data from daily tests that detect E coli and other bacteria amid reports of swimmers falling ill A UK university spinout behind a rapid bacterial water testing kit is planning to launch live water quality maps, as scores of beachgoers report falling ill after swimming. Molendotech, a spinout from the University of Plymouth, sells a portable test that detects E coli and other bacteria in water and delivers results on the spot, without waiting for days to get laboratory results. Continue reading...

New rules could affect nine in 10 rental properties in duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and at Sandringham King Charles and Prince William could be forced to spend up to £10m upgrading hundreds of rental properties on their private estates to meet planned energy-efficiency rules. The government has announced that landlords will need to ensure their properties have energy performance certificate (EPC) ratings of C or higher by 2030 – up from the current requirement of an E. Continue reading...

Latest reading on Wednesday likely to frame scale of challenge for new PM to ease pressures on households amid Iran war fallout British households are facing a renewed cost of living squeeze, with official figures expected to show this week that soaring energy bills drove up inflation in July to close to 3%. As the Iran war continues to send shock waves through global energy markets, economists predict the surge in UK gas and electricity bills last month will push Britain’s headline inflation rate to 2.9%. Continue reading...

Law was set to go into effect in January, months before cyclosporiasis outbreak, but now is set for 2028 Congress passed a law to help federal agencies investigate outbreaks of foodborne illness – a regulation experts said could have stopped the US’s largest cyclosporiasis outbreak much sooner. The only problem? The rule has been delayed – for 15 years, including most recently amid lobbying in 2025. Continue reading...

Ahead of Fat Bear Week, avid fans are glued to the spectacle of brown bears devouring salmon at Brooks Falls in Alaska One of this summer’s biggest onscreen hits has had big beasts, great escapes and choppy waters, but it’s not Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – it’s a livestream of Alaskan brown bears catching salmon. The Brooks Falls bearcam at Katmai national park in the US was watched 7.3m times between 22 June and 4 August – up 70% from the same period last year and more than double the views it attracted in 2024. Continue reading...

Police say Larry Montes struck a woman and a security guard after he disrupted Shabbat services A New York City man is facing hate crime charges after police say he assaulted a woman and a security team member while disrupting Shabbat services at Central Synagogue in Manhattan – all in plain view of a live stream. The New York police department identified the suspect in the case as Larry Montes, 46, who was arrested after the episode at the synagogue. Montes was charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count of criminal mischief as a

About 1.6m dozen eggs from Texas recalled amid one of the largest recorded foodborne illness outbreaks in US history A massive egg recall affecting nearly 1.6m dozen eggs has been elevated to the US Food and Drug Administration’s highest-risk warning as officials investigate a salmonella outbreak that has sickened nearly 100 people. The FDA on 12 August reclassified the recall of nearly 1.6m dozen white and brown cage-free eggs over concerns they may be contaminated with salmonella. Continue reading...

Former VP sent fundraising appeal for Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign – with half of donations going to Harris’s organization Alaska US Senate candidate Mary Peltola has rejected the support of Kamala Harris , her fellow Democrat, after the 2024 presidential candidate sent out a seemingly unsolicited fundraising appeal on Peltola’s behalf. Harris, who lost Alaska – typically a Republican-voting state – by 13 points during her unsuccessful White House run, on Wednesday sent an email from her political organization to supporters of Peltola, a former US House member. Continue reading...

Israeli air strikes on southern Lebanon killed at least 11 people on Saturday, in the deadliest attacks since a truce between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on June 20. Lebanon’s health ministry and state news agency said an air strike that targeted a home on the edge of Ansar village killed seven people, including three children, and wounded two. The second, on the village of Deir al-Zahrani, killed four and wounded 17. Israel and the Lebanese government announced a “framework agreement”...

Police in Virginia have arrested a 19-year-old in connection with a shooting on Saturday that left five people injured. No one died in the shooting, though one victim sustained critical injuries. Chesterfield county police announced the arrest of Camron Harris of Henrico, Virginia. They found him hiding in a wardrobe on campus on Saturday afternoon. He was not a student at the university, authorities said. Police said they obtained eight felony warrants for his arrest including malicious...

The US is readying unprecedented economic measures against Iran, as President Donald Trump seeks to intensify efforts to force Tehran to capitulate after almost six months of war. The president said in a brief interview with Fox News that the US was planning to hit Iran’s economy hard, and that he did not care if the conflict were to end before the November US midterm elections, which would hinge on voter perceptions of the economy. Trump has struggled to find an off-ramp to the war, which has...

Russia is confounding expectations that its influence in the Middle East would drastically decline after the downfall of Syria’s Assad regime in 2024. At the time, Moscow operated about 100 military facilities in the war-torn country, following its intervention in the Syrian civil conflict from 2015 to prop up then president Bashar al-Assad in alliance with Iran and its regional proxies. When Assad was forced to flee to Moscow, and control of most of Syria was seized by Islamist rebels led by...

Thirty lions and tigers that were kept alive – barely – for years in cramped concrete cages at a closed Argentine zoo began entering jumbo-size transport crates on Friday as they embarked on ambitious journeys to wildlife sanctuaries halfway across the world in South Africa and the United States. The cats are being rescued from the former Lujan Zoo, about 70km (43 miles) northwest of Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires, after years of uncertainty over their fate. Four Paws, the international...

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would “soon” declare the Strait of Hormuz waterway part of US territory after defeating Iran. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated – pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” he said with a chuckle during a political rally at a police academy in Garden City, New York. “It’s true,” he added. It was unclear how seriously Trump intended the remark or whether it represented a new policy...

UK academic Jason Arday, who resigned from the University of Cambridge last week amid a high-profile plagiarism storm that featured racism claims, was found dead on Friday, the prestigious British institution confirmed. Arday, 41, was found unresponsive on Friday afternoon at an address in south London, according to the capital’s Metropolitan Police Service, which did not confirm the identity of the deceased person discovered. “We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news,” Cambridge...

President Donald Trump dismissed concerns on Friday over living conditions and the mental health of service members on a US aircraft carrier deployed against Iran, while confirming the ship would soon rotate out. Asked by reporters whether family members were worried about the situation on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Trump said “no, they’re not”. Trump also rejected the idea that the ship – now at sea for nine months – had been deployed for too long. “No, no, no, not nearly enough,” he said. The...

Italian authorities recovered three artworks by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth millions of euros that were stolen earlier this year from a private museum near the northern city of Parma, police said on Friday. A statement from the Italian Carabinieri’s art recovery squad said the artworks were discovered during searches ordered by prosecutors, but no details were given. The investigation is ongoing. Meanwhile, Brazilian police said late on Thursday that they had located eight stolen works by...

Luigi Mangione admitted in court on Friday to fatally shooting US health insurance executive Brian Thompson and pleaded guilty to two federal charges of stalking the executive with the intent to kill him. “I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and ‌he died,” Mangione said. The guilty plea will avert a federal trial in the closely watched case over the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, a brazen crime that was condemned by public officials but became emblematic of Americans’ frustration with health...

Li, a woman in her late twenties from southwestern China, is anxious about her coming interview for a 10-year US visa. She has big plans for her travels – a weeks-long stay next year that would be her first visit to the country – followed by a planned return trip in two years while pregnant so her child can attain American citizenship. But those plans have been thrown into doubt. Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to end “birth tourism”, tightening scrutiny on...

A helicopter pilot has died after crashing in a forest in eastern Germany while carrying out liming work, the police directorate in the city of Chemnitz said on Friday. Workers managed to pull the man from the helicopter after the impact, police said. Despite immediate first aid administered at the scene, the man died from his injuries. The helicopter had no other people on board. Police did not provide information on the identity of the pilot or the cause of the accident near the small town of...

A drone entered Latvian airspace and was shot down by Italian Eurofighter jets, the military said on Friday. The decision to shoot it down was taken to avert a threat to Latvia’s population, Defence Minister Raivis Melnis said. An air alert was lifted after the drone was intercepted, Latvia’s military said on social media, after authorities had urged people across the Baltic state to avoid going outside and seek shelter. A spokeswoman for Latvia’s military said the drone was shot down over a...

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage won his self-triggered by-election in southern England on Friday, but saw his strategy to silence critics backfire when his main rival, Count Binface, a comedian dressed as a trash can, took more than a quarter of the vote. In a highly unusual move, Farage, one of Britain’s leading Brexit campaigners, did not turn up at the vote count in the southern English seaside resort of Clacton because, he said, ‌the police had advised him there was a campaign to disrupt the...

The top US priority now in the Iran war is no longer its nuclear programme but to bring petrol prices down for American consumers, the vice-president said on Thursday, with the treasury secretary adding that new economic punishment to wear down Tehran is imminent. The comments by Vice-President J.D. Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent illustrate the powerful leverage Tehran has gained by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon – consistently...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China completes milestone test of US$10.8 billion canal link to Southeast Asia Chinese authorities have conducted the first full transit test along a 134.2km (83.4-mile) canal megaproject linking a vast inland region with Southeast...

Some sailors have reportedly tried throwing themselves into the sea, basic supplies can run short and sanitation is going awry: life on America’s giant Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is increasingly difficult as the Iran war drags on. The ship – now in its ninth month of deployment – is expected to be replaced in the Middle East by another carrier, the George Washington, in a move sure to be welcomed by the Lincoln’s crew and their loved ones. But concerns about conditions on the Lincoln have...

In every civilisation, certain stories capture the psyche so profoundly that they are retold across centuries. In the West, Homer’s Odyssey is the one. Countless adaptations have emerged over millennia, inspiring literary giants from Dante Alighieri to James Joyce. Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation is merely the latest. While it reflects the British-American filmmaker’s personal vision, it also offers a glimpse into the anxieties and self-reflections of today’s Western elite. Homer’s...

President Donald Trump ordered the US Navy to return to using steam catapults to launch planes off of aircraft carriers, acting on a long-time complaint despite opposition from many naval officers. In a presidential memorandum, Trump ordered US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to come up with a plan within 60 days on what would be needed to use hydraulic catapults in the next Gerald Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The planned USS Doris Miller will be the fourth ship in the six-vessel...

Luigi Mangione is expected to plead guilty on Friday to resolve federal charges relating to the fatal shooting of UnitedHealth Group executive Brian Thompson, and prosecutors will recommend he serve life in prison, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The plea would come at a Friday hearing that US District Judge Margaret Garnett set after federal prosecutors and defence lawyers jointly requested one. Court records did not identify the purpose of the hearing, and it is possible...

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca defence agreement, they executed a structural overhaul of the Middle East’s security architecture. The pact codifies a defence commitment, where an armed attack on one is treated as an assault on all. Building upon September’s Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement, this tripartite arrangement bridges the financial capital of the Gulf, the...

⁠Bird remains were found ⁠in the engine of a Ryanair Boeing 737 NG plane where a passenger was partially sucked through a broken window shortly after take-off from Greece in July, the US National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday. The NTSB ‌is investigating the incident where a piece of the engine broke off the plane and smashed the window. The plane, headed to Germany, lost pressure and was forced to make an emergency landing. The NTSB said in its preliminary report into the July 10...

The Pacific-based aircraft carrier USS George Washington has begun heading towards the Middle East, according to Navy statements and open source information on the ship’s movements. This comes as reports have emerged of mental health and supply issues aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose long deployment to the Middle East in support of the Iran war includes a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days. The USS George Washington left port in Da Nang, Vietnam, last week,...

The Kennedy Centre board voted on Thursday to add US President Donald Trump’s name to the facade of the performing arts venue and move forward with a two-year closure, according to congresswoman Joyce Beatty, a trustee through her position in Congress, and her lawyers. A representative for the Kennedy Centre did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The moves set up a test of US District Judge Christopher Cooper, who ruled in May that letters affixed to the building and spelling out...

A passenger train derailed on Thursday in southern England, seriously injuring two people and causing minor injuries for nine others after three carriages overturned, the British Transport Police said. The Southern Rail train from Victoria station in London to Eastbourne was carrying about 150 people when it went off the tracks outside the tourist town of Lewes. Passenger Rob Bradley said the train began rocking as it picked up speed and the carriage he was riding in with his six-year-old...

A professor managed US funding of computer science research for more than two years while failing to disclose that he was simultaneously involved in Chinese government programmes, according to previously unreported documents. The professor, Tao Li, was a programme officer at the National Science Foundation from 2015 to 2017, a job that included overseeing the awarding of grants for research in areas such as hardware, software and algorithms. During that time, Li took part in two Chinese talent...

Poland has ⁠arrested a ⁠Russian man who was ⁠hired by Moscow to kill a Ukrainian-American citizen in Warsaw, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday. The Russian was detained on August ‌7 and had been recruited to kill a man who was “inconvenient to the Putin regime”, Tusk told journalists. The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Moscow has regularly ⁠dismissed accusations by European powers of attacks, saying the West ‌is stoking...

A blast at a ⁠storage facility for petroleum products at the Netherlands’ Rotterdam port killed one person and wounded six others on Thursday, officials said, as police investigated the cause of the explosion. A spokesperson for major energy commodities trading company Gunvor said an “incident” occurred during maintenance work on a storage tank. A police spokesperson said that there was no immediate ⁠sign of sabotage and that all possible scenarios were under ‌investigation. Rotterdam is...

German police said on Thursday that a suspicious object found on rail tracks in a Bavarian ‌town did not contain explosives, as initially feared. Earlier on Thursday, buildings near the object were evacuated in the town of Treuchtlingen for the item to ⁠be moved safely by a robot. Experts had earlier taken ‌X-ray images of the object that was found in the southern ‌part of the town. The public ⁠had ⁠been urged to steer clear of the area, which ‌was cordoned off, police also said on social...

Chinese carmakers could capture between 15 and 30 per cent of the European automotive market by 2035, up from roughly 10 per cent this year, analysts at Citi said, with the outcome resting on how far Brussels goes in tightening tariffs and made-in-EU rules. Current European Union rules would allow Chinese carmakers to reach 30 per cent by 2035 – Citi’s base scenario – while extending existing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to plug-in hybrids would cap the market share at 25 per cent, Citi...

US military facilities across the Pacific are in a worrying state of decay, the Pentagon inspector general warned, raising concerns about bases that are critical to deterring China. Corrosion and holes in buildings, falling ceilings and the presence of mould and asbestos were among the problems identified through inspections of 11 US facilities across the region and relayed to a dozen senior Defence Department officials in an emergency management advisory this month. The issues have affected...

The US military campaign against Iran has so far failed to force Tehran to capitulate. The Trump administration is betting once again that suffocating economic pressure will do the job. Facing a shortfall of necessary munitions and wary of continuing an unpopular war, Trump and his top officials are returning to a familiar playbook with Iran: relying on a steady increase in economic sanctions and a naval blockade to stifle oil exports. The renewed emphasis on economic pain – it was dubbed...

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited on Thursday Russia’s far eastern Kuril Islands for the first time, prompting a “strong” protest by Japan, which also claims the territory, and drawing diplomatic backing for Tokyo from the United States. Russian-Japanese relations have long been dogged by tensions over the contested islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories and seized by the Soviet Union in 1945. The Kremlin posted a video of Putin in the Kuril Islands, with Russian media saying...

Nurses are collapsing at work as they endure extreme heat in buildings that are proving unfit for the record temperatures gripping Britain. Conditions are “inhumane”, the Royal College of Nursing said on Thursday. Members have reported temperatures in excess of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in UK hospital wards and care homes, often without access to air conditioning, fans or even to windows that open, the RCN said. As Britain sweats through its fifth heatwave of the year, record...

Three of Russia’s largest grain terminals in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk have halted operations after being damaged in a massive overnight drone attack by Ukraine. Grain shipments from Novorossiysk are currently impossible because of serious damage to terminal infrastructure, people familiar with the matter said. A loading gallery at United Grain’s Novorossiysk Grain Plant collapsed after the strikes and several silos were damaged, the people said, while a gallery and truck unloading...

Tonnes of aid from regional partners began to roll into Colombia on Wednesday, as the search for survivors in the rubble of a powerful earthquake grew more desperate after the temblor razed buildings, buckled roads and crushed cars. The devastation has tested Colombia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, and his government as it scrambles to respond to the disaster and civil society as it pushes to provide aid to the most affected communities. De la Espriella said on Wednesday evening that...

China said on Wednesday it would help Colombia recover from the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck the country’s west on Monday, killing more than 200 people. Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Beijing would do what it could in suitable ways, in line with what Colombia requested, in response to questions from Xinhua and Telesur at a briefing in Beijing. Guo said no Chinese nationals had been reported killed or injured in the disaster, and that the embassy in Bogota was “working to...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the youngest person to hold the role, will leave at month’s end, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday. Leavitt, 28, just recently returned to the White House after taking a brief leave for the birth of her second child in May. Leavitt has been one of the most visible advocates of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. The Republican president described her as one of his “most trusted aides” in a social media post announcing her...

Day briefly turned to night in Spain on Wednesday, as the country witnessed its first total solar eclipse in more than a century, plunging it into eerie darkness in one of nature’s greatest spectacles. The spectral glow of the sun’s outer corona, shimmering out of the edges of the shadowy moon, drew gasps and cheers from huge crowds, just 90 minutes after it first appeared in the remote Arctic region of northern Russia. “It’s a sight I never would have imagined seeing,” said Isabel Troyano, a...

Eurovision Song Contest organisers announced rule changes on Wednesday excluding any country in an armed conflict from hosting the competition and increasing the minimum age of competitors. While they did not mention any country by name, Israel, which has been at war in Gaza since 2023, came close to winning the competition in both 2025 and 2026, ultimately finishing second on each occasion. Under the old rules, the winning country normally hosts the following year’s competition. Under the new...

Israel on Wednesday carried out its first air strike in more than a week in Gaza, both sides said, breaking a relative lull as the US pressed a peace plan. The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas commander, charging that he had been planning attacks against Israeli forces operating in the war-battered territory. “The terrorist was struck in an aerial strike in order to remove the threat to IDF troops,” a military statement said, adding that it tried to mitigate civilian harm. Gaza’s civil...

Spectacular images of lava flowing down the slopes of an erupting Mount Etna have drawn flocks of tourists to the Italian volcano – to the worry of local guides. The tallest active volcano in Europe, Etna has been spewing ash and lava for days, forcing the closure of the nearby Catania airport, a key gateway for tourists visiting the island of Sicily. Companies that organise nighttime hikes allowing participants to watch the eruption up close say they have been flooded with calls. “They all want...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday he hoped more countries would join a defence agreement signed last week between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan aimed at stabilising a region wracked by conflict. The so-called Mecca Joint Defence Agreement was signed on Friday as the Middle East grapples with fallout from the US-Iran war, which has dragged in regional players and disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. “Our vision for it is not limited to the three...

US soybean growers are “adapting” to a steep decline in China-bound exports by selling to third countries and the American biofuel sector, compensating enough to cause only a small drop in production, according to a top trade association’s chief economist. In November, Beijing committed to buy at least 25 million tonnes of American soybeans annually through 2028, as part of an agreement reached after China stopped the purchases during US President Donald Trump’s trade war in early 2025. But just...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday threatened retaliation for Western seizures of its commercial vessels, describing them as “piracy.” Speaking on a visit to a Russian warship that was taking part in a naval exercise in the Pacific, Putin described the Western moves to detain vessels linked to Russia as a breach of international maritime law. “It’s nothing but piracy and robbery,” Putin said. “If this is done, we will be forced to respond in kind.” He added that the Russian response...

The United States and Iran are poised to blow past a deadline they had set themselves to broker terms on peace and Iran’s nuclear program.

A dubious post that spread on X became the basis of false claims that Iran’s leadership had declared it a nuclear power.

Immigrants have long eased labor shortages on farms and factories in Italy. But churches also need foreign-born priests, like the Rev. Vincent Souly of the Ivory Coast.

A woman who secured the criminal file of her grandmother, a collaborator, offered to share it with a Jewish family that had been betrayed. Then she balked and a new dispute ensued.

Many queer people are going no contact — cutting off their families for myriad reasons. It’s not always the right answer.

The representative is fusing her body and mind on the public stage to show us what real female power can look like.

Artem Murdid, his mother and his girlfriend are accused of terrorism. They say they did nothing wrong.