“President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is considering changing the name of Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ as the trade war between the United States and Canada intensifies. Such a change would be reminiscent of the Republican president’s unilateral action last year by executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The United States and Canada are locked in a trade dispute, with Canada expected to announce retaliatory measures Tuesday. That’s in response to the Trump administration enacting 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down. ‘The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,’ Trump said Tuesday on social media.” (08/25/26)
“CIA Director John Ratcliffe is visiting Moscow Tuesday, according to reports — after a mysterious military flight landed in the Russian capital. Ratcliffe arrived aboard a C-17 transport plane that departed Joint Base Andrews, a base outside Washington used for high-ranking official travel. The plane stopped in Latvia en route to Moscow, with the Pentagon and White House initially declining to comment on who was aboard. CBS News and Axios reported that it was Ratcliffe who made the trip.” (08/25/26)
“Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar living in dozens of camps in Bangladesh held a rally Tuesday to demand their safe return to their home state, nine years after they fled a government crackdown. The demonstrators urged the international community to ensure security in Rakhine state as they marked what they call the ‘Ninth Anniversary of Rohingya Genocide Day’. More than 1 million refugees from Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic and religious minority now live in the sprawling camps around the Cox’s Bazar district of southeastern Bangladesh. Most of them fled across the border in a mass exodus in 2017 after Buddhist-majority Myanmar launched a crackdown in Rakhine, following an attack by a Rohingya Muslim insurgent group. The Bangladesh government earlier attempted to start the repatriation at least twice, but it did not work out as none of the refugees was willing to go back, citing security concerns. Bangladesh says it will not force anyone to return.” (08/25/26)
“A group of grocers filed two lawsuits Monday over New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open five city-run grocery stores, saying it would harm neighborhood supermarkets. The Multicultural Business Coalition, an organization that says it represents owners of smaller stores, said in the filings that the city would violate business owners’ civil rights if the new stores open and that officials did not study how the planned stores would affect existing businesses. … The plan for city-owned grocery stores, which would sell some items at a 30% discount, was part of Mamdani’s platform as he ran for mayor. It calls for five stores, one in each borough of New York City, to open by 2029.” (08/24/26)
“Dozens of US lawmakers came together on Tuesday to demand the immediate release of Sama Safi, a 20-year-old American psychology student with ‘a severe complex chronic health condition’ who was ‘arbitrarily and wrongfully detained’ by the Israeli military nearly three months ago. Safi was abducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on June 2 as ‘part of a series of raids targeting Birzeit University students that morning that wrongfully detained three other young women: Natalie Abu Diah, Leila Khalil, and Joulan Abu Awad,’ the members of Congress wrote to President Donald Trump’s top diplomat. ‘This targeting of Palestinian students is not an isolated incident but part of what United Nations human rights experts have called a systematic policy to ‘undermine the right to education’.'” (08/25/26)
“At least 47 people were killed and 22 more injured in an overnight gang raid on a neighborhood overlooking Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, the UN said on Monday, prompting anger over the lack of protection from repeated deadly attacks. The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti said estimates could still change. The hillside community of Kenscoff, in a strategic position overlooking routes into the capital, has suffered a dozen attacks by armed gangs since last year, forcing thousands to flee their homes.” (08/25/26)
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has established a minimum reward of $25,000 in cases where people went missing or were killed in Indian Country, part of a broader effort to address high rates of violence affecting Native American communities. The new minimum applies to more than 50 unsolved homicides and missing-person cases in tribal communities. Most of the cases are less than 10 years old, though a dozen have been unsolved for more than two decades, an AP analysis found. Victims’ families and experts are unsure the higher amounts will be enough to get tipsters to come forward, citing people’s fears and distrust of the federal government. … The FBI investigates federal crimes on nearly 200 Native American reservations, along with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.” (08/25/26)
“A federal jury convicted Block Bits co-founder Japheth Dillman on five fraud-related counts after prosecutors showed how nearly $1 million flowed from investors into a cryptocurrency trading operation built around an automated system that never existed. … Dillman and co-founder David Mata pulled in about $960,000 from roughly 22 retail investors between June 2017 and August 2018. The sales pitch was specific: Block Bits Fund I supposedly ran a proprietary bot trading about 100 digital assets across more than 30 exchanges and harvesting price differences between them. That machine was the heart of the pitch, and prosecutors said it simply was not there. The SEC alleged Block Bits’ actual trading amounted to Mata manually placing trades through an exchange account.” (08/24/26)
“President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree opening the way for the Russian state to take temporary control of critical infrastructure found to be inadequately protected from attack. The decree, published on Monday, would allow Moscow to strip owners of physical and financial control over facilities should it be determined that they are failing to secure them or repair damage quickly. The move comes as Ukraine maintains an intense drone campaign against Russian infrastructure. … Fuel and energy facilities, including nuclear power, are included under the legislation as well as industry, communications, transport and logistics, public utilities and other facilities deemed essential to state security and economic stability.” (08/24/26)
“The Supreme Court lifted a judge’s block on President Trump’s executive order adding to mail voting requirements, removing a key roadblock that prevented the policy from going into effect for the midterms. Over the public dissents of the three liberal justices, the high court said Monday that the judge had no authority to block Trump’s directive ahead of the U.S. Postal Service implementing the new ballot standards. ‘Federal courts review final rules, not proposed rules—and certainly not antecedent internal directives to propose a rule. If the Postal Service’s final rule harms the States, they may challenge that rule,’ the court wrote. It allows Trump to move closer to implementing his mail ballot restrictions for November’s contests. But now that the Postal Service announced its final regulation late last week, the states had already begun their new push to block it.” (08/24/26)
