“Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved plans overnight for a [squat] that would split [occupied] East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank, a move his office said would bury the idea of a Palestinian state. It was not immediately clear if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the plan to revive the long-frozen E1 scheme, which Palestinians and world powers have said would effectively lop the West Bank in two and will likely draw international ire. … Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand imposed sanctions in June on Smotrich and another far-right minister who advocates for [squat] expansion, accusing both of them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.” (08/14/25)
“Ukrainian drones struck two Russian cities on Thursday in attacks that injured at least 16 people, local authorities said, a day before a US-Russia summit on the war in Ukraine. Thirteen people were wounded, two seriously, when a drone struck an apartment building in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don …. Three civilians were wounded in the city of Belgorod …. Separately, the head of Russia’s Volgograd region said fallen debris from Ukrainian drones had caused a fire at an oil refinery.” (08/14/25)
“A divided panel of appeals court judges ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration can suspend or terminate billions of dollars of congressionally appropriated funding for foreign aid. Two of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that grant recipients challenging the freeze did not meet the requirements for a preliminary injunction restoring the flow of money. In January, on the first day of his second term in the White House, Republican President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to freeze spending on foreign aid. After groups of grant recipients sued to challenge that order, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered the administration to release the full amount of foreign assistance that Congress had appropriated for the 2024 budget year. The appeal court’s majority partially vacated Ali’s order.” (08/13/25)
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Tuesday that his state would redraw its House maps after President Trump failed to respond to a letter the governor sent him urging Trump to have red states call off redistricting efforts. ‘DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!),’ Newsom wrote in a statement on the social platform X put out through his press office, meant to mock how Trump writes his posts on Truth Social. … Newsom penned a letter to Trump on Monday pressing the president to have Texas and other red states stop their mid-decade redistricting efforts …. Newsom’s office gave Trump until Tuesday evening to reply to the letter.” (08/13/25)
“Air Canada said Wednesday it will begin a gradual suspension of flights to allow an orderly shutdown of the country’s largest airline as it faces a potential work stoppage by its flight attendants on Saturday. The airline said the first flights will be canceled Thursday, with more on Friday and a complete cessation of flying by Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge by the weekend. The union representing around 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants issued a 72-hour strike notice Wednesday. In response, the airline issued a lockout notice.” (08/13/25)
“A team led by renowned Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei has built a key component for a quantum computer — an atom-arranging setup capable of creating arrays 10 times larger than previous systems — that raised hopes it could one day be scaled to tens of thousands of these tiny building blocks. The approach taken by Pan and his team from the University of Science and Technology of China overcomes a major hurdle to atom-based quantum computing, according to a paper published last week in the peer-reviewed Physical Review Letters. The researchers designed an artificial intelligence system capable of arranging more than 2,000 rubidium atoms – each serving as a qubit, the two-state basic unit of quantum computing – into perfect patterns in a mere 60,000th of a second, it said.” (08/13/25)
“Uganda’s biggest opposition party on Wednesday filed a case in the constitutional court to nullify a newly enacted law that reinstated the right of military tribunals to try civilians, a lawyer and party official said. The Supreme Court proscribed the prosecution of civilians in the tribunals in January, saying they lacked legal competence to conduct criminal trials in a fair and impartial manner. Local and international rights campaigners have long accused Uganda’s government of using military courts to pursue political opponents of President Yoweri Museveni, 80, who has been in power for almost 40 years. His aides have denied this, saying only civilians who use guns for political violence are prosecuted in such tribunals.” (08/13/25)
“The inmates making quadruple murderer Bryan Kohberger’s time in prison a living hell knew he was coming to the high-security Idaho lockup and planned how they could carry out a campaign of harassment against him, according to a report. Kohberger was transferred from jail to the only high-security prison in the state after he received four life sentences last month for the gruesome slayings of four University of Idaho students in 2022. And the prisoners at Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna ‘were aware he was coming’, former homicide detective Chris McDonough told NewsNation Tuesday. ‘The inmates were apparently waiting for him,’ said McDonough, who now works for the Cold Case Foundation. ‘And when he got there, they are now making his life absolutely miserable.'” (08/13/25)
“The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday on more than a dozen Mexican companies and four people it says worked with a powerful drug trafficking cartel to scam elderly Americans in a multimillion-dollar timeshare fraud. The network of 13 businesses in areas near the seaside tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta were accused of working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a group designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization. In a scheme dating back to 2012, four cartel associates are accused of defrauding American citizens of their life savings through elaborate rental and resale schemes, according to a Treasury statement. In the span of six months, officials said they were able to document $23.1 million sent from mostly people in the U.S. to scammers in Mexico.” (08/13/25)
“The Ariane 6 rocket on Wednesday blasted off carrying Europe’s next generation satellite for warning against extreme weather events. As many European countries simmer in a deadly heatwave, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) said its MetOp-SGA1 satellite will give ‘earlier warnings to help protect lives and property from extreme weather.’ … The rocket carrying the four-tonne satellite took off from France’s Kourou space base in French Guyana. MetOp-SGA1 was to be put into an 800 kilometre (500 mile) high orbit. It will be Europe’s first contribution to a US-led programme, the Joint Polar System, putting up satellites orbiting between the north and south poles.” (08/13/25)
