Good morning. Prime Minister Mark Carney says he will speak with U.S. President Donald Trump before new U.S. tariffs take effect on Wednesday. More on that below, along with a Churchill Falls hydro deal and Canada’s accidental landlords.

Health data appears to be most affected by administration’s attempt to wipe findings that don’t align with its priorities, tracker shows

A database of federal law enforcement officer misconduct records. A survey measuring physical, sexual and emotional violence against children and youth. Real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from US embassies around the world.

These are among the hundreds of federal datasets that the Trump administration has taken down or altered as part of its aggressive campaign to wipe all mentions of data findings that do not align with the administration’s priorities.

The scale of Canada’s wildfire seasons is told through a familiar accounting each summer: the total fire count, the control status of active blazes, the total area burned, the number of evacuation orders and the tally of structures lost.

Romania detected more than 100 drones involved in seven attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports in recent days, interim Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruță told Romanian channel Digi24 on 17 August 2026. He said the attacks were the most intense recorded recently and that Ukrainian forces destroyed most of the drones “a few dozen meters from Romanian airspace.”

Russia’s growing attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports put a key export route at risk as Kyiv seeks other outlets while its Black Sea ports are under attack. They also put Ukraine's southern border region under pressure as Kyiv develops trade links with Moldova and Romania, and NATO routes more military aid through Romania.

The latest drone swarms remained over Ukraine, and officials found no indication that Romania’s threat level had risen, Miruță stated. The Romanian military nevertheless remained on alert as attacks intensified across the Danube.

Ukraine looks south for trade and military aid

With Russia hitting its ports, Ukraine is turning to Romania and Moldova to keep trade moving. Kyiv and Chișinău are discussing a rail link through Moldova to Romania’s Constanța port, though Ukraine estimates it could carry only about 10% of its grain exports.

The rail proposal comes as Russian port strikes have cut monthly agricultural exports by 20–30% and left up to 10 million tons of grain in storage without buyers, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi has said.

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More than 100 drones detected near Romania in four days, NATO jets scrambled seven times

NATO said in December that a second aid hub in Romania would begin operating in January. It was designed to supplement the main center in Rzeszów, Poland, and route supplies toward Ukraine’s southern and eastern fronts.

Romania faces repeated drone incursions

Russian drones targeting Ukraine have repeatedly entered Romania as Moscow attacks Ukrainian ports across the Danube. More than 40 such incursions had been recorded by early June, Romanian Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu said.

The most serious occurred on 29 May, when a drone hit an apartment building in Galați. Two people were injured, and about 70 residents fled or were evacuated.

Vladimir Putin suggested that the aircraft might have been Ukrainian, but Romania’s forensic investigation later identified it as a Russian-built Geran-2.

Romanian forces later shot down three drones in 72 hours in July, while Miruță said Spanish pilots and Romanian troops destroyed a fourth on 16 August.

Debris from drones intercepted over Ukraine has also washed onto Romania’s coast, prompting temporary access restrictions while specialists checked for explosives.

Bucharest is buying low-altitude radars and ground interceptors through the EU’s SAFE program. Miruță said drones often fly at 70 to 150 meters, and ground systems would be cheaper to use than fighter-launched missiles.

Alberta is considering new measures that would require aspiring truck drivers to have two years of general road experience before obtaining their commercial licence.

Authorities blamed Nanner for knocking over a heat fixture, but Brittany Jacobs contends it was trying to escape blaze

The snake didn’t start the fire. So says a Virginia science teacher who owns a python that was found outside its enclosure in a middle school classroom that caught fire recently.

Authorities, meanwhile, have publicly blamed the fire on the snake, named Nanner, alleging the python knocked over a heat fixture in her owner’s classroom, igniting a blaze that caused damage at Bedford county’s Forest middle school and killed a tortoise there.

Politics that worked for Democratic candidates in New York, Minnesota, Michigan won’t cut it in red Florida, analysts say

If primary elections elsewhere this summer were tussles between progressives and moderates for the direction of the Democratic party’s political future, Tuesday’s contests in Florida could not be more different.

In a former swing state that has in recent years become reliably red, moderate Democratic candidates Alex Vindman and David Jolly are heavily favored to become the party’s nominees for November’s Senate and governor’s race, respectively.

The former Dallas Cowboys star is on indefinite leave after being arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. His future in a competitive business is now in doubt

After Tony Romo’s arrest last month, TMZ published a 31-minute “extended cut” of the body-camera footage from the Wisconsin police officer who arrested CBS Sports’ star NFL analyst on suspicion of operating a vehicle while under the influence.

It’s an uncanny watch. The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback’s familiar goofy geniality collides with the gravity and stilted formality of an encounter with law enforcement. The video of a disoriented Romo struggling to answer basic questions and failing a field sobriety test, and his rictus-grinning, disheveled, head-askew mug-shot, form a glaring contrast with his smart-suited look a year earlier: beaming as he posed in the spotlight with his play-by-play partner, Jim Nantz, at the network’s preseason media preview.

We are living in the world we were warned about. Frontier artificial intelligence models from OpenAI autonomously coordinated with one another, then broke out of their testing environment and hacked into another company, Hugging Face, to steal the answers to a test.

A.I. companies don’t want their technology to lie, cheat or steal. So why is this happening? Why are the creators of these models apparently unable to control their creations? If A.I. development isn’t on a safe path — and it doesn’t seem to be — what do we do about it?

Toner has been thinking about A.I. safety for a long time, from both inside and outside A.I. companies. She was part of the effort to fire OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, in 2023, which ultimately failed. Currently, she’s the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Mentioned:

“Pacing the Frontier” open letter

“The Future is for Everyone” by Mark Zuckerberg

Recommendations:

The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll

In the Cells of the Eggplant by David Chapman

Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast by John Zhu

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Aman Sahota. Cinematography by Marina King and Jonas Zellner. Video editing by Brandon Belk-Yee. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

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Moldova will now carry Ukraine’s grain to Romania at half price, and President Maia Sandu is defending that choice against Moldovan farmers who stand to lose from it. What Kyiv was still negotiating a week earlier is now a signed tariff cut, and the growers left to absorb it have threatened mass protests.

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Ukraine and Moldova discuss rail corridor for grain amid Russian Black Sea attacks

Sandu ties Ukraine’s harvest to Moldova’s security

Speaking on Radio Moldova, Sandu argued that helping a wartime neighbor keep its export income is worth the strain at home, NewsMaker reported.

“If Ukraine cannot sell its products and has no money to defend itself, then we will have bigger problems than we do today,” she said. “We cannot turn our backs on Ukrainians who are bombed every night and every day wake up, grow grain, and resist. Through their resistance, they protect our peace too.”

She set Moldova’s role against that of larger backers: “Other states help them much more—with financial aid, with military aid. Here we can help them, with these transit routes.”

Farmers set a 21 August deadline

Moldova has halved rail transit tariffs on Ukrainian goods from 10 August to 31 December 2026, a move that could earn Moldovan Railways several million euros and route around 10% of Ukraine’s expected six million tons of 2026 cargo through its territory, Curs de Guvernare reported.

The cut has unsettled local growers. The association Forța Fermierilor (Farmers’ Force) says they face real risks and wants a seat in overseeing the transit. After meeting Prime Minister Vasile Tofan on 17 August, it warned of “massive” protests unless the government shows progress by 21 August.

Russian strikes push grain onto the rails

Ukraine wants the overland route because Russia’s strikes have made the sea route unreliable. Odesa’s ports handle about 90% of Ukraine’s grain, and an overnight strike on Odesa on 17 August damaged another foreign civilian ship.

In July alone, Russian attacks damaged 28 vessels at Greater Odesa’s ports and killed 21 sailors, monitor Andrii Klymenko reported. The rail line to Romania’s Constanța port is the safer alternative. Even in 2023, when Moldova moved to shield its market from Ukrainian grain, it kept transit open.

Ghana has publicly demanded that Russia halt the recruitment of its citizens to fight in the war against Ukraine, following 17 August talks between the two countries' foreign ministers in Moscow, The Moscow Times reported. Ghana's top diplomat said Moscow agreed to work on the matter, while Russia confirmed that Ghanaians had signed military contracts but defended the practice. 

Ghana brings its dead and missing to the table

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa accused Russia of the "illegal recruitment" of Ghanaians for the war on Ukraine. After the Moscow talks, he said his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, agreed to work toward resolving the issue, according to Interfax Russia. Ablakwa reported that 62 of his compatriots had died in Ukraine, with a further 15 listed as missing, Bloomberg reported.

Russia confirms the contracts, then justifies them

Lavrov confirmed that Ghanaian citizens had signed contracts with Russia's Defense Ministry. He claimed the Ghanaians had signed out of solidarity with a country that had helped Africa fight racism and for financial reasons. He stated that Moscow had received similar appeals from other countries, and that a dedicated Defense Ministry structure reviews such cases and would examine the additional requests raised by the Ghanaian side.

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Fighters from 51 countries now held in Ukraine after fighting for Russia, ombudsman says

A pattern stretching across two continents

The recruitment of African nationals to reinforce Russian forces has alarmed governments across the region. Kenya and South Africa had already pressed Moscow with similar demands. In February, Kenyan intelligence said Russia had deceptively lured more than 1,000 Kenyans into the war, many of them promised jobs as truck drivers or security guards.

In December 2025, South Africa detained five people suspected of recruiting mercenaries for the Russian army. Last fall, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma, was reportedly involved, convincing 20 young men they were traveling to Russia for bodyguard training to later work in her father's party. Botswana in July reported the deceptive recruitment of its citizens, saying the number of victims was "growing at an alarming rate," and Panama later leveled similar accusations. Russia's Foreign Ministry claimed the signed contracts were voluntary.

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Over 1,000 Kenyans lured into Russia’s war in Ukraine, 50+ Ghanaians killed there — three governments confirmed it, none confronted Moscow

Ghana's confrontation echoes earlier ones

Ukrainian officials say the death toll among African recruits has climbed into the hundreds, turning what Moscow frames as voluntary service into what several governments describe as trafficking.

In March, three governments had already confirmed their citizens were being lured to the war, including more than 1,000 Kenyans and over 50 Ghanaians killed. Kenya said the same month that Russia had agreed to stop using its recruits, though families of the missing were still waiting. 

A European Parliament resolution has separately accused Russia of stripping African recruits of their documents and sending them to the Ukrainian front.