Ukraine and Moldova are discussing transporting Ukrainian grain by rail through Moldovan territory to the Romanian port of Constanta, an option driven by intensified Russian attacks on shipping in the Black Sea, according to unnamed sources in both countries cited by Reuters.

The talks come as Russian strikes on vessels using the Black Sea corridor have disrupted traffic during the harvest season and forced Ukraine to cut its export forecast. On 22 July, no ship passed through the corridor at all, and the country's agriculture ministry has already lowered its projection for the 2026–2027 season by up to five million tons.

Discount sought, volume guarantees demanded

Kyiv is asking for a discount of 50 percent off the nominal rate to transport its grain, according to the agency's sources. A source at Moldovan Railway said Moldova responded with a counterproposal: guarantees from Ukraine on the volumes of grain it would transport through the route.

"We are currently collecting information on potential volumes from interested shippers. The information-gathering process has not yet been completed," a senior Ukrainian industry official told Reuters.

Ukraine expects corridor to cover 10 percent of exports

Ukraine estimates the Moldovan corridor could handle 10 percent of its grain exports. Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said earlier that his ministry had lowered its grain export forecast for the 2026–2027 season from 43 million tons to 38–40 million tons because of Russian attacks on ports.

Ministers discuss rail links

A day before the Reuters report, Moldova's Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Vladimir Bolea, visited Ukraine's Odesa region and met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Kalashnyk, to discuss improving rail connections and expanding the transit network between the two countries.

Moldova's premier defends transit revenue

Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said his country should not pass up the opportunity to earn millions of euros from transiting Ukrainian grain cargo. He dismissed suggestions by Moldovan farming groups that Ukrainian grain prices would depress the value of their own produce.

"Let's not look for enemies where there are none," he said on Moldovan television.

Russian attacks on shipping

Russia intensified strikes on vessels using the Ukrainian Black Sea corridor in July. On 13 July, Russian forces struck a civilian ship flying the flag of Togo while it was unloading mineral fertilizer off the coast of Odesa region, killing five crew members and injuring five others.

The following day, 14 July, Russia attacked two civilian vessels in the Black Sea — cargo ships flying the flags of Tanzania and Liberia. The captain of one of the ships was killed. On the evening of 17 July, a vessel flying the flag of the Marshall Islands was struck. Attacks continued afterward.

On 22 July, no vessel passed through the sea corridor. The Ukrainian government called the disruption "deliberate economic and humanitarian terror," coming at the height of the harvest season.

Ukraine convened an urgent session of the UN Security Council over the attacks, calling on all states — particularly those "which this directly concerns" — to demand that Russia stop striking shipping. Separately, the Southern Mining and Processing Plant (Pivdennyi HZK) announced it was suspending extraction and temporarily scaling back operations.

Largest for-profit hospital system and operator in the US reported $6.8bn in profits, while employees find it difficult to make ends meet

Union workers with HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital system and operator in the US, are holding picket protests across the country as they push for pay and staffing increases in a new contract.

The hospital system has over 300,000 employees in the US and the UK, with 22,000 US workers represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) who are in contract negotiations with HCA. Workers are asking for a pathway to a $25 an hour minimum wage, improved wage scales and raises that match the increased cost of living, along with benefits including paid vacation, sick time and bolstered work protections.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We know what needs to be done

Disturbing news about our water resources is now constant and unrelenting. In just the past few weeks, media have reported that Puerto Rico is suffering a deep water crisis as severe drought has cut water supplies to thousands. The Rhine and Po rivers in Europe are at record low levels. The seven states sharing the Colorado River in the US are fighting over unprecedented shortages, while its major reservoirs have shrunk to their lowest levels since they were built.

Hungary’s only nuclear power plant is on the verge of shutting down because there isn’t enough water in the Danube River to cool it. Toxic chemicals have been found in all English water bodies.

Two advisers have links to a venture fund co-investing in US defense companies that benefit from federal spending

Pete Hegseth’s appointments to a key Pentagon advisory body include two men with ties to the venture capital fund where Donald Trump Jr is a partner, which has lucrative investments in military and space technology.

Defense Policy Board appointee Marc Andreessen’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firms and known by the name “a16z”, co-invests alongside the Trump partnership 1789 Capital in three defense contractors. Fellow DPB appointee Blake Masters also sits on the boards of three ventures tied to 1789 Capital.

Manitoba’s first supervised consumption site is set to fully open today in Winnipeg after lengthy delays.

A bipartisan group of US House members introduced the House version of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on 10 August, advancing the sweeping sanctions package during the chamber's summer recess just days after the Senate passed it.

The move puts the bill one chamber from becoming law. If the House passes it, it would hand the president authority to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the biggest buyers of Russian crude and gas—China and India chief among them—and to blacklist the aging tankers of Russia's shadow fleet, the vessels that move sanctioned oil around Western restrictions. The target is the oil revenue that pays for Russia's war on Ukraine, at a moment when Ukrainian deep strikes have already knocked a large share of Russian refining capacity offline.

What the bill would do

The package imposes primary and secondary sanctions on Russian officials, oligarchs, entities propping up Russia's defense-industrial base, and foreign actors that materially aid Moscow's military operations. It targets major Russian banks and the foreign financial institutions that do significant business with them, and it goes after the shadow fleet and sanctions-evasion networks—ships, owners, operators, insurers, and ports that knowingly move Russian oil. The tariff framework, up to 100% on the top five buyers of Russian oil and the top five buyers of its gas, replaces an earlier plan for a blanket 500% tariff, with the US trade representative setting the specific rate for each country. The bill also folds in Iran, extending the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996.

Sanctions could be lifted only if the president certifies to Congress that Russia has signed a peace deal accepted by a free and independent Ukrainian government and has halted hostilities and efforts to subvert Kyiv.

A bill born from a stall—and a death

Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced the measure in 2025 with 500% tariffs. It drew more than 80 Senate cosponsors and went nowhere for over a year, as the White House kept it off the floor while betting on negotiations that never delivered. Graham secured President Trump's sign-off, then died on 11 July of an aortic dissection, a day after his last visit to Kyiv. The Senate renamed the bill in his honor and passed it 86-11 on 7 August.

The House is not a rubber stamp

The House text is identical to the Senate-passed version, so the companion functions largely as a whip count—a way for members to signal support before a floor vote expected this fall, once the chamber returns from recess on 31 August. Passage is not guaranteed: some House members have voiced fundamental concerns about handing the president broad tariff powers that could raise costs for US importers and consumers.

Tuesday’s competitions in Wisconsin and Minnesota follow similar battles for the direction of the party, including last week in Michigan where progressive Abdul El-Sayed triumphed

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In the race to replace the late US senator Lindsey Graham, 10 candidates have been barnstorming South Carolina diners, church halls and recreation centers, compressing a normal year of campaigning into about a fortnight.

The Republican party is staging a special primary election in the state on Tuesday to choose Graham’s replacement. His sister, Darline, who has been serving as interim senator following his sudden death last month, is on the ballot.

President Donald Trump departed on a secret military flight from Turkey last month when the White House said he was flying aboard ⁠Air Force One, an extraordinary move prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Trump signed an executive order that will involve splitting up the highly effective measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three single shots. The president also announced an overhaul to the childhood immunization schedule, scrapping recommendations for the hepatitis b, Covid-19 and influenza vaccines. He also suggested that the number of inoculations is linked to the rate of autism in the US, despite no proven link between the two. Medical experts have blasted the changes, calling it “problematic and deeply concerning.”

Todd Blanche has been sworn as US attorney general, cementing Trump’s installation of his former personal attorney in charge of the Department of Justice. Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since April, was confirmed in his new position during a ceremony at the White House on Monday.

Trump has named White House staff secretary Will Scharf to become White ​House counsel and assistant to the president, replacing David Warrington, who is taking a job in the private sector. In taking up that role, Scharf will become the White House’s top lawyer after overseeing the administrative work of the Oval Office in his current position.

Lawyers for David Hearn, the Olympian who was arrested for alleged property destruction of the reflecting pool before his charges were dropped, said that the Trump administration is “continuing to attack an innocent man”.

Good morning. Police have arrested a man alleged to have made a bomb threat against the U.S. consulate in Halifax, the third recent incident targeting a U.S. consulate building in Canada. More on that below, along with an update on B.C. wildfires and a ghost resort on Prince Edward Island.

Fedir's four and a half years compress a shift the Ukrainian military has been living through since the invasion. Ukraine's forces have moved from Soviet-era systems, through Western precision weapons, to a homegrown drone war that now shapes the front line more than any single piece of hardware. Soldiers have had to relearn their job every year, mastering whatever technology arrives next, because the side that adapts faster survives. Fedir's story shows how fast that reinvention has come, and what it costs the people carrying it out.

"We give battle, boys — this is war," battalion commander Mykhailo Myronenko told the men. Fedir, a former construction worker, was on combat duty with a Lviv air defense brigade, and his job was diesel: keeping the generators running so the S-300 launchers never lost power. On the busiest days, he says, the unit fired eight to ten times.

In 2024, the war upgraded around him. He retrained on the IRIS-T SLS, a German air defense system, and moved from generators to the launch itself. "Three missiles. Three targets down," he says of his first launches on Western hardware.

"I was standing in snow mixed with mud, and I understood I was really useful to my Ukraine," said Fedir.

Then he left. The IRIS-T sits well back from the front, and Fedir gave it up to fly drones, because he wanted to see the results of his work up close, through his own camera rather than on someone else's screen. He flew his first missions in Sumy Oblast, moving onto position in the dark with the headlights off. Through the camera, he saw his first Russian soldier walking a trench.

Drone operators are the eyes of the front, and among the most hunted people on it for exactly that reason. The task that matters most, he says, comes after the flight: not bringing a "tail" home, not letting an enemy drone track the path back to your shelter. One day, he says, it went wrong. A Russian FPV drone found their group, a comrade made cover shouting "FPV," and the blast was followed by artillery meant to finish them off. Fedir took a serious concussion, spent a few days in a hospital, and went back. "I was desperate to return. Because this is my war," he said.

The callsign came by chance, from the work. When the jamming is heaviest, and he is fighting to hold the link to his drone against Russian electronic warfare, he starts to move at the controls, a small involuntary dance. His comrades named him Dancer.

His rotation has ended, and he could go back to the IRIS-T. He has chosen to stay on the zero line. After the war, he says, he wants the ordinary things: a family, and the peace to build again.

From progressive and moderate to election deniers, state sees wide spectrum of candidates in test of direction for both parties

Minnesota voters on both sides of the aisle are weighing the direction of their parties – and their chances of winning over the general electorate – in marquee statewide races on Tuesday.

On the left, Peggy Flanagan, the state lieutenant governor and a progressive, faces off against Angie Craig, a US representative, for the Democratic bid for US senate in a race punctuated by the role of immigration enforcement in the state that saw two residents killed by immigration agents in a winter surge.

Republicans, including Graham’s sister Darline, expedite campaigns to replace late senator in special primary race

In the race to replace the late US senator Lindsey Graham, 10 candidates have been barnstorming South Carolina diners, church halls and recreation centers, compressing a normal year of campaigning into about a fortnight.

The Republican party is staging a special primary election in the state on Tuesday to choose Graham’s replacement. His sister, Darline, who has been serving as interim senator following his sudden death last month, is on the ballot.

Francesca Hong is Democratic frontrunner in four-way primary race to lead the swing state, a test of anti-establishment sentiment

Wisconsin voters will decide on Tuesday whether to nominate a democratic socialist for the state’s highest office in the latest test of an anti-establishment wave among Democratic primary voters.

Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, emerged as the frontrunner in a four-way race to succeed Tony Evers, the Democratic governor who is not seeking another term.

There’s no evidence that vaccines cause autism, or that we should separate MMR shots. This order is dangerous

“This is based on what I feel.” That was the president last September, explaining why he wanted the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine broken into three separate shots. On Monday, he signed an executive order instructing exactly that.

Four decades in intensive care have taught me what a feeling costs once it becomes national policy. Children will be hospitalized who did not need to be. Some of them will die. No one can name those the vaccine has saved, because prevented harm is invisible by definition, and that invisibility is what makes preventive medicine easy to dismantle and hard to defend.

A recent letter signed by 1,367 researchers and engineers at frontier AI labs – mainly OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Deepmind – points to a dangerous moment

It is fashionable in certain circles to dismiss the catastrophic risks of AI. One often hears that “the real experts” who work on the technology every day are really not concerned at all; that only “doomers” and “Luddites” espouse a “fringe” view from a “position of ignorance”; that all talk of potential catastrophe is just “science fiction”.

Fortunately, an open letter has been published that lets us hear from the real experts who work on the technology every day, in their own words. And are they worried? Very.

Prosecutors allege 28-year-old gunned down Brian Thompson outside Manhattan hotel in 2024

Luigi Mangione, who is accused of the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is due to appear on Tuesday morning at Manhattan state court.

Mangione’s appearance comes less than a month before the start of his highly anticipated 8 September trial. Prosecutors allege that Mangione gunned down Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel on 4 December 2024.

Two Russian oil refineries caught fire on 11 August, but the two incidents tell very different stories. In Orsk, in Orenburg Oblast, drones sparked a blaze that Ukrainian monitoring channels quickly linked to Kyiv's long-range campaign. Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers farther east, a Rosneft plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur burned for reasons that remain unexplained.

A drone strike deep in Orenburg Oblast

Early on 11 August, residents of Orsk reported explosions near the Orsknefteorgsintez refinery, and a large fire soon followed. OSINT analysts at the Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported the strike. By their assessment, the drones flew more than 1,500 kilometers from Ukraine's border to reach Orsk. Preliminary findings pointed to damage at the plant's hydrocracking complex. Modernized in recent years, the unit can process 1.6 million tonnes a year.

Russian officials confirmed the attack, though they did not name the target at first. Orsk Mayor Artem Vorobyov urged residents to stay indoors and away from windows. Orenburg Governor Yevgeny Solntsev, meanwhile, activated the "Kovyor" (Carpet) airspace-safety plan across a 100-kilometer radius. Authorities also imposed temporary flight restrictions at the Orsk airport.

"The strike drones covered more than 1,500 kilometers from Ukraine's border to reach Orsk—among the deepest targets yet in the refinery campaign," Exilenova+, via OSINT monitoring

An unexplained blaze in the Far East

Far to the east, the picture is murkier. Around 11:00 local time, residents of Komsomolsk-on-Amur reported a fire near the city's refinery. ASTRA then geolocated the footage to Rosneft's RN-Komsomolsk plant. Notably, Ukrainian analysts cautioned that the fire does not appear to stem from a drone strike. After all, the site sits roughly 6,500 kilometers from Ukraine—far beyond the range of Kyiv's long-range drones. Coverage from the Kyiv Independent, meanwhile, flagged no clear cause.

The plant's press service reported no injuries, as relayed by Russian state agency TASS. Commissioned in 1942, the RN-Komsomolsk refinery has a design capacity of about 8 million tonnes of crude per year. In fact, it supplies more than 60% of the petroleum products across Russia's Far Eastern Federal District. Moreover, it produces gasoline, diesel, marine fuel, and other products for the region.

Ukraine's campaign against Russian oil refineries

The Orsk plant is no stranger to such strikes. Drones previously hit Orsknefteorgsintez on 3 October and 11 November 2025, and again on 29–30 April 2026. Since 2022, Ukraine has widened its deep-strike campaign against Russian oil refineries, fuel depots, and pipelines. Such targets power the Kremlin's army and bankroll the war through oil exports. Increasingly, Russian oil refineries have become the signature target of Ukraine's long-range war. Just the night before, on 10 August, Ukraine's General Staff confirmed a strike on the TANECO refinery in Tatarstan. A fire broke out there, too.

As of publication, Kyiv had not claimed the 11 August Orsk strike. Still, the timing fit a familiar pattern—a long-range campaign aimed at the fuel that keeps Russia's war machine moving.