Dale Sanders said he fell 71 times on the trail, but completed the journey as ‘people are motivated … by my efforts’

A 91-year-old hiker has reclaimed his record as the oldest person to complete the more than 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail.

By his count, Dale Sanders, of Tennessee, fell 71 times during the feat, six of which he said were hard falls and one which required a brief hospitalization and another just 200 yards from the end. The 2,193-mile trail runs between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine.

Company is offering cash reward for 40,000lb stolen cargo, and turns theft into lighthearted social media promotion

Pabst is offering a reward after tens of thousands of cans of its Blue Ribbon beer were stolen from the company’s southern California warehouse two weeks ago – if it is all safely returned.

In Instagram posts, Pabst put the weight of the stolen cargo at 40,000lb (18,000kg) and started a countdown seeking its return.

RFK Jr, the health secretary, has suggested the deaths were ‘fabricated’ while the CDC claimed it was reviewing them

Top US health officials and government agencies are currently not including the two recent measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania in their counts.

“This is highly unusual,” said Debra Houry, former chief medical officer of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She noted that this did not happen with the three deaths reported from measles in Texas and New Mexico last year.

Singer, accused of murder and sexual abuse of teen Celeste Rivas Hernandez, to be represented by LA public defender

Singer D4vd lost his high-profile private lawyers on Monday at a hearing where he entered a new not guilty plea to charges that he killed, sexually abused and dismembered 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

It is not clear why Blair Berk and her colleagues Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Peter parted ways with the singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke. They were replaced by a lawyer from the Los Angeles county public defender’s office.

Both thefts occurred on 17 August at a distribution center east of Los Angeles

Thieves made off with tens of thousands of cans of Pabst beer in two separate heists from a southern California warehouse on the same day, police said.

Pabst Blue Ribbon has turned the thefts – valued by police at $70,000 – into a lighthearted social media promotion. But police in Montclair said on Friday that investigators were trying to determine whether they were part of a single operation.

In Lithuania, a photograph of a company executive with a black mourning ribbon was placed next to funeral wreaths, and similar objects turned up near a Czech defense company, Delfi reported on 30 August. Law enforcement officials are investigating whether the two incidents are connected.

Russia is trying to obstruct the defense assistance that NATO countries provide to Ukraine. To this end, Russia uses various forms of intimidation: exerting political pressure, carrying out cyberattacks, and recruiting people to conduct sabotage against foreign defense companies. Russia is suspected of using a new form of psychological pressure against the executives of companies that supply aid to Ukraine: through the use of elements symbolically associated with death.

Wreaths outside a Vilnius drone maker, and a suspect in custody

In Vilnius, funeral wreaths were left near the offices of RSI Europe, a company that manufactures unmanned systems and supplies Ukraine with FPV drones and remote detonation systems. Next to the wreaths, unknown individuals placed a photograph of company head Tomas Milašauskas, tied with a black mourning ribbon. Milašauskas is alive and well.

"We are not afraid. This is ordinary intimidation, a provocation, the usual methods of Russians' work. Our reaction is absolutely normal—we continue to work, we do not react and do not get distracted, because their goal is to distract our attention and direct it where it should not go," Milašauskas told LNK Žinios, as relayed by Delfi.

Milašauskas said that this was the first time RSI Europe had faced such a provocation. But the company had previously faced attempts to interfere with its operations, including cyberattacks.

A similar incident occurred in Czechia at almost the same time. Funeral wreaths also appeared near the offices of Czech defense group CSG, which makes ammunition and military equipment. A photograph of CSG executive director David Chour was placed nearby, Delfi reported.

Lithuanian police have already detained one suspect and launched a pre-trial investigation. National Crisis Management Centre head Vilmantas Vitkauskas said he believed the monitoring and the measures taken after earlier talks with defense firms made the detention possible. The detainee is a Ukrainian citizen, LNK's sources said. Preliminary information suggests that he may have been hired to deliver the wreaths, while the person who ordered them may have been a Belarusian citizen.

“This is probably only the beginning”

Lithuanian officials are treating the use of mourning symbols against defense companies as a possible provocation linked to Russian intelligence, after warning the sector to expect such attempts. Remigijus Motuzas, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, said:

"I think that such cases may become more frequent—and they have already become more frequent. This is probably only the beginning," he said.

He said the warnings are serious enough to require particular vigilance, although security at infrastructure facilities in the country has already been strengthened.

The Lithuanian authorities are also paying particular attention to the fact that photographs and videos of the wreaths quickly spread on social media and Telegram channels following the incidents. Posts accompanying the material promoted claims that NATO is allegedly fighting Russia with Ukraine’s hands, while European companies assisting Kyiv are supposedly making money from the war. Lithuanian officials consider this information component characteristic of information operations by Russian intelligence services.

Donkey named HeeHaw was shot and killed as authorities reportedly looked on property in search of a missing person

A police officer in the US state of Georgia was placed on leave after a family’s pet baby donkey was shot and killed during an early-morning search on their property.

The animal’s owner, Hannah Israel, said officers were at her pasture without notification or permission at about 12.45am on Sunday, reportedly looking for a missing person when they encountered the small male donkey named HeeHaw.

US Army Green Berets have begun training Poland's special forces to move and strike on the kind of drone-saturated ground Ukraine fights on, the Associated Press reported. No ally besides the US had taken on the drone-heavy drill until now, and US instructors built it only months ago from Ukraine's battlefield lessons.

Ukraine has turned from an aid recipient into a source of tactics, feeding allies the counter-drone methods and strike tactics it forged against Russia's invasion. NATO is still behind: an alliance war game in February exposed how badly its own forces fare against drone warfare of that kind.

Bavaria plays the part of Russia

The drill spans a 1,100-square-mile (3,000 km²) stretch of Bavarian countryside around the US Army's Hohenfels training center, an hour southeast of Nuremberg. Polish commandos must slip past a US airborne unit playing the enemy, then move about 60 miles (100 km) north to Grafenwoehr and blow up a mock target.

In earlier runs, Green Berets removed their uniforms to blend in, a senior enlisted soldier familiar with the scenario said. He and a Green Beret officer at the training complex spoke anonymously, under a US policy against naming special forces personnel.

"This is supposed to be Russia and you're going to stand out in Russia," he said.

Farms, villages, cameras, and a populous city line the route. German civilians, largely unaware of the exercise, become the test: any tip they phone to police can help the military pinpoint the team. Once a team is spotted, "now you have the entire Russian arsenal coming at you," the soldier said. The US side can send military police with dogs or direct more drones to the area, and had more than 100 available in earlier runs.

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A Green Beret officer said the drill tries to replicate "all of those effects that we're seeing either Russia or Ukraine having to overcome." Ukraine pioneered this kind of drone warfare across four and a half years of fighting Russia. Its combat experience has been entering NATO training elsewhere in Poland, and its drone crews recently outmatched a US brigade in another German drill. The exercise has run just twice before, both this year with US teams, and the officer said he expects most, if not all, of NATO's 32 members to show interest in trying it.

The wider US message on drones has been mixed, AP said. On 20 August, the Army's acting chief of staff ordered a Europe-based drone unit back to infantry duty. US President Donald Trump has also wavered on cutting troop levels in Europe, and his administration launched a force review.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in March that Ukraine was already helping five Middle East and Gulf states counter Iranian drones fired during the US-Israeli war on Iran, and that US and European governments had asked for help too, AP reported.

NATO said on 30 August 2026 it sees no imminent threat of attack from Russia, Reuters reported. Russia is stepping up covert operations across Europe alongside its war on Ukraine, a NATO official said. The statement followed a week of warnings from Western capitals.

Russia's sabotage campaign in Europe has grown steeply since the full-scale invasion, reaching from Molotov cocktails thrown at a French drone plant to severed undersea cables and attacks on railways. Recorded attacks in Europe hit 34 in 2024, nearly triple the 12 counted a year earlier by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which says Western states have yet to build an effective answer to a campaign pitched below the threshold that would trigger a military response.

Attacks on Ukraine and covert acts in Europe are both rising

Russia is attacking Ukraine harder and running more covert operations in Europe at the same time, the official said.

"Even as the Russians are facing very substantial resistance from Ukraine, they are stepping up attacks on Ukraine as well as hybrid acts in Europe," the official said, adding: "As always, NATO remains vigilant and alert to the variety of threats we face. At this time, we see no imminent threat of attack."

Hybrid acts mean covert moves—sabotage, arson, drone flights—that stop short of open war.

A week of alarms

Three developments that week bore on the same question—whether Russia would strike a NATO country, not only Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on 28 August that Russia is preparing to escalate both in Ukraine and across the region, putting the critical window at seven or eight months.

Days earlier, CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow to meet intelligence counterparts. Two people familiar with the meeting told Reuters that Ratcliffe did raise the prospect of Russia acting against a NATO state, though whether the trip had any other aim stayed unclear. One source said several topics came up, including Russia's support for Iran. US President Donald Trump dismissed that reading two days later, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attack NATO territory and that Ratcliffe carried no message.

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On 25 August, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at a coalition summit that his government will soon name who was behind the 4 August drone attack attempt at Leipzig/Halle airport. Russia denies any role in sabotage on European soil and dismisses such accusations as Western scaremongering.

Richer countries might have more resources to deal with catastrophe, but this problem grips the entire planet, however much leaders may want to deny it

Climate breakdown is happening on one Earth, but two different worlds. In one, its impacts increasingly encroach on everyday life; longer periods of discomfort and shorter periods of sharp pain. Endless, hotter summers, and within them sudden wildfires, evacuations, homes burned to cinders in a matter of hours. In another, catastrophe. This summer has been a snapshot of that split-screen. The hottest day on record in parts of Europe, and a wave of water, mud and ice in Nepal that so far has claimed more than 750 lives. Thousands of people are still missing.

The difference is also one of resources. The climate crisis has an economic cost, but some places can absorb it better than others. Responses to this summer of wildfires in Europe included a rapid scrambling by the French government to provide everything from tax breaks for businesses affected by the fires to relocation costs and aid to rebuild homes. The UK government had deployed almost £100m before the summer to strengthen wildfire resilience.