Thirty years after the killing of Tupac Shakur, conspiracy theories and rumors about the perpetrator’s identity, one man has now been held criminally responsible for the rap icon’s death.
A Las Vegas jury convicted Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a 63-year-old former South Side Compton Crips gang leader, of murder for his role in the drive-by shooting. During the two-week long trial, prosecutors argued Davis was the “on-the-ground, on-site commander of the effort to kill Tupac” and had sought revenge after the musician was involved in a fight with his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
Pamela Cisneros, 49, was wielding two knives when she stabbed a woman, who died in the hospital, and a man
New York City police shot and killed a woman Monday after she stabbed two people in Times Square, city authorities said during a press conference.
Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, described the stabbings as “random and unprovoked” acts carried out by a woman with previous mental health problems.
Resignation comes after months of turmoil at Pentagon, from leaked investigation to ousting of senior officials
The army secretary, Dan Driscoll, has handed his resignation to Donald Trump, the White House said on Monday, becoming the latest high-profile figure to depart the defense department.
The army official, who is second in line to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had reportedly been eyeing an exit from the Pentagon amid apparent friction with the secretary.
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.
A deadly flash flood in the Grand Canyon over the weekend was likely driven by a confluence of climate factors, including drought, wildfire scarring and warming temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that can supercharge storms.
At least two people have died, nearly 80 people were rescued and one remained unaccounted for after a surge of water and debris swept through the immensely popular tourist destination on Saturday, fueled by torrents of rain that hit the national park’s Bright Angel Creek area.
Naegleria fowleri is commonly found in warm freshwater, and if it enters through the nose, can cause brain damage
A North Carolina teenager has died after contracting a rare and often fatal brain-eating amoeba.
The state’s health department (NCDHHS) confirmed the boy’s death on Monday, saying: “NCDHHS has been informed that the teen who developed a rare illness, caused by Naegleria fowleri died on Aug. 31, 2026. We extend our condolences to the family, friends and community impacted by this loss.”
Phantom Ranch has been a solitary refuge visited by some of the most famous names of history. More typically, it’s been a beacon for the half-collapsed, exhausted and overheated hikers trudging down the Grand Canyon for more than a century.
The sole lodge at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, the cabins long had a near mythical reputation. Located along the Bright Angel Creek, which tumbles into the mighty Colorado River at the base of the canyon, they served as a reminder of the long history of one of America’s most spectacular but savage environments.
Letter from chair of joint chiefs of staff addresses concerns over Trump officials using military to interfere with vote
The highest‑ranking US military officer says there are no plans to deploy troops to polling places during the November midterm elections – responding to Senator Elissa Slotkin’s request for information amid concerns about whether the Trump administration might send service members to election sites.
In a letter obtained by the Guardian, first reported by the Associated Press, Gen Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, told Slotkin “the Joint Force has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections”. He added that there were also “no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election‑related material”.
North Carolina DA says girl, 17, who disseminated attackers’ manifesto charged with murder by aiding and abetting
A 17-year-old North Carolina girl who recorded a livestream of a shooting that killed three people at a San Diego mosque and disseminated the attackers’ white-supremacist writings has been charged with murder by aiding and abetting, a district attorney said on Monday.
Forsyth county district attorney Jim O’Neill said at a news conference in Winston-Salem that the girl, whose name was not mentioned during the news conference, was arrested last week. On Monday, just before she was due to begin the school year, a grand jury indicted her on three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy.
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.
Justices’ 5-4 ruling permits Trump administration appeal to block lower court order halting above-ground work
A divided US supreme court has permitted Donald Trump to continue building his controversial $400m White House ballroom despite legal challenges, raising the likelihood it will be completed.
In a 5-4 ruling, the justices permitted the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court order that had halted above-ground construction of the project while a lawsuit by a historic preservation group seeks to block it.
The Tennessee Volunteers will be honoring Dolly Parton with a helmet sticker this season, the college football team’s head coach, Josh Heupel, announced on Monday.
Parton, a Tennessee native, died last week at the age of 80 from cancer.
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.
A Ukrainian defense company has built a single device that finds an FPV drone, reads its video feed, and jams it. Rebel Group has developed Brama, a stationary electronic warfare and reconnaissance system to counter FPV drones, which it plans to codify for use by the Defense Forces, the company's press service told Oboronka.
Brama can both detect a drone's signal and jam it, allowing an operator to move from spotting a drone to suppressing it.
Two jobs from one point
Brama can detect the frequency of an analog video signal, decode it, and then apply directed electronic warfare to suppress both the video channel and the drone's control link, the press service explained. Once an operator receives target data and locates a drone, they can suppress it immediately without additional equipment, Militarnyi reports.
"Both functions are implemented in a single device, so the operator does not need to use additional equipment to move from detection to suppression," a Rebel Group representative says.
Rebel Group is seeking codification
Brama has already passed laboratory testing and trials in combat conditions, according to the company. It is now going through Ukraine's military codification procedure, the required step before defense equipment can be approved for broader use by the armed forces.
Its producer company, Rebel Group, specializes in electronic warfare and reconnaissance systems, and some of its equipment has already been codified and tested at the General Staff's proving grounds, the press service noted.
It joins a widening Ukrainian EW effort
Brama is one of several recent Ukrainian counter-drone systems. In July, Ukraine unveiled Lima Quant, an upgraded electronic warfare system built to defeat the advanced satellite-navigation antennas Russia now fits to Shahed drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, and guided bombs, United24 reported.
Those antennas, newer 12- and 16-element arrays, had proven resistant to earlier jammers, which is why each side keeps building the next countermeasure as the other adapts.
More than half the drones Russia fired at Ukraine over the past four days were jet-powered, and Kyiv was the main target. Of the more than 1,500 drones launched, about 800 were jet-powered, Colonel Yurii Ihnat, head of the communications department of Ukraine's Air Force Command, said, UNIAN reports.
A massive attack on Kyiv and the Kyiv region began on 27 August, two days after US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow. According to President Donald Trump, the visit was related to efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine, per Sky News.
Previous interceptors won't work
The attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, accompanied by repeated air-raid alerts, has continued for all five days since then.
A jet-powered Shahed is a version of the strike drone fitted with a turbojet engine in place of a propeller, which makes it three times faster and far harder to shoot down.
Ukraine intercepts about 88 to 90 percent of all drones, but the rate against jet-powered ones is lower precisely because of their speed, Ihnat noted.
The problem is structural: Ukraine's interceptor drones reach roughly 300 kilometers per hour and physically cannot catch a target moving faster and flying at about five kilometers' altitude, beyond the reach of mobile fire teams and portable SAM systems.
Russia adds jet drones every month
Moscow began using jet-powered UAVs in large numbers in July, launching five times as many as in June, Ihnat noted. Their number may rise further by the end of August, he added.
The jet-drone attacks come from every direction. Ihnat said the debris of recovered Shaheds shows they were manufactured just two weeks earlier, meaning production is running without pause.
Banderols fly like cruise missiles
Russia has also stepped up its use of Banderols, systems that combine features of drones and missiles and fly at up to 600 kilometers per hour, Ihnat said. They are harder to shoot down, so short-range surface-to-air missile systems and aircraft with air-to-air missiles are used against them.
Jet-powered drones are significantly more expensive than conventional ones, Ihnat noted.
The strikes hit specific targets
Russia's attacks are aimed not only at psychological pressure on the capital's residents but at specific targets, Ihnat said. These are logistics and shopping centers, postal terminals, critical infrastructure, and other strategic sites.
Strikes of this kind have destroyed about 90 percent of Ukraine's modern warehouse space in recent weeks and slowed grain exports through the Black Sea corridor.
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.
Santos was accused of profiting from bets tied to his attendance at Trump’s State of the Union address
George Santos, the former Republican congressman whose political career collapsed under a mountain of lies, has become the first person ever handed a lifetime ban by the prediction-market platform Kalshi.
The company announced the permanent suspension on Monday, along with a $71,356 fine, after federal regulators accused Santos of profiting from bets tied to his own attendance at Donald Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this year.
Lander screamed at and verbally abused as he protested against Hindu nationalist rally in Madison Square Garden
The New York Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander was screamed at and verbally abused by protesters over his stance on Israel as he protested against a Hindu nationalist politician speaking outside Madison Square Garden.
As Lander attended a demonstration on Saturday against the event, organized by the Hindu nationalist RSS movement and where Mohan Bhagwat, leader of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was speaking, he was confronted by several protesters demanding that he leave the rally.
Three-quarters of Americans said in a recent poll that they oppose datacenters being built next to their homes
Donald Trump has criticized communities pushing back against datacenter projects across the US amid a growing backlash, warning those that reject them risk becoming “backwards and poor”.
As controversy surrounding local datacenter plans continues to swirl around election campaigns nationwide ahead of November’s midterm elections, the US president declared Americans “will only have yourselves to blame” if they are canceled.
The president’s deportation machine is creating a class of people inside the US who have fewer protections against the power of the state
Is the Trump administration creating a group in the US with fewer protections against executive power owing to their immigration status? Its often openly racist actions suggest so. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims to target “the worst of the worst” – undocumented migrants who commit violent crimes. Yet the Guardian reported that over half of those arrested in July had no criminal convictions or pending charges. That month, ICE made record arrests and deportations, apprehending 1,500 people and removing 1,100 daily.
When campaigning, Donald Trump falsely claimed that Haitians were “eating the pets”. In office, his administration moved to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians. In June, the supreme court let the protection expire, leaving about 350,000 people at risk of deportation to a country gripped by violence and instability. The court’s decision means more than 1 million TPS holders from 13 nations previously considered too unsafe to return to are now at risk of deportation. Many have lived and worked legally in the US for years.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Congressman says Thomas abandoned his principles to become an extremist, hard-right member of bench
The senior Democratic congressman James Clyburn said his decision to support Clarence Thomas for a US supreme court seat “was a mistake” and called for the expansion of the nation’s highest legal panel to 13 justices.
Clyburn, of South Carolina, spoke up for Thomas at his fiery 1991 confirmation hearings, calling him “a personal and professional friend” who would use their shared experiences lifting minorities and advancing civil rights to become a respected and accomplished jurist.
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.
Ukrainian troops say they have trapped about 2,500 Russian soldiers on the Kinburn Spit. Systematic drone strikes and remote mining have let them cut the Russian supply lines and destroy almost all of Russia's artillery on the spit, scouts told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's "Crimea.Realities" project.
The Kinburn Spit is a narrow sandy peninsula about 40 kilometers long, between the Dnipro-Buh Estuary and the Black Sea, the last part of Mykolaiv Oblast that Russia has held since 2022. Whoever controls the spit controls the sea exit from the ports, which is why Moscow kept artillery there to shell the southern coast, said former Head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration Vitali Kim.
Now, the troops say, Russia can reach the coastal zone of Mykolaiv Oblast only with long-range guns from occupied Kherson Oblast.
Supply runs through a single corridor
The Russian force has one way in — a single land route Ukrainian troops keep under fire, from Zaliznyi Port through Heroiske.
"Our task here is to neutralize everything that drives onto the Kinburn Spit. Since we started destroying Russian troops at a rapid pace, they cannot bring in anything effective," reconnaissance unit commander with the call sign "Yava" explained.
A scout calls the spit a trap
Intercepts show panic among the Russian units, the troops say.
"In the intercepts, they're screaming that they can't do logistics, that they don't want to go in, because it's death. The road is cut, and they have very little ammunition. The spit is a trap for them," the scout said.
Mining the supply routes is the main method
The problem, the troops say, is that the occupiers disguise themselves as civilians, changing into civilian clothes, which places limits on when Ukrainian soldiers can strike. The main method is catching the Russians on logistics by mining their routes.
"A vehicle hit a mine that was dropped maybe a week ago, maybe yesterday. The first thing is cutting Russia's logistics — the vehicles, the resupply by quad bikes and motorcycles," deputy reconnaissance company commander with the call sign "Holova" explained.
Response seeks to discredit Washington Post story that four generals and admirals advised against prolonging Iran war
Pete Hegseth regularly receives formal objections from senior commanders and proceeds anyway, the Pentagon’s top spokesman has said, as he tried to discredit a Washington Post report that four generals and admirals had advised against prolonging the war in Iran.
“Of course, we demand candid military advice,” Sean Parnell wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Non-concurs are standard. The Secretary sees them constantly. That’s how you run a real military.”
A Ukrainian drone maker is selling its unmanned aerial vehicle as a kit that users assemble themselves. BlueBird Tech has unveiled the Bebradrone Kit, a modular drone whose configuration the buying unit sets when it orders, choosing the control system, video transmitter, camera, flight electronics, and navigation gear, Defender Media reports.
The name Bebradron comes from the Ukrainian joke meme “nyukhai bebru” (“sniff the bebra”), a humorous euphemism for the male genitalia.
The airframe comes in three grades
Units choose how much is pre-assembled. The Base version is a bare mechanical airframe for self-installation, at about $150, according to Brave1 Market. The ARF adds pre-installed motors for about $335, and the Pro comes with a configured flight controller for about $130.
A fully built Bebradrone glider without added configuration runs about $875 on the marketplace. BlueBird also offers a custom option, with its own engineers selecting and integrating equipment for a specific mission.
The specifications hold in the base build
In its base configuration, the Bebradrone Kit cruises at 90 kilometers per hour and reaches up to 150. Its tactical radius is up to 45 kilometers, and it carries up to 7.5 kilograms.
Flight time can reach 30 minutes, with a working altitude of 150 to 500 meters. The drone launches from a pneumatic catapult, which needs no runway or prepared strip.
The company grew from a volunteer group
BlueBird describes itself as having started with a small group of enthusiasts testing drone ideas and learning from their own mistakes. That grew into an R&D operation and production workshops, with separate units for development, manufacturing, quality control, service, and military contact.
The company now employs more than 350 specialists across several Ukrainian cities, building electronic warfare, drone detection, strike FPV, and communications systems. Its products are tested under real-world conditions and refined based on feedback from the front lines.
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.
Funeral wreaths outside the office of RSI Europe, a drone manufacturer supplying Ukraine, in Vilnius, Lithuania, August 2026. Screenshot: LNK Žinios via Delfi
“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.
After Lindsey Graham’s death, Democrat Annie Andrews finds herself in a closely watched race as she seeks to flip his Republican seat
Annie Andrews was a dark horse Democrat challenging a five-term Republican in the US Senate when 314 Action, a political action fund devoted to electing scientists and doctors, first backed her.
Now, after the unexpected death of Senator Lindsey Graham, Andrews finds herself in a closely watched race. Donald Trump persuaded South Carolina voters last week to select Graham’s sister, Darline, as the new Republican candidate. They will face off in November in an election still heavily favored to keep the seat in Republican hands in the conservative state.
Ukraine's former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov has offered to help the United States build a fleet of attack drones if Washington sends Ukraine the Patriot interceptor missiles it needs to get through winter, he told the Financial Times. The idea is Fedorov's own proposal, not a deal, and he holds no government post that would let him negotiate one for Kyiv. He is in Washington mainly to raise American money for a fund that would both invest in Ukrainian defense-tech companies and build new ones of its own.
Over the past year, Ukraine's partners have shifted from handing over weapons off their shelves to funding and co-producing Ukrainian-designed drones and missiles, inside and outside the country.
What the fund would do
Fedorov used his working trip to Washington to line up venture funds, entrepreneurs and tech companies as backers, Suspilne reported. The fund would not simply invest in existing Ukrainian defense-tech firms, he wrote; it would also create new companies around the technologies the front line needs most. He set out three targets: battlefield robots to replace soldiers in the most dangerous positions, jet-powered interceptor drones to bring down Russia's faster new attack drones, and cheap missiles that use artificial intelligence. He did not say what his own role would be, or whether he would profit. He said the next step is to assemble a team and launch the first projects.
Explore further
The Fedorov protesters lost. But they backed a man for what he built, not what he promised—and that may be new in Ukraine.
The interceptors behind the offer
Fedorov framed the drone help as a straight swap.
"I'm ready to make that trade," he told the FT.
Ukraine is running low on interceptor missiles for its Patriot batteries, one of the few air-defense systems able to reliably stop Russia's ballistic missiles. Fedorov declined to say whether he would meet anyone from the Trump administration.
Ukraine's ex-minister turns open critic
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Fedorov on 15 July, after six months in the job. Fedorov said a feud with Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who he says blocked his reforms, drove the split, Zelenskyy removed Syrskyi on 21 July as protests spread. in an interview with Reuters published on 25 August.
"it looks as though we're gradually, slowly losing," he said in an interview with Reuters.
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.
Explore further
Ukraine’s drones crushed a US armored brigade in a war game in Germany
Allies want Ukraine's lessons—the US Army is stepping back
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.
This is an adaption of a podcast interview 404 Media recorded with Erin West and Paul Raffile. Check out the whole thing here on YouTube.
Erin West and Paul Raffile stepped out of their van about 45 minutes outside Lagos, Nigeria, and walked down a muddy hill. At the bottom, they entered a field with houses made of corrugated steel and cardboard. Raffile kept falling into the mud.
After walking about a quarter of a mile, the pair came to a hut, six feet high on stilts, and climbed up a ladder. Inside was the baba lao, a local spiritual leader. The baba lao was going to do a ritual designed to ensure a Nigerian scammer would make more money in his blackmailing or manipulation of an overseas victim, maybe back in the United States.
A scammer who accompanied West and Raffile had a photo of the victim he was trying to get money from, and the identity he had impersonated to do so. The baba lao then fused these two souls together to bring more fortune to the scammer, Raffile recalled. For two and a half hours, the baba lao jumped between grinding herbs, creating talismans, sacrificing an animal. Locals gathered outside the hut.
West and Raffile are scam experts: West is the founder of Operation Shamrock, an organization that aims to disrupt scam operations, and Raffile is a long time cybercrime researcher, who focuses especially on sextortion. This is where scammers, like those in Nigeria, will assume the identity of a young person, approach teenagers in the U.S. on apps like Instagram, have them record explicit videos, then pull the mask away and threaten to release the videos to the victim’s friends and family unless they pay up. Sextortion is common across U.S. social media platforms; at least dozens of young boys have taken their own lives after being targeted.
The pair hatched a plan to go to Nigeria to see if they could actually track down a scammer. The trip provided rare insight into how some scammers live and how brazenly many of them flaunt their scams.
Sextortion is “targeting youth. It's surging,” Raffile said. “I wonder, can we hatch a plan where we put ourselves out there as a target, create our own fake account, get scammed by these criminals, and then trace the criminal back to their home turf?”
💡
Do you know anything else about Nigerian scammers? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
They made an Instagram and Snapchat account pretending to be a young person. Within a couple of days, they started receiving suspicious direct messages. West said she was “flabagasted” at how quickly the messages came in.
The scammers were pretending to be young women, often using photos stolen from OnlyFans models. As the chat progressed and the scammers demanded money, the pair said they could only pay in Bitcoin, and sent a link to a website where the scammer could allegedly claim their payment. The site was actually grabbing the scammers’ IP addresses. It showed the scammers were in Lagos, Nigeria. With not much to go on just yet, the pair got on a flight to Nigeria.
Once they landed, they had around six days to find a scammer. It would not be financially viable to sit around in Lagos forever. The pair deployed the IP address grabbing website again, but this time one of the scammers granted the tool more permissions in his browser. The tool was also designed to, if possible, get their exact location, or turn on its camera and see their face. This time, it worked. They had a scammer’s face.
At one point, another scammer asked the pair to move from Instagram, where the conversation initially happened, over to WhatsApp, which revealed the scammer’s phone number. The pair’s fixer put that number into TrueCaller— an app that harvests peoples’ phone contact lists and makes them searchable, essentially — which revealed the name Big Dollar. West also provided the number to some contacts who investigated it. They worked with another expert too who was able to dig up more information and find the scammer’s real name. They then found other social media profiles belonging to Big Dollar, including a TikTok account that had posted blackmail messages. The pair were given GPS coordinates of where this scammer might be.
They drove to Big Dollar’s village, and ultimately he refused to meet the pair. West told Big Dollar on the phone, we know who you are, we know where you live, and the next step is we’re going to give this information to the FBI. Around this time, they saw Big Dollar’s social media accounts go dark.
West said, “it was an interesting opportunity to really put some fear in a class of people who aren't really afraid of being arrested.”
Officials say one person still unaccounted for as forecast heavy rain and thunderstorms threaten further flooding
A second death was confirmed by National Park Service officials on Monday after a flash flood sent a surge of water and debris through an area of the Grand Canyon over the weekend.
Dozens of visitors had to be evacuated by helicopter during the deluge, which consumed trails and infrastructure. Nearly 80 people were rescued and one person is still unaccounted for, as more heavy rain and thunderstorms in the forecasts threaten additional debris flows, flash floods or rock falls, the NPS said in a statement.
The technology can help candidates listen more deeply to voters, as examples from Japan and Scotland show
There are plenty of signs that AI will make all of our experiences of the US midterm elections worse. Voters have anxiety about AI’s impacts on the country. Politicos are using AI deepfakes to spread lies. The White House is posting slopaganda.
Meanwhile, candidates are missing a real opportunity to use AI to make campaigning better. The technology can help candidates listen more deeply to voters’ concerns, engage constituents more inclusively, and formulate policy platforms that are more responsive to our input. There are vanishingly few examples of this in US politics, but groups in Japan, Scotland and the US’s own academic and private institutions show how that could change.
War on Gaza and violence in West Bank is playing out in the streets of Toledo, Ohio, where the Arab American community has flourished
From his office outside Toledo, Ohio, Thamin Tim Ridi opens his phone to livestream the scene outside the besieged house of his brother, Loui, thousands of miles away in the occupied West Bank.
This month, with his property at risk of being destroyed by Israeli settlers, Loui traveled from Ohio to his ancestral home in Qusra, south of Nablus, where his mother and other family members have been living in constant fear of attack.
Director Mark Mori followed coffee chain workers’ struggle to unionize: ‘These young kids are so inspirational’
As the food service industry was pushed on to the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, workers at Starbucks stores in the Buffalo region of New York went public to announce their union-organizing campaign.
Their efforts, and Starbucks’ responses, have culminated in one of the most expansive union-organizing campaigns – and one of the most aggressive union-busting campaigns – in modern US history.
Death toll from unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris now stands at more than 900. Plus, was it a mistake to take away Pluto’s planet status?
Good morning. Rescue teams are working to reach hundreds of people feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of half a dozen hydropower projects in Nepal as more than 900 workers were reported missing after the devastating flash floods.
The death toll from the unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris that crashed through valleys of Nepal on Wednesday last week has risen to 903 people, with 16 reported dead on the Tibet side of the border. More than 4,000 are missing in Nepal, with another 500 in Tibet. Hundreds of bodies, many unidentified, have been buried in shallow graves.
How large is the rescue operation? Nepal’s prime minister, Balendra Shah, said almost 21,000 security personnel were involved in the rescue operations, besides civilian workers and volunteers. China’s state-run CCTV reported that Beijing had mobilised more than 2,100 rescue workers. The Red Cross has estimated that more than 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the disaster, which China and some experts linked to the effects of the climate crisis.
Why has the disaster sparked a racism row in Australia? A slew of racist social media comments have been made towards missing Australians. Most of them were on pilgrimages, including to Mount Kailash in Tibet. Mainstream media outlets including News Corp, Channel 7, Channel 10 and Nine have been hit with highly offensive and discriminatory comments on Facebook articles identifying the missing Australians.
What has Donald Trump claimed US forces are doing? Hours after the attacks, the US president, Donald Trump, claimed in a social media post that Iran’s energy hub of Kharg Island was being “blown to smithereens” but gave no further details. The White House and the US defense department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Attacking Kharg, which handled 90% of Iran’s oil exports before the war, would severely disrupt the Islamic republic’s energy trade and put huge pressure on its economy.
We’re watching today as Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, and Kevin Warsh, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deliver their opening remarks at the G20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina.
Kameron Glasgow of Florida honors wife Kenya and daughter Kennedi at local vigil after last week’s tragedy
A Florida man whose wife and toddler daughter were killed by a lightning strike while he was near them recently has implored people to “hold … tight” to their loved ones.
Kameron Glasgow made that arresting remark to local media at a weekend gathering honoring the memories of his wife, Kenya, and two-year-old daughter Kennedi after they died on 23 August from an exceedingly rare cause.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer has a level-headed reputation but commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and White House adviser Peter Navarro also have key roles
Having reportedly read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson Greer considered himself an unlikely target for accusations of francophobia.
But Donald Trump’s US trade representative, hitherto one of the president’s less high-profile cabinet members, found himself in that uncomfortable position amid the acrimonious collapse of bilateral trade talks with Canada that now threatens to degenerate into an all-out trade war between the two close trading partners whose economies are tightly intertwined.
Public lands belong to all of us. No one should plunder those lands for profit
Do people still say a car was “sold for parts”? Because the US is being sold for parts or just handed over to the oligarchy. It’s a fire sale, a bankruptcy auction, it’s a planned dismantling of everything from its military to its institutions of higher education to its scientific research to its public lands.
And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite national park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park’s edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world’s first national park.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
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.
Explore further
650 participants from 24 countries: Ukraine brings its battle-tested drone-defense experience to NATO’s Baltic Trust 2026 exercise
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.
Dozens evacuated after flash-flood event near Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch, officials say
One person died and about 15 people were missing or unaccounted for after a major flash flood swept through the Grand Canyon national park in Arizona on Saturday afternoon, according to the National Park Service.
The flash-flood event occurred in the area of Bright Angel Canyon and the Phantom Ranch, where park staff and the Arizona department of public safety had evacuated more than 60 people as of Sunday morning.
Trump officials shuttering three projects on foodborne parasite, two defunded by Congress, Politico reports
The Trump administration is shuttering two of the three US Department of Agriculture research projects studying cyclospora after the foodborne parasite has sickened tens of thousands of Americans during the summer, Politico reported on Sunday.
The two projects were defunded by Congress earlier in the year, while the third is due to be moved in coming months from Maryland to Iowa as part of a broader USDA reorganization, according to the report.
During a 10-season career with the Rams, who drafted him with the 13th overall pick in 2014, Donald was a three-time defensive player of the year and an eight-time first team All-Pro. He won a Super Bowl with the Rams at the end of the 2021 season before announcing his retirement in March 2024 at the age of 32.
Dawn is champion after public voting of eight yellow-bellied marmots as they fattened up for long winter ahead
A marmot contest started by researchers who turned to OnlyFans to help save a decades-long research project has chosen its champion in its inaugural Fat Marmot Week.
Dawn was crowned the winner of Fat Marmot Week 2026 after securing back-to-back victories in both the mass-gain and popular-vote competitions, according to the organizers of the marmot project at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
Ukraine has four potential interceptor systems that could shoot down Russia’s increasingly common jet-powered Geran attack drones, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara said on 30 August, according to Suspilne.
Russia has sharply increased its use of the faster drones against Ukrainian cities, causing major damage to civilian infrastructure and many civilian casualties. The attacks are putting near-unprecedented strain on Ukraine’s air defenses.
All four interceptor systems have undergone field testing, Khmara said. Ukraine now aims to bring them to the required level as quickly as possible and scale production to thousands of units.
“The search for countermeasures against jet-powered drones continues,” Khmara told journalists, according to Suspilne. “There are already four potential interceptors that can shoot down jet-powered ‘Shaheds.’ Field tests have already been conducted on them.”
Russia is rapidly expanding Geran attacks
Russia's Gerans are jet-powered adaptations of the Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones that Russia has produced domestically throughout the full-scale war. The faster Geran variants give Ukrainian air defenses less time to detect and engage them.
Ukrainian defense technology adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov said Russia used more than 2,500 jet-powered Gerans against Ukraine in August, up from about 1,500 in July.
He also said the drones are being launched against Ukraine almost directly from Russian factories, highlighting the rapid expansion of their production and use.
Zelenskyy calls for faster production
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made countering the Gerans a priority as Russia sustains repeated attacks on Ukrainian cities.
At a 28 August meeting of Ukraine’s military leadership, Zelenskyy said the country needed to maximize domestic weapons production, with the immediate focus on defending against jet-powered Gerans and increasing Ukraine’s own long-range strikes against Russia.
“[The] main thing is our defense against jet-powered ‘Shaheds,’” Zelenskyy said in his evening address.
He said Russia had adopted a tactic of keeping Kyiv and other cities under repeated air raid alerts, with Gerans reaching the capital as well as cities including Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.
Explore further
Four days of Russian attacks keep Kyiv under near-constant fire. Ukraine is struggling to defend its skies
“All our means of countering [them] are already being used,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine needs a significant acceleration in production of interceptors specifically designed for the jet-powered drones.
Khmara said the four potential interceptors are now at the field-testing stage, with the next step being to bring them into production at a scale of thousands of units.
For Ukraine, that scale is critical. The country must defend a large territory against increasingly large Russian drone barrages while also preserving limited air-defense resources for ballistic and other missiles that require more advanced interceptors.
Tom Homan denies British far-right commentator, who was deported one day after arrest, got preferential treatment
The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that deporting the British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amounted to preferential treatment.
Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July.
‘Alt-right’ agitator and former Trump backer deported from US is said also to be too extreme for Reform
As he arrives back in the UK after being deported from the US by the Trump administration, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos may be wondering what lies ahead for him in his native country.
The “alt-right” agitator, 41, made his name in the US by promoting Donald Trump and associating with his allies before the 2016 election.
Connexion
