Trump-appointed regulator OKs banking license for Trump-linked crypto firm

Trump-appointed regulator OKs banking license for Trump-linked crypto firm

Politico reports: The Trump administration has granted preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture backed by President Donald Trump’s family to operate a federally chartered trust bank, over the protests of Democrats who decried the decision as riddled with conflicts of interest. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank regulatory arm of the Treasury Department, said in a letter on Friday that it was conditionally approving World Liberty Trust Co.’s application for a trust bank charter. The company…

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Depleted strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage to storage caverns

Depleted strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage to storage caverns

CNBC reports: The caverns that hold the U.S. strategic oil reserves could get damaged by the rapid release of stockpiles in response to the Iran war, experts warned this week as inventories hit a four-decade low. Damage to the caverns would make it more difficult to respond to future energy emergencies, the experts said. The oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is stored at 60 salt caverns thousands of feet underground at four major sites along the Gulf Coast…

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How Trump took charge of everything while accepting responsibility for nothing

How Trump took charge of everything while accepting responsibility for nothing

The Associated Press reports: It is among the most famous phrases in presidential history: “The buck stops here.” Except with President Donald Trump, it almost never does. Concerns about a weak economy and still-high inflation? His predecessor, Joe Biden, saddled him with that, he says, even though the Democrat has been out of office for 18-plus months and despite Trump once promising an immediate turnaround. The problem-plagued revamp of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? That was marred by vandalism, the…

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The reason why Israel has done little to rein in settler violence

The reason why Israel has done little to rein in settler violence

The Associated Press reports: Palestinians in the occupied West Bank village of Qusra have huddled inside their homes for days on end, unable to leave because of the threat posed by Israeli settlers. The Israeli military, which over the past three years has displayed staggering military and intelligence capabilities from Beirut to Tehran, has yet to fully remove the settlers from the area of the village, about an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv. The United States, which provides billions of…

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Inside Ukraine’s kill zone

Inside Ukraine’s kill zone

Reuters reports: A terrifying game of hide-and-seek is playing out in this deadly corridor that snakes along the 1,200 km-long (750-mile) front line in Ukraine. The war, well into its fifth year, has become the first major conflict to be dominated by unmanned aerial vehicles, with thousands of the cheap but deadly machines filling the skies. Ukraine and invader Russia are constantly advancing the new technology, which is transforming modern warfare. Both sides have had to abandon age-old tactics of…

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Fake news spreads like an epidemic. Here’s how to stop it

Fake news spreads like an epidemic. Here’s how to stop it

The Straits Times reports: More than five years after the outbreak of Covid-19, most of us still remember the shape of the pandemic. It started small and distant. Then it passed from one person to another quickly, and we often did not even know we were spreading it. Today’s misinformation epidemic has the same shape: Fake news spreads quickly, and those “infected” by a rumour are often unaware it is untrue before passing it on to others. The “pink salt…

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The death of dark energy is a false alarm – the universe is still accelerating

The death of dark energy is a false alarm – the universe is still accelerating

By Phil Wiseman, University of Southampton and Mark Sullivan, University of Southampton A 2025 study by South Korean researchers caught the attention of the astronomy community when it suggested that the evidence behind dark energy could be wrong. Dark energy makes up about 70% of the universe but nobody knows what it is. This makes it a frequent target for scepticism. Scientists had long known that the universe was expanding. But in the late 1990s, researchers discovered that this expansion…

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A ‘super’ El Niño could transform the Amazon. Is the world’s biggest rainforest doomed?

A ‘super’ El Niño could transform the Amazon. Is the world’s biggest rainforest doomed?

Nature reports: El Niño is back with a vengeance. A mammoth patch of warm water is growing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is giving four-in-five odds that the disruptive climate phenomenon will turn into a “very strong” event by the end of the year. Some forecasters say this El Niño is on track to become the strongest in at least 150 years. For the Amazon rainforest, the timing could hardly be worse….

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Navy carrier’s problems are tied to strategic attacks on U.S. base in Bahrain early in war

Navy carrier’s problems are tied to strategic attacks on U.S. base in Bahrain early in war

The New York Times reports: The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s supply problems began soon after the first day of the war, as Iranian missiles and attack drones fell on a Navy base in Bahrain. The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades. The Navy needed a Plan B to continue feeding…

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How Trump’s unprecedented effort to prosecute noncitizen voters fell apart

How Trump’s unprecedented effort to prosecute noncitizen voters fell apart

By Peter Elkind, Jen Fifield, Doug Bock Clark, Ken B. Morales and Andy Mannix This story was originally published by ProPublica It was late March when Joe Teirab, the second-in-command at Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office, received an urgent email from Washington. The federal government was scrambling to find criminal cases to back up President Donald Trump’s claims that illegal voting by noncitizens was tipping the scales in American elections. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a massive federal law enforcement agency,…

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U.S. military family schools will indoctrinate kids on Western civilization and Christianity

U.S. military family schools will indoctrinate kids on Western civilization and Christianity

The Associated Press reports: The Department of Defense is introducing a course centered on Western civilization and Christianity this fall in the schools it operates for military families, part of an effort by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to redirect the education system toward patriotic values and classical learning. The Department of Defense Education Activity operates about 160 schools across 11 countries and educates roughly 70,000 students who are children of active-duty military or civilian service members. Conservatives have eyed the…

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The real reason why data center gas power plants are so dirty

The real reason why data center gas power plants are so dirty

Wired reports: Amazon has acquired a massive off-grid power plant being built in Texas for one of its data centers that could be one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. But size isn’t the only reason its climate toll will be so high. The plant will rely on a much less efficient set of gas turbines than regular power plants use; these kinds of turbines are also increasingly being put to use at other data…

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The data center industry’s PR blitz is backfiring

The data center industry’s PR blitz is backfiring

By Lisa Sorg August 14, 2026 This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. HENDERSON, N.C.—On a recent summer evening Mitzi Parrott, who lives in Vance County, saw a television commercial on the evening news that gave her pause. Kathie Hamm and Bobbie Lequire, also of Vance County, saw it, too, streaming on Sling and posted on Nextdoor. The ad extolled the…

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Netanyahu refers to UK as ‘first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon.’ He doesn’t speak for British Jews

Netanyahu refers to UK as ‘first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon.’ He doesn’t speak for British Jews

The Guardian reports: The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” in a podcast interview, where he also described the country as the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon”. His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population. Netanyahu praised positive coverage of Israel by the journalist Randolph Churchill, the son of former prime minister Winston Churchill, over half…

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