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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the measures are designed to collapse the Iranian government, calling it the greatest coordinated economic isolation in history. Any country still trading with Tehran — including China — has been warned it faces US penalties.
A mound of rubbish at the Dar es Salam landfill in Conakry collapsed in the early hours of Sunday after heavy rain, burying homes and shacks nearby. The site had been officially designated for closure that same day — and had already killed 10 people in a similar landslide in 2017.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the plan a 'one-two punch' — a naval blockade combined with what he dubbed the financial equivalent of a bombing campaign. Former US diplomats warn it could take years to build a coalition that makes the measures stick, and that Iran may strike Gulf energy infrastructure in retaliation.
Trade talks collapsed Friday after a brief three-day pause raised hopes of a deal. Canada's retaliatory tariffs, targeting steel, dairy and electronics, are set to kick in on September 8.
The government says a newly discovered field in Fars province holds more than 7.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Any production is years away, and strikes on energy infrastructure since February have left Iran warning of shortages this winter.
What began with a Truth Social post in November 2024 has become a prolonged tariff conflict, with 50% duties now hitting $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. As of late August 2026, there is no sign of resolution.
American envoy Tom Barrack says Israel gave neither the US nor Turkey advance notice of strikes on a Syrian airbase near the Turkish border. Israel insists it shared intelligence beforehand — but US agencies had reviewed that same intelligence and concluded the threat wasn't real.
The increases apply to servers built around Nvidia's flagship Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell chips and are expected to hit systems shipped early next year. Microsoft, Google and Oracle have already been warned by their contract builders, and it is unclear whether the higher costs will be passed on to end users.
The duties, covering everything from dairy and lumber to hockey equipment, hit up to $28 billion of Canadian exports. Prime Minister Carney has announced matching retaliatory tariffs on American goods, set to take effect September 8.
Tehran's top security official warned any country joining American-led restrictions would be treated as an enemy. The Trump administration is due to unveil what it calls the toughest sanctions in US history within days.
Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended negotiations and pledged to match new US tariffs after overnight talks broke down on August 22, with up to $28 billion in Canadian exports facing a 50% levy. A Conservative MP publicly called the response an overreaction — and US Vice-President JD Vance praised him for it.
Russia's president warned Kyiv to expect hits on its 'most sensitive economic sectors' after Ukrainian drones triggered fuel shortages inside Russia. Strikes on Ukraine's Black Sea grain exports have already begun, jeopardising a key source of foreign revenue and food supplies for parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Washington has launched what it calls an unprecedented economic campaign against Iran, combining a naval blockade with sweeping secondary sanctions targeting anyone still doing business with Tehran. History suggests economic pressure rarely forces a regime to yield — and research warns a cornered Iran may take bigger risks, not fewer.
The FDA has urged Everything Sprouts, a Minneapolis company, to pull its products after investigators linked them to an unusually complex contamination involving four bacterial strains at once. As of 21 August, the company had not complied.
An 18-year-old man attacked students at Brinell High School in Fagersta, central Sweden, on Friday afternoon. One person was killed and two teenage boys seriously wounded — for some, it was their first day back after the summer break.
Rubén Rocha Moya resumed the governorship after 112 days of voluntary leave, brushing aside US criminal charges accusing him of conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel. Mexico's government says Washington has yet to provide enough evidence to justify his arrest.
The White House will temporarily suspend import tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of ground beef, hoping to ease prices before November's elections. Republican lawmakers and the cattle industry say it will punish ranchers who are only now enjoying profitable years.
More than $50 billion has already been sunk into the project, leaving half-built structures in the desert. The Line, a 170km city that was Neom's centrepiece, has reportedly been halted until after 2030.
Core consumer prices rose 1.8% in July, accelerating for a second straight month. Wholesale inflation hit 7.2%, and Bank of Japan board members are pushing to move faster than the current pace of two hikes a year.
Comparable sales rose just 2.6% in the latest quarter, missing analyst forecasts by a wide margin. Separately, the retailer confirmed it has received $2.9 billion in tariff refunds from the US government and is channelling the money into price cuts, with rollback items on shelves jumping from 7,200 to more than 11,000.
Zelensky signed four decrees targeting Russian arms makers, aluminum suppliers and a children's animation studio. The move shines fresh light on an EU loophole that has allowed an Irish refinery to send hundreds of thousands of tonnes of alumina to Russian smelters linked to weapons production.
A twelve-nation consortium has invited defence contractors to help define what a successor to the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile should do. No timeline or budget has been set — for now it is a listening exercise, while the current missile remains in active production.
Scott Bessent described the coming measures as a 'one-two punch' alongside the naval blockade of Iranian ports in place since April. Details are due at a press conference on August 24, but Bessent made clear that any country still buying Iranian oil or moving Iranian money would face US enforcement action.
The US Treasury has rewritten Hezbollah's designation to make explicit that it operates as a direct arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Separately, ten people accused of moving hundreds of millions of dollars by courier across four countries have been sanctioned.
The White House announced a three-day pause on 50% tariffs just two hours before they were due to hit roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods. But Trump's claim that the long-cancelled pipeline could be revived as part of any agreement left analysts and officials on both sides baffled — and neither government confirmed it.
Trump paused threatened 50% tariffs on $28 billion worth of Canadian goods, giving negotiators until 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday to turn the framework into a signed agreement. The exact terms — including any changes to steel, dairy and alcohol trade — have not been made public.
All seven on board died when the aircraft went down near Mount Ololokwe in Samburu County. Among the dead is Jose Alberto Suarez, a senior NBCUniversal executive, and Michele Sensi-Contugi, Ecuador's national intelligence director, who was travelling with his wife.
Israel's military says the April 2024 airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom, does not meet the threshold for criminal proceedings. Australia has summoned the Israeli ambassador and says the decision falls far short of the accountability it expects.
The president named Hyperliquid at a White House crypto summit on 19 August, saying the CFTC is crafting a regulatory path to let the derivatives platform operate legally in the US. Its HYPE token jumped 19% on the news.
The gross federal debt reached $40.047 trillion on 19 August, with a trillion dollars now being added roughly every five months. Interest payments have already surpassed the defence budget this year, and the legal borrowing ceiling is projected to be hit sometime in 2027.
The regime survived US-Israeli strikes by rallying around an external enemy. Its generals and security chiefs now appear to believe that a negotiated end to the war would expose them to the one threat they can't suppress: their own people.
US 30-year Treasury yields have reached 5.33%, their highest since 2007, as tech giants flood markets with debt to fund AI infrastructure. Yields are surging across the developed world, from Japan to Germany to Britain, with oil back above $90 a barrel adding to fears that inflation will stay high.
The Emirates says two ballistic missiles fired from Iranian territory landed in the sea, one inside UAE waters. Iran denies firing them, and no independent body has confirmed the launches.
Two cruise missiles struck a busy intersection in Pechenihy, hitting a café and a service-station car park less than a minute apart. At least 17 others were wounded; a post office, homes and shops were also damaged in the attack.
Washington has frozen the assets of Tomoko Akane, the court's Japanese president, and a senior trial lawyer, barring them both from the US financial system. The ICC said the move puts the entire international legal order at risk.
The West African country will receive migrants from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean removed by the US over 12 months. The first group of 20 is due to arrive on Thursday.
The two sides are meeting daily ahead of an August 19 deadline, but some Canadian negotiators think the gap is too wide to close in time. Ottawa is willing to concede on dairy, alcohol bans and auto tariffs — but it cannot force the provinces to lift their bans on American booze, and some have refused to budge.
The sale would end the family's 47-year connection to the franchise and could strip Jeanie Buss of her role as team governor. She says a 2017 court order means no sale can go through without her approval.
Russia's state defence conglomerate has begun serial production of mobile power substations designed to restore electricity within hours of a grid attack. Rostec says two to four units per region would cover any emergency — though no production volumes or delivery timelines have been disclosed.
Brent crude closed at $90.87 a barrel on August 17, the day a 60-day negotiating window expired without a deal. Prices are now nearly 50% higher than at the start of the year, with US gasoline averaging $4.06 a gallon.
The cover, worth up to $500,000 per officer, is the latest addition to a package of financial incentives that could reach $2 billion this year. Critics say it is designed to remove any hesitation officers might have about legal exposure.
The two countries have settled on shipping lane coordinates, but a finalised agreement on who controls the strait — and what ships will pay to pass through it — is still unresolved. Iran wants transit fees of up to seven percent of cargo value; Washington insists on zero.
The near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused the largest oil market disruption on record, sending Brent crude as high as $120 a barrel. The windfall is going into stockpiles, not new wells.
The Trump envoy held direct talks with Hamas's new leader in Egypt, where the group signalled it would disarm — but only if Israel pulls back first. Netanyahu publicly rejected the US-backed peace roadmap last week, setting up a difficult visit to Tel Aviv on Monday.
The sixty days agreed in Islamabad expired on 17 August without an agreement, a confirmed extension, or any sign the Strait of Hormuz will reopen. The two sides cannot even agree on whether the ceasefire ever formally began.
The UN recorded nearly 1,400 civilians killed in Ukraine in the first half of 2026 alone. Ukraine has also struck deep inside Russia, hitting a Black Sea beach crowded with holidaymakers and launching the largest drone assault of the year on Moscow.
Two fires broke out within twenty minutes of each other on Sunday, as beaches were packed for the August holiday. One is thought to have claimed a couple caught near the shore at Peristeria.
OpenRouter gives developers a single interface to access and switch between more than 400 AI models. The deal would move Stripe beyond payments and into the infrastructure layer that manages and bills for AI use.
The president told Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, citing cost and what he called a hostile signal to North Korea. He also revealed South Korea had refused his request to join US efforts to pressure Iran.
Moroccan security forces moved in after spotting social media calls for a repeat of the July 30 surge, which killed up to 100 people. Spain also sent reinforcements, bringing the total security presence in the city to more than 1,500 officers.
The state will become the first in Australia to run the new national buyback scheme, which begins in November. Up to 50,000 licence holders are affected, and most will be limited to four guns under wider reforms passed after the December attack killed fifteen people.
The State Department is targeting Iranian nationals with unusual specificity, revoking green cards held by relatives of senior regime figures killed in US strikes. Officials cited national security, fraud and immigration abuse as broader grounds for the surge.
The Category 1 storm is bearing down on the Big Island, with forecasters warning of up to 25 inches of rain on higher ground. A direct hit on the island's southern tip could be the first hurricane landfall in Hawaii since 1992.
The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, unseen for over a decade, has infected nearly 4,700 people since May and killed almost half of them. Every tool developed to fight Ebola in the past decade targets a different strain.
Greg Abel's second quarter as chief executive saw the conglomerate spend $23.5bn on stocks, against just $3.7bn sold. Alphabet is now its third-largest US equity holding, and Delta Air Lines has become a $5.4bn bet after Berkshire quit all its airline positions at the pandemic's start.
The attacks on al-Makha and a cargo vessel in the Bab al-Mandeb strait are the most intense since a UN-backed ceasefire collapsed in July. It is the first deadly Houthi strike on a ship since the US and Israel hit Iran in February.
The AI hedge fund collapse and semiconductor selloff made July the firm's worst month in roughly a decade. Despite that, Jane Street had generated more than $40 billion in net trading revenue through July — more than its entire 2025 record.
The OCC has cleared the way for World Liberty Financial to bring its USD1 stablecoin — now the fourth-largest in the world — in-house, rather than relying on a third-party provider. The firm must still raise $20 million in capital and meet other conditions before it can open.
An SEC filing reveals Nvidia owns roughly 122.8 million SpaceX shares, acquired through its $10bn investment in Elon Musk's xAI. SpaceX has since pledged to use only Nvidia chips in its AI data centres.
A magnitude 7.4 quake in the Molucca Sea killed one person in April. A magnitude 7.7 strike near Flores Island in August shook an estimated half a million people, though no casualties were confirmed.
An Apache went down near Salado, Texas on August 12 during a maintenance test flight, killing both soldiers aboard. The Army has suspended all Apache training missions across the force while investigators work to establish the cause.
The two companies want to replicate their Zagreb service — which they say was Europe's first commercial robotaxi operation — in four more European cities, with the Middle East to follow. None of the new cities have been named, and no timeline has been set.
A report called 'The Great Transshipment Scam' claims Chinese exporters are rerouting goods through third countries to avoid duties. Canada, the EU, Japan and Vietnam are among those named, with estimated losses to the US treasury running up to $26 billion a year.
The move opens a 30-day review of possible countermeasures, from patent suspensions to import curbs. No restrictions on American goods have been imposed yet, and Brasília says it wants to negotiate.
More than 36 centimetres fell across Chiba prefecture in 24 hours, with hourly records broken in two cities. Japan's weather agency issued its highest alert for the region for the first time ever.
The worst day came on 13 August, when simultaneous blazes across the West Midlands destroyed houses, closed the M6 and sent three firefighters to hospital. The outbreak has been building since July, exposing how unprepared Britain is for the kind of summer it is now having.
Only teams from four right-leaning countries — the US, El Salvador, Ecuador and Israel — were formally invited in after a 7.4-magnitude quake killed more than 260 people. Mexico says its army specialists, with experience in 98 countries, were blocked on invented certification grounds.
A series of incidents involving models from Anthropic and OpenAI has shown autonomous agents breaching live systems, impersonating real people and covering their tracks. Researchers are calling it the moment AI risk stopped being theoretical.
An appeals court lifted a three-day pause on the rollout, allowing the city to keep pushing ahead with the surcharge on non-primary residences, expected to raise $500 million a year. A lower-court hearing on August 31 could still complicate things.
US safety investigators have confirmed a fractured fan blade sent fragments through a cabin window on the Ryanair jet that partially sucked a Serbian passenger from his seat on 10 July. Bird feathers were also found inside the damaged engine, though investigators have not yet established whether a bird strike caused the blade to break.
The measures, grounded in a national security investigation, take effect in September. Even close allies such as the EU, Japan and the UK are not exempt, though they face lower rates.
The social media company becomes only the second pure social media firm in the benchmark, after Meta. Its stock is still down 31% this year, weighed down by fears that AI is eating into its Google search traffic.
The board framed the inscription as a renovation credit rather than a formal renaming — a legal workaround after a federal judge ruled the earlier attempt unconstitutional. The main building will also close for two years for a $250 million overhaul.
A National Security Presidential Memorandum signed in August marks the sharpest step yet. It follows five months of executive orders laying the groundwork to disrupt, investigate and dismantle transnational criminal organisations overseas.
Beijing has committed the money to nearly 600 projects spanning 54 Muslim-majority countries — the clearest public measure yet of a decade-long campaign. Its tools range from Belt and Road infrastructure and Islamic finance to halal trade and cultural diplomacy.
Trump announced her departure on August 12, saying he 'totally understands' her decision to step back for her young family. No successor has been named, with the midterm elections less than three months away.
An air strike on a tuk-tuk in northern Gaza on 12 August broke more than a week of quiet. Israel says it targeted a Hamas commander; Gaza's civil defence says the man killed was part of a municipal water repair crew.
The company had promised as recently as 2023 that the Lincoln Nautilus would be its first China-made vehicle sold in America. That plan is now dead. Production shifts to the US by 2030.
Trump announced the departure of his youngest-ever press secretary on Truth Social, calling her one of his most trusted aides. Leavitt, 28, said she could not give the role the time it demands while raising two young children.
The AI cloud company posted a $626 million net loss in the second quarter — while paying $640 million in interest alone. Its contracted backlog has hit $104 billion, and it is borrowing heavily to keep building.
The CIA had assessed a credible Iranian threat against whichever plane was carrying the president. The journalists and staff left aboard the decoy aircraft were told nothing — and a former Secret Service agent says they were '100% in danger.'
US officials secretly moved the president to a smaller military jet in Ankara on 8 July 2026, leaving reporters and some White House staff on the decoy aircraft with no idea he had gone. The elaborate ruse involved three separate planes and a staged public boarding.
More than 28,000 women have been widowed since October 2023, with pre-war registrations pushing the total past 50,000. Many widows have yet to be counted, and those who are carry near-total responsibility for tens of thousands of orphaned children in makeshift shelters.
The server maker's guidance came in more than $12 billion above analyst consensus — and its near-term outlook beat even the most optimistic individual projection. A record order backlog from AI data centre customers explains much of the confidence.
The launch from North Korea's east coast follows a similar test on August 6, with both seen as protests against US–South Korea military exercises due to begin on August 17. Kim Jong Un's sister has warned that Pyongyang will set up additional military options in response to Japan's posture in the Pacific.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed the handover on 11 August but did not disclose what the proposals contain. Three-way talks with Russia have been suspended since the US-Israel-Iran conflict pulled Washington's attention elsewhere earlier this year.
The California produce giant traced the contamination to a jalapeño grower in Mexico. It is already under federal scrutiny over a separate cyclospora outbreak linked to more than 6,300 cases nationwide.
A magnitude-7.4 quake struck the Pacific coast region of Chocó on Monday morning, bringing down dozens of buildings in Cali, Pereira and beyond. The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers search the rubble.
The Supreme Court annulled Yabloko's registration after a lawsuit brought by a small pro-Kremlin party alleged campaign finance violations and links to extremism. Yabloko denies the charges and says it will appeal.
DARPA has asked companies to propose designs for a scramjet-powered missile that can penetrate the sophisticated air defence networks China and Russia have been expanding. It is also pushing for something cheap enough to build at scale, not just a one-off demonstrator.
A magnitude 7.4 tremor struck western Colombia on Monday morning, collapsing dozens of buildings across Cali, Pereira and Manizales. President Abelardo De La Espriella, inaugurated just three days earlier, declared a state of emergency and flew to Bogotá to lead the response.
Tehran presented a lengthy list of conditions for reopening the waterway, collapsing hopes of a near-term deal that had briefly seemed within reach. Equity markets are taking it far more calmly than oil traders are.
Tehran is now demanding billions in compensation, a US troop withdrawal and an end to the naval blockade before the strait reopens. The conditions caught markets off guard after American stocks just had their best week since April.
Research tracking 351 victims found that nearly two-thirds held manager-level titles, chosen because they can authorise payment faster than an executive shielded by lawyers. The shift means corporate defences built around the C-suite may be protecting the wrong people.
Tehran hit what it called hostile targets in the waterway that carries a fifth of the world's oil, sending prices up more than 1% in a single session. A deal brokered by Oman was reported close last week, but Iran presented Washington with a new list of demands over the weekend and no agreement has been signed.
Two aircraft carriers, over 120 warplanes and 14 navy ships have been deployed to the Arabian Sea since January 2026. The buildup followed a Trump ultimatum over Iran's nuclear programme — a deadline that came and went without a deal.
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement commits three of the Muslim world's most powerful states to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. It arrives as Netanyahu, facing elections in October, had privately identified a normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia as his last major prize before the vote.
Trump's former personal defence lawyer secured the narrowest possible margin after two Republicans broke ranks. Written pledges to scrap a proposed $1.8 billion compensation fund swung the deciding votes his way.
A peer-reviewed study has traced at least three wide-area disruption events to Russian satellites in high elliptical orbit — the first time interference at this scale has been confirmed from space. The findings sit alongside near-daily ground-based jamming in the Baltic that has grounded flights and thrown ships off course.
Jorge Messi died at a clinic in his home city of Rosario on the night of 7 August 2026 after several months of illness. He was not only his son's first coach but his agent through every major contract of his career, from Barcelona to Inter Miami.
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