🚢 While oil tankers get blacklisted and price caps make headlines, Russia’s shadow fleet sails on – powered not by steel, but by people. 🕵️‍️ New investigation by Dallas reveals that behind the scenes, a web of Russian crewing firms recruits, pays, and papers over the human

Another wild scoop on NPR from Tom Dreisbach: Video shows a man on Jan. 6 shouting for the crowd to kill police: “Kill ‘em!” He admitted saying it. One of Trump’s first acts in office was to cancel his trial and hire him for a job at the Justice Department.

Leaked draft reports show the Trump administration is planning to eliminate or downplay accounts of prisoner abuse, corruption, LGBTQ+ discrimination and other alleged abuses. Adam Taylor Hannah Natanson John Hudson washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Putin suggests meeting Trump in UAE as Kremlin senses advantage washingtonpost.com/world/2025/08/…

Excellent analysis of the risks of Trump-Putin meeting

... presidential summits “are most successful when they are used to deliver tangible outcomes ... Standing next to Putin is a giant gift to Russia’s imperial dictator ... “I hope Trump expects to get something valuable in return. A ‘good meeting’ is not enough.”

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with U.S. President’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington. Prior to the meeting, a “Memorandum of Cooperation” was signed between SOCAR and ExxonMobil in the presence of President Ilham Aliyev and Special Envoy Steve

Reporter: Does Putin have to meet with Zelensky before you meet with Putin? President Trump: No.

Trump now says Putin doesn’t have to meet with Zelensky.

So Vladimir Putin, who has an ICC warrant out for his arrest, gets a meeting with the U.S. president on U.S. soil without having to give up or even promise anything—after ignoring and insulting Trump. One more win for Putin, one more loss for Trump.

Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens. nytimes.com/2025/08/08/tec…

We're all responding to a series of sometimes-contradictory leaks, hints and suppositions regarding the Trump-Putin talks (eg, that 'Trump won't meet Putin unless he agrees to meet Zelelsnky first' line that came and went). To a degree, this is inevitable, but I suspect it also

No matter what deal Trump may plan in Alaska with Putin, it will be worthless without Ukraine and Europe agreeing. And the U.S. knows that.

The U.S. envoy is grossly incompetent and his confusion is causing diplomatic crises. wsj.com/world/ukraine-…

This is deeply damaging incompetence. Witkoff should finally start taking a notetaker from the U.S. embassy for future meetings. That's how professional diplomacy works.

We all laugh and roll our eyes and yet I am trying to think what the reaction -especially from rightwing media - would have been in 2013 if Obama had showed a foreign dictator around the White House while chuckling and revealing 2016 *third term* merch to him hidden in a closet.

“Earned?” Since when do US diplomats describe imperial invasion and occupation in this way? Shocking.

105 years ago Latvia and Soviet Russia signed Peace Treaty, recognising the independence and sovereignty of 🇱🇻. 20 years later Kremlin brutally violated the treaty occupying Latvia. Treaty is valid and relevant also today but one must keep in mind that 🇷🇺 has bad legal record.

Trump’s supporters keep touting a Nobel peace prize, often citing the DRC/Rwanda deal ending a 30-year war. But it never held according to this reporting. Massacres of women and children by Rwandan backed rebels go on. The Globe and Mail theglobeandmail.com/world/article-…

Incredible video of China ramming its own vessel while chading the Philippine Coast Guard in the South China Sea.