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China has removed two top generals from its highest military command body and expelled two other senior commanders from a Communist Party-controlled legislature, as turbulence continues within the upper echelon of the country's armed forces.Once China's No. 1 general, Zhang Youxia, has been removed from the national Central Military Commission (CMC), according to a brief statement issued by the National People's Congress Standing Committee via state media Xinhua on Aug. 28.The statement didn't offer any reason for the swift dismissal of Zhang, who had served as vice chair of the national CMC since 2018.Zhang, also a member of the Chinese...

I reported on Thursday that there was a massive deal in the offing to acquire an interest in Venezuela's oil fields that could help guarantee our energy security. Now, both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have weighed in, saying they pulled it off and the deal is official. Trump said in a Truth Social post that they'd secured "majority control" over 65 billion barrels; it "more than doubles" our reserves and will "substantially lower gas prices." 🚨 BREAKING NEWS pic.twitter.com/vkRV9oOetV— Department of State (@StateDept) August 28, 2026BREAKING NEWS: The United States of America has just entered...

The U.S. military is experiencing a “beyond critical” shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe largely driven by President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, a U.S. defense official in Europe and a NATO official told The Associated Press, raising concerns about vulnerabilities in NATO countries to a potential Russian attack. The U.S. defense official said the most concerning shortfall involves Patriot missile interceptors, which can shoot down Russia’s high-speed ballistic missiles. The NATO official confirmed the low inventories of Patriots among American and NATO forces in Europe. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. In the...

President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s oil reserves. Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez. “The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump wrote.

Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to the land of my childhood and youth exposed me to a culture very different from the one that nurtured me. Growing up as a grammar schoolboy in 1970s and ’80s England, I absorbed the importance of personal restraint; emotional self-control in public; privacy; acting with honesty and fairness, even to one’s own hurt; and respecting others regardless of their social status or opinions. At the level of society, such personal values...

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski stated at NATO headquarters in Brussels that Warsaw does not want allied nuclear weapons stationed on its soil, according to Politico on August 27. This statement represents the most explicit position expressed by Polish authorities on the matter to date. Zalewski emphasized that while Poland intends to remain an active participant in NATO's collective nuclear deterrence framework, that role does not require physical deployment of nuclear warheads within Polish borders. “I would like to state clearly and openly: Poland does not want to have nuclear warheads on its territory. We want to participate in...

The official in charge of President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan for Gaza criticized Israel on Wednesday for its attacks on the war-battered Palestinian territory and warned that the alternative to the U.S. proposal is the next war. Nikolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace high representative, insisted to the U.N. Security Council that Trump’s 20-point plan has not stalled and “has moved from the negotiating table to the engineering table.” The militant group Hamas has agreed to the proposal’s key provision to disarm and turn Gaza over to civilian rule, he said. But Israel’s ongoing strikes since last October’s ceasefire are...

The Global Government Affairs team over at X dropped a bombshell Thursday night, revealing that the X Safety team had uncovered proof positive of a foreign influence campaign targeting the build out of AI and data centers in the United States. It turns out that, after launching an investigation, the team uncovered a massive bot farm consisting of roughly 200,000 "suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts," including hundreds that appear to have been trying to manipulate debate in the U.S. over artificial intelligence, data centers, and the associated energy costs. ... According to X, about 200 accounts within the bot farm network...

Hundreds of Ceuta residents blocked Red Cross vehicles carrying food to illegal migrants on Thursday, 27 August, before pushing through police lines, dismantling makeshift settlements and setting migrant encampments on fire, as anger over the thousands who remain in the Spanish enclave after July’s mass invasion spilled into a third consecutive day of unrest. The confrontation began near Benítez beach, where residents sat across the road for more than two hours to prevent Red Cross vehicles from reaching El Trampolín, one of the principal improvised migrant camps. Protesters carrying Spanish and Ceuta flags demanded the illegal migrants’ removal, chanting ‘Ceuta...

King Harald V of Norway, Europe’s oldest monarch, has died at the age of 89, after 35 years on the throne. Harald is succeeded as monarch by his son Haakon. He leaves his wife of 57 years, Queen Sonja, two children, and five grandchildren. His granddaughter Ingrid Alexandra now becomes heir to the Norwegian throne. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said, “a whole nation is in mourning” after Harald’s death, with the people of Norway “left with a deep sense of gratitude for a long life in the service of Norway.” The government declared a national period of mourning,...

We reported earlier on 14 recent wins that are going to help the country, from immigration actions to economic actions. But now there's a new report from two U.S. officials about a deal that's in the offing. "Calling this deal huge would be an understatement," one of the officials said. "It is massive."The Trump administration is in talks with Venezuela's interim government about taking an ownership stake in the South American country's enormous oil resources, two U.S. officials tell Axios.Why it matters: The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the...

Americans define being truly American more by a person's respect for political institutions and laws than by their birthplace or religion, the August 7 - 10 Economist / YouGov Poll finds.The survey asked Americans how important each of five things is for being truly American, and many put civic obligations ahead of birthplace or religion: 67% say it is very important to respect American political institutions and laws and 63% say the same about having American citizenship. 54% say it is very important to speak English; fewer say it is very important to have been born in the U.S. (31%)...

So close, and yet so far. Only last week, Canada and the US were finally on the cusp of reaching a long awaited trade deal. Already Trump had announced the joyous news on Truth Social, already Canadian prime minister Mark Carney had celebrated securing the “best terms” for Canada and called for provinces to lift the ban on US alcohol. Then, somehow, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. Late last Friday, Carney told Canadian negotiators to walk away, saying Washington was offering “a bad deal.” Trump promptly reimposed the 50 percent tariffs on goods imported from Canada that...

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe paid an unannounced visit to Moscow yesterday, spending eight hours in the Russian capital before returning to the US. Though he visited the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that they had met – though Ratcliffe certainly spoke to his counterpart Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR external intelligence service, and other top Russian security officials. The list of topics urgent enough to prompt the first personal visit of a US cabinet-level official to the Kremlin in six months is short. Ratcliffe could have been responding to reports of a planned Russian escalation...

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin ​will not attack a NATO country, and he played down media ‌reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe warned Russian officials against such an attack earlier in the week. "He's not going to attack a NATO territory," Trump said of the Russian leader while speaking to reporters ​in the Oval Office. Earlier in the day, Trump told Axios in a ​phone interview that there would be no such attack, and that Ratcliffe, who ⁠flew to Russia on Tuesday to meet briefly with intelligence counterparts, had not ​been dispatched to...

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The move comes amid the president’s repeated threats and taunts that he would do so amid his escalating trade war with Canada. “This is official, effective immediately,” Trump said after signing the order in the Oval Office. The president said he’d “filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else” for the name change. “We notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So we’ve done everything that you have to do, and this is official, effective immediately,” he said. The order says...

WASHINGTON — A purported deal between Iran and Oman to control the Strait of Hormuz and share revenue from fees is “not even close to done” and would be meaningless so long as President Trump’s blockade of Iran remains in effect, a US official told The Post. A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed Wednesday that the two nations had agreed to terms to control the shipping bottleneck — but The Post’s source said that ill-defined terms are still believed to lack full approval from Iran’s leadership. “The deals don’t mean anything unless we approve it. It...

Hundreds of police officers from across England have been drafted in to restore order in Middlesbrough amid fears the town is on the brink of descending into a gang war. Violence, believed to be linked to five young men who were killed in a wrong-way crash on the A66 on Saturday, has spiralled across Teesside. This afternoon, armed police swarmed a house on the Bankfield estate in Eston after a 39-year-old man was injured in a stabbing. A house was also rammed by a vehicle this morning in South Bank. The suspected knife attack took place just down the road...

After completing final assembly, the aircraft recently made its way to Aircraft Final Finishes, where it will receive its paint and finishes, including the stealth coating that helps reduce its radar signature.

A bipartisan six-member delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives met with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Astana on August 25, two days after Kazakhstan elected the first members of its new unicameral Kurultai. Tokayev called the timing symbolic and proposed closer dialogue between Congress and the new legislature. The delegation was led by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith and included Greg Murphy, Carol Miller, Ronny Jackson, Wesley Bell, and Ed Case. Smith said President Donald Trump had called him at 2 a.m., several hours before the meeting. Trump sent his regards, expressed appreciation for his relationship with...