Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of Russia's liberal opposition party Yabloko, was pronounced guilty of "public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" and sentenced to 11 years and 1 month in a penal colony by a court in Pskov on Monday.

Shlosberg has described the war as a catastrophe for Russia. The Kremlin says he is spreading slanderous lies about the army.

Making his closing statement before the verdict and sentence were read on Monday, Shlosberg maintained his innocence, saying he was the victim of a political trial.

A US Navy destroyer spent four days without power in the South China Sea last month, depriving its crew of hot meals, flushing toilets, and air conditioning, CNN has reported. The report comes as US sailors in the Persian Gulf are facing similar conditions.

The USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, suffered an “engineering casualty involving its generators” while on an exercise in the South China Sea last month, a Navy spokesman told CNN on Monday.

The Benfold lost the ability to maneuver on its own, and lost galley services, toilets, air conditioning, and drinking water, the spokesman said. At the time of the incident, temperatures in the South China Sea averaged between 32 and 37 degrees Celsius.

Humanity has built an extraordinary system for producing and sharing knowledge, yet many people still lack a broad understanding of the systems shaping their lives. That gap is becoming a democratic dilemma.

We live in what is routinely called the knowledge economy. Humanity has never produced, stored or had access to so much knowledge. Yet here is an uncomfortable question: how much does the average person actually know about the world in which they live?

Stewart Sweeney

First Nations witnesses brought Parliament evidence of a terrorist bomb, death threats and lives disfigured by racism. Governments sent empty chairs. The media supplied silence. Canberra showed whose fear merits the machinery of state. Andrew Brown.

Australia does not merely have a hierarchy of grief. It has built a bureaucracy to administer it.

At the top, grief is televised, funded, securitised, furnished with a special envoy and carried into a Royal Commission by the full weight of government. At the bottom, grief is granted a microphone and denied an audience.

On 26 January, a homemade bomb packed with nails and ball bearings was thrown into a crowd of about 2,500 people at a First Nations rally in Perth. By dumb luck or mechanical failure, it did not explode.

When Lars Werner of the "Last Generation" climate activist group glued himself to the road four years ago to protest for greater climate action, Germany had not yet seen 12,500 heat-related deaths (the 2026 toll, so far), or record temperatures across Western Europe, and fully loaded ships were still navigating the Rhine without difficulty.

In Germany, record heat meets climate action fatigue

BY Oliver Pieper

Climate action does not seem to be a priority for the German government — despite record temperatures, heat-related deaths and drought. Why aren't more people taking to the streets in protest?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States spent $21 trillion on its military between 2001 and 2024 (in constant 2024 dollars), equal to the combined military spending of the next 18 countries. 

Iran barely made that list at all, spending only 2 percent of what the U.S. did, and SIPRI estimated Iran’s 2025 military budget at only $7.5 billion. So how is Iran holding its own against the multi-trillion-dollar U.S. war machine?

Except for the unfortunate victims of Western information blackouts and propaganda, it has long been obvious that Ukraine under its leader-beyond-elections Vladimir Zelensky is not a democracy, even by the real world’s low standards. Zelensky’s regime is extremely corrupt, authoritarian, and lethally vicious.

Concentration Camp Ukraine? In a comedian’s dictatorship, a pop singer tells the truth

A rare celebrity outburst has pierced Kiev’s climate of fear, exposing forced abductions, repression and a regime terrified of truth

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

The planned transfer of US-made missiles and other weapons from Türkiye to Ukraine will “inevitably undermine mutual trust” with both Washington and Ankara, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

The US State Department notified Congress earlier this month that it was prepared to authorize the re-export of weapons from Turkish stocks to Ukraine. The package reportedly includes 70 M39 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, 12 M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, more than 2,500 M26 rockets with cluster warheads, and 47,000 203mm cluster artillery shells.

The total value of the proposed transfers is estimated at around $280 million.

Former ambassador Yamagami Shingo is again shaping Australian political debate. His nationalist commentary, partisan interventions and revisionist views deserve scrutiny before his attacks are treated as the voice of Japan.

Yamagami Shingo, once Japanese Ambassador to Australia and now energetic right-wing vlogger, must be laughing up his sleeve. That’s the sleeve where, as he reveals in a recent podcast, he wears a cufflink decorated with the Japanese military flag.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Tired of woke luxuries like port calls, hot water, clean laundry, deodorant and knowing when you're coming home?

Then have we got the vacation for you!

Inspired by reports from families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Newberger’s AI Funnies proudly presents the cruise where 260+ days at sea isn't a problem—it's a feature.

Endless days at sea!
The exclusive Hegseth Meal Plan!
Invigorating cold showers!
Yesterday’s uniform—today!
Freedom from distracting care packages!
And absolutely no pesky shore leave getting in the way of your vacation!

Plus, the whole experience comes with the enthusiastic support of your Commander in Chief.

No return date. No accountability. No hot water. You know—the woke stuff.

Welcome aboard the PETE HEGSETH GETAWAY CRUISE.
(WARNING: THIS IS SATIRE BASED ON REPORTED NEWS)

From a handwritten response in 1911 to the largest single census category today, “no religion” charts a profound shift in Australian identity – shaped by secularisation, migration and changing social attitudes.

When I sat down to fill in my first Australian census in 2026, one question was a familiar one. Back home in India, “What is your religion?” was never really a question – although it is asked in the census.

Afzal Azeem Chowdhary

Last September I made a short video that was by far the most viral piece of content I’ve ever put out.

I can’t trace all the views, but at least a million people watched it across Instagram and TikTok, and possibly elsewhere. Neighbors in Athens, Greece told me they’d come across my face in their feed; Chinese accounts captioned the video and reposted it. I felt like I’d made a dent in the universe and — I’m not going to lie — a little bit special.

It’s Time For Movements To Rethink Social Media

"Until there is convincing evidence that such activity can be undertaken without causing serious or irreversible harm, prudence calls us to exercise great caution."

The Episcopal Conference of the Pacific (CEPAC) expressed this in a pastoral statement issued on Aug. 10 on deep-sea mining, signed by the Conference's President, Archbishop Ryan P. Jimenez of Agaña, Guam, who also serves as President of the Federation of Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO).

Bishops of the Pacific urge caution over deep-sea mining

Some 500 years ago, Jakob Fugger was the richest man alive. The German financed emperors and popes, and reshaped global trade and banking to set the economic course for the modern world.

For Greg Steinmetz, the Augsburg, Germany-born Jakob Fugger was "the first person to conduct trade on a truly global scale."

Steinmetz, a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, profiled Fugger in the 2015 biography The Richest Man Who Ever Lived.

How the world's first global trader, Jakob Fugger, got rich

BY Thomas Kohlmann