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Russia’s war against Ukraine

Infantrymen of the operational battalion of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, “Khartiia,” practice airborne skills using an American M113 tracked armored personnel carrier in Kharkiv Oblast on Aug. 29, 2025. (Viacheslav Madiievskyi / Ukrinform / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Ukraine liberates village of Novoekonomichne in Donetsk Oblast, General Staff says. Ukrainian assault groups spent two weeks fighting to liberate the settlement, raising the national flag in the village center on Aug. 31, according to the General Staff.

Russian front-line advances have slowed down in August, monitoring group says. The pace of Russia’s advance in Ukraine dropped by 18% in August, with Russian forces occupying 464 square kilometers of territory.

Russian strikes hit Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa oblasts, causing fires and casualties. In Kyiv Oblast, a Russian drone strike hit the Bila Tserkva community, killing one person and wounding others, Secretary of the Bila Tserkva City Council Volodymyr Vovkotrub said.

Russian forces allegedly preparing major assault toward Siversk in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine’s military says. Siversk, Russia’s new potential target, lies about 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of Russian-occupied territory and just south of the contested Serebrianskyi Forest.

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Zelensky to reportedly meet European leaders in Paris on Sept. 4. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to broker a swift peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, is not expected to attend the Paris meeting at the moment, a source told AFP.

Ukraine’s SBU files in absentia notice of suspicion against Kadyrov for war crimes. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced on Sept. 1 that it had charged Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in absentia with war crimes against Ukrainian soldiers.

Russian map behind top general hints at ambitions to seize Ukraine’s Odesa, Kharkiv. While Moscow has publicly insisted on full control of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, the map indicated possible plans extending to Odesa and Kharkiv, neither of which had been included in earlier demands.

Zelensky announces faster air defense deliveries after deadly Russian strikes. “We are accelerating the supply of additional air defense systems to enhance protection against missiles,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

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Ukraine war latest: Ukraine liberates another village in Donetsk Oblast amid ongoing Russian offensive

Ukraine’s 425th Regiment has liberated the village of Novoekonomichne in Donetsk Oblast and raised the national flag, the General Staff announced on Sept. 1.

Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images

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Russia-Ukraine naval drone arms race could ‘usher in a new era of warfare’

After a string of devastating Ukrainian strikes that crippled much of its Black Sea Fleet, Russia is now turning to naval drones in a bid to rebuild its presence and adapt to a new phase of maritime warfare.

Photo: Stringer / AFP via Getty Images

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As Putin shakes hands with Modi, Xi, here’s the state of Russia’s allies

After three years of international isolation, Russian President Vladimir Putin is back at the forefront of the global stage.

Photo: Gavriil Grigorov / Pool / AFP via Getty Images

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From Crimea to Donbas, Russia’s “peace” has always meant more war. We’re here in Ukraine to give the world a reality check. Support independent journalism in this critical moment.

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Human cost of Russia’s war

General Staff: Russia has lost 1,083,790 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022.

The number includes 800 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.

International response

US Treasury’s Bessent says ‘despicable‘ Russian bombing campaign against Ukraine puts all sanctions options on the table. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Sept. 1 that the Trump administration is considering new sanctions on Russia after Moscow intensified strikes on Ukraine despite recent peace talks.

Slovak PM Fico plans meetings with Putin, Zelensky this week. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced on Sept. 1 that he will visit China to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Slovakia.

Key Chinese bank reportedly halts Russia payments after EU sanctions.

Heihe, a small rural lender, was one of the last Chinese banks willing to process transactions for Russian non-sanctioned credit organizations after larger Chinese banks cut off such services.

EU considers tighter rules to block Russian gas after 2027 ban, Bloomberg reports. The plan specifically raises concerns over gas shipped through TurkStream, the pipeline linking Russia with Southeast Europe.

Russia’s oil infrastructure under fire | Ukraine This Week

In other news

Kyiv names managers for US-Ukraine investment fund ahead of first meeting. The announcement sets the stage for the fund to become functional after four months of preparation by America’s International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Ukraine’s Support Public-Private Partnership Agency (PPP Agency).

Suspected Russian jamming hits von der Leyen’s plane during Bulgaria visit. “We can confirm there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safe,” European Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta confirmed for the Kyiv Independent.

Kim Jong Un travels to China to join Xi, Putin at WWII anniversary events. Photographs published by North Korean media showed Kim with senior officials, including Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, inside his dark green armored train.

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The livestock industry — not just Fairlife — has long portrayed dairy as an essential, wholesome product from cows who just happen to be producing milk on quaint, green pastures. But cows on dairy farms, even when they’re not overtly abused like those seen in undercover investigations into Fairlife, still face severe welfare issues because of the very nature of dairy production.

Today’s cows have been bred to produce far more milk than they naturally would, which greatly taxes their bodies. They’re (artificially) impregnated each year — another physical stressor — to induce milk production. After they give birth, their calves are quickly taken away so that humans can take their mothers’ milk.

Newborn calves are then confined alone in tiny hutches. Females go on to become dairy cows once they’re sexually mature, while the male calves are dehorned and castrated — often without pain relief — and sold off to become veal or beef.

Most dairy cows have little to no access to pasture and spend their lives confined indoors or on dirt feedlots. Naturally, they might live to 15 to 20 years of age, but by 5 or 6 years old, when bodies give out and their milk yield wanes, they’re sent off to slaughter.

Many of these practices have become standard on dairy farms of all sizes — not just on mega dairies. It’s a reality far different from what consumers often see in advertisements and on milk bottles.

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For the American middle class, it has been a summer of cooling confidence.

Consumer sentiment dropped nearly 6% in August, after trending up in June and July, according to a closely watched index from the University of Michigan. Pessimism about the job market increased, with more people surveyed saying they expect their income to decline, according to polling done by think tank the Conference Board.

The middle class—generally considered to include households making roughly $53,000 to $161,000 a year—is playing an outsize role in that waning optimism. After months of tracking high-income earners’ increasing confidence about the economy, households making between $50,000 and $100,000 made an abrupt about-face in June. They now more closely resemble low-income earners’ gloomier views, according to surveys done by Morning Consult, a data-intelligence firm.

“There was a period of time, briefly, where the middle-income consumer looked like they were being dragged up by all that was going well in the world,” said John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult. “Then things fell off a cliff.”

Evidence of a squeezed middle class is mounting. Several CEOs across the dining, retail, fashion and airline industries have said their middle-class customers are increasingly strapped, even as high earners keep on buying.

Well, I guess one crisis averted.

Last summer, two of the most influential figures in modern media — Liberty Global’s John Malone and Fox Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch — held private discussions about combining Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) with Fox Corporation, a move that could have reshaped the global media landscape, according to a report published this weekend.

The discussions were revealed in a lengthy profile published by the Financial Times after they secured an interview with Malone earlier this year. Malone is currently on a press engagement tour in order to promote his new memoir, “Born to Be Wired,” written with his “Cable Cowboy” biographer Mark Robichaux.

Malone said the deal made sense, but ultimately didn’t come to pass because both sides could not figure out how to pair cable news channels Fox News and CNN together. CNN, founded by Ted Turner in the 1980s, is now owned by Warner Bros Discovery; Murdoch launched Fox News as an alternative to CNN in the 1990s, presenting news through a right-of-center lens and growing it into the highest-rated cable news channel in America.

It was the hottest day of the year so far when the central air conditioning started blowing hot air in the mobile home where Richard Chamblee lived in Bullhead City, Arizona, with his wife, children, and half a dozen cats and dogs.

It was only mid-June but the heat was insufferable, particularly for Chamblee, who was clinically obese and bed-bound in the living room as the temperature hit 115F (46C) in the desert city – situated 100 miles (160km) south of Las Vegas on the banks of the Colorado River.

The family could not afford to immediately replace or repair the AC system, so instead they bought a window unit and installed it next to Chamblee’s bed. They positioned fans, ice packs and cold drinks close by in an effort to keep Chamblee cool and hydrated, checking in on him every couple of hours.

But the mobile home is old, open-plan and poorly insulated. Despite their efforts, the temperature hovered close to 100F in the house, according to Chamblee’s son John.

Chamblee overheated and struggled to breathe. His core temperature measured 108F when he was rushed to the emergency room, but doctors were unable to cool him down, according to the death report obtained by the Guardian using the Freedom of Information Act (Foia). Chamblee’s heart stopped working.

We are no longer a functioning society.

atomicpoet.org/media/dd7a25123…

Kraa The Sea Monster (1998) is what happens when Godzilla’s sleazy cousin crawls from a Jersey swamp in a rubber suit that reeks like a stale Domino’s pizza box.

This was Full Moon’s grand attempt to ride the coattails of Godzilla ’98, and they don’t even try to hide it. There’s literally a Godzilla billboard in one of the destruction shots, like the movie itself is sighing, “Yeah, you probably should’ve watched that other garbage instead of this garbage.”

The setup is threadbare: Lord Doom—Doctor Doom’s knockoff brother from a Halloween clearance bin—sends Kraa to stomp Earth into submission. Planet Patrol, a team of photogenic twenty-somethings squeezed into lycra on what looks like a rejected Death Star set, can’t make it to the fight. S

o the job falls to a biker, a waitress, and, best of all, a clam-shaped alien puppet who talks like he’s auditioning for Super Mario Bros. Supposed to land in Italy, he crashes in New Jersey instead, so of course he speaks in a cartoon Italian accent.

And the monster? Kraa ambles through miniatures like he’s shopping for groceries. Sometimes you’ll catch timecode still burned into the frame, or a green screen that never got finished. The rubber suit itself was later sold off to collectors—proof that someone out there paid actual money to own a piece of Full Moon’s sweat-soaked kaiju history.

Planet Patrol could’ve been the saving grace. They’re pretty, they’re in lycra, and they radiate late-night-TV charisma. But they barely show up, leaving us stuck with Earthlings nobody cares about. Worse still, when the monster footage arrives, it’s so bland you almost miss the biker and waitress. Almost.

Here’s the problem: Kraa! isn’t gloriously inept like Plan 9 from Outer Space, and it isn’t stylishly wild like Starcrash. It’s self-aware bad. It winks at you. And nothing kills camp faster than a movie begging to be in on the joke. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the kid in high school rehearsing comebacks in the mirror, never realizing that trying too hard is the least cool move of all.

In the end, Kraa! The Sea Monster is a kaiju flick without menace, a parody without guts, and a spoof without bite. Watch it if you’re curious, but don’t expect “so bad it’s good.” This one’s “so bad it’s boring”—and boring is the monster no one can beat.

Found on movies@piefed.social

The highest-resolution images of a solar flare captured at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm) ever captured may reshape how we understand the Sun’s magnetic architecture—and improve space weather forecasting. Using the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, built and operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO), astronomers captured dark coronal loop strands with unprecedented clarity during the decay phase of an X1.3-class flare on August 8, 2024, at 20:12 UT. The loops averaged 48.2 km in width—perhaps as thin as 21 km—the smallest coronal loops ever imaged. This marks a potential breakthrough in resolving the fundamental scale of solar coronal loops and pushing the limits of flare modeling into an entirely new realm.

Coronal loops are arches of plasma that follow the Sun’s magnetic field lines, often preceding solar flares that trigger sudden releases of energy associated with some of these magnetic field lines twisting and snapping. This burst of energy fuels solar storms that can impact Earth’s critical infrastructure. Astronomers at the Inouye observe sunlight at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm) to view specific features of the Sun, revealing details not visible in other types of solar observations.

Source.

When a team of scientists embarked two years ago on a $1m landmark study of Iowa’s persistent water-quality problems, they knew that the findings would be important to share. High cancer rates amid the state’s inability to stem the tide of pollutants flowing into rivers and lakes was a growing public concern.

But now, after the completed study pointed to agricultural pollution as a significant source of the key US farm state’s water problems, public officials have quietly stripped funding from plans to promote the study findings, according to sources involved in the project.

The report, the results of two years of data analysis, has been highly controversial in Iowa because of the large amount of evidence it cites linking water pollution – and resulting human and environmental health risks – to the state’s economically and politically powerful farm industry.

Supporters of the report said the agricultural industry and allied public officials have tried to downplay the findings for months, and they fear this move is another impediment to change.

"Who cares if we're killing our customer base?"