Top World News
South Korean airport becomes busiest in world for global traffic amid Iran war
Incheon airport had 38.39m international passengers in first half of 2026, as traffic diverted from Middle East hubsSouth Korea’s Incheon airport has become the world’s busiest airport for international passengers, in part owing to disruption in the Middle East caused by the Iran war.The airport, South Korea’s main gateway, about 30 miles (48km) west of Seoul, handled 38.39 million international passengers in the first half of 2026, according to preliminary figures compiled by the Airports Council International (ACI), the global trade body for airports. Continue reading...
Zambia elections haunted by ghost of incumbent president’s arch-rival
Hakainde Hichilema is bidding for second term, but feud between him and family of Edgar Lungu, who died in 2025, continuesAs Zambians go to the polls on Thursday, the ghost of the current president’s predecessor hangs over the elections.Hakainde Hichilema, 64, is bidding for a second term leading the southern African country after defeating his arch-rival Edgar Lungu by a landslide in 2021. Continue reading...
Kash Patel vows to carry out 'Russia's bidding in plain sight' in new letter: legal expert
FBI Director Kash Patel pledged to investigate agents who caught Russians trying to frame Democrats before 2020, a new report reveals.According to national security writer Marcy Wheeler, an unsigned, undated letter attributed to Patel is the "centerpiece" of a propaganda push, and she flagged in a Wednesday post on her legal blog emptywheel that it was notably not written on FBI stationery.In the letter, Patel says he "immediately disbanded" the bureau's Foreign Influence Task Force upon taking over as director, and that his team is now probing whether the unit improperly zeroed in on informants tied to the Bidens."We remain concerned that defensive briefings to Congress may have been overly focused on just Biden and Ukraine rather than the balanced picture of all foreign threats," the letter reads.Patel added that although "these alleged activities occurred during a different era within the Bureau," his team is "firmly committed to identifying, investigating, and holding accountable all abuses."The task force is the same unit that flagged efforts by John Solomon and Rudy Giuliani to launder foreign influence operations targeting Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 vote, according to Wheeler. The letter's premise, she wrote, rests on a spreadsheet from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that was released by Bill Pulte. It also revives claims from discredited informants, including Alexander Smirnov.The influence campaign lands as Patel prepares for a reported trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg on October 14-15 and just weeks before the midterms.Wheeler mentioned that a Russian outlet with a history of airing material from the FSB, the Russian security service, published a piece that openly speculated this week about Patel receiving kompromat on Democrats and serving as a backchannel to Vladimir Putin."They're just promising to do Russia's bidding in plain sight," Wheeler wrote.
Suspicious details of Trump's secret plane swap revealed by Air Force One photographer
A New York Times photographer on Wednesday revealed several suspicious new details in President Donald Trump's plane swap amid a threat.Douglas Mills, a photojournalist who was on Air Force One with the press corps as the group headed back from Turkey after a NATO summit in July with Trump and several administration officials, told CNN's Erin Burnett the incident was "alarming" after learning Trump had left the plane in a catering truck.Burnett mentioned that Mills and other reporters were asked to lower their window shades. And in an interview with reporters after that flight, Trump had commented specifically on window shades."Probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleazebags that we have to deal with, it has to be closed," Trump said. "But if I go, you go, right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions?"Mills said that comment now has a different meaning."In hindsight, I think back on that, wow, if he didn't, why did they just put our shades down and not his shades up in the front of the plane? So that was kind of a red flag to me mentally," Mills said. "I felt like obviously we were a decoy. And in that moment, we didn't know all the facts that we know now."Burnett pointed to the window shades, asking if that was a potential giveaway that something irregular was happening."Maybe that's why they had to put your window shades down, right? Because they didn't want you to see the catering," she said. "That's exactly right," Mills said."By the time we got to the front of the plane, I had taken those pictures of the catering truck on the backside of the plane as we were motoring up," he said. "And I was shooting pictures through the van that we were driving in. And once we got up and looked out and saw the president was already on board, that kind of also said to me something's going on." This foreign visit was atypical, and Trump ditched his usual goodbye."But no, none of that happened this time," Mills said. "He went up the steps and was on there before we ever got out of our cars. It was unusual. And then once we got up on the plane and the shades had to go down, there were just a lot of questions throughout. And now in hindsight, it was one of those things as a reporter, photographer, you know, that we probably should have been asking more questions about because a lot of things didn't fit right."
Trump's 'sick and demeaning moment' revealed his greatest fear: Ex-GOP strategist
Former Republican insider Steve Schmidt argued on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's biggest fear is someone who tries to hold him accountable — like CNN's Kaitlan Collins.In his podcast and video series "The Warning," the co-founder of the anti-Trump organization, The Lincoln Project, compared Trump's "Trojan horse" move in Turkey, where he left journalists and his own aides as "bait on the chum plane" under a credible threat, to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. He juxtaposed this with the moment FDR learned that a torpedo was fired at the USS Iowa, where he rushed to the rail to see it coming towards the ship. "When he was aboard a presidential aircraft flying with Dwight Eisenhower sitting next to him shortly after giving him command of the D-Day operation with the hydraulics out on the airplane, FDR lit a cigarette, threw his head back and laughed at all of it," Schmidt said, citing a book from Rick Atkinson that describes the incident."He says we'll see how good those Army Air Corps pilots are and has a big laugh," Schmidt said. "That's what courage under fire looks like. That's what cool under fire looks like. But this man, intimidated by Kaitlan Collins, is no FDR. He's no Eisenhower. He's the weakest American president in history, with a yellow stain as wide as his ankles running down the middle of his back. This is a fearful man, and you see it all the time."As Trump made his way off Air Force One with a catering cart, it revealed more about him "as an obese American fascist," Schmidt explained. And his reaction after the reports surfaced was telling."Look at this decaying geriatric sloth trying to make it up these stairs," Schmidt said. "Look at him coming down. Look at the bruising on his hand, the skin color, the preposterous wig. Decrepitude and decay etched all over his body and face. And we, the people, are his prisoners in a dungeon of rot and American decay.""With Pete Hegseth and little Marco as bait and Donald Trump safe on his way back to the loving arms of Melania," Schmidt added, mocking Trump. "What a sick and demeaning moment, perhaps in all the history of the country, the lowest in the history of the degraded American presidency."
Former Mexican governor charged in case of 43 students who vanished in 2014
Ángel Aguirre indicted in case that rocked Mexico and became symbol of its brutal cartel violenceThe former governor of Guerrero state in Mexico has been formally charged over his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, a case that has become a symbol of the country’s brutal cartel violence and government impunity.Ángel Aguirre, who was arrested last week, is accused of forced disappearance and obstruction of justice for ordering the destruction of surveillance tapes that may have shed light on what happened to the students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college on the night of 26 September 2014. Continue reading...
Outrage as Trump admin accused of 'inventing' terror threat to target charities
A new report issued by the State Department lays out an alarming blueprint for criminalizing dissent against the Trump administration through a dubious link to Cuban foreign subversion, critics say.The July 20 release of the State Department report "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism" comes on the heels of a global gathering of counterterrorism officials in Washington hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to enlist U.S. allies in cracking down on a perceived global left-wing terrorism threat.The Cuba report posits that “a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States” by the beleaguered communist nation through espionage and terrorism is responsible for sustaining and shaping the political left in the United States today, including “antifa” and a host of “leftist nonprofits, anti-ICE collectives, social groups and Marxist militant organizations.”In a chapter titled “Front Groups & Fellow Travelers,” the report spotlights an array of domestic leftist groups calling on the U.S. to lift the embargo against Cuba and opposing the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort through militarized surges by federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.While raising the specter of terrorism and espionage in two chapters dedicated to each subject, the report highlights a range of activities by U.S. activist groups, including registered charities.None of the activities are criminal. They include organizing initiatives, political advocacy, aid convoys, work stoppages, campaigns for political office, monitoring of law enforcement, and raising bail funds to support protesters. Rubio asserted a link between Cuba and domestic protest groups during his remarks at the opening of the July 16 Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Violence."The Cuban regime’s sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere,” he said. “And it remains inextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the West."Critics charge that the report, coupled with Rubio’s effort to mobilize a global counterterrorism coalition against the left, poses a threat to Americans’ constitutional rights. By tying domestic dissent to national security, critics say, the Trump administration could justify more robust surveillance measures, along with sanctions, that aren’t available under the constitutional safeguards that typically limit domestic law enforcement.“I think the concern is they’re hyping fears of a foreign threat to tie in actors here on domestic soil,” Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior professional staff member on the House Jan. 6th Committee and helped write its final report on the attack on the U.S. Capitol, told Raw Story. “Whether they can do that with Cuban communists or a foreign antifa group, they can use counterterrorism tools on American people: surveillance, de-banking, and other strong counterterrorism tools.”Joscelyn added that there is no evidence of an actual “foreign nexus” to justify deploying counterterrorism measures against domestic opponents of the Trump administration, so “they’re inventing one because they don’t have one.”The State Department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.Among other U.S. organizations, the State Department report targets the National Network on Cuba, which it describes as “a key node for coordination between the Cuban regime and the American far left.” The report raises an alarm about a “National Rapid Response Plan” distributed by the network in June, which the State Department describes as “a detailed strategy for activating and launching ‘coordinated nationwide actions’ against federal institutions, U.S. military bases, and ICE detention centers and field offices in the United States within 24 hours of U.S. military action… against Cuba.”But the State Department report omits any mention of the types of actions that are outlined in the plan. Far from being terrorist strikes as the report insinuates, they are familiar protest activities, including rallies, meetings, art builds, flyering, and banner drops. Also belying any notion of a call for criminal violence, the document recommends: “Make your plan now and start publicizing it.”In another example, the report targets the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, a registered charity which has a history of sending humanitarian aid and solidarity delegations to Cuba. The report claims that the foundation “facilitates radical agitation within the United States” through a separate fiscal sponsorship program.The report lists five groups accused of “radical agitation” that receive donations through the fiscal sponsorship program. One, a Black women-led organization, advocates for Haitian refugees, currently facing deportation following the Supreme Court decision upholding the Trump administration’s decision to end temporary protected status. Another is described as advocating for the abolition of the police, ICE and prisons, and fighting “gentrification” and “police violence” in Brooklyn. Yet another group, described as a “Black Queer Feminist led, abolitionist organizing project,” is engaged in a mission of “reimagining and rebuilding our own systems towards liberation.”Nowhere in the short bullet points for each group, which appear to be drawn from their websites, does the State Department allege any specific criminal misconduct.The anti-ICE, police abolitionist and pro-LGBTQ+ positions of the targeted groups mirror the focus of National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, a directive issued by President Trump last September to “investigate and disrupt” leftist movements motivated by, among other things, “extremism on migration, race and gender.”The report assails the People’s Forum for partnering with the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America “to recruit up to 4,000 ‘rapid response’ activists to counter ICE enforcement operations in the city” and helping to organize a “nationwide anti-ICE school and business shutdown” in January.Following the State Department report, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), subpoenaed the People’s Forum to probe it for alleged foreign influence.The People’s Forum decried the State Department report as advancing “false and sweeping allegations that everyone opposing the criminal blockade of Cuba or supporting social justice movements are left-wing terrorists.” The organization went on to describe the State Department report and congressional probe as being “part of an escalating crusade against all progressive organizations and any group or person who expresses opposition to the ultra-right, racist, and pro-war policies of the Trump White House.”The National Lawyers Guild, itself a target of the State Department report, flagged the document as a signal that the administration is “consolidating its legal architecture of fascist repression,” part of an escalation that also includes stiff sentences handed down to anti-ICE activists in Texas who were present at a protest that turned violent and the ongoing prosecution of 15 anti-ICE activists in Minneapolis charged with conspiracy for blockading a federal facility and tracking immigration agents in the field.The Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, meanwhile, said the State Department’s recent moves appear to build on previous efforts by the Trump administration to punish perceived enemies by ordering investigations of former officials such as Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, and prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey. “None of these actions required the pretext of the ministerial or a report about Cuba,” the group said in a recent report. “Instead, those just serve as justification for the administration to dig deeper. The administration appears to be creating a framework that recasts constitutionally protected speech, protest, and association as foreign-directed extremism, making the next round of investigations and prosecutions easier to sell to the public.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the July 16 ministerial on leftist political violence that, following Trump’s direction in NSPM-7, the Treasury Department is “expanding its efforts to identify organizations that abuse charitable and nonprofit structures as vehicles for illicit finance.“We are examining where tax-exempt status has been exploited, where charitable entities have become financial conduits for foreign-influence activity and how those entrusted with stewardship of these organizations have instead enabled violence,” Bessent said. Code Pink, another registered charity and one of the groups named in the State Department report, received a “Request for Information” letter from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control seeking information about a humanitarian trip to Cuba in March to deliver medical supplies for children’s hospitals, the group confirmed to Raw Story.The State Department accused Code Pink of “brazen and overt propagandizing on behalf of several hostile regimes” while describing it as exemplifying “domestic American ‘anti-imperialist’ and Third Worldist organizations” serving as “vectors of subversive foreign influence.”Melissa Garriga, a spokesperson, told Raw Story, “Code Pink does not work on behalf of any foreign government; our actions and campaigns are influenced by deadly U.S. foreign policy funded by our tax dollars.”Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, told Raw Story the most troubling aspect of the State Department report is that it vilifies First Amendment-protected activities.“Solidarity trips, aid convoys, and anti-embargo advocacy are constitutionally protected speech and association, not evidence of foreign control,” she said. “By blurring compassion for Cubans into ‘being directed by Cuba,’ the report revives a familiar Cold War tactic, effectively demonizing dissent as foreign-directed subversion.”
'Get this man a catering cart': Internet ridicules Trump as he battles Mother Nature
The internet had a laugh as President Donald Trump appeared to struggle to walk down the stairs with an umbrella as wind and rain hit after Air Force One landed in Ohio on Tuesday.Trump stepped off his plane at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, where a crowd was waiting for him before he headed to Marine One, en route to the Patriot Games in Geneva, Ohio. It happened just a day after reports surfaced that Trump had used Air Force One as a decoy while returning from Turkey under a credible terror threat in July, fleeing in a catering cart and being taken to another aircraft while reporters and White House staff remained on the plane.The clip was shared by independent journalist Aaron Rupar on X."Trump still can't open an umbrella, struggles to get down stairs of Bribe Force One," Rupar commented, referencing the jet gifted to Trump by Qatar.Others noticed the moment."Get this man a catering cart!" Nick Turse, senior reporter at The Intercept, wrote on X."This is the hardest thing he will do all day," strategist Vincent D. Monroy wrote on X."That’s 6,000% more wind than what a man Trump’s age can handle," liberal commentator Chris Robinson wrote on X."How long until he orders the umbrella be arrested?" progressive commentator Janice Hough wrote on X.Trump still can't open an umbrella, struggles to get down stairs of Bribe Force One pic.twitter.com/oY2yGC2xsK— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
Trump officials at each other's throats over 'sickening' report on boat strikes: 'A joke'
Trump administration officials are slamming their colleagues in the Pentagon after a new report downplayed casualty counts from recent military strikes, per a new report.The Department of Defense turned over an annual report to Congress with a tally of civilian casualties from military strikes in 2025, and one anonymous Trump administration official called it "a f------ joke," according to reporting by The Intercept. The report addresses allegations of civilian harm during 2025 military attacks in Somalia and Yemen, as well as boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, where the Pentagon insists it's fighting drug trafficking, The Intercept reported.However, the report asserts that U.S. attacks killed no civilians during military boat strikes, despite reports that those strikes killed more than 120 civilians, according to The Intercept. A second Trump administration official called the report "a total whitewash" and "sickening," adding that the Pentagon has "absolutely no credibility."The Intercept noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gutted civilian harm mitigation and response programs in the Pentagon. Although the report, which has only been released to Congress but not to the public, denied civilian deaths from the boat strikes, it found that U.S. attacks in the Middle East likely killed or wounded hundreds of civilians, The Intercept reported.However, the second official said that the report offered "lowball numbers" for civilian casualties from U.S. attacks in Yemen. The report estimated U.S. air and naval strikes in Yemen killed 153 civilians and wounded almost 250, but the Yemen Data Project estimated that 238 civilians were killed and 467 were injured by U.S. attacks. Both anonymous officials also pointed out that the Pentagon is still reviewing 15 cases of attacks on civilians in Yemen and that the 10-person civilian harm mitigation team at CENTCOM has been reduced to one person. The first official said it "doesn't bode well for the war in Iran," adding, "How will they get through hundreds of cases for Iran if their one civilian harm person still hasn't finished in Yemen?"
Katie Miller goes off the rails attacking reporter behind bombshell Trump story
Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, had a meltdown on Tuesday, slamming the reporter who revealed President Donald Trump had used Air Force One as a decoy to evade an assassination threat.Miller unleashed her anger on Washington Post reporter Dan Lamothe, who had described how Trump had ditched his high-security aircraft and jumped inside an airport catering truck before boarding a secret plane that flew out of Turkey in July, The Daily Beast reported. The White House had claimed Trump was on Air Force One.Miller lashed out at Lamothe in a post on X, resharing his quote with her own commentary."There is some loser out there super pleased and fulfilled with himself because the leftist media is giving him attention and telling him how brave he is," Miller wrote.Journalists and some White House staff apparently did not know Trump had taken a separate flight due to the credible threat, instead believing they were on the same plane as the president.
Trump's 'unforgivable' secret plot left Americans as 'sitting ducks': analysis
President Donald Trump's plane-swap plan "to save his own skin" exposed a darker reality behind how he treats the American public and press corps, an analyst reported on Tuesday.After it was revealed that Trump used a food truck to avoid a potential Iran terror threat, "might seem like an amusing caper," it was actually a "cowardly plot hatched by Trump, Pete Hegseth, Dan Caine and Trump’s security staff," reported David Gardner for The Swamp, The Daily Beast's Substack."For a start, the president has been caught in a bare-faced lie to the American public," Gardner wrote. "For some reason, he cannot understand that the media is the proxy of the people. To mislead the press is to mislead the country."But that wasn't the only revelation behind what happened."Worse—way worse—was Trump’s acceptance that the White House press corps, his own White House and military officials and the flight crew were expendable as long as he was safe from what must have been a credible Iranian terror threat," Gardner wrote.This bombshell had a different outcome, and "left Americans as sitting ducks.""We already knew he dodged going to Vietnam because of spurious bone spurs. But that was just Trump," Gardner wrote."This was unforgivable," Gardner added.
The return of the caspian tiger: how a species feared extinct has come back to Kazakhstan
The wild capture and release of a female big cat into a nature reserve is the first step towards reintroducing a population that hasn’t been seen for 70 yearsOn 31 July, “Umit” – which means hope in Kazakh – was released into a nature reserve on the edge of Lake Balkhash after more than a decade of careful planning to return the caspian tiger to the region. With this release, Kazakhstan became the first country to restore its tiger range after they had been thought extinct, with the last reliable sighting in the country recorded more than 70 years ago.Umit – a wild-caught female tiger transported from the Russian far east – will be joined by more big cats in the coming years, with plans to establish a self-sustaining population of about 50. A wild-caught male flown from Russia is still being monitored by authorities and will be released when he is judged fit to survive alone. Two wild tiger cubs are also being reared on the reserve in special enclosures, with as little human contact as possible, and are likely to be released into the marshlands next year, to feast on boar, deer and kulans, a type of wild donkey. Continue reading...
