President Trump announced an agreement giving the U.S. majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's proven reserves, a 25-year arrangement targeting 1.5 million barrels a day across 17 strategic oilfields. Trump credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, saying it came "at no cost to the American Taxpayer" and will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela. Energy analysts caution the pump-price relief won't be immediate — Venezuelan infrastructure needs years of work and billions in capital.
In his debut Jackson Hole speech as Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh called inflation numbers troubling and said the central bank is "not done fighting" for price stability, with PCE stuck at 3.7 percent. Markets repriced fast: odds of a September hike jumped from 35 percent to 55 percent, and odds of two or more hikes by year's end nearly doubled to 46 percent. That puts Warsh squarely at odds with President Trump, who has pressed the Fed to cut.
Governor Josh Shapiro announced Pennsylvania's first measles-related deaths in 35 years, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. immediately disputed it, suggesting officials may have made the deaths up. The Lancaster County coroner says his office has no record of any measles deaths, though state law requires they be reported to him. Pennsylvania has confirmed 460 cases across 31 counties this year — the nation's largest outbreak since 1991.
Trump signed documents Friday allowing farmers and ranchers to process their own meat, calling the big packers a "nasty Monopoly." Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says more is coming — waived red tape in processing, expanded interstate sales, and support for smaller processors. Ranchers welcome the attention but warn that more processing capacity alone won't fix an industry squeezed by drought, herd contraction, and consolidation.
A Russian attack Saturday on the Bucha district west of Kyiv killed at least 37 people, one of the deadliest strikes of the year, sparking a fire that tore through homes and damaged some 50 residential buildings. Moscow's Defense Ministry claimed it hit a warehouse storing long-range drone components in the village of Myla. Russia says it downed 313 Ukrainian drones overnight, with strikes in the Rostov region wounding eleven, including four children.
The UN's International Maritime Organization says roughly 6,000 seafarers remain stuck aboard hundreds of ships in the Persian Gulf, with 19 killed and more than 70 attacks on international shipping since the conflict began February 28. CENTCOM says the Navy has cleared all Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz and escorted nearly 1,500 commercial vessels carrying 750 million barrels of crude. Iran, meanwhile, has exported zero oil from its shores since the blockade was reimposed in mid-July.
Catastrophic flooding and mudslides along the Nepal-China border have now claimed at least 676 lives, with close to 3,000 people still unaccounted for — including roughly 90 Americans. Continued rainfall has stalled rescue operations, leaving crews unable to reach entire valleys. It is shaping up as one of the deadliest natural disasters of the year.
SpaceX completed a full-duration, 33-engine static fire of the Super Heavy booster at Starbase in South Texas on Friday, a key milestone ahead of Starship Flight 14. That flight, now believed to be targeting mid-September, would be the megarocket's first true orbital trip and its first attempt at deploying real payloads. The planned tower catch has been deferred — both the booster and Ship 41 are expected to attempt soft ocean splashdowns instead.
Archaeologists working Israel's Sakhnin Valley have documented the largest known concentration of stone tools made from fossil-bearing rock and sparkling geodes, dating between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. Researchers at Tel Aviv University argue the toolmakers deliberately chose these striking materials, possibly believing them imbued with potency or cosmic significance. Until now, such objects had only turned up as scattered one-offs across continents and eras.
The Netherlands' Trimbos Institute issued a red alert after pills molded in the shape of Donald Trump's head were turned in at drug-testing centers and found to contain PMMA, a substance that can be fatal. PMMA acts more slowly than MDMA, which leads users to take a second dose before the first kicks in — the mechanism behind most overdoses. Dutch testing centers accept anonymous samples, which is how the batch surfaced in the first place.
