Ukraine launches mass drone attack on Russia, loses more ground in east

Firefighters work at a site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine September 1, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 01 September 2024
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Ukraine launches mass drone attack on Russia, loses more ground in east

  • Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv injured more than 40 people, including five children
  • Zelensky renewed calls on allies to allow Kyiv to fire Western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory and reduce the threat of attack

KYIV: Kyiv launched one of the biggest drone attacks on Russia since the full-scale war began, targeting power plants and an oil refinery overnight, while Moscow’s forces made further advances toward a key town in eastern Ukraine, officials said on Sunday.
Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv injured more than 40 people, including five children, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to renew calls on allies to allow Kyiv to fire Western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory and reduce the threat of attack.
The fighting comes at a critical juncture in the two-and-a-half year conflict, with Russia pressing an offensive in eastern Ukraine while trying to expel Ukrainian forces that broke through its western border in a surprise incursion on Aug. 6.
Russia last week pounded Ukraine with its heaviest air strikes of the war, hitting energy facilities, part of a campaign of drone and missile barrages that have killed thousands of civilians and troops since the conflict began in February 2022.
Ukraine, with a rapidly expanding domestic drone industry, has stepped up its own attacks on Russian energy, military and transport infrastructure.
It is also pressing the United States and other allies for permission to use more powerful Western-supplied weapons to inflict greater damage inside Russia and impair Moscow’s abilities to attack Ukraine.
“All necessary forces for the rescue operation have been brought in,” Zelensky said on his Telegram channel, in response to the Kharkiv attack that officials said involved at least 10 missiles and struck locations including a shopping mall.
“And all the necessary forces of the world must be brought in to stop this terror. This does not require extraordinary forces, but enough courage on the part of the leaders — courage to give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself.”
In Kharkiv, rescue workers and volunteers carried injured civilians to ambulances after missiles struck the mall and an events hall. Shattered glass and debris were strewn across the ground and people fled to a metro station for safety.
Earlier, Russian officials said air defense units had destroyed 158 drones launched by Ukraine overnight, and that debris caused fires at the Moscow Oil Refinery and at the Konakovo Power Station in the neighboring Tver region.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports of drone attacks against Russia or from the battlefield in Ukraine, and Kyiv has yet to comment. Russia rarely discloses the full extent of damage inflicted by Ukraine’s air attacks.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine
Zelensky said that last week alone Russia had used 160 missiles, 780 guided aerial bombs and 400 attack drones against cities and troops across Ukraine.
He called on Telegram for “a decision on long-range strikes on missile launch sites from Russia, destruction of Russian military logistics, joint shooting down of missiles and drones.”
Kyiv’s allies are wary of how Russian President Vladimir Putin would respond should their weapons be used against targets far inside Russian territory.
Russia’s TASS state news cited Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that Moscow would change its nuclear doctrine in response to the West’s actions over the conflict in Ukraine. He did not specify what the changes would entail.
Russia’s existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by Putin in 2020, says it may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.
Russia, which accuses the West of using Ukraine as a proxy to wage war against it, has said before that it is considering changes.
“The work is at an advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to make corrections,” TASS cited Ryabkov as saying.
Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the West.
In eastern Ukraine, where the heaviest fighting of the war is concentrated, Russian forces continued to advance toward Pokrovsk, which is a vital military hub and transport link to towns and cities further north.
Ukraine had hoped that its surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region launched last month would force Russia to re-deploy troops and take the pressure off besieged forces in the east, but so far it does not appear to have had the desired effect.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Sunday its forces had captured two more settlements in Donetsk region and were “continuing to advance deep into the enemy defenses.” One of them, Ptyche, is just 21 km (13 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk.
At least three people were killed and nine wounded in Russian shelling of Kurakhove, a town around 35 km south of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine’s top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said the situation was “difficult” around Russia’s main line of attack in eastern Ukraine.


UN chief says US attacks on Iran nuclear sites a ‘direct threat to international peace and security’

Updated 8 min 24 sec ago
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UN chief says US attacks on Iran nuclear sites a ‘direct threat to international peace and security’

  • Israeli PM Netanyahu praises Trump, saying his “bold decision”  will “change history”
  • Trump wins immediate praise from Republicans in Congress after announcing strikes on Iran

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday slammed UPresident Donald Trump’s decision to order US military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities as a “dangerous escalation.”

“I am gravely alarmed by the use of force by the United States against Iran today. This is a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge – and a direct threat to international peace and security,” he said in a statement.

“There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control – with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,” he said.

Guterres called on member states to de-escalate and to uphold their obligations under the UN Charter and other rules of international law.

“At this perilous hour, it is critical to avoid a spiral of chaos. There is no military solution. The only path forward is diplomacy.  The only hope is peace,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was predictably all praises for Trump’s decision.

“Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the awesome and righteous might of the United States, will change history,” he said in a video message directed at the American president.

Netanyahu said the US “has done what no other country on earth could do.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon also thanked Trump for his “historic decision to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Today, President Trump proved that ‘Never Again’ is not just a slogan — it’s a policy.”

In Washington, Congressional Republicans — and at least one Democrat — immediately praised Trump after he announced his fateful attack order.

“Well done, President Trump,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina posted on X. Texas Sen. John Cornyn called it a “courageous and correct decision.” Alabama Sen. Katie Britt called the bombings “strong and surgical.”
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin posted: “America first, always.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said Trump “has made a deliberate — and correct — decision to eliminate the existential threat posed by the Iranian regime.”
Wicker posted on X that “we now have very serious choices ahead to provide security for our citizens and our allies.”
The quick endorsements of stepped up US involvement in Iran came after Trump had publicly mulled the strikes for days and many congressional Republicans had cautiously said they thought he would make the right decision. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Saturday evening that “as we take action tonight to ensure a nuclear weapon remains out of reach for Iran, I stand with President Trump and pray for the American troops and personnel in harm’s way.”
Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, were briefed ahead of the strikes on Saturday, according to people familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Johnson said in a statement that the military operations “should serve as a clear reminder to our adversaries and allies that President Trump means what he says.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Arkansas, said he had also been in touch with the White House and “I am grateful to the US servicemembers who carried out these precise and successful strikes.”
Breaking from many of his Democratic colleagues, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, an outspoken supporter of Israel, also praised the attacks on Iran. “As I’ve long maintained, this was the correct move by @POTUS,” he posted. “Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and cannot have nuclear capabilities.”
Both parties have seen splits in recent days over the prospect of striking Iran. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican and a longtime opponent of US involvement in foreign wars, posted on X after Trump announced the attacks that “This is not Constitutional.”
Many Democrats have maintained that Congress should have a say. The Senate was scheduled to vote as soon as this week on a resolution by Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine requiring congressional approval before the US declared war on Iran or took specific military action.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, posted on X after Trump’s announcement: “According to the Constitution we are both sworn to defend, my attention to this matter comes BEFORE bombs fall. Full stop.”


Early humans survived in a range of extreme environments before global migration, study says

Updated 22 June 2025
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Early humans survived in a range of extreme environments before global migration, study says

  • This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age

WASHINGTON: Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra.
This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published Wednesday in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago.
“Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.
Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. While prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn’t happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago.
“What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded — why were humans ready this time?” said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago.
Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven’t found evidence to back that up.
This study took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself.
The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there.
“There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,” Hallett said. “We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.”
While humans had long survived in savanna and forests, they shifted into everything from from dense rainforests to arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallett called an “ecological flexibility that let them succeed.”
While this leap in abilities is impressive, it’s important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research.
Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe’s Neanderthals, he said.
The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn’t answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today.


NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

Updated 22 June 2025
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NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

  • The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander.
NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace’s lander slammed into the moon.
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon’s far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week.
The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.


Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

Updated 22 June 2025
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Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

  • Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war

After nearly two years of stark divisions over the war in Gaza and support for Israel, Democrats are now finding themselves at odds over US policy toward Iran as progressives demand unified opposition to President Donald Trump’s consideration of a strike against Tehran’s nuclear program while party leaders tread more cautiously.
US leaders of all stripes have found common ground for two decades on the position that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The longtime US foe has supported groups that have killed Americans across the Mideast and threatens to destroy Israel. But Trump’s public flirtation with joining Israel’s offensive against Iran may become the Democratic Party’s latest schism, just as it is sharply dividing Trump’s isolationist “Make America Great Again” base from more hawkish conservatives.
While progressives have staked out clear opposition to Trump’s potential actions, the party leadership is playing the safer ground of demanding a role for Congress before Trump could use force against Iran. Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war.
“They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who served under Democratic President Barack Obama and is now a strategist on foreign policy. “The beasts of the Democratic Party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”
Progressive Democrats use Trump’s ideas and words
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., has called Trump’s consideration of an attack “a defining moment for our party” and has introduced legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, that calls on the Republican president to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.
Khanna used Trump’s own campaign arguments of putting American interests first when the congressman spoke to Theo Von, a comedian who has been supportive of the president and is popular in the “manosphere.”
“That’s going to cost this country a lot of money that should be being spent here at home,” said Khanna, who is said to be among the many Democrats eyeing the party’s 2028 primary.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed to Trump’s stated goal during his inaugural speech of being known as “a peacemaker and a unifier.”
“Very fine words. Trump should remember them today. Supporting Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake,” Sanders said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders has reintroduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran, insisted that US military intervention would be unwise and illegal and accused Israel of striking unprovoked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York signed on to a similar bill from Sanders in 2020, but he is so far holding off this time.
Some believe the party should stake out a clear anti-war stance as Trump weighs whether to launch a military offensive that is seemingly counter to the anti-interventionism he promised during his 2024 campaign.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party need to step up and loudly oppose war with Iran and demand a vote in Congress,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide, on X.
Mainstream Democrats are cautious, while critical
The staunch support from the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for Israel’s war against Hamas loomed over the party’s White House ticket in 2024, even with the criticism of Israel’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Trump exploited the divisions to make inroads with Arab American voters and Orthodox Jews on his way back to the White House.
Today, the Israel-Iran war is the latest test for a party struggling to repair its coalition before next year’s midterm elections and the quick-to-follow kickoff to the 2028 presidential race. Bridging the divide between an activist base that is skeptical of foreign interventions and already critical of US support for Israel and more traditional Democrats and independents who make up a sizable, if not always vocal, voting bloc.
In a statement after Israel’s first strikes, Schumer said Israel has a right to defend itself and “the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad as they prepare for Iran’s response.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, was also cautious in responding to the Israeli action and said “the US must continue to stand with Israel, as it has for decades, at this dangerous moment.”
“It really seems like the Trump and Iran war track is kind of going along like a Formula 1 racetrack, and then the Democrats are in some sort of tricycle or something trying to keep up,” said Ryan Costello, a policy director for the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, which advocates for diplomatic engagement between US and Iran.
Other Democrats have condemned Israel’s strikes and accused Netanyahu of sabotaging nuclear talks with Iran. They are reminding the public that Trump withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions negotiated during the Obama administration.
“Trump created the problem,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, on X. “The single reason Iran was so close to obtaining a nuclear weapon is that Trump destroyed the diplomatic agreement that put major, verifiable constraints on their nuclear program.”
The progressives’ pushback
A Pearson Institute/Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from September 2024 found that about half of Democrats said the US was being “too supportive” of Israel and about 4 in 10 said their level support was “about right.” Democrats were more likely than independents and Republicans to say the Israeli government had “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war between Israel and Hamas.
About 6 in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans felt Iran was an adversary with whom the US was in conflict.
Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American from Arizona, said Iranians are unwitting victims in the conflict because there aren’t shelters or infrastructure to protect civilians from targeted missiles as there are in Israel.
“The Iranian people are not the regime, and they should not be punished for its actions,” Ansari posted on X, while criticizing Trump for fomenting fear among the Iranian population. “The Iranian people deserve freedom from the barbaric regime, and Israelis deserve security.”


Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

Updated 22 June 2025
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Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

  • Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation

NEWARK, United States: Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of US pro-Palestinian campus protests, pledged Saturday to keep campaigning after he was released from a federal detention center.
“Even if they would kill me, I would still speak for Palestine,” Khalil said as he was greeted by cheering supporters at Newark airport, just outside New York City.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation.
He was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.
The Columbia University graduate was a figurehead of student protests against US ally Israel’s war in Gaza, and the Trump administration labeled him a national security threat.
“Just the fact I am here sends a message — the fact that all these attempts to suppress pro-Palestine voices have failed now,” said Khalil, who is still fighting his potential expulsion from the United States.
He spoke alongside his wife Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s first child while Khalil was in detention, as well as Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Mahmoud Khalil was imprisoned for 104 days by this administration, by the Trump administration, with no grounds and for political reasons, because Mahmoud Khalil is an advocate for Palestinian human rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“This is not over, and we will have to continue to support this case,” she added.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, is not allowed to leave the United States except for “self-deportation” under the terms of his release.
He also faces restrictions on where he can travel within the country.
President Donald Trump’s government has justified pushing for Khalil’s deportation by saying his continued presence in the United States could carry “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Beyond his legal case, Khalil’s team fears he could face threats out of detention.
“We are very mindful about his security, and the irony is that he is the one being persecuted,” Baher Azmy, one of his lawyers, told AFP.
“But he is committed to peace and because he is rejecting US government policy he is under threat,” Azmy added, without elaborating on any security measures in place for Khalil and his family.