Weekday morning and evening editions. Saturdays once. Good news on Sundays. All sources labeled.
THE LAST STRONGHOLD
Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s Black Sea Fleet naval base at Novorossiysk overnight, damaging four warships in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “unique operation.” Ukraine’s General Staff said two frigates, the Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen, a small missile ship, and a patrol vessel all suffered damage. The full extent was still being assessed. The same night, Ukrainian forces separately struck a Russian ground relay station in occupied Crimea and a drone unit in occupied Luhansk.
Zelenskyy said the strike combined Palianytsia jet-powered drones, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles, and naval drones. Ukraine’s security service said forces also hit an S-300 air defense radar system, a firing position at the port’s second pier, an oil depot tunnel entrance at the Sheskharis terminal, and infrastructure across three additional piers.
Regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev said an 8-year-old boy was killed in Novorossiysk during the attack, and at least eight other people were injured. Kondratyev said hundreds of Ukrainian drones struck Novorossiysk and two nearby towns overnight.
Novorossiysk has become Russia’s primary Black Sea naval hub after repeated Ukrainian strikes forced the fleet out of occupied Crimea. It now hosts a major oil export terminal serving pipelines run by Transneft, Russia’s state-run pipeline monopoly. Ukraine’s naval campaign has now destroyed or damaged roughly 30% of the Black Sea Fleet since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, ship by ship.
The strike came despite reported US pressure to stand down. Vice President JD Vance asked Zelenskyy in a July 31 phone call to halt Ukrainian attacks on oil tankers using the port, particularly vessels tied to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. Zelenskyy proceeded with the strike anyway less than two weeks later.
Zelenskyy framed the attack as proof Russia’s fleet remains vulnerable regardless of where it relocates, warning that occupying forces and the infrastructure supporting them will not be safe as long as the war continues. Russia’s own military losses have climbed sharply as the war grinds on. Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian personnel losses reached 42,860 in July, the highest monthly figure since January 2025.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Ukrainian outlets are foregrounding a detail American coverage treats as a footnote: that this strike defied a direct US request to stand down. Kyiv Independent and Kyiv Post both led with the Vance phone call before getting to the damage assessment itself. The framing in Ukrainian press is not “the allies coordinated a strike.” It’s “Ukraine made its own call despite Washington’s preference,” evidence of an independent military policy rather than a coordinated one. That distinction barely registers in US coverage, which has largely treated the strike as a straightforward escalation story.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Ukraine struck one of Russia’s last major naval strongholds just weeks after the US vice president asked Zelenskyy to stand down from targeting this exact port. Kyiv did it anyway. That’s a real data point on how much control Washington actually has over Ukraine’s operational decisions, even as the two countries coordinate closely on the broader war.
Sources: Kyiv Independent (Ukraine, independent — damage assessment, Zelenskyy’s “unique operation” quote); United24 Media (Ukraine, government-linked — weapons systems, targets struck, Black Sea Fleet campaign tally); Washington Times (US — casualty figures, governor’s statement); Kyiv Post (Ukraine, independent — Vance/Financial Times reporting, regional context); Ukrinform (Ukraine, state news agency — Crimea and Luhansk strikes, Russian July casualty figure)
DARYL LOWERY’S FOUR DAYS
Daryl Martinez Lowry was placed in a South Carolina foster home on July 16. Four days later, he was dead. The 13-year-old was killed July 20 at a boat dock on Lake Strom Thurmond in Modoc, in what arrest warrants describe as a physical altercation with a 16-year-old and 17-year-old Landen Moore.
According to those warrants, Daryl was cut with a knife during the altercation before Moore held him underwater with malice aforethought, causing his death. McCormick County deputies responded to the dock around 7 a.m. and recovered his body.
SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, charged Moore with murder. He is being held without bond, with a circuit judge to set bond at a later date. The 16-year-old was also arrested and remains in the custody of the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice.
The foster home Daryl had been placed in belonged to Bernard Hamby, chair of the McCormick County Council. McCormick County Sheriff Chad Cox asked SLED to take over the investigation, citing what he called a conflict of interest involving the parties. Records requests submitted to multiple county agencies were redirected to SLED, which has said only that the case remains active. Hamby said in a statement his “heart is shattered,” and that he was “so sorry for the circumstances” that brought Daryl to his home.
The family has hired attorney Tyler Bailey, who is running an independent investigation parallel to the criminal case. Bailey’s inquiry is focused on how Daryl came to be placed in that specific home, and who was responsible for supervising him beforehand. He has requested DSS placement records, including Daryl’s own file and records of any prior incidents involving other children placed with Hamby. Bailey has called the agency’s response “less than forthcoming,” citing gaps in what it has produced.
Bailey said other parents have alleged prior issues, including runaways, at Hamby’s home before Daryl’s placement there. DSS has not confirmed or denied those claims, citing South Carolina’s child welfare confidentiality statute as its basis for declining to discuss the case at all.
The family has also questioned why Daryl, a Chester County resident, was placed more than 100 miles from home when relatives had asked to take him in. His family should have been preparing for his eighth-grade year, Bailey said at a press conference outside the Chester County Courthouse the day after Daryl’s funeral. “Instead, they had to bury him yesterday,” he said.
Bailey has separately alleged the children in Hamby’s home were left unsupervised near the lake where Daryl died. No news outlet covering the case has identified or quoted a Guardian ad Litem assigned to Daryl, despite South Carolina law entitling every child in an abuse or neglect case to one since 2010. Whether Daryl had one, and whether that person had any contact with him during his four days in the home, remains unreported.
Daryl’s cousin and godmother, Sadrina Sanders, remembered him as a loving, joyful person who was always smiling and laughing, full of life. The Chester County School District, where Daryl attended middle school, said it would offer grief support to his classmates.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A 13-year-old in state custody was dead four days after being placed with a sitting county official, and the agency responsible for his placement has cited confidentiality law to avoid answering basic questions about how that happened. No Guardian ad Litem has been identified in any reporting on his case. This is the kind of story that stays local unless someone keeps asking.
No updates today on Tasia Fortune, Nolan Wells, or Khloe McDonel.
Sources: WALB (US — bond denial, arrest warrant details); TheGrio (US — independent investigation, DSS records requests, SLED redirect); WRDW (US — Bailey’s press conference quote, placement distance questions); WIS (US — Hamby’s statement, Sanders’ account of Daryl)
THE SIEGE AT QUSRA
Israeli settlers have besieged two Palestinian families, the Abu Ridi and Hassan families, in their homes in the West Bank village of Qusra since Sunday. The families say their water and power have been cut and food supplies are running low. The village sits south of Nablus in the northern West Bank.
Homeowner Youssef Hassan told the Times of Israel by phone that settlers erected a makeshift structure blocking his entrance and cut his electricity, trapping him inside with his wife and their two young daughters, ages two and four. Seven members of the Abu Ridi family, including two young girls, were separately left isolated after settlers tore down a wall outside their home and used the rubble to block the road.
The Israeli military called the settler outpost at Qusra “illegal, reprehensible, and unacceptable activity” in a statement Tuesday, among its sharpest public criticism yet of this kind of land seizure. But when the Palestinian homeowners first reported the siege, the soldiers who arrived at the scene were filmed praying alongside the settlers rather than removing them.
Israeli forces clashed with the settlers Wednesday in an attempt to break the siege, and the IDF said it removed a structure the settlers had used to restrict access. Footage showed some settlers remained at the site afterward, and armed settlers continued blocking roads despite the military’s declaration that the area is a closed military zone.
Activists trying to bring food and medical aid to the trapped families said they were blocked as well. Andrey X, an activist who has documented settler violence across the West Bank for two years, said settlers attacked his group and an ambulance attempting to reach the Hassan family, in full view of Israeli soldiers who did not intervene. Ameer Dawood of the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission called the siege “an extremely dangerous act of settler terrorism and an attempted takeover of Palestinian property.”
The siege follows a documented pattern in the area. A newly built mosque in Qusra was set on fire last month, with Hebrew graffiti sprayed nearby. In July, settlers surrounded a Palestinian home in the neighboring village of Jalud for more than two weeks; the owners eventually fled, and settlers have occupied the property since. Qusra’s mayor, Abdel Azim Wadi, said residents have witnessed a sustained pattern of the village being targeted.
That pattern extends into open threats elsewhere in the region. Days before the Qusra siege began, dozens of settlers attacked Palestinians plowing land in Al-Mughayyir, wounding six people, including three children and two women, and burning part of a nearby valley. Roughly 60% of that village’s land has already been confiscated, and settlers have established at least 11 illegal outposts there, “barring the farmers from their land,” Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported from the scene. In a separate incident last month, clashes in the nearby village of Tal killed four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers, after which an Israeli lawyer from the Havat Gilad settlement outpost, Yehuda Shimon, told the BBC that “we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra” in retaliation. Shimon, who represents settlers arrested for violence against Palestinians, told the BBC he considers the statement racist but true, based on his religious beliefs.
A top UN official told the Security Council this week that conditions in the West Bank have reached a breaking point. Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, rejected the suggestion that settlement expansion is an obstacle to peace.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Israeli and Palestinian coverage of this story are looking at almost entirely different problems. The Times of Israel’s own reporting centers the trapped family’s direct account and treats the siege as a policing failure. Al Jazeera’s ground reporting from Al-Mughayyir doesn’t mention diplomacy at all; it centers Palestinian farmers watching their land disappear in real time. The BBC’s on-the-ground reporting, the strongest international account of Qusra specifically, captured a detail that undercuts the Israeli military’s own statement: soldiers responding to the family’s own emergency call were filmed praying with the settlers, not removing them. That contradiction between the military’s public language and its conduct on the ground is the story the BBC’s reporting foregrounds, and it is largely missing from American coverage.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: An American citizen is currently trapped in their own home by Israeli settlers, and the US government is frustrated with Israel’s response, not the settlers’ actions. This is happening as an Israeli lawyer has publicly called for killing Palestinians in nearby villages, and as documented settler violence has reached some of its worst levels since the war began.
Sources: Times of Israel (Israel, right-centre — Hassan family’s direct account); BBC, via the Star Kenya (UK, public broadcaster — IDF statement, Abu Ridi family details, mayor’s characterization, Jalud precedent, mosque burning, UN Security Council briefing); Irish Times (Ireland — Wednesday clash, structure removal); The New Arab (UK-based, pro-Palestinian editorial lean — Andrey X account, Dawood quote); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Al-Mughayyir attack, Odeh’s on-the-ground report); MyJoyOnline, citing BBC (Ghana — Shimon interview and quote); UN News (UN primary source — July settler-violence data)
THE SUNDAY DEADLINE
The 60-day memorandum of understanding governing the US-Iran conflict is set to expire Sunday. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said it is working to keep both countries at the negotiating table before that deadline arrives. Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi visited Tehran this week as part of that mediation effort.
The US Navy fired on a cargo ship Tuesday for violating its blockade of Iranian ports. It was the latest in a series of enforcement actions US Central Command has carried out since the blockade began. Yemen’s Houthi forces and US forces separately reported new attacks Tuesday, another sign that prospects for ending the broader war are dimming even as the Hormuz talks continue.
President Trump said Tuesday the situation with Iran is “going fine” and that the US Navy has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz. He also said he does not trust Iran’s representatives, and that renewed military action remains possible.
Shipping traffic through the strait fell to eight vessels Tuesday, its lowest daily count since August 5 and well below the ten-day average of about 12. Only one vessel, a coal carrier, exited the strait; the rest were still transiting.
Iran’s own military establishment is projecting confidence publicly. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an adviser to the IRGC commander, told PBS in an interview that the US military was weaker than it is perceived to be. The remark came as Iran continued firing missiles and drones at Kurdish positions in Erbil, with several drones crashing in Iraqi territory.
CENTCOM said its blockade forced dozens of ships to change course this week, with F/A-18 fighter jets now flying enforcement missions from the USS George H.W. Bush, deployed in the region.
While all of this is happening, Iran’s execution rate has climbed sharply since the war began. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, an Iranian human rights group, has documented 916 executions since the start of 2026, including 15 in August alone. At least 56 people have been executed on national security-related charges since March 19, including 27 tied to anti-government protests, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said last week. The European Union has called the pace of executions “appalling.”
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Regional coverage is treating Sunday’s MoU deadline as the central story of the week. Al Jazeera and Dawn have both led their live coverage with the deadline and Pakistan’s mediation effort, not with Trump’s remarks. American coverage has run the opposite way, leading with Trump’s “total control” comments and treating the deadline itself as background context buried several paragraphs down. The region watching this most closely, Pakistan especially, is focused on whether the diplomatic clock runs out. Washington’s coverage is focused on how the president is characterizing the war.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A deadline that could reshape this war arrives Sunday, and it’s Pakistan doing the diplomatic work to keep both sides talking before it does. Iran’s execution rate has climbed to levels the EU calls appalling, a human cost of this standoff getting far less attention than the shipping and oil numbers.
Sources: Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — MoU deadline, Pakistan mediation, cargo ship strike); ABC News (US — Trump’s remarks); Dawn (Pakistan — shipping traffic data, Naqdi’s PBS interview, Erbil strikes, Houthi attacks); CNN (US — execution figures, Türk statement, EU characterization); Fox News (US — CENTCOM blockade enforcement, USS George H.W. Bush operations)
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NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,636 killed
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,333 killed
🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded (includes 472 killed, 3,004 wounded in Gaza)
🇺🇸 US military: 18 killed, 687 wounded
🇵🇸 Gaza: 73,381+ Palestinians killed, 174,231 wounded
🛢️ Brent crude: $88.41/barrel
⛽ US gas: $4.04/gallon
Sources: HRANA (Iran), Lebanon MOPH, INSS (Israel), DCAS (US, disputed — see Aug 4 story), OCHA (Gaza), OilPrice.com, AAA.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
