Russian and Ukrainian attacks kill 4 people a day after deadly shopping mall drone strike by Moscow

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least two people overnight in Ukraine, officials said Saturday, while a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Krasnodar region killed two others, a day after a strike on a Ukrainian shopping center killed 16 people.

In the latest attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that one person was killed and another wounded when ballistic missiles hit railway infrastructure in the capital, Kyiv.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that its forces had hit a locomotive depot.

Moscow’s forces have recently intensified their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting Ukraine’s chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors, the sole weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down the missiles.

Russian drone strikes also killed one person overnight in a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said Saturday. Zelenskyy said that three people were wounded in an attack on a minibus in the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.

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US imposes 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, and Canada says it will retaliate

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products early Saturday, and Canada immediately said it would retaliate, after last-ditch negotiations failed to resolve the latest strain in already tense relations between the historic allies.

President Donald Trump’s import taxes will hit about 5% of what Canada ships to the United States every year, including products ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors.

“Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement. The retaliation escalates the trade conflict and calls into question the future of a North American trade pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries.

Canada sought concessions on Trump tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos and lumber that the United States was unwilling to provide, a senior Trump administration official told reporters.

“Tonight, Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week. Despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement read to reporters on a press call shortly before midnight.

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Wildfires expose — and detonate — buried bombs and mines from WWI and WWII

ELSENBORN, Belgium (AP) — The wildfires burning across Europe this summer have exposed a potentially deadly threat lurking beneath the blackened landscape: rusty bombs and mines from World War I and II that threaten crews responding to the flames.

Some of the weapons have exploded in the intense heat. Blasts have been reported in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, where a bomb-disposal team was dispatched to check a forest threatened by flames near a site of fierce fighting in the Limburg province in 1944.

Fueled by climate change, the fires and explosions show that the continent’s “climatic luck” is running out, said Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Steady temperatures and predictable rainfall once ensured that most buried weapons stayed dormant.

“Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable,” Njeri said. Fires can ignite old munitions but can also burn away the scrub and brush that hides them.

This wildfire season was supercharged by heavy rains in January that spurred vegetation growth, which became kindling when the summer heat arrived. Those temperatures, combined with drought conditions, low humidity and stiff winds, offered an ideal environment for fire, according to a study issued last month by the World Weather Attribution group.

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What to know about Alex Jones' Texas court win and more than $1 billion in damages he still faces

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is still under orders to pay more than $1 billion over his false claims surrounding the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre despite a Texas court reducing some of the money awarded to families.

For the bombastic Infowars founder, the ruling that saves him more than $40 million was still a legal victory amid multiple punishing financial judgments that forced him and his company, Free Speech Systems, to file for bankruptcy.

Sandy Hook families have yet to collect any money from Jones, who has left his Infowars platform amid numerous ongoing legal battles but is still broadcasting on other websites.

He still faces a defamation judgment of $1.25 billion in a Connecticut lawsuit and the nearly $6 million that remains in the Texas case.

What to know about Jones, Infowars and his legal cases:

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Former Hong Kong vigil organizer strives to mark Tiananmen crackdown despite convictions

HONG KONG (AP) — Tang Ngok-kwan still occasionally visits the places where Hong Kong once publicly remembered Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Though Tang's fellow activists were locked up in prison, accused of inciting subversion, and an annual candlelight vigil they previously organized to mourn the crackdown's victims vanished, the 58-year-old continues to personally and discreetly remember the event, which is a political taboo on mainland China.

At Victoria Park, where tens of thousands of people once gathered for the only large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown in China, Tang bowed on the eve of the anniversary and read of a list of the victims in a low voice. He sometimes returns to two university campuses where commemorative sculptures once stood, even though most traces of their existence already have vanished.

Two of Tang's former colleagues were convicted Friday under a Beijing-imposed national security law, facing a maximum prison term of 10 years. Their vigil organizing group also was found guilty. Government-approved judges ruled the pair had incited others to overthrow the leadership of China’s Communist Party through unlawful means.

Many observers say the convictions were the latest case reflecting the decline in freedoms in the former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

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TikTok reaches $400 million settlement with US Justice Department over children's privacy

TikTok has reached a $400 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, ending a 2024 lawsuit alleging the company violated federal children's privacy laws.

The DOJ said Friday that TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and another $100 million after an order vacates an earlier consent decree against its predecessor company, Musical.ly.

“This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents,” said U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. in a statement. “The Department’s priority is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations. This resolution secures a substantial recovery while reinforcing the protections that families expect and deserve.”

Since the DOJ's lawsuit in 2024, TikTok has undergone major changes, most notably in the ownership structure of its U.S. arm. In January, the social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture.

Representatives for TikTok did not immediately respond to a message for comment Friday.

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Why the bond market is flexing its muscles, and why everyone needs to care

NEW YORK (AP) — The bond market is one of the few forces in the world strong enough to get politicians to snap to attention. It also helps dictate how much ordinary people have to pay on their mortgages and car loans, as well as how much they earn from their savings accounts and 401(k) plans.

This week rising bond yields forced the U.S. Treasury Department into an unusual intervention and raised the specter of higher borrowing costs putting the brakes on consumer spending, the lifeblood of the economy. It also sparked concerns that investors might finally be thinking twice about financing a seemingly endless flow of government borrowing.

Here's a look at what's going on and how it affects everyone:

When governments and big companies borrow money, they don't ask a bank for a loan. Instead, they sell IOUs to investors and promise to repay the money with a certain interest rate. If those IOUs are set to be repaid many years from now, they're called bonds. (IOUs the U.S. government will repay more quickly are more often called bills or notes.)

Investors in the bond market often buy and sell these bonds after they're issued, and they continue to pay the same interest rate. But if the bond starts to look less attractive, a buyer can get bonds that were earlier worth $100 for less than that. Such a drop in price means the new buyer will get a bigger return, percentage-wise, on their money than the interest rate the bond pays on its face value. Those payments are called the bond's yield.

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Trump urges South Carolinians to make Sen. Darline Graham the GOP nominee for US Senate

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump sought Friday to boost Sen. Darline Graham's effort to win a full term, telling thousands of supporters that the first step toward keeping her as their senator involves helping the political newcomer triumph in a Republican runoff next week.

The Republican president also begged them to pretend that he's on the ballot Tuesday — even though he is not — if that will help get them out to vote.

Voters will decide Tuesday whether Graham or Rep. Ralph Norman will be the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate on the ballot in November.

“You have to get out and vote,” Trump said about Darline Graham, who is serving out the remainder of the term of her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly in July. “And we need every South Carolina patriot to go to the polls and vote for Darline Graham.”

Trump nodded to the reality that Republican base voters lose interest in elections when he is not a candidate for office, as is the case this year. Trump is serving his second and final term as president.

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Supreme Court's chief justice allows work on Trump’s $400M White House ballroom to continue for now

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday allowed the White House to continue construction on President Donald Trump’s $400 million ballroom project for now, as the Supreme Court considers the Trump administration's emergency request to intervene in lawsuits over the project.

The temporary order came hours before lower-court rulings would have forced a halt to aboveground construction of the project because Trump didn't get congressional approval.

It will remain in place until the Supreme Court issues a more durable decision, though the one-page document does not detail Roberts' reasoning or indicate when another ruling will be handed down. Roberts signed the order because he oversees emergency appeals of cases filed in the capital.

Trump thanked the high court and the chief justice during his remarks later Friday during a political appearance in South Carolina.

“When they say proceed, I think that's a good thing. That's a good thing,” Trump said.

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Trump announces plan to lower beef prices, but ranchers and some Republicans are already balking

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Friday that his administration will allow more beef to be temporarily imported into the U.S. without triggering higher tariffs, which drew swift pushback from cattle producers and conservative rural-state Republicans.

Beef prices have climbed to record highs amid a drop in the number of U.S. cattle, consistent consumer demand and limits on cattle from Mexico, where the animals are facing a flesh-eating pest. The U.S. president has also imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil, a major beef exporter.

Trump remains under pressure to cut costs and address affordability issues ahead of November’s midterms. But ranchers, normally some of the president’s biggest supporters, are enjoying some rare profitable years and worry cheap beef imports will reduce cattle prices — and with it, the incentive to increase herd sizes.

“We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said in a statement. “Flooding the market with foreign beef hurts our livestock industry and undermines the long-term solution: growing the U.S. cattle herd to meet demand.”

When asked by reporters Friday evening about criticism of the deal, Trump said, “I love the ranchers; they’ve done a fantastic job. But they admit that we need a little help, and, in order to get the prices down, so that’s what we’re doing.”

News from © The Associated Press, 2026