15 August 2026 – Short News

Trump Takes His $400 Million Ballroom Fight to the Supreme Court

Donald Trump wants construction of his $400 million White House ballroom to continue despite a court order and is now taking the fight to the Supreme Court. His administration asked on Friday for an appeals court ruling to be temporarily suspended so work can continue while the case moves forward. The appeals court in Washington ruled 2-1 last week that Trump must stop construction because Congress never approved the project. The case involves a roughly 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the site where the White House East Wing stood until Trump ordered it demolished last fall. The majority of the judges said the president has no unilateral authority to push this project through without congressional approval. The ruling was put on hold for two weeks to give the administration time to go to the Supreme Court. That is exactly what it has now done.

Trump's top lawyer before the court wants a decision before August 21, when the construction ban is set to take effect. What makes the argument especially remarkable is this: The administration is suddenly describing the ballroom as part of an "integrated military complex" and claiming that a fully secure ballroom is urgently required for national security. A prestige project personally pushed by Trump has therefore become, in court, a matter of national security. Preservationists sued to stop construction, and the appeals court initially sided with them. Now the case is before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority Trump has repeatedly turned to in recent years whenever lower courts stopped his administration. This fight has long since moved beyond taste or architecture. It is about whether a president can bypass Congress on a $400 million White House project and then invoke national security when the courts stand in his way. By August 21, the Supreme Court has to decide whether Trump can keep building or whether work at the site really does have to stop.

Trump Suddenly Looks to Europe for Help - Iran Talks Are Stuck, Hormuz Is Becoming a Problem

Talks on ending the Iran war are barely moving, and Washington is now looking for help from countries nobody had previously seen as mediators. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger in Washington on Tuesday and spoke by phone with his Greek counterpart Giorgos Gerapetritis on Wednesday. Officially, both conversations sounded routine, and Iran was not even mentioned in the State Department statements. One day later, however, both European foreign ministers spoke by phone with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The State Department says Rubio neither asked them to do so nor gave them messages to pass on to Tehran. A European diplomat says the timing was no coincidence. Washington is apparently trying to get talks moving after channels through Oman, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar have been stalled for weeks.

The immediate dispute is no longer only about Iran's nuclear program, but about the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil normally passes and which was open before the American-Israeli attacks began on February 28. Trump is under growing pressure: The war is weighing on the economy, important American weapons stockpiles are shrinking, and the midterm elections are coming in November. Vice President JD Vance said openly on Thursday that goal number one is keeping oil and gas cheap for Americans. Only after that did he mention the goal of permanently preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Austria and Greece are not being brought in by accident. Vienna is home to the International Atomic Energy Agency and was already the site of the final negotiations over the 2015 nuclear deal. Greece, meanwhile, is one of Europe's major shipping nations and has major interests in keeping trade routes through Hormuz and the Red Sea safe. Vienna has already offered to host further talks and said there is no military solution. Athens pushed for freedom of navigation and security at sea. Iran, as expected, describes the same talks differently and speaks about the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz after the "illegal aggression" by the United States and Israel. Araghchi also accused Washington of violating the interim arrangement agreed in June. Whether Austria or Greece can actually mediate is completely open. Experts warn that real mediation requires trust on both sides and cannot be created through a few phone calls.

But the fact that Washington is now bringing even Vienna and Athens into the effort shows one thing above all: The existing channels are not enough, the war is still going, Hormuz remains blocked, and Trump urgently needs a way out before oil prices, depleted stockpiles and the midterms all land on his desk at the same time.

To be continued ...

Europe Is Burning Again - Record Heat, Evacuations, Deaths and Even Nuclear Plants Are Going Offline

By mid-August, Europe is facing heat that is no longer merely uncomfortable but is forcing entire regions into emergency conditions. Firefighters are battling wildfires and brush fires at the same time in France, Britain, Spain, Germany, Croatia, Albania and Greece, while soils and forests contain barely any moisture after weeks without rain. France is experiencing its driest year since records began and at the same time already its fifth heat wave of the summer.

In the Landes region, more than 500 people had to leave their homes after a fire tore through the forests overnight. Just last month, a major fire near Bordeaux displaced a quarter of a million people. Even the power supply is feeling the heat: Six French nuclear reactors have been shut down in recent days, partly because of heat and drought, partly because unusually large numbers of jellyfish near a plant on the English Channel blocked the cooling-water intake.

The drought is not stopping at the forests, it is reaching the energy supply. Water levels in the Rhine and Danube are falling to levels not seen in a long time, and as the water disappears, power plants lose the cooling they need. In Romania, Reactor 1 at the Cernavodă nuclear power plant was taken offline because the Danube was running too low.

In Britain, homes in Stourbridge burned down to their walls, with 20 to 30 buildings completely destroyed. Nineteen people and six firefighters were hospitalized for smoke inhalation and other injuries. In Stoke-on-Trent, a 23-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman were arrested on suspicion of arson. London recorded 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, making it the hottest day of the year, while England and Wales have just gone through their driest July since records began in 1836.

Spain, meanwhile, moved the remains of three 11th-century kings out of the San Juan de la Peña monastery as a fire approached. Paintings, liturgical objects and historic clothing were also removed. Around 800 people had to leave their homes there, while an even larger fire in Huelva province has already burned more than 115 square miles of land. In Germany, the entire village of Gey in North Rhine-Westphalia, home to 1,800 people, was evacuated after a fire in the Hürtgen Forest came within roughly 1,000 feet of homes. Nearly 740 acres of forest were burning, and old World War II ammunition made firefighting even more dangerous. Germany has also already set a new record for heat-related deaths: According to estimates by the Robert Koch Institute, around 12,500 people died from the effects of heat between the beginning of the year and August 2, more than in the entire previous record year of 2018.

In Croatia, one person died in a fire near Omiš and 14 others were hospitalized, seven of them temporarily in life-threatening condition. More than 1,000 people had to flee, while 194 people, including children, were rescued from the sea and from boats after escaping the flames by heading for the coast or onto the water. Albania still reported eleven active fires on Friday, while in northern Greece more than 300 tourists and residents were evacuated by ship.

Persistent drought: The Netherlands is heading toward a nationwide water crisis

Belgium and the Netherlands are also expecting temperatures around 99 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Netherlands is simultaneously dealing with severe drought and local water shortages. None of this is happening in some distant future. It is happening now, in Europe, in countries whose infrastructure was built for long cold seasons and is barely prepared for weeks of heat like this. The link to human-caused climate change has long been scientifically established, yet the political response in many places remains shockingly small compared with what is already happening outside. Homes are burning, villages are being evacuated, historic treasures are being carried out of monasteries, people are dying from the heat, and many are still talking about this decade as if there were plenty of time left. Nature is not waiting until politics and society finally feel comfortable enough to take the situation seriously.

"Not Nearly Long Enough": Trump Simply Brushes Aside the Misery on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The USS Abraham Lincoln has now been at sea for more than eight and a half months, much of that time in the Iran war, and families and sailors are now reporting conditions that have little left to do with a normal deployment. Two sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have tried to jump off the ship because conditions during the carrier's extended deployment in the Middle East have become catastrophic. Basic supplies are running short, water is reportedly contaminated, toilets and plumbing are failing, safety on deck is suffering, packages disappear for months, and above all the mental health of many sailors is getting worse and worse. Donald Trump was asked about it on Friday.

The reporter told him the crew's families were worried. Trump simply replied: "No, they're not." When asked whether he was concerned about the sailors' mental health and whether the deployment had already gone on too long, he said no three times and then added: "Not nearly long enough." Yet it has already been decided that the Navy has to relieve the Lincoln, and the USS George Washington is slated to replace it. Even Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth played down reports about conditions aboard the ship earlier this week, claiming the situation had been misrepresented. Senator Richard Blumenthal then wrote to Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and laid out what is now known: shortages of basic supplies, contaminated water, plumbing problems, worsening mental health, dangers on the flight deck and a mail system in which care packages disappear for months. None of it seems to matter much to Trump.

Read also our article: Desperate Sailors Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln Are Trying to Go Overboard After 250 Days Without Setting Foot on Land

Since the Iran war began, Trump has repeatedly played down its cost, even though 18 American service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded. The Pentagon even tried to remove four deaths from the war's official toll just days after they died because Trump had previously announced a cease-fire, even though the fighting continued. Injury figures were also withheld in full at times. Just hours after his comments about the Lincoln, Trump stood before a crowd in Garden City, New York, and said he might soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States. The strait has been one of the most dangerous points of this war for months, and its blockade has badly hit oil supplies and global markets. Trump also defended high gas prices: If Americans had to pay a little more and the price was at four dollars, then that was fine. He said he would never apologize for it. Meanwhile, thousands of men and women aboard the Lincoln are carrying the consequences of a war whose end is still nowhere in sight. Their president has now told them that eight and a half months apparently is still not enough.

Crocodiles Were Once Warm-Blooded - and Only Much Later Became the Animals We Know Today

Crocodiles are considered classic cold-blooded animals, yet their ancestors were apparently the exact opposite for an astonishingly long part of their history. An international research team led by Roger Seymour of the University of Adelaide has concluded that the common ancestor of crocodiles, dinosaurs and therefore birds already had a high metabolic rate around 250 million years ago. That ability apparently remained in the crocodile line for many millions of years. Only comparatively late did they switch to the slow metabolism that defines crocodiles today. Researchers tracked down the evidence through tiny openings in fossilized thigh bones. Blood vessels that supply the bone run through these so-called nutrient foramina. The more active an animal is, the more heavily its bones are stressed and rebuilt, and the greater the blood flow required. In modern mammals and birds, these openings are large, while in crocodiles, lizards and turtles they are much smaller.

Researchers examined 217 thigh bones from museum collections. After removing damaged specimens and those from very young animals, they were left with data from 81 extinct species. Their calculated blood flow was, on average, even higher than that of mammals of comparable size and significantly higher than that of modern reptiles, with the exception of monitor lizards. The result was especially striking among 24 extinct members of the crocodile line: Every one of them showed high values, even animals from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods that already looked very much like modern crocodiles. Researchers therefore believe the slower metabolism developed only with the final transition to life in the water and ambush hunting, where long periods of motionless waiting and holding the breath became more important than constant activity. Evolution among dinosaurs was not uniform either. Predatory dinosaurs were highly active from the Triassic onward, while metabolism apparently declined again in some plant-eating ankylosaurs, stegosaurs and later giant sauropods. Heavy armor or sheer body size made rapid escape less important for those animals. In two-legged archosaurs weighing more than 25 pounds, scientists also found stronger blood flow in the thigh bone than in four-legged animals because body weight was carried on two limbs instead of four.

The researchers do warn against making a simple equation: A high metabolic rate does not automatically mean an animal kept its body temperature constant like a modern bird or mammal. Monitor lizards still show today that a very powerful metabolism is possible without true internal temperature regulation. Direct evidence of such temperature regulation in early archosaurs is still lacking. Even so, the study changes a long-familiar picture: Today's slow-moving crocodiles apparently are not the original state of their family, but the result of an adaptation that came much later.

Microsoft Fonts, Old Photos, Kicked Off the Ballot: Russia Turns Election Law Into a Farce

Russian State Duma lawmaker Mikhail Matveyev has lost his place on the ballot, and even by Russian standards the reasoning reads like satire about an election law that no longer seems to know how far it can be bent. Matveyev sits in the Duma for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and wanted to run again in Samara's single-member District No. 163. The Samara Regional Court canceled his registration after a lawsuit filed by Anastasia Sarantseva, a candidate for the Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice. The court said her objections were justified but did not say which of them ultimately proved decisive in removing him from the race. Matveyev himself had already made the allegations public, and some of them are the kind of thing you have to read twice. One complaint involved a drawing on his "Matveyev 2026" campaign website showing him with a raised fist.

The plaintiff claims the drawing was based on a photo whose rights supposedly belong to an unnamed media outlet. Matveyev counters that this very outlet cited his own Telegram channel as the source of the photo. It gets even more absurd with his old personal website. Because Matveyev links there to earlier work and posts, photos that are ten or fifteen years old suddenly became part of the case, including a picture of him giving a lecture in 2009 and another showing him with Orthodox activists. The fact that Matveyev himself appears in the pictures did not help him. According to the lawmaker, the argument was that someone else took the photos, so he should have obtained permission to publish them.

Even the fonts ended up in the case. According to Matveyev, his current campaign site uses fonts whose rights belong to the Communist Party, while older pages and social networks use the standard fonts of the respective platforms and Microsoft. Matveyev points out that a user on Telegram or VKontakte cannot simply replace the platform's default font with a campaign font in the first place. The images in his eight-page report on his work in the State Duma were also examined one by one to see whether he could prove he had the right to use them. Politically, the case has another layer: Matveyev says the lawsuit is meant to remove him from a district where he is difficult to beat through a normal election. According to him, the brother of plaintiff Sarantseva works for his main rival, Alexander Zhivaykin of United Russia, and is also executive director of the Samara Region Wrestling Federation, whose president is Zhivaykin himself.

Only a few days earlier, the liberal Yabloko party had already been removed from the Duma election by the Supreme Court, also following a lawsuit in which copyright claims played a major role. That case involved, among other things, a historic photograph of Hiroshima, an image created with ChatGPT and even the question of who owns the phrase "As long as there is no war." Particularly remarkable: In the case of the image created with ChatGPT, the court actually concluded that Yabloko should have obtained OpenAI's permission to use it. Posts on Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube were also deemed problematic because, in the court's view, the campaign expenses attached to them could not properly have been paid from the election fund. Yabloko was the only approved party with an explicitly antiwar platform and campaigned under the slogan "For Peace and Freedom." Now Matveyev follows.

In Russia, that now means photos from fifteen years ago, Microsoft fonts and the question of who took a picture can decide who is allowed to appear on a ballot at all. Election law is not being abolished. It is being buried under rules until, in the end, only those remain whom nobody wants removed.