Ukraine has rapidly expanded its one-way attack-drone campaign from the Sea of Azov into the Black Sea, claiming strikes against more than 180 vessels and maritime targets around the Crimean region over the past three weeks, according to Reuters. The widening maritime offensive follows a summer campaign in which Ukrainian drones struck dozens of Russian energy assets, warehouses and logistics hubs.

The risk of the Russia-Ukraine conflict merging with the US-Iran conflict seems plausible, but remains low at this point, despite overnight signals from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X that Ukrainian forces had hit “military cargo shipments involving Iran.”

Zelensky noted, “We also have very good results from long-range strikes in the waters of the Caspian Sea. In particular, these are vessels that were involved in transporting military cargo from Iran, and a warship.”

In August 2025, Ukraine struck the Russian cargo ship Port Olya-4 at a Caspian Sea port, saying it was loaded with Iranian Shahed drone components and ammunition.

An Estonian-born blogger on X, who goes by “WarTranslated,” cited Iranian Telegram channels claiming that Tehran is “threatening ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine after Zelensky said they hit a military vessel carrying cargo between Russia and Iran.”

Iranian Telegram channels are threatening ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine after Zelensky said they hit a military vessel carrying cargo between Russia and Iran. pic.twitter.com/t6TXWAaoUQ

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) July 25, 2026

The Ukrainian drone strike on the Iran-linked vessel points to deeper Russia-Iran military cooperation, likely centered on Tehran’s transfer of Shahed drone technology, components and munitions to Moscow.

More or less, this is just noise from both sides. Still, the two Eurasian war zones remain connected through Russia-Iran military cooperation, creating an ongoing risk that any escalation could cause the conflicts to converge into a broader confrontation. That risk remains low, but it cannot be dismissed.

By Phil Brink of FreightWaves

Canadian and U.S. agencies uncovered a broker-style operation using commercial transportation connections to move illegal drugs.

Canadian authorities seized nearly 1.7 metric tons of illegal drugs during a cross-border investigation named Project Bay. The haul included suspected cocaine, methamphetamine and opium. Authorities estimated the products’ street value above $139 million. Investigators called it one of Ontario’s most significant seizures from a single case.

Traffickers used broker-style transportation model

Windsor Police launched the investigation in January 2025. The Canada Border Services Agency joined the effort the following month. Investigators worked to identify a trafficking network with connections to the international border. Ontario Provincial Police later supported the cross-border and interprovincial portions.

Investigators found a broker-style model operating within the commercial transportation sector. The organization used established connections to arrange cross-border drug movements. Drivers knowingly transported the illegal products within legitimate supply chains, according to the release. Authorities continue investigating the network’s source and full scope.

U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the Drug Enforcement Administration assisted with international aspects. Toronto Police and Peel Regional Police also provided operational and investigative support. Several specialized Canadian units participated during the searches. Those agencies included local, provincial and federal law enforcement partners.

Searches uncover drugs, firearms and cash

Police teams executed 18 search warrants on June 25. The locations included Windsor, Corunna, LaSalle, Brampton and Kleinburg. Authorities conducted two additional searches in Markham and Caledon on July 14. Investigators then carried out two more in Brampton on July 20.

Authorities seized 973 kilograms of suspected cocaine and 660 kilograms of suspected methamphetamine. They also recovered 49 kilograms of suspected opium and 230 oxycodone tablets. Officers found 17 firearms, including an anti-tank rifle. The haul also contained ammunition, brass knuckles, magazines and a baton.

Investigators recovered C$80,000 and US$10,000 during the operation. Officers also took one vehicle as offense-related property. Additional items included high-end jewelry, money counters, 43 cellphones and six laptops.

Twenty-one people face 104 offenses

Authorities charged 21 people with 104 offenses under two Canadian laws. Those statutes include the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Police arrested 19 defendants during the operation. Two others remain wanted under outstanding arrest warrants.

The OPP Provincial Asset Forfeiture Unit joined the case. Its investigators will examine possible offenses involving criminal proceeds. The unit will also assist with taking property connected to alleged crimes. Project Bay’s broader investigation remains active.

“This seizure reflects the scale of criminal activity that crosses borders and impacts communities across Ontario,” OPP Chief Superintendent Mike Stoddart said. He credited cooperation among municipal, provincial, federal and international partners. “We have significantly disrupted the flow of harmful substances,” Stoddart said. He also said authorities removed substantial profits from the criminal economy.

“This investigation began as the result of information obtained by the Windsor Police Service,” Chief Jason Crowley said. He said the operation later expanded across several Ontario jurisdictions. Crowley credited law enforcement partners with dismantling the network. He said the organization moved dangerous drugs and firearms into communities across the province.

CBSA’s Southern Ontario region has seized 5,555 kilograms of illegal drugs at land ports this year. Officers there have also seized 206 firearms during that period. Regional Director General Michael Prosia credited cooperation among domestic and international agencies. He specifically thanked Ontario Provincial Police and Windsor Police for their work.

Project Bay remains an active investigation. Before publication, FreightWaves contacted OPP for additional information about the transportation operation. OPP did not provide a response before publication. FreightWaves will update this article as officials release more details.

Why it matters

The case shows how criminal networks can place illegal products inside legitimate commercial supply chains. Transportation professionals can use these details to recognize how traffickers may exploit industry connections.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on July 24 directing signs to be placed outside one of the Smithsonian Institution’s history museums warning visitors that some exhibits contain inaccurate information.

The order references a July report by the White House Domestic Policy Council, which alleges that the National Museum of American History “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”

Trump said in his order that the report shows that “the Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”

The president directed his administration to use “all available authorities” to encourage the Smithsonian Institution to correct the issues identified in the report and ensure compliance with the laws, funding requirements, and contract conditions.

The order instructs the Interior Department to place temporary signage along the sidewalks and walkways that are maintained by the National Park Service and used by the public to access the museum, informing visitors of the report’s findings.

The signage will direct visitors to locations and resources presenting what the president deems accurate information regarding America’s history, according to the order.

The Smithsonian Institution did not return a request for comment by publication time.

The National Museum of American History, located in Washington, was originally named the National Museum of History and Technology when it was opened in January 1964. The museum was renamed in October 1980.

The museum’s collection includes more than 1.7 million objects representing the nation’s heritage in the areas of science, technology, society, and culture, according to its website.

Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, defended the museum during a July 21 congressional hearing, saying its work is guided by the Smithsonian’s standards of scholarship and independence.

“The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates,” Hartig said. “We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all of its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions.”

The White House report followed Trump’s March 2025 executive order directing the Interior Department to ensure that public monuments “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

The report said the museum has not established any exhibit specifically dedicated to the Founding Fathers, the Second Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, or the nation’s path to independence and the establishment of constitutional rule of law.

“Our central finding is not that the museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope,” the report stated.

“Rather, it is that museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”

Folks across the Mid-Atlantic are enjoying a welcome stretch of mild weather today, with temperatures in the 70s following several rounds of extreme heat earlier this month that sent temperatures into the 90s and even into the triple digits. Enjoy the comfortable nights in the 60s and low 70s over the next few days, because another heat wave is already on the horizon.

“New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7,” private forecaster Commodity Wx Group wrote on X.

New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7. pic.twitter.com/GTwfR5pVrY

— Commodity Wx Group (@commoditywx) July 24, 2026

Bloomberg forecast data show temperatures beginning to climb by the middle of next week, with highs peaking in the mid-to-upper 90s during the first week of August. The incoming heat wave is not expected to match the intensity of the two earlier this month, when temperatures surged well into the triple digits.

Notably, temperatures in the Lower 48 have reached their seasonal peak and will begin trending downward.

Peak summer is a welcome relief for customers across the PJM grid, who are facing some of the highest power costs in the nation.

This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson.

We’re hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we’ve done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday. 

What is it, the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, etc., etc.  

But my question is, compared to what? 

Mao Zedong? He killed 70 million people.

He was the greatest mass murderer in history, and that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that or the million people who are in concentration camps in China? 

Compared to historically to the Aztecs? 

We’re told the Aztecs were great people. They had an empire, but they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years, they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow Indigenous people. 

Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th-century creator of the Zulu nation?

He was responsible for a genocide in crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. 

Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes. 

So, what is going on? 

We have a tradition in the West of self-criticism. That’s what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism, and it’s quite destructive. 

So, let’s just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. 

Look at immigration. Why do a million people, or 2 million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden, from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former Third World that were victims of socialism, why do they risk their lives coming here every year? 

Why do all these critics of the United States … [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], why did her parents want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Ilhan Omar’s father want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib’s father want to come here? Why did [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani’s parents want to come? Was it so bad? 

Can’t they ever acknowledge that they came here because they had greater security, they had greater freedom, they had greater economic opportunity? And if they had criticisms, it was never enough that they wanted to go back to the places that they praised, but only from a distance and in the abstract. 

The truth is that the poor in the United States are better off than most of the middle classes in every other country. 

We saw that in the World Cup when middle- and upper-middle-class Europeans came over, and unlike … to watch the games, and unlike most tourists, they didn’t just stick on the coasts. They went to places in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the South, and the Midwest. 

And they found two things.

One, Americans were amazingly friendly and open, upbeat, not downers and drab, and everything’s terrible, which they expected from their experiences in Europe. 

And more importantly, they were affluent. They had big homes. They had air conditioning. the poor had appurtenances. Everybody has a cell phone. Nobody worries about the cost, apparently. 

There’s also then the hypocrisy of a lot of our critics.

And let me just give you an example of a few of them. 

Hasan Piker is a child of very, very wealthy Turkish immigrants that became U.S. citizens. He grew up for much of his life in Turkey. He gave a talk the other day in a Mao suit to Democratic Socialists of America. Think about that. He put on the uniform, so to speak, of the greatest mass murderer in history, and then he denounced capitalism. 

But he didn’t denounce capitalism in his own life because his parents are multimillionaires. He is a multimillionaire, and he drives a, what? $120,000 Porsche. Isn’t that a luxury of the bourgeoisie? 

And then there’s Zohran Mamdani, of course. His family, as I pointed out numerous times, was the elite of the elite of the elite in Uganda, a community of expatriates, Indians, from India that control 60% of the wealth, and they’re only 1% of the population. 

And he grew up in privilege here. He had a very nice home. He has a family estate on Lake Victoria, of all places. 

Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, he always is pointing out the evils of Republicans, and as he looks at the drift of the Democratic Party, he puts his finger in the wind, and he says socialism is the answer. Ro Khanna does. 

But he’s a multimillionaire. His father-in-law is one of the wealthiest members of the Indian American community, probably worth $500 or $600 million. His own children have been deeded golf courses. His wife drives a $190,000 Range Rover, and he’s lecturing us about our shortfalls? 

And then, of course, we come to [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom. He wants to get in on the socialist craze, so he said the other day, as is his wont, moving his arms around and being very slick and glib, that capitalism fails. It didn’t work. 

It worked for you, Gavin. You have a $9 million home. 

You are the, basically, the quote-unquote, “protégé” of the Gordon Getty oil for- fortune, who backed all of your business opportunities. 

Graham Platner, the now-disgraced madman who thought he was going to be senator with a Nazi tattoo. He criticized capitalism. He said that, you know, he was drifting towards socialism, very critical of America. 

But he really wasn’t a small-business person. He was a construct. His mother and father, who were very wealthy, one owned an upscale restaurant, the other was a well-known, often corporate real estate lawyer. They set him up in business, and they were his only client, and they allowed him to have land to use. 

So, what I’m getting at is most of this criticism of America is not coming from the so-called poor. It’s not coming from the lower middle classes. It’s coming from elites in urban enclaves who have done very well with capitalism, and they feel that by mouthing these socialist and communist platitudes, it’s a way to get power within the Democratic Party first, and then within the United States second. 

And remember one thing, this is not new. Most of the violent socialist communist movements in history, whether we look at the anarchist of the late 19th century, or whether we look at the Bolsheviks of 1905 all the way up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, or we look at the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, especially the Reign of Terror, 1792 and 1793, when a bunch of very wealthy, this should sound familiar, socialists hijacked the French Revolution and turned it into a Stalinist-like murder spree. 

They all had one thing in common. They were very, very wealthy, and they hated the very system that had enriched them, and they wanted to try out a whole series of nihilist projects on whom? On the middle class and the poor, with the proviso that none of their ideology would ever apply to themselves. 

They are far less active across the US in 2026, but not truly gone.  Is it exasperating, or, is it entertaining?  It depends on how you look at it.  Yes, the Black Lives Matter movement is back, and big surprise, they’re angry over the police shooting of another violent minority criminal.  But, is he black?

Not according to his extensive offender detail record, in which his race is listed as “White” and his ethnicity is listed as “Latino”.  Yet another in a long line of imprisoned minority perpetrators falsely identified as white on their rap sheet in order to artificially reduce official crime stats.  That said, it’s nice to know that BLM is finally admitting that all lives matter. 

Corey Durrell Ruiz, 38, recently released from prison, was approached by police while riding a bicycle after allegedly attempting to enter (break into) random vehicles in Madison, Wisconsin.  He was also suspected of a previous bike theft.  

When officers attempted to detain Ruiz, he ran.  He was tackled off the bike, but produced a fixed blade knife and stabbed one of the officers.  The wounded officer fired three shots, killing the suspect.  

July 22, 2026 – Madison, Wisconsin.

Four officers struggle to arrest a man suspected of stealing bikes and checking cars.

During the fight, he pulls a large fixed-blade knife.

One officer is stabbed. A second officer is also injured.

A female officer yells “Taser, Taser,…

— Louis Montoya (@montoyalouis1) July 24, 2026

Generally speaking, pulling any weapon during an arrest and trying to use it against an LEO is legal justification for the use of deadly force in return.  It is unlikely that the officers involved will face charges in court.  Not to be overlooked, Corey Ruiz has a long criminal history of up to 40 separate misdemeanors and felonies dating back to 2007. 

This includes an extensive history of attacking police officers, and yes, this does matter because it shows a consistent pattern of violence.  A world without Corey Ruiz is, objectively, a better world.

The Black Lives Matter movement and the mainstream media have immediately seized on the shooting in an effort to exploit it for political purposes.  The local Democrat run government is already bending the knee to protesters as they hijack press briefings with inane fatiguery.  BLM mobs are stalking Madison looking for chances to create chaos.  Wisconsin’s leftist governor is calling for “accountability” in the shooting.

It’s fascinating that the family of Corey Ruiz has appeared on camera to demand transparency, given that Ruiz was listed as homeless at the time of the encounter with police.  Multiple reports indicate mental health and substance abuse issues, and apparently no one from Ruiz’s family was willing to give him a place to stay.  They are, though, readily available to soak up the media spotlight and feed the activist fervor in the wake of his death. 

News outlets are circulating photos of Ruiz from 2014; a common tactic used by the media to make the suspect look younger and elicit greater empathy from gullible portions of the public.

Concert attendees in Madison got a taste of the old BLM mob mentality when protesters stormed the venue and demanded a platform for their grievances.  As much as they would like this to become a “George Floyd moment”, however, times have changed and BLM has exhausted much of the public support they had in 2020. 

Mob of angry protesters crashed a concert in Madison, Wisconsin, demanding “justice” for Corey Ruiz, a black man who was shot and killed by police after he allegedly pulled a knife during an arrest.

They essentially held the attendees hostage while hijacking the stage. The event… pic.twitter.com/J2GALWl4ob

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 23, 2026

The shooting is a clear case of officer self defense based on eye witness accounts and the available video footage.  Police body cams are liable to give more detailed insight into the incident, but the evidence against Ruiz is already damning.  

Leftist groups and Democrats seem to be angling for more Kenosha-style riots, perhaps as a means to create disruption during an election year.  But the American populace is tired of the theatrics.  If the protests don’t fade due to lack of interest and riots do take place, few people are going to shed a tear if the National Guard drops the hammer on them.  

Ultimately, Ruiz is one of many repeat offenders who had no chance of reform; a member of the 1% of people who cause the vast majority of societal grief for the other 99%.  He should have stayed locked up for the safety of the community at large, and if he had been he would still be alive today.  Maybe, though, that’s not what the Democrats and BLM really want.