Ukraine struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg Sunday morning in what Russian state media called “one of the biggest drone attacks of the year.”
Alexander Beglov, governor of St. Petersburg, said on Telegram Sunday that the city underwent a “massive” overnight attack from Ukrainian drones. “The Ministry of Emergency Situations continues to extinguish fires at the Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, and industrial warehouses in the Kolpino district,” he said, adding that one person died and several others were injured in the incident.
The drone strikes come as Kyiv and Moscow ramp up attacks on each other’s infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week he had ordered the resumption of strikes on Russian oil refineries following a three-day pause after U.S. President Donald Trump declared he had brokered an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
Trump repeatedly urged Ukraine to halt its attacks and blamed the country for rising fuel prices — while also calling for Zelenskyy to be replaced as president.
Writing on X Sunday morning, the Ukrainian president highlighted Moscow’s continued attacks on Ukraine. “In total, over this past week, the Russians have attacked Ukraine with almost 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic,” he wrote, adding that the U.S. “should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements.”
Separately, Vilnius said that a suspected drone may have self-detonated in Lithuania while on a flight path toward Latvia Sunday morning. A spokesperson for the Lithuanian armed forces said NATO air defense mission fighter jets were scrambled in response to the incident near the Latvian border.
The provenance of the suspected drone is unclear, but Robertas Kaunas, Lithuania’s defense minister, said the object was likely a drone which had entered the country from Poland, adding that he had proposed a joint investigation with his Polish counterpart.
Police searches are also underway in eastern Poland after reports of an unidentified object entering the country’s airspace following a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Starlink restrictions hampering Ukraine’s war effort are “a planned operation,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
The satellite service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX is still deactivated in Ukraine at speeds over 160 km/h, which prevents some of its drones to intercept high-speed Shahed drones used by Russia, Zelenskyy told reporters in a WhatsApp chat.
He added that Ukraine conducted a test by sending Starlink-equipped vehicules to European Union countries, at speeds over 180 km/h. “Starlink kept working … The conclusion is this: the restrictions are in effect in Ukraine, but they are not in effect in European Union countries. So, this is a planned operation,” Zelenskyy said.
The restrictions have revived questions on Ukraine’s reliance on the satellite system operated by a U.S. company amid escalating tensions between Kyiv and the White House. “This will cost many of us our lives,” an experienced Ukrainian officer told POLITICO and the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network earlier this week.
“We’re reaching out to everyone at the military level, at the Ministry of Defense level, and at the diplomatic level, including to SpaceX. Right now, no one is responding to our military or the Ministry of Defense,” Zelenskyy told reporters.
The European Union is under increasing pressure to provide Ukraine with an alternative to Starlink. But negotiations between Brussels and Kyiv over access to the bloc’s Govsatcom program — which gives participating governments secure communications capabilities— have been stalling. And IRIS², the EU’s in-house planned network to match Starlink, is only expected to come online in 2030.
“The Europeans are now raising the question of alternatives themselves. And they’re already working on them. They’re already making progress, and they’ll succeed in this area. I can already see that,” Zelenskyy said.
SpaceX did not immediately responded to a request for comment.
Earlier on Saturday, Zelenskyy accused Russia of looking to create a blackout across Ukraine, amid attacks on energy infrastructure and the waiver of U.S. sanctions on Moscow.
“Russia is trying to cause a blackout in Ukraine right before winter. Russia is trying to leave millions of our people without electricity and heating. Pressure is needed to stop this,” he said on Telegram.
“An American sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor, monetary rewards for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin: all of this only encourages him to keep striking,” he added.
The Ukrainian leader’s comments come after Russia carried out strikes on the war-torn country’s energy sector, including power generation and transmission facilities, with more than 320 jet-powered Shahed drones, loitering munitions, cruise and ballistic missiles. Power was reportedly cut for about 1 million people.
They also come as U.S. President Donald Trump signed on Friday an executive order that waived key sanctions on Russia — a decision that Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, described as “an important and truly historic moment.” Trump’s move comes only a few days after he made a deal with Putin over supplying barrels of diesel, leaving European countries and Ukraine stunned.
“A decision was unfortunately made in America to completely ignore Lindsey Graham’s bill, which was supposed to introduce truly effective pressure on Russia to end this war,” Zelenskyy said. “This bill could have helped a great deal, and it still can! But the law needs to actually work, and every vote for it matters.”
This article was updated. Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.
Apple has finally announced its long-rumored foldable: the iPhone Duo.
The new phone has a 5.4-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch inner display, a “nano‑texture” finish on the inner screen, and barely any visible crease. Instead of Face ID, it uses Touch ID on the power button. It has two cameras, a main lens and a wide-angle lens. Apple completely revamped iOS 27’s controls and apps for the foldable, including putting the dock on the side of the phone. And it has a flashy opening animation when you unfold the phone.
The iPhone Duo a big new bet from Apple, though one that’s a little late to the game compared to competitors like Samsung and Google. The phone isn’t cheap: it starts at $1,999 for the base 256GB model, and the prices only go up from there. Still, Apple said that preorder demand was “extraordinary,” so it could have a hit on its hands.
When the midrange Sony Xperia 10 VI was announced over two years ago with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset and Android 14, Sony promised three major OS updates which would have included this year's Android 17 release. However, according to a notice posted to the company's UK support site, the Xperia 10 VI won't be getting Android 17 after all.
In the notice Sony explains that a "detailed technical assessment" revealed that "limitations related to the device's storage configuration" mean the Xperia 10 VI "does not support an Android 17 upgrade experience that we consider adequate." As a result, the company has "decided not to make this …
The iPhone Duo is Apple’s first foldable phone. | Photo by Antonio Di Benedetto / The Verge
Few phones have been more anticipated than a foldable iPhone, but it's finally here. The iPhone Duo was unveiled during Apple's "Surprise and shine" event alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 models.
Apple's first foldable has a 5.4-inch outer screen, and it unfolds to show off its 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR screen. Apple Pencil support is coming later this year. While it lacks Face ID for facial unlocking, there's a Touch ID sensor along its edge to identify your fingerprint. The device has an IP68 rating, with Ceramic Shield 2 on its back, with Ceramic Shield covering the front display. It has the same A20 …
Apple's iPhone Duo foldable phone opens for preorder tomorrow, October 16th, at 8am ET / 5am PT, but you don't have to wait until then to get your order mostly sorted. The company's product page for the phone now lets you select the color you want, along with storage capacity, carrier preference, and whether you want to set up a trade to make the $1,999 foldable a little cheaper.
Once you enter all of the details, all you'll need to do tomorrow morning, once preorders open, is to confirm your order. It'll be sitting in your cart ready for checkout. This will save you some time, and you'll jump ahead of people who are still customizing their …
BRUSSELS — NATO allies will hold a crisis meeting to discuss how to respond to a series of drone strikes on cargo shipping in the Black Sea, Romania’s President Nicușor Dan said.
Two chemical tankers were hit by air drones in the past 24 hours in or near Romania’s territorial waters, but it is “too early” to say for sure whether Russia was behind the attacks, Dan added.
Dan was speaking on the sidelines of the European Council summit in Brussels, where he spoke to Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte about the latest incidents.
“The secretary general expressed the solidarity of the alliance and there will be a NAC [North Atlantic Council] meeting at which the whole situation with the Black Sea will be discussed,” Dan told POLITICO. “Of course the conclusion is that all the hybrid attacks are trying to decrease our support for Ukraine. We will continue to support,” he said.
Dan said invoking NATO’s collective defense clause, Article 5, was “not now” being discussed as an option for responding to the attacks. Nor has Romania asked for Article 4 — the emergency clause that sets consultations in motion over military matters when a member’s security has been threatened — to be triggered, he said.
Rescuers are searching for seven missing crew members after two chemical tankers were hit by aerial drones in or near Romanian territorial waters. Over the past 10 days, drones have hit at least five more cargo ships close to Romania and Bulgaria — both NATO members — killing at least 23 sailors.
Investigation teams from Romania’s army and intelligence services are trying to establish what led to the most recent drones strikes on the ships, Dan said.
Romania asked NATO for equipment including specialized radars and requested the delivery to be accelerated after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building near the border with Ukraine in May.
Dan suggested Romania was likely to seek further assistance with equipment from allies this time. “On the operational level, we are in the same situation where we have been … on the Danube border with Ukraine,” Dan said. “What we did at that moment, we came here to NATO and some of our allies — United States, France, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, Portugal — gave us some equipment. And now we are in the same situation, but on the other border, with the Black Sea.”
After the meeting with Dan and Radev, NATO’s Rutte said the alliance had already increased “counter-drone capabilities” along its eastern flank. “NATO will continue to work closely with our allies in the Black Sea, adjusting our deterrence and defence posture as needed,” he posted on X.
This story has been updated. Victor Jack contributed to the report.
Seven crew members are missing after a tanker caught fire close to Romanian territorial waters in the Black Sea Thursday morning, Romanian authorities said.
The San Marino-flagged chemical tanker sent a distress call at 7 a.m. local time about 13 nautical miles from Sulina, a port on Romania’s eastern coast, close to the Ukrainian border. Romanian border police, along with aviation units, arrived to assist the crew, the Romanian Naval Authority said.
Five people have been rescued so far, the naval authority told local media. Another tanker was affected by a fire late on Wednesday close to Sulina, with authorities confirming the crew were safe.
Romanian authorities have not given a reason for either incident. The fires broke out hours after the country’s defense ministry announced an air alert around Snake Island — a Ukrainian territory located about 40 kilometers from the spot where the San Marino tanker sent its distress signal. A drone was also spotted near Sulina overnight `”after which it disappeared from the radar,” the ministry wrote.
At least five commercial vessels have been hit by suspected drone strikes in the Black Sea over the past two weeks. The deadly attacks are affecting a key route that carries 95% of Ukraine’s grain exports.
On Oct. 6, drones struck two ships in Bulgaria’s Black Sea economic zone. One sank, and its 10 crew members went missing. On Tuesday two more ships were struck near Bulgaria, leaving 11 crew members missing.
Romanian President Nicusor Dan will meet Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for talks on the sidelines of the European Council summit in Brussels at 1:30 p.m. today.
BRUSSELS — Slovakia is reviving a dormant cooperation forum with Moscow, putting Russia’s gas and oil supplies, nuclear fuel and the treatment of Russian athletes high on the agenda of their first such meeting in five years, according to a Russian government note obtained by POLITICO.
The note, written by Russian Science and Higher Education Minister Valery Falkov, says Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár agreed during an Aug. 20 video call to hold a meeting of the Russian-Slovak Intergovernmental Commission in Moscow.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said Wednesday the meeting is scheduled for Nov. 25. The Russian note — which is dated Sept. 10 — initially set the date of the meeting as Oct. 26-27.
The IGC, which covers economic, scientific and technical cooperation, has been dormant since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The last meeting was the commission’s 21st session, held in Bratislava on Nov. 12, 2021.
The meeting comes as Moscow finds openings in other international arenas. The U.S. has invited Vladimir Putin to December’s G20 summit in Miami, while the International Olympic Committee has provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and urged sports bodies to ease restrictions on Russian athletes.
Asked about the purported agenda for the IGC, the Slovak foreign ministry directed POLITICO to Blanár’s public statements after the Aug. 20 call. “We pursue a policy in all directions and maintain dialogue with all countries that are interested in pragmatic cooperation with us for the benefit of the Slovak Republic’s national interests,” Blanár said at the time.
The Russian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The renewed push for warmer Slovak-Russian relations follows Fico’s May 9 visit to Moscow, where he met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during Victory Day commemorations. It comes after Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary’s April election, which cost Putin one of his closest partners in Europe and forced him to look elsewhere for EU allies.
Months before losing the election to Péter Magyar, Orbán rebooted the Russian-Hungarian Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation, which had been suspended for several years after the 2022 invasion. Magyar’s government did not confirm to POLITICO whether the commission would go ahead next year.
EU leaders, including Fico, will gather in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit focused on issues including energy prices and support for Ukraine, with the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expected to join them for a conversation on Friday.
Oil imports and cultural integration
In the August video call, Blanár raised Slovakia’s opposition to the EU’s phaseout of Russian gas imports and asked to discuss supplies at the Moscow meeting, according to the document, which POLITICO could not independently verify but bears the hallmarks of a legitimate Russian ministerial note. Slovak representatives also stressed the importance of continued Russian oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline and welcomed regular shipments of nuclear fuel for Slovak power plants, according to the note.
Slovakia remains heavily reliant on Russian oil and gas, and Fico has argued that ending imports would raise costs. When the two leaders met in Moscow on May 9, Putin said Russia would do everything to meet Slovakia’s energy needs.
The agenda for the meeting next month reaches beyond energy, according to the document. The sides plan to explore working groups on culture, tourism, agriculture and environmental protection, and to discuss the status of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Bratislava.
Falkov also records Blanár’s opposition to what the note calls the “discrimination against Russian athletes” at international competitions, noting the issue is to be discussed at the IGC meeting.
The International Olympic Committee lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee in July and said its previous recommendations restricting Russian athletes’ participation no longer applied. World Archery lifted restrictions on Russian athletes and officials in August. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has also called for Russia to be allowed back into international football.
The approach echoes Moscow’s recent effort to lock in closer ties with Orbán’s Hungary. Budapest and Moscow in December agreed on a 12-point plan to expand cooperation in areas including energy, trade and culture. The plan was signed by then Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko after talks in Moscow in December. The Slovak note points to a similar breadth of ambition.
The Kremlin’s outreach to Fico shows how Moscow can use energy ties to pull individual EU countries away from a united stance on Ukraine. Putin made a similar pitch in Washington last weekend: After a call with the Russian leader, President Donald Trump said Russia would supply diesel to U.S. and global markets to bring down fuel prices. The deal would provide revenue to Moscow while weakening efforts to maintain a united front against the Kremlin.
But there are questions over whether Putin can follow through on his pledge to Trump. Ukraine has been stepping up drone strikes on Russian refineries, aiming to disrupt fuel supplies and cut revenue for Moscow’s war effort. Kyiv said this month that strikes had disabled 51 percent of Russia’s oil-refining capacity.
Ukraine’s strikes on data centers inside Russia aimed to disrupt military planning and communication services. There were also reports of another kind of disruption: to customers waiting for their dinner from food-delivery apps.
Kyiv’s drone strikes on three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir saw delays and interruptions for thousands of businesses and households that rely on Yandex’s cloud infrastructure, including e-commerce, digital payment platforms and apps of food delivery and car services. Ukrainian drones on Wednesday targeted a major Sberbank data center in Russia’s Saratov region, though a senior company executive said it hadn’t affected operations.
After the strikes on Russian data centers, Kyiv noted that Moscow has already repeatedly targeted its digital infrastructure. “Ukrainians wanted to show Russians that two can play this game,” a senior official familiar with the operation told POLITICO, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The attacks and counter-attacks point to a new frontline in war: the infrastructure powering the digital economy.
The attacks on the buildings that supply compute power are akin to striking a power plant supplying the electricity, heating and fuel that both militaries and civilians depend on. It may weaken an enemy’s war effort but can also bring everyday life to a standstill.
Experts say the cost of rebuilding in Russia will be particularly high as the centers require scarce materials that must be imported. “Obtaining a large amount of equipment to replace what was destroyed is not going to be easy,” said Oleg Shakirov, a cyber policy and international security researcher, noting that most hardware needs to be imported and that is complicated by high global demand and sanctions on Russia.
“To be honest, no one really knows what’s the actual damage. Since two data centers are still offline, we can assume that it’s significant,” said Shakirov.
Joseph Jarnecki, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, warned that normalizing strikes to data centers could have a new set of dangerous consequences.
“These strikes likely breach International Humanitarian Law and it’s a big risk when global populations increasingly rely on digital services,” he told POLITICO.
When servers become targets
Data centers have entered the crosshairs of other recent armed conflicts. During the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran earlier this year, drone strikes hit three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Since data centers can serve civilian and military purposes simultaneously, the legal status of targeting them is far from straightforward.
Kubo Mačák, an expert on international humanitarian law, said a data center must meet two conditions to qualify as a military objective under the Geneva Conventions: it must make an effective contribution to military operations and destroying it must offer a “definite military advantage.”
A delivery robot from Russian tech giant Yandex moves through Moscow. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
“If you know that they are storing military intelligence or that they’re using the data center to power military artificial intelligence tools,” Mačák said, there could be grounds to consider it a military objective.
Following the most recent strikes of the Yandex data centers, users on social media platform X reported a sudden drop in automated bot activity, including from accounts associated with pro-Russian, pro-Trump and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) narratives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seized on the reports to boast that the strikes had made social media less toxic, even as independent researchers and national research institutes found no evidence they specifically disrupted any Russian disinformation campaigns.
Mačák said that even if a data center is being used to “let’s say, run some trolls or these bot farms to interfere with elections abroad … that would not be sufficient.” In other words, hosting propaganda bots does not, by itself, make a data center a lawful military target.
The dual-use quandary has often focused on the targeting of energy infrastructure, which has been frequent in the Russia-Ukraine war. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, blaming the attacks for rising fuel prices. He has since called for both sides to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, although the existence of any ceasefire agreement remains disputed.
As data centers become increasingly central to national economies, they will become more consequential targets. A senior NATO official granted anonymity to discuss the matter told POLITICO that data centers are already considered potential targets and that the alliance is factoring their vulnerability into its planning.
NATO allies recognize that their data centers could come under attack in a conflict, the official said: “We would get it in a fight.”
Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv contributed to this report.
The Ukraine war’s spillover into the Black Sea is creating a growing European security and commercial risk: Drones are hitting ships and killing sailors, grain routes are under strain, and insurers and investors are weighing the cost of operating through Ukraine’s ports.
Five commercial vessels have been hit in Bulgarian and Romanian waters over the past week alone, leaving at least four people dead, several sailors missing and others injured. In response, Black Sea countries Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey have raised the issue at NATO, asking for more focus toward the region and joint support, according to two alliance diplomats.
“The attack within Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone is absolutely unacceptable. It constitutes a serious breach of maritime and international law and will further jeopardise safe navigation in the Black Sea,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said on X after the attacks last week.
Russia has been attacking Ukrainian ports and cities in the area since the start of its full-scale invasion. But the recent strikes have brought the spillover into NATO territory. If they continue, EU leaders will face pressure to protect Black Sea shipping and keep Ukrainian trade moving.
Those questions will be top of mind at Thursday’s European Council summit. According to draft conclusions obtained by POLITICO, leaders are expected to discuss the “immediate restoration of safe passage for grain cargo ships.”
A wider problem
Russia is not the only country using naval drones in the Black Sea. Ukraine has also used them against Russian-linked shipping. In June, a Ukrainian sea drone exploded in Romania’s Constanța port after Kyiv said it had veered off course because of Russian electronic interference.
“The Black Sea situation is quite dangerous because attacks are coming from both [sides],” said an EU shipping representative, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “You have to worry about both.”
Attribution can also be difficult. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said Wednesday that investigators still have not proven that Russia is behind the strikes — although some have attributed his reticence to his broadly softer approach toward the Kremlin.
Drone operations by both Russia and Ukraine are likely to continue as long as each has the money and production capacity to sustain them, said Cristian Vlas, assistant research manager for Eastern Europe at the think tank ACLED.
Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and founder of the Black Sea Security Forum, told POLITICO that a “serious diplomatic initiative” was needed, bringing together Ukraine, Russia and a third-party guarantor, such as Turkey, “to restore freedom of navigation in the Black Sea.”
Grain routes under pressure
The security risk is disrupting routes that carry Ukraine’s harvest to market, with consequences for EU transport links. Black Sea ports are Ukraine’s main export gateway, handling around 95 percent of the country’s grain exports, as well as significant volumes of iron ore. Shipping traffic has fallen as the security risk has grown.
Some cargo is being rerouted to the River Danube, but capacity there has been stretched in recent months as drought pushes water levels to record lows. Operators are trying to add rail capacity, but that risks moving the bottleneck westward to Romania.
Moving more Ukrainian grain overland also risks reviving tensions with farmers in neighboring EU countries, Vlas said. Romanian farmers have worried that Ukrainian produce meant only to transit could stay on the domestic market, he added, while transport operators are already juggling competing demands for capacity.
Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi has warned that millions of tons of unsold grain is piling up, and that farmers who can’t sell won’t be able to afford to resow all their land.
Bulgaria is working with Romania and Turkey on a joint initiative to protect freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, which Radev plans to bring to EU leaders on Thursday.
Following the Black Sea countries’ request at NATO, military officials are likely to look into possible options such as shifting counter-drone systems to the region, the two alliance diplomats said. Radev said Sofia will convene his counterparts in Ankara and Bucharest to examine further proposals, while a senior Bulgarian official called for new joint anti-drone systems with Romania, partly financed by the EU.
Investment at risk
The attacks also threaten what had started to look like a renewed bet on Ukraine’s ports. MSC, the world’s largest container line, was among the biggest and newest investors, reportedly acquiring a majority stake in a container terminal at a port near Odesa in May.
Ukraine has also been offering investors a long-term concession at the Chornomorsk terminal near Odesa. This terminal is one of Ukraine’s largest planned port public-private partnerships and part of what is expected to be a multibillion-euro reconstruction effort involving European companies.
But people who work in Ukraine’s ports say the case for rebuilding is collapsing.
“No one is ready to invest and rebuild, since you know that tomorrow there will be another missile, another pack of drones,” Oleg Grygoriuk, chairman of Ukraine’s Marine Transport Workers’ Trade Union, said.
The Fairbuds 2 have had a total design revamp from the original pair.
Repairable, ethical phone brand Fairphone has released its second pair of earbuds. The Fairbuds 2 are just as repairable as the first generation, but deliver improved audio and almost twice the battery life. The Fairbuds 2 are out now in the UK and Europe from £99 / €119, and a US launch at $119 will follow on November 2nd.
The Fairbuds 2 have been redesigned from the ground up, moving to a stemmed design, available in black or green, and a case that's 37 percent smaller than the first generation. Despite that shrinking hardware, Fairphone has almost doubled the buds' battery life, which now totals 40 hours without active noise cancellation …
The Headphone A keep the shape and style of Nothing’s over-ear design, but with an opaque instead of transparent case. | Photo by John Higgins / The Verge
One of the best deals we’ve seen today bundles together a great pair of headphones with a solid album. When you add the Nothing Headphone A in black or white and the CD version of the Charli XCX album Music, Fashion, Film to your Amazon cart, you’ll save 33 percent on your order, bringing the total down to $97.52. That’s lower than the best price we’ve seen for the headphones on their own, which retail for $199, and you get a free album to boot. The other colors also qualify for the discount, but have a higher starting price, so the discounted price will be higher as well.
Nothing Headphone A
Nothing’s second over-ear headphones may not offer everything found on the pricier Nothing Headphone 1, but you do get physical controls, good sound, and more than five days of battery life per charge. Their design is also a bit more discreet, for better or worse. Read our review.
We reviewed the Nothing Headphone A when they launched earlier in 2026, and praised them for their physical controls, IP52 dust and water resistance rating, and excellent battery life. They have a more subtle design than other Nothing products, opting for an opaque housing instead of the translucent shells on other Nothing headphones.
Days after Ukrainian military drones took down several Russian data centers, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that the campaign had hurt Russia's disinformation efforts. "It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms," Zelenskyy said Monday. "There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations."
Zelenskyy isn't the first to assert that the drone operation, which targeted data centers belonging to the Russian technology company Yandex, has cut down on spam and disinformation campaigns fomented by Russian bot farms. Social media users have claimed they've noticed less traffic on posts by MAGA-affiliated a …
To camp with kids makes me question my sanity. I crush tasks. Setting up the tent, laying out the bedding, stacking coolers on a bench. The picnic tables are skeined with leaves after a season of rain. I peel and drape their skeletal outlines over a nurse log. Forest doilies. We brought bikes. Our sons pop wheelies in the parking lot, safer than it sounds because few campers have braved late spring at Seaquest State Park.
On the drive along Spirit Lake Highway to Mount St. Helens, the houses are few and well-priced. I marvel; Brian scoffs. That’s because this whole place was destroyed forty years ago. Having timed our trip to the eruption’s anniversary, we ascend through what had been a trail of devastation. Once seared by lahars, the landscape has greened into a wildlife corridor that winds around the Toutle River.
Scientists didn’t think life would come back this fast. Scant weeks after the blast, fireweed poked its green head through the ash, sending purple flowers skyward by July of 1980. The next year, I was born. We don’t always know where hope resides. I spent four decades guarding a secret. Quietude is a fertile state. Sure, I published hundreds of articles with my byline. But I rarely disclosed my own truths.
To this sunny weekend, I had invited a couple that Brian and I met in Seattle. Like him, they’re from the Midwest. Friendly people. She sang at our wedding with her two sisters, one of whom was our officiant. They moved to Portland a year after we met. We have stayed friends, which says something because I have lost contact with people who live in north Seattle. Together we decide on the Hummocks Trail. It’s only 2.5 miles long. I used to burn for monthlong expeditions, but it’s a good length for short legs.
I had never heard of hummocks before, which is the privilege of choosing one’s encounter with destruction. Hummocks are pieces of the mountain blown off by the eruption and carried downhill by a landslide. By the time we arrived, they had settled into place.
Seeds grow best when given space. To heal from my origin so that I could become myself and a mother, I have accepted estrangement as necessary. My parents are unable to reconcile our facts. They prefer façades. But to remain in relation with falsity is too deep a strain. My narrative belongs to me.
Upon these chunks of rock, ecosystems arise. Beneath the alders, bushy green horsetails wave in the unaccustomed sun. Their bright stalks, notched like bamboo, are topped with long fronds that grow in a feathery circle, like squirrel tails. With more than 300 million years of evolutionary strategy in the making, horsetails are hard to remove when they take root. It doesn’t matter how many times you pull them. I was charmed when they touched down in my garden. There, like here, they grow high enough to tickle my children’s hands along the path.
Our boys throw sticks into the ponds. Called the lifeblood of the hummocks by helpful plaques I read at a gallop to keep the kids in sight, the ponds are more like seeps. Or rainfall catchment basins. They were born when chunks of shattered glacier melted, forming pits filled by water then buried in ash. No longer held together by the mountainside, the hummocks slumped apart. Water dribbled through gray crannies. Now exposed to the sky, the ponds are thick with algae and cattails. Damselflies and dragonflies lay their eggs in the stillness. In springtime, the toad and frog eggs hatch into tadpoles which wriggle through the murk.
The ponds are unstable and evaporate quickly. To survive their home, the creatures must reproduce early and often. By the time I birthed our boys, I was in my thirties and had fortified my self-regard. Each autumn, the frogs and toads bury themselves in the muck to wait for spring. I had no knowledge of such metaphors when I was a girl. But I waited for my season to come.
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(Steve Terrill/Getty Images) Mount St. Helens erupting
Fireweed has many uses. I can only name a few. Epilobium angustifolium fights inflammation, bacteria and aging, among other properties. What I can say about fireweed — I know what it is to harden in resistance, to become a seed that flowers in adversity. I work to overcome a tendency toward hypervigilance and its attendant crises of critique and anxiety. My husband has a hard time getting me to relax.
He is practiced. I am wary of his wiles. But Brian loves the prickly spine of me. He did not show up just to harvest the blossoms. He takes time to water the roots. He opens channels to the sun. He accepts sudden rains for the blessings they bring. I married an easygoing man. He trusts eventuality. Our sons scamper down the path with their friends, secure in their innocence.
Called Lawetlat’la, Loowit, or Louwala-Clough, which means smoking mountain, Mount St. Helens didn’t remake itself overnight. The eruption began on the same day in March that our eldest was born and that the Attis passion week concludes. Lavatio. A public ceremony that washes the image of the mother goddess, following Hilaria, a time for celebration. Few continue to worship Cybele, if any, but her rituals persist in other guises. Images of the Madonna are promenaded through the streets of Catholic towns throughout Europe and South America. She is showered in petals gathered from the hills, just like in pagan times. Carried in procession, her image is exposed to public view so that she may confer protection upon that community. With sorrowful eyes and an enigmatic smile, she tells them a story about themselves.
Mount St. Helens collapsed in three separate blocks, the first of which hurtled toward where we are hiking. Standing in the sun, passing snacks, it is hard to imagine the ground — which feels solid under my feet — as it had been, spinning down the mountain at up to 155 miles per hour.
A few seconds after the first block slid, the second block broke through, powered by the blast of released pressure and the magma welling from beneath. Before Mount St. Helens erupted, scientists didn’t know how far away to keep onlookers. Geologists thought the volcano would blow its top upward, rather than sideways. The mountain did not perform according to plan. For this and other reasons — some decided to wait it out — fifty-seven people perished that day in May. Decades of subsequent study have shown that the earth held this knowledge for us, but we did not see it.
Scientists had noticed mounds near other volcanoes, but they believed the hills had formed from mudflows or glaciers. But they were, in fact, evidence of catastrophe. In New Zealand 23,000 years ago, Mount Egmont’s debris avalanche traveled 19 miles. Closer to home in California, Mount Shasta’s debris avalanche traveled 30 miles. In 1888 Japan, a debris avalanche traveled 7 miles from Mount Bandai and became a hilly forest that people now call home. Glistening in the sun, the scooped cone of Mount St. Helens’ summit can be seen from these hummocks which came to rest 14 miles from their source. Snowmelt unfurls from the crater like tentacles.
My home in Seattle is 3,093 miles from the island of my youth. It would take forty-six hours to drive that distance, or forty-two days to walk the diagonal across a country which has not always felt great enough to protect me. I hew to my beloved jagged coast. This place helped make me who I am, a woman who carries stories for our descendants. May they know greener times.
Seeds grow best when given space. To heal from my origin so that I could become myself and a mother, I have accepted estrangement as necessary. My parents are unable to reconcile our facts. They prefer façades. But to remain in relation with falsity is too deep a strain. My narrative belongs to me.
When this book is published, I anticipate my birth family will not speak to me again. While the pull toward my parents is real, separation brought relief to my body. Do these hummocks miss their brethren shoved against the valley walls? Their silt and silica trickle downhill together, grain by grain.
While the pull toward my parents is real, separation brought relief to my body. Do these hummocks miss their brethren shoved against the valley walls? Their silt and silica trickle downhill together, grain by grain.
Most entanglements are quantum. The braids of Toutle River are akin to the Missoula Flood patterns, visible from astronomical heights which reveal our land’s history: A mighty ice dam gave way, again and again, to the water it held in abeyance. I have worked hard to pry apart the fractals that have locked my kin into repeating errors at various orders of magnitude. To move forward, I have relinquished the belief that my happiness depends on our unity. They don’t have to show kindness for me to heal. They have their reasons for being puzzles I no longer need to solve. Forgiveness does not imply reconciliation.
Releasing them has freed me to hold space for my own story. My liberation has stoked resentment and dissent. You’re hurting us, they accuse, meaning, You’re hurting our idea of us, and this idea is all that we are. In these pages, I remain in relation to forebears who no longer define my future. Our shared memories make us a family the way rivers carry snowmelt to the sea.
It can be hazardous to leave the path that was planned for you. Here on the hummocks, in full view of the mountain which mothered them, I step off trail and slide down scree that skins my shin into a shining ruby constellation. I don’t bother to shield my legs from the sun. My scars remind me: Forging a desire line can be dangerous. So is failing to follow your hope. When I think of my family now, I look for roots I’ve grown into the earth. Sturdy enough to bear witness, they send signals of welcome to you whose presence I embrace, unseen.
With our communion comes responsibility for what happens next. That, too, is mine to accept, though not control. The route to the goddess unmakes you. Our journey was never meant to be linear. Find the whole in the fragments.
Dusk cloaks the grove around our tents. A cinder cone rebuilds herself on a horizon I cannot see. Here I feel safe to revel in the gloaming. Evenings are ceremonial for parents. We remain open to the world in defiance of routines which structure our days. Rituals are made through repetition. We feed our children and tell stories. Not much remains to be done. In the forest, there is no bathing, except in beauty.
Our kids stay up. The campfire warms their small faces. Wet wipes provide the semblance of clean hands after s’mores. The fathers are tasked with bedtime. With kisses good night, my sons step into our tent. My husband zips up the door. From the fire circle, I hear their murmurs and laughter amidst the slight rustle of sleeping bags. My friend smiles, her eyes agleam with patient hope. She is ready for our song time. The night stills but for the crackles of sap. We sip from metal cups, our sparks spiraling toward the stars.
“Desire Lines” is available in print from Red Hen Press or as an audiobook narrated by the author, who is currently on a book tour.
KYIV — Russia caught the Ukrainian capital off guard with its latest attack, hitting the country with over 100 drones and five ballistic missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday.
“Intelligence on Russian ballistic missile launches helps save lives, and this is one of the most critical issues. This is precisely what helps prevent people from being killed — when there is an early warning about ballistic missiles,” Zelenskyy said.
He added: “Regarding this strike, unfortunately, there was no warning from partners.”
Kyiv usually receives a tip-off about impending Russian missiles via the Battlespace Command and Control Center system, which is operated and controlled by the United States’ military and NATO members, among others.
However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said at the Warsaw Security Forum Tuesday that intelligence sharing through the platform is ongoing.
“They [Americans] told Ukrainians no warning happened because of bad weather conditions, which is seen as not an adequate reason in Kyiv. Thus many are getting increasingly worried this might not have been the case,” an official familiar with the matter told POLITICO on condition of anonymity.
The missile warning system has malfunctioned before. “At times this information doesn’t get through. This isn’t the first instance … If there were specific technical issues this time, I think the specialists will sort it out. And they will resolve this problem together with our partners,” Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ignat said Tuesday.
The U.S. reportedly threatened to cut intelligence sharing once again last week if Kyiv does not stop stricking Russian oil refineries. Zelenskyy did not publicly confirm the threat, but has backed down.
“Ukraine has not carried out strikes on Russian oil refineries or the energy sector in general for the two days since the American President announced an energy ceasefire. But Russia did not heed the American President,” Zelenskyy said, appealing to the U.S. to lead peace negotiations.
“The Russians have attacked both our energy facilities and our critical infrastructure, sending absolutely clear signals that they have no intention of refraining from strikes on Ukraine. Nineteen regions of our country have come under attack in these two days alone,” he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Monday that both Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an energy ceasefire because he said so — “and if it was violated, they both violated it.”
“Actually [Russian President Vladimir Putin] wants to make a deal, and we have to get Zelenskyy to want to make a deal,” Trump said.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Katie Zacharia, the president’s new press secretary, demurred when asked if the U.S. has stopped sharing intel with Ukraine.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” she said.
Speaking to reporters at the White House later on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. has not stopped sharing intel with Ukraine.
“But we are really helping them get to a final answer,” Trump said. “We are helping them, and we are sharing intel. We want the war to end.”
He reiterated that he is helping to broker a deal between Putin and Zelenskyy. “There is a lot of hatred there between the two of them. They both want it to end, they don’t know how to get there. We’re gonna get them there,” he said.
Russia has not yet commented on the ballistic strikes, but issued a general statement saying it had struck military and weapons production facilities across Ukraine.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Zelenskyy did not deserve a pause in fighting in response to the energy ceasefire: “I don’t think that he deserves a break. I don’t think that we will buy assurances and promises again,” he said.
This article was updated with comments from the White House and Donald Trump. Elleiana Green and Casey He contributed reporting.
Actress Selma Blairwas arrested Sunday night after allegedly attempting to open an airplane door midflight and assaulting two flight attendants aboard a Delta flight from Los Angeles to New York, according to multiple reports.
Blair, 54, allegedly punched one flight attendant and bit another during the confrontation, TMZ first reported Monday.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed that officers responded to Delta Flight 938 after it arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport around 11 p.m. Sunday. Two flight attendants reported injuries, and one was transported to a hospital for further evaluation.
Blair was taken into custody and transported to a hospital for evaluation. The FBI is investigating the incident.
A representative for the actress told TMZ that she had experienced a medical emergency. “Selma experienced a medical emergency that led to the alleged conduct,” the representative said. “Upon landing, she received immediate medical attention and is currently in stable condition.”
The nature of the reported medical emergency has not been disclosed.
Blair, known for her roles in “Cruel Intentions” and “Legally Blonde,” publicly revealed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2018. She has since become an advocate for people living with the chronic neurological disease. In April, Blair said she remained in remission but continued to experience fatigue and other lasting symptoms. There is no confirmed connection between her MS diagnosis and Sunday’s incident.
Delta said in a statement to Variety that it has “zero tolerance for unruly or unlawful behavior,” adding that passenger and crew safety is its priority.
The airline said the flight landed ahead of schedule despite the incident.
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