Ukraine’s ex-defense chief calls on Zelensky to lift election ban

(Challenging Zelesnky? Someone is going to get killed before this is Over)

Mikhail Fedorov argued that the country should hold a vote despite the ongoing armed conflict with Russia

Published 19 Aug, 2026 00:11 | Updated 19 Aug, 2026 01:37

Ukraine’s former defense minister Mikhail Fedorov, whose surprise firing last month sparked weeks of protests, has called for the ban on wartime elections to be lifted.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, whose five-year presidential term expired in May 2024,has refusedto hold a new election, citing martial law imposed after the conflict with Russia broke out in February 2022.

Fedorov, a young, tech-savvy minister credited with championing drone warfare and fostering military cooperation abroad, was sacked on July 14 amid reports of clashes over priorities and tactics with Ukraine’s top commander, Aleksandr Syrsky. Zelensky responded to street protests demanding Fedorov’s return by firing Syrsky the following week. Both Fedorov and Syrsky have since publicly sought to downplay their differences.

In a campaign-style video released on YouTube on Tuesday evening, Fedorov blasted corruption and called for accountability and transparency amid what he described as“a systemic crisis of governance.”

“We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that would allow Ukraine to restore a fully functioning democratic process even if the war drags on,” Fedorov said.

“We can find a solution even in this situation,because democracy is not a luxury reserved for peacetime. Democracy is part of what we are fighting for today. But there is another reason why this conversation is needed right now.

People cannot live indefinitely in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are being made,” the former minister added.

Fedorov’s video address featured images of protests in his support, as well as references to high-profile corruption scandals involving government ministers and members of Zelensky’s inner circle, including his former chief of staff Andrey Yermak.

“Society gets the impression that the main criterion for appointing someone is not their professionalism, their track record or their ability to change the country, but their personal loyalty to the system,” Fedorov said. In an apparent jab at Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, he argued that the country’s parliament should be “the heart of Ukrainian democracy, not its wallet.”

In a post on X, Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev argued that Fedorov was “de facto signaling his presidential ambitions in a challenge to Zelensky.”

Critics have long accused Zelensky of abusing his power and seeking to sideline officials widely seen as potential political rivals. In February 2024, he abruptly sacked his top commander, Valery Zaluzhny, who was credited with the defense of Kiev during the early stages of the conflict, and later appointed him ambassador to the UK. In January, Zelensky removed Kirill Budanov as head of military intelligence and appointed him his new chief of staff. Both Zaluzhny and Budanov enjoyed significant public support and had polled close to or ahead of Zelensky.

A July survey by the Rating Group indicated that Zelensky’s approval rating (59%) trailed those of Budanov (62%), Fedorov (65%) and Zaluzhny (70%). According to a Socis poll released on August 6, Zelensky would lose by a wide margin to each of the three in a runoff election.

Zelensky’s rule has been marred by controversies that have caused uproar at home and abroad. Last year, he sought to curb the investigative powers of the Western-backed anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO, only to back down following protests in Kiev and criticism from Ukraine’s foreign backers.

In November, anti-corruption investigators uncovered an alleged $100 million kickback scheme in the energy industry that implicated Zelensky’s longtime business partner Timur Mindich, who fled the country to evade arrest. The fallout led to the resignations of several ministers and Zelensky’s close associate Yermak.

https://www.rt.com/russia/644247-lavrov-kiev-war-machine/

AI-written bills riddled with errors flooding US Congress – Politico

Congressional lawyers are reportedly spending more time fixing some chatbot-written bills than it would take to draft them from scratch

Published 18 Aug, 2026 22:10 | Updated 18 Aug, 2026 23:15

US congressional lawyers are struggling with a flood of error-ridden AI-generated legislation, forcing them to spend increasingly more time rewriting proposals produced by chatbots, Politico reported on Monday.

Staffers andoutside groups have more frequently turned to ChatGPT and Claude to produce legislative text, with error-ridden drafts regularly reaching the HouseOffice of Legislative Counsel (OLC), according to eight current and former officials interviewed by the Axel Springer-owned outlet.

In some cases,lawyers spend “more time trying to fix AI-drafted legislation than it would take for them to draft it from scratch,”one person who advises congressional staff on the technology said.

The OLC helps lawmakers turn policy proposals into bills and ensure they fit existing US law. However, AI-generated drafts have reportedly arrivedwith incorrect statutory references, confused legal definitions and wording that could produce unintended consequencesif enacted.

One example cited by Politico defined a “state” in a way that could exclude Washington, DC or tribal nations from a federal program. AI can also confuse legal mechanisms such as tax credits, deductions and grants.

The errors are adding to an already heavy workload. The OLC has 61 attorneys and 19 support staff and received 5,623 legislative requests during the first 60 days of the current Congress, up 72% from the same period two years earlier.

AI use is becoming increasingly common on Capitol Hill, four congressional staffers told Politico,saying that chatbots are used to review and draft legislation. The introduction of generative tools, however, has already led to a number of public blunders.

In June, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s officepublished an amendment summary containing the words “Claude responded:”along with other text copied from the chatbot. Luna said AI had been used on the summary rather than the amendment itself, and added that theinclusion of Claude’s remarks was “not a shocker. Most staff use it.”

A similar episode recently occurred in Canada, where New Brunswick lawmaker Bill Oliver admitted using AI to prepare a lengthy speech after reading leftover chatbot instructions aloud in the legislature, including: “Here’s a more natural, flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points.”

AI-related errors havealso reached the US courts. Two federal judges came underscrutiny last year over rulings containing inaccurate quotations, factual errors and incorrect case references, with AI reportedly involved in at least one case.

The State Department also apologized last month after using anAI-generated map that misplaced all six African countries it highlighted.

Despite such blunders, the OLC is also exploring how AI could assist its own work. The office told Congress in March that it had formed a working group to examine uses such as legal research and had already introduced specialized technology to help its lawyers draft legislation.

https://www.rt.com/news/644371-us-ai-legislative-proposals/

Pope used AI to warn about dangers of AI – researcher

Leo XIV’s treatise bears the signature signs of Antrhropic’s Claude, Linch Zhang claims (this might be the only thing the Pope is right about

Published 27 May, 2026 17:42 | Updated 27 May, 2026 18:45

“Significant fractions” of Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on the dangers of artificial intelligence were actually written by artificial intelligence, analyst Linch Zhang claims.

In the 42,000-word ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ (Magnificent Humanity),the pontiff warned of the growing, state-like power of Silicon Valley, the immorality of autonomous weapons, and the dangers of allowing AI to “construct a new Tower of Babel” and reduce human beings to “a resource to be used and exploited.”

Despite its appeal for AI to be regulated and “disarmed,” large portions of ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ show some telltale signs of being written by AI, Zhang claimed in a blog post on Tuesday.

“Phrases and punctuation much more commonly used by AI are much more present in this papal encyclical than past encyclicals,” Zhang wrote, pointing to the document’s use of em-dashes (127 instances, compared to 26 across four encyclicals by Pope Francis) and “tricolons: a series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses used for rhetorical effect.”

Running the text through AI detector Pangram, Zhang found thatsome paragraphs were “essentially 0% AI,” but others were between 40% and 100% AI-written. All four of Francis’ encyclicals registered as entirely human-written, as did writings by Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Pangram also flagged the Italian version of the encyclical for AI, suggesting that artificial intelligence was not just used to translate the document.

When Zhang’s experiment was repeated by The Verge, roughly 46% of the encyclical was determined to be written by AI.

The specific LLM (large language model) used to craft the text was likely Anthropic’s Claude, Zhang claimed, citing his own familiarity with Claude andits overuse of certain words such as “genuinely.”

The fact that certain paragraphs appear completely free of AI suggests that “some senior Vatican officials heavily used AI assistance for this encyclical and many (probably including Pope Leo himself) didn’t,” Zhang wrote.

“My tentative hypothesis is that Pope Leo does not approve of the AI usage in encyclicals, and plausibly was not even aware of significant AI usage in his own encyclical,”Zhang concluded.

The Vatican has not commented on Zhang’s claims. Nor has Anthropic, whose co-founder, Christopher Olah, delivered an address alongside the Pope on Monday.

https://www.rt.com/news/640653-pope-encyclical-ai-written/

Trump pauses 50% tariffs on Canada for 3 days

Trump said the U.S. and Canada “have a DEAL” but didn’t provide details.

Aug. 18, 2026, 10:22 PM EDT / Updated Aug. 18, 2026, 11:29 PM EDT By Steve Kopack

President Donald Trump late Tuesday slammed the brakes on a wave of tariffs that were set to hit Canada at midnight.

On social media, Trump wrote:“I have paused the 50% Tariffs against Canada, that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three day period, based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!”

Trump did not provide further details, except to refer to theKeystone XL pipeline, which he said “may be awoken from the grave!”

“The deal will include comprehensive market access for all American goods, economic security commitments, digital trade alignment, and many important provisions that will continue to protect our market and American workers, along with our Canadian partners,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a separate social media post.

In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the postponement of tariffs would last until the end of the day Friday.

“Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done,” he said.

The 50% duties would have affected about $20 billion worth of U.S. imports from Canada, according to the trade representative’s office. The import taxes would have hit products ranging from hockey sticks to some building materials, liquors and certain kinds of clothing.

The last-minute deal came after more than a week of furious meetings and technical talks.

On Monday afternoon, Carney described the talks with the Trump administrationas “very delicate and intense” but did not provide any further details. Carney and Trump spoke later that afternoon and again late Tuesday, Carney’s office told NBC News.

In his statement late Tuesday, Carney acknowledged the “intensive discussions.” He added that his government was aiming to “deliver greater certainty and real benefits for Canadian businesses, workers, farmers and families.”

“While we continue this work, Canada remains focused on building a stronger, more independent, and more competitive economy at home,” he said.

Carney has previously said the threatened duties were a “direct violation” of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement, which Trump pursued and signed in his first term.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned in a statement Tuesday that in the event of no deal, “the introduction of higher tariffs would damage both economies, drive up costs for U.S. families, further disrupt critical supply chains, and risk the 13 million American jobs that depend on” the North American trade pact.

The tariffs that were set to be imposed would have been the first use of Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.The law allows the White House to implement duties of up to 50% on any foreign trading partner that “discriminates” against U.S. commerce.

In talks with their counterparts, Canadian officials were seeking not only to have the Section 338 tariffs scrapped entirely, but also to lower Section 232 tariffs on industrial products such as steel and aluminum, CBC News and Bloomberg have reported.

The Chamber of Commerce said Tuesday that lower duties on Canada would be “a boon to U.S. consumers, producers, farmers and manufacturers.”

A sticking point Monday and Tuesday appeared to be a request for lower automobile duties, according to Bloomberg and Reuters, which also reported that U.S. officials did not want to cut current 25% tariffs on that sector to anything lower than 15%.

Trump did not say in his brief social media post whether the duties would be lowered.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said earlier that the reasoning behind the threatened 50% duties was effectively payback for Canada’s retaliation against previous tranches of Trump’s tariffs.

“The policy basis for [Wednesday’s] duties are related to measures that Canada took against the United States,” Greer said last week. “I’ve got two countries in the world that have retaliated against the United States for trade measures: the People’s Republic of China and Canada. That’s not the kind of company you really want to be running in.”

Last year, Trump briefly responded to China’s retaliation by raising tariffs into the triple digits. Talks between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s vice premier over months eventually defused that tension, and tariffs were lowered.

Trump has also aimed his anger at Canada repeatedly. At one point, he became enraged by the province of Ontario, which ran a TV ad during 2025 World Series telecasts. The video used edited clips of Republican former President Ronald Reagan to criticize Trump’s trade policy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-pauses-canada-tariffs-rcna593176