外媒每日新闻 Quake, Wildfire & Guilty Plea Edition

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, will leave her post at the end of August, President Donald Trump announced on August 13. Leavitt, who recently returned from maternity leave after the birth of her second child in May, said she felt she “cannot be the best mom” to her two young children while devoting the constant time required of the role. Trump described her as one of his “most trusted aides” and said she would become “one of my top outside advisors.” Trump did not name a replacement. Leavitt was the youngest person ever to serve as White House press secretary and had been one of the most visible faces of the MAGA movement. She ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022, winning a 10-way Republican primary before losing to incumbent Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas.^[1]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” in a podcast interview for Israel’s army radio, describing it as the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon.” The comments play into a far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population. Rather than challenging the remarks, the host asked if all of Europe was “like that,” to which Netanyahu doubled down. The British Foreign Office called the comments “completely unacceptable” and raised them with the Israeli government. The remarks come as UK-Israel relations have grown increasingly strained under Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who has signaled a significant shift in the UK’s Middle East approach. Opposition politician Avi Dabush attacked Netanyahu for mocking a critical ally at a time of unprecedented global isolation.^[2]

For five nights, Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in the West Bank town of Qusra, preventing families from leaving as food and water supplies dwindled. Settlers cut water and electricity lines, forcing one family to drink well water. One of the besieged homes belongs to a Palestinian American living in Ohio, who watched the siege unfold via security cameras. On August 14, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee called the settlers “terrorists” — a word American officials usually reserve for Palestinian militants. It was an unusually sharp rebuke from the Trump administration, which has given unprecedented support to Israeli settlements. The UN humanitarian office recorded more settler attacks in Qusra than in any other West Bank community in 2026. A total of 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers this year, and Palestinian officials reported 1,476 settler attacks.^[3]

An 18-year-old Belgian student working a summer construction job stumbled across a hidden trove of gold worth an estimated €9m (£8m) while excavating trenches for a sewage system at a former brewery site in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, about 30km northwest of Brussels. “At first I thought it was €1 coins. Then we saw a gold bar,” said Kobe, who was working with colleagues on the site of a former brewery built in the late 19th century. The hoard, stashed in a bag in a bricked-in cellar wall, includes gold coins, nuggets, and numbered bullion bars. The building is being renovated by a social welfare organization. The treasure has been transferred to a secure facility pending investigation to establish legal ownership. Belgian law requires finders to wait at least five years for potential owners to claim any treasure, and the building contractors, the welfare organization, and descendants of the original brewery owner could all have claims.^[7]

President Trump is betting that a financial squeeze called “Operation Economic Fury” — in effect since April 16 — can end the Iran war that began on February 28. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the sanctions campaign the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign. The Iranian economy has shrunk by an estimated 5.4% (IMF), with annual inflation at 88.6%. Iranian oil loadings have dropped from 1.8 million bpd before the war to under 500,000 bpd. However, experts note that sanctions cannot bite as quickly as the shuttered Strait of Hormuz, and Trump has not articulated clear strategic goals. Richard Nephew, who directed Iran sanctions strategy in the Obama administration, said: “Trump has systematically weakened his own hand through his inadequate use of force, inarticulate elucidation of an objective, and vacillation on negotiations.” Oil prices climbed as investors interpreted Trump’s comments as a sign that fewer ships would traverse Hormuz.^[8]

A devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia’s Flores region early Saturday morning, killing at least 47 people and causing widespread panic. The quake, recorded at 4:58 AM local time at a depth of 15km, collapsed buildings and homes across the East Nusa Tenggara province. A tsunami warning was issued and later lifted, but tsunami waves of 1.5 metres were recorded in several areas. At least 235 aftershocks followed, including one of magnitude 6.1. In the port town of Maumere, 20 people were found dead, including eight killed in a landslide. Preliminary data showed 346 homes, 87 schools, and more than a dozen health facilities damaged. Rescuers have been unable to reach Nagekeo, the area closest to the epicentre, because roads were blocked by landslides and communications disrupted. About 2,000 people evacuated. A second 6.1-magnitude quake struck off northern Sumatra hours later.^[10]

Almost 500 people have been arrested on suspicion of starting wildfires in France since July 1, as firefighters across half a dozen European countries battle ferocious blazes amid a record-breaking heatwave. A fire engulfed homes in a Croatian holiday resort, killing one person, injuring 40, and forcing 1,200 to evacuate. In western Germany, over 2,000 people fled their homes after a wildfire in the Hürtgen forest spread near the village of Gey, where unexploded WWII ordnance detonated in the flames. In France, 525 people were evacuated from the village of Luglon as a new wildfire tore through 1,100 hectares of pine forest. In northeast Spain, an army unit removed the remains of three 11th-century kings from a monastery threatened by fire. In northern Greece, small boats evacuated about 500 holidaymakers from beaches. In the UK, wildfires burned several houses to the ground in the West Midlands. About 70% of those arrested in France were suspected of deliberately starting fires.^[11]

Luigi Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal courtroom to stalking and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4, 2024. “On the morning of December 4, 2024, I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and he died,” Mangione told the court. “I knew what I was doing was illegal.” He described researching the investor conference online, emailing UnitedHealthcare leadership posing as an investor to obtain information, and using a 3D printer to forge part of a firearm. The guilty plea ends the prospect of a federal trial and throws his separate state case into potential disarray, as his lawyers filed paperwork to dismiss it based on New York’s double-jeopardy law. Manhattan prosecutors said their case “wasn’t over.” Prosecutor Jamie McDonald said: “There can be no celebrity in assassination.” The killing had sparked an outpouring of public rage at the for-profit healthcare industry, but the plea ended the prospect of a trial putting that industry under scrutiny.^[12]

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek open-sourced its agent workbench Harness v0.1 on August 14 under the MIT license. Harness is designed to give language models practical agency — the ability to modify code, search for information, run tests, and deliver results autonomously. Its core philosophy is “everything is a plugin,” allowing it to connect to dozens of model providers including Kimi, OpenAI, and others. The release represents a significant step toward pushing agent capabilities from closed proprietary products into an open ecosystem. By open-sourcing the toolchain under a permissive license, DeepSeek is challenging the closed-agent approach of Western AI labs and enabling developers worldwide to build, extend, and customize autonomous AI workflows. The move also intensifies the open-source vs. proprietary tension in the agent space, as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI keep their agent frameworks closed.^[15]

The hashtag #MangioneGuilty trended across U.S. Twitter/X after Luigi Mangione’s surprise guilty plea in federal court. The development divided social media: supporters who had rallied behind Mangione as a symbol of anti-establishment rage expressed betrayal and confusion, while critics argued the plea proved his culpability. Many users lamented that the plea ended the prospect of a public trial that could have put the for-profit healthcare industry under scrutiny. Legal Twitter analyzed the double-jeopardy implications for the state case, with some predicting the state charges would be dismissed. The hashtag #NoCelebrityInAssassination also circulated, quoting prosecutor Jamie McDonald. The discourse highlighted the deep public anger at healthcare costs that transformed a murder case into a cultural flashpoint.^[18]

Netanyahu’s podcast remark calling the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” and predicting it would be the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon” went viral on X/Twitter under #NetanyahuUK. British users expressed outrage, with many noting that Pakistan — officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan — has had nuclear weapons since the 1990s, making Netanyahu’s claim factually wrong. Critics pointed out the similarity to JD Vance’s 2024 campaign comments. Israeli opposition figures used the moment to highlight Netanyahu’s diplomatic failures. The hashtag #IslamophobiaIsNotPolicy also trended alongside it. The UK Foreign Office’s unusually blunt response (“completely unacceptable”) signaled the depth of the diplomatic rift. The discourse also examined how Netanyahu’s rhetoric aligns with a broader pattern of far-right leaders using Islamophobic tropes to mobilize domestic support.^[19]