Tues - A Pole-Dancing Axe Thrower. Beware Monster Monsoons.

Did They Try Adding a Truckload of Pasta?


A truck has spilled more than 150,000 tomatoes across a busy motorway in the US state of California, bringing traffic to a standstill.

The splattered tomatoes caused seven cars to crash and closed much of the Interstate 80 highway on Monday.

Three people had minor injuries and a fourth is in hospital with a broken leg, California Highway Patrol said.

During tomato season, lorry drivers use the major motorway to transport the fruit across the state.

An initial collision caused the tomato truck to swerve into the central divide of the motorway, spilling fist-sized tomatoes across a 200ft section of the motorway, according to reports.

This left a sea of red sauce about "two feet deep", said Highway Patrol Officer Jason Tyhurst.

Cars drove over the squelching tomatoes, creating a dangerous slurry of tomato juice, oil and dirt.

Beware of Monster Monsoons

A third of the country underwater. More than 1,000 people killed. And an estimated $10 billion of damage done.

“Monster monsoons” in Pakistan have swept away lives, homes, crops and bridges as weeks of historic summer rain fuels deadly flash floods. Almost half a million people have been displaced, with vast areas cut off from supplies and power.

Torrents are sweeping away multi-storied buildings and inundating people up to their necks.

Experts and local officials have drawn a direct line to man-made climate change, saying it illustrates how countries with the lowest contributions to the global crisis are becoming increasingly vulnerable to its effects — and in dire need of urgent aid.



Pakistan last year ranked as the eighth most affected nation by climate change from 2000 to 2019, in the Global Climate Risk Index by non-profit group Germanwatch. People living in hotspots like South Asia are 15 times more likely to die from climate crisis impacts.

Here's Kherson!

On Monday and into Tuesday morning, reports filtered through Russian Telegram accounts and unofficial sources in Ukraine indicate that Ukraine has taken a number of towns and villages at multiple points on the line, several of which represent necessary steps toward liberating the region.

At the northern end of the line, Ukrainian troops have reportedly liberated Arkhanhel's'ke. This allows Ukraine to completely encircle Russian forces in Vysokopillya. That location has been one of the most fortified—and fought over—sites in all of Kherson oblast.





South of Davydiv Brid, Russian forces have at last acknowledged Ukrainan control of small villages along the Inhulets River as well as the capture of the Sukhyi Stavok. Ukrainian forces are reportedly sweeping east toward Bruskynske, which was the limit of attacks made shortly after Ukraine first secured its bridgehead on the east side of the river.



If the advances in the south are accurate, then they’re by far the most significant. Among the villages reportedly captured by Ukraine on Monday were Tomyna Balka and the neighboring village of Novodmytrivka. If true, this represents a 10km cross country advance by Ukraine to secure a location it fought hard to reach—and failed to secure—in the previous counteroffensive.

Previous Guy Insists that the QOP Talk About Previous Guy

Republican leaders and donors are suddenly making worried noises about their political chances.

Five months ago, their party looked likely to take both the U.S. House and the Senate in 2022. Republicans appeared ready to consolidate their leads over Democrats in the numbers of governorships and state legislatures held. Best of all, they seemed to have quietly sidelined former President Donald Trump.

Now their prospects look clouded. Gasoline prices have dropped. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade and galvanized pro-abortion-rights voters, including some nonreligious but otherwise conservative women who might have voted Republican. Their Senate hopes are being dashed because Trump intervened in primaries to nominate a bunch of unattractive candidates in must-win swing states. On Wednesday, Politico posted quotes from a very anxious conference call by Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel with major donors. Small-dollar donations to Senate candidates have dropped abruptly, even as Democratic fundraising surges.

Note to Masters:  The Internet Never Forgets

Venture capitalist Blake Masters, who won the Republican nomination for Arizona’s U.S. Senate race with Donald Trump’s endorsement, has since removed language from his website that supported the former president’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

According to CNN’s KFile, Masters has modified wording on his site that supported Trump’s election claims, argued the country would be better off if Trump was still president, and claimed Democrats are trying to “import” a new electorate ― rhetoric that matches a white supremacist conspiracy theory.

Those views were on Masters’ website on Aug. 1, the day before he clinched the GOP primary. They’ve since disappeared.

Meanwhile, He Can't Resist Bigotry

I Wish They Hadn't Published This Story.   Or Maybe They are Trying to Protect the Real HIMARS

Ukraine may be outgunned but in the latest sign it is not yet outfoxed, a fleet of decoys resembling advanced U.S. rocket systems has tricked Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range cruise missiles on dummy targets, according to interviews with senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials and photographs of the replicas reviewed by The Washington Post.

The Ukrainian decoys are made out of wood but can be indistinguishable from an artillery battery through the lens of Russian drones, which transmit their locations to naval cruise missile carriers in the Black Sea.

“When the UAVs see the battery, it’s like a VIP target,” said a senior Ukrainian official, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles encountering long-range artillery replicas.

After a few weeks in the field, the decoys drew at least 10 Kalibr cruise missiles, an initial success that led Ukraine to expand the production of the replicas for broader use, said the senior Ukrainian official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

The use of rocket system decoys, which has not been reported previously, is one of many asymmetrical tactics Ukraine’s armed forces have adopted to fight back against a bigger and better-equipped invading enemy. In recent weeks, Kyiv’s operatives have blown up rail and electricity lines in occupied Russian territory, detonated explosives inside Russian arms depots and assassinated suspected collaborators.