NATO Shoots Down Drone Over Latvia Amid Global Crises

NATO fighter jets shot down a drone that breached Latvian airspace on Thursday, an unprecedented incident on the alliance's eastern flank. It came as Ukraine reported its worst month for civilian deaths since May 2022, with 437 killed in July alone, a sign the war keeps spilling beyond its borders. Tension also flared around the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran struck UAE oil tankers, rattling Gulf shipping. African Union members quietly offered to mediate, wary that an oil-price shock and looming crop failures would hit fuel-dependent African economies hardest. In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers made a rare intervention to shield the village of Kusra from an armed settler attack, filmed on video. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee condemned the attackers as "Israeli terrorists," as settler violence keeps rising. Extreme weather compounded the mood. Germany's Robert Koch Institute counted at least 12,500 heat-related deaths this year through August 2, the worst toll in a decade, hitting Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate hardest. A fast-moving wildfire forced roughly 1,800 residents to evacuate near Hurtgenwald as flames neared the village of Gey, with unexploded WWII munitions slowing firefighters across 300 hectares. In Japan, record rain in Chiba killed four people and stranded thousands at Narita airport, prompting the region's highest-ever rain warning.