Category World News

United States President Donald Trump has said his administration is “looking at” reclassifying cannabis as a less dangerous drug.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said he would make a determination on the legal classification of the drug over the next few weeks.

“That determination hopefully will be the right one,” Trump said. “It’s a very complicated subject.”

Trump said that while he had heard “great things” about medical-use cannabis, he had heard bad things about “just about everything else” to do with the drug.

“Some people like it, some people hate it,” he said. “Some people hate the whole concept of marijuana because if it does bad for the children, it does bad for people that are older than children.”

Stocks in cannabis-related businesses soared following Trump’s remarks.

New York-based Tilray Brands jumped nearly 42 percent, while Canada’s Village Farms International and Canopy Growth Corp closed up about 34 percent and 26 percent, respectively.

Trump made his comments after The Wall Street Journal reported last week that he told attendees at a recent fundraising dinner that he was interested in reclassifying the drug.

While cannabis is fully legal, including for recreational use, in 24 US states, the use and possession of the drug is illegal at the federal level.

Cannabis is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, putting it in the same category as heroin, LSD and ecstasy.

Under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s classification system, Schedule I drugs are defined as those with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, August 12:

Fighting

• Two ambulance workers were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Horlivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, Russian-installed administrator Ivan Prikhodko said in a post on Telegram. The driver of the ambulance was also in a serious condition, Prikhodko said.
• Russian forces launched dozens of attacks on Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing four people and injuring seven, regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said in a post on Telegram. Two apartment buildings and 30 houses were damaged, he added.
• Russian forces killed two civilians and injured 11 in the Donetsk region on Sunday, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram.
• A Russian attack killed a man and injured two women in the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovy, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a post on Telegram.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian forces “used more than a thousand aerial bombs and nearly 1,400 attack drones against Ukraine” in the past week. The latest figures show that Russia is continuing its intense bombardment of the country after carrying out a record 6,297 drone attacks on Ukraine in July.
• Russian forces occupied the village of Zatyshok, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported.

Ceasefire talks

• Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow hopes the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday will give “impulse to the normalisation of bilateral relations” between the two countries, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reports.
• Speaking to journalists on Monday about the upcoming meeting, Trump again said that “there’ll be some swapping, there’ll be some changes in land” discussed, but that he will also tell Putin: “You’ve got to end this war.”
• Asked if Zelenskyy would be invited to the talks, Trump said: “He wasn’t part of it… I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings. He’s been there for three and a half years, and nothing happened.”
• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told US broadcaster ABC on Sunday that “when it comes to this whole issue of territory, when it comes to acknowledging, for example, maybe in a future deal that Russia is controlling de facto, factually, some of the territory of Ukraine, it has to be effectual recognition, and not a political de jure recognition.”
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that French, United Kingdom and other European leaders, as well as EU and NATO chiefs, will discuss “further options to exert pressure on Russia”, and the “preparation of possible peace negotiations and related issues of territorial claims and security”, at virtual talks on Wednesday.

Sanctions

• The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said that the bloc is working on “more sanctions against Russia, more military support for Ukraine and more support for Ukraine’s budgetary needs and accession process to join the EU”, after European foreign ministers held emergency talks on Monday before the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday.
• The European Commission said it received 1.6 billion euros ($1.86bn) “in so-called windfall profits” from interest on “immobilised assets of the Russian Central Bank” in the first half of 2025, and that 95 percent of the funds will be used to support Ukraine through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism (ULCM).

Politics and diplomacy

• Trump will hold talks with European leaders and Zelenskyy on Wednesday, the European Commission press office told the Kyiv Independent media outlet.
• Zelenskyy said he held calls with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

A gunman has opened fire in the parking lot of a Target store in Texas, United States, killing three people, according to authorities.

The attack occurred on Monday in the state’s capital, Austin, with Chief of Police Lisa Davis describing the attacker as a man in his 30s with “a mental health history”.

After the shooting, the man fled the scene in a stolen car, which he later crashed. He then stole another car from a nearby dealership before he was captured.

Emergency responders found the three victims, who were not immediately identified, when they arrived at the scene. Two were pronounced dead immediately, with a third pronounced dead at a hospital.

“This is a very sad day for Austin. It’s a very sad day for us all, and my condolences go out to the families,” Davis said.

The attack occurred shortly before schools restart in the country, in what is commonly a popular time for shopping.

In a post on X, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson called the attack a “devastating situation”.

“My heart is with the victims and their families,” he said. “While this remains an active and ongoing investigation, what I’ll say is that this was a sickening, cowardly act of gun violence.”

The Target attack comes just over two weeks after an attack at a Walmart store in Michigan.

A man stabbed 11 people at the store in Traverse City on July 26, and has been charged with “terrorism” and multiple counts of attempted murder.

In late July, a 27-year-old man fatally shot five people in Midtown Manhattan, in the deadliest shooting in the city in more than two decades.

The United States has upped pressure on the Pakistan-based Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), labelling it a “foreign terrorist” organisation.

The designation, announced by the Department of State on Monday, comes after the BLA, which is also known as the Majeed Brigade, was designated a “specially designated global terrorist” (SDGT) organisation in 2019.

The new designation is more severe and comes as US President Donald Trump has sought increased contacts with Pakistan’s government.

In a statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the move “demonstrates the Trump Administration’s commitment to countering terrorism”.

“Terrorist designations play a critical role in our fight against this scourge and are an effective way to curtail support for terrorist activities,” the statement said.

The BLA was designated as an SDGT following  a series of attacks in 2019. More recently, in March this year, the secessionist group claimed responsibility for the siege of a train travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, in which dozens of passengers and soldiers were killed.

The new designation makes it a crime for anyone in the US to provide support to the group, while the previous designation only targeted financial resources.

Balochistan is the largest but least populous and poorest province in Pakistan. The region has experienced at least five secessionist uprisings since Pakistan’s formation in 1947.

The latest iteration began in the early 2000s, and has since broadened its focus from securing the province’s natural resources to full-fledged independence.

Supporters of the secessionist movement have alleged that Pakistan’s government has exploited the region’s resources, while neglecting its population of 15 million. The province remains key to trade, housing the deep-sea ports at Gwadar, a key component in plans to link southwestern China to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan.

Recent BLA attacks have further inflamed tensions between Pakistan and India, with Islamabad accusing New Delhi of fuelling the violence. India has denied the claims.

Last month, the administration of US President Donald Trump also labelled The Resistance Front (TRF), which Rubio described as an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a “foreign terrorist” group following an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April that killed 26 people.

Trump later said he was behind a ceasefire that ended a brief military confrontation between India and Pakistan in May, a claim rejected by India. Relations between New Delhi and Washington have further soured over Trump’s tariff campaign against India.

Meanwhile, in June, Trump hosted Pakistani Army chief Asim Munir, considered one of the most powerful men in the country, for lunch at the White House.