🛰 🇺🇸 🌌 NASA science chief Nicky Fox says the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble!

Each image covers about 100 times more sky at similar sharpness. One year of Roman data could rival decades from Hubble.

It is named for NASA’s first chief of astronomy, the woman colleagues called the mother of Hubble after she helped push that telescope through Congress.

The telescope is scheduled to launch tomorrow at 7:26 a.m. ET, 9 months ahead of schedule.

📎 Mario Nawfal

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦 Ukraine was hit by approximately 1,500 jet-powered Shaheds in July 2026.

This August, the number has already exceeded 2,500.

The jet-powered Shaheds are being launched at Ukraine practically straight from the factory.

Source: Ukrainian MoD advisor and EW expert Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov

🔗 Clash Report

🇮🇸❌🇪🇺 Icelanders rejected in a referendum, opening talks with Brussels for EU membership.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸❌🇸🇦 Israeli state broadcaster, Kan, claims Saudi king, Mohamed bin Salman met with CENTCOM commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, asking for the U.S. to intervene in the Yemeni Civil War and lead a multinational coalition against Ansarallah/The Houthis.

Cooper rejected MBS' proposal according to Kan.

The Saudi request from the United States reflects the kingdom's desire to avoid entering the "Yemeni mud," given its past experience. On the other hand, the negative response from the Americans reflects their unwillingness to lead another fighting front in the Middle East.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸🇻🇪 America’s murky deal to secure a fifth of Venezuela’s oil

It could give both countries reason to postpone elections indefinitely and maintain the remnants of the Maduro regime in power.

It was a typically Trumpian announcement. On August 28th, the American president declared what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history”, an agreement he said would give America “majority control” of more than 65bn barrels of Venezuelan crude: around one fifth of the country’s vast proven reserves. Details were conspicuously absent, but the president said it involved “a partnership with private business” and would be “at no cost to the American taxpayer”. He described Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s unpopular and unelected leader, as the “Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela”. Ms Rodríguez joined in the mutual obsequence, offering her “deepest gratitude” to Mr Trump for a deal she said will contribute to “our country’s economic growth, the energy security of our hemisphere and greater balance in international markets”.

Sources with knowledge of the agreement tell The Economist that the “private business” that will hold a 45% stake in the new joint-venture operator (with the American government reportedly holding the rest via an office at the Pentagon), will be North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, a privately owned oil producer, registered in Barbados with offices in Caracas. That company is controlled by Alejandro Betancourt, a controversial London-based Venezuelan, often referred to as one of a group of “bolichicos”—businessmen who made themselves fortunes on the back of lucrative contracts during the chaotic corrupt heyday of Mr Chávez’s rule. Mr Betancourt has faced several international investigations into alleged money laundering. But he appears to have made himself exceptionally useful to the Trump administration.

But there is a bigger problem for Mr Trump’s deal than the background of its joint venture partner. Any contracts signed will still ultimately be with the government of Ms Rodríguez. She is not a leader chosen by Venezuelans but the heir to Nicolás Maduro, who flagrantly stole the last presidential election, in 2024. That vote was won by Edmundo González, the stand-in for the wildly popular opposition leader María Corina Machado. Mr Maduro was seized by American commandos in Caracas on January 3rd and flown to New York, where he faces drug-trafficking charges. But his absence does not bestow any legitimacy on Ms Rodríguez, his former deputy, or on the contracts her government signs. “It will be a fiasco for all involved,” said Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, now at Harvard, of the deal, which he described as unconstitutional.

The risk for those signing contracts is that a future democratic government could also take that view. But that raises the prospect that both the Trump administration and the Rodríguez regime might now share an incentive to prevent any elected government from taking office. “This growing ‘win-win’ arrangement [is] difficult for either side to walk away from,” said Imdat Oner, a former Turkish diplomat who served in Caracas. “As the deal takes shape, the opposition’s role and influence could increasingly fade into the background.” Already the Trump administration has strongly discouraged Ms Machado, who left Venezuela to collect the Nobel peace prize last December, from returning home. All this leaves her in a tough spot; opposing the deal may leave her even further from power. As this story was published, she had not commented on the deal.

📝: 8 months after Venezuela surrendered, they lost access to their oil resources. This is the fate that awaits Iran if it decides to acquiesce to Trump's demands. The Iranians are fully aware of this, as they already experienced a similar event in 1953 when the CIA overthrew the popular PM, Mohamed Mosaddegh and installed the Pahlavi monarchy which quickly ceded the rights to Iran's oil resources to foreign companies.

🔗 https://unwall.app/www.economist.com/the-americas/2026/08/29/americas-murky-deal-to-secure-a-fifth-of-venezuelas-oil

🚀 🇺🇸 🛰 The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has officially launched and is heading to its forever home at L2.

Over the next three months, the observatory will perform final checks and power its instruments before revealing its first images by early 2027.

nasa.gov/Roman

📎 Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 President Trump says he is going to fill up the US Strategic Oil Reserve with Venezuelan oil.

Trump says the “topping out” process will begin very shortly and is a “gift” from Venezuela to the US.

📎 KobeissiLetter