Top 5 US news stories
August 27 2025
EU to Propose Eliminating Tariffs on US Industrial Goods to Meet Trump's Demands
Democrats' Divisions on Israel-Gaza Spill into Open as DNC Chair Scraps Resolution
SpaceX's Starship Achieves Major Milestone With Successful Flight to Space and Back
Ukraine to Ease Wartime Travel Ban, Allowing Men Aged 18-22 to Leave
Mexican Cartel Turf War Turns Ecuador Into a Global Murder Capital
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WSJ
1. EU to Propose Eliminating Tariffs on US Industrial Goods to Meet Trump's Demands
The European Union will seek to fast track legislation by the end of the week to remove all tariffs on US industrial goods, a demand made by President Donald Trump before the US will lower its duties on the bloc’s automobile exports. The European Commission, which handles trade matters for the EU, will also give preferential tariff rates on certain seafood and agricultural goods, according to people familiar with the matter. The EU has conceded that the trade arrangement struck with Trump favors the US but that the accord is necessary to give businesses stability and certainty. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen previously described it as “a strong, if not perfect deal.”
Bloomberg
2. Democrats' Divisions on Israel-Gaza Spill into Open as DNC Chair Scraps Resolution
The Democratic Party’s divisions over Israel and the war in Gaza were on messy display at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday, as members weighed just how far to go in reprimanding Israel for its conduct on the battlefield. Then, the party chairman abruptly abandoned his own proposal, kicking the subject to a task force in an acknowledgment of enduring intraparty tensions. “There’s divide in our party on this issue,” Ken Martin, the D.N.C. chairman, said. “We have to find a path forward as a party and we have to stay unified.” Mr. Martin’s unexpected move came during a morning session of the D.N.C. meeting in Minneapolis, where party activists had debated dueling resolutions about how to respond to the humanitarian crisis and war in Gaza. The measures were almost entirely symbolic, yet laid bare the broader generational and establishment-versus-grass-roots fault lines shaping the party nearly two years after the war began. One measure, backed by a number of younger D.N.C. members including the leaders of the College Democrats of America and High School Democrats of America, called on Democratic elected officials to endorse an arms embargo and the suspension of military aid to Israel, and to recognize Palestine as a nation. The other, supported by Mr. Martin and his allies on the Resolutions Committee, sought to chart something of a middle course. Their resolution urged an influx of humanitarian aid to Gaza, an immediate cease-fire, the release of hostages taken captive from Israel during the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 and “a credible, negotiated pathway toward a two-state solution” for Israelis and Palestinians.
NYT
3. SpaceX's Starship Achieves Major Milestone With Successful Flight to Space and Back
SpaceX’s Starship — the mammoth rocket that Elon Musk hopes to use to take people to Mars — made it all the way up to space and all the way back down to Earth during a 10th test flight on Tuesday night. The largely successful mission was a likely relief to both SpaceX and NASA, suggesting that the development program is back on track. NASA is counting on Starship as the lander to put its astronauts on the moon in the coming years. “They appeared to achieve all of their test objectives,” Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said in an interview. Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Even more ambitiously, Mr. Musk says it will be fully reusable, with both stages returning to the launch site and caught by giant mechanical arms.
NYT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2025
4. Ukraine to Ease Wartime Travel Ban, Allowing Men Aged 18-22 to Leave
Young men will be allowed to leave Ukraine after the government changed its border crossing rules, modifying a law introduced after Russia’s full-scale invasion that forced adult males under 60 to stay in the country. The new rules for men aged 18 to 22 will come into force soon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media on Tuesday, adding that the changes had been “agreed with the military command”. Martial law remains in place in the war-torn country. The ban on men leaving has been a source of tension in Ukraine, with regular cases of males being given exemptions for a temporary stay abroad refusing to re-enter, or families remaining separated for months or years at a time. Government officials have also become increasingly concerned with the high number of males under 18 being sent abroad by their parents in a bid to circumvent the ban. “Graduating classes were made up almost entirely of girls — universities were lacking male applicants,” Oleksandr Fedienko, an MP from the president’s ruling Servant of the People party, told the Financial Times. “This kind of decision will help keep these young people in Ukraine, so that they contribute to their own country rather than to others.” The exodus of males under 18 has occurred despite the fact that only men aged 25 and over can be conscripted into Ukraine’s armed forces. The US and several other western countries have pressured Kyiv to lower the minimum mobilisation age, in a bid to address an acute manpower shortage that has contributed to Russian territorial gains in recent months.
FT
5. Mexican Cartel Turf War Turns Ecuador Into a Global Murder Capital
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador—Inside a gang’s safe house in this port city, police officers found a shrine to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, the skeletal icon of Mexican drug cartels. The 5-foot statue was flanked by a smaller likeness of Jesús Malverde, a mustachioed 20th-century bandit revered by Mexican drug smugglers. Ecuadorean hit men lighted candles and prayed to the statues for protection before heading out to kill their next victim, said Roberto Santamaria, a police officer who helped discover the shrine in January. They had fully adopted the practices of their foreign cartel patrons. “Everything that works for them in Mexico, they’ve brought here,” said Santamaria. Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels have spread to more than 40 countries as they work to meet surging demand for cocaine in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Their turf war expanded into Ecuador, which became a top prize due to its strategic location nestled between the two biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru. The cartels work through local gangs that have grown stronger and more dangerous as they adopt the gruesome tactics of Mexico’s drug wars. Ecuador has devolved in a few years from one of the region’s safest nations to among the world’s most deadly. Five of the world’s 12 most murderous cities are in Ecuador, with the city of Durán ranked No. 1, according to the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank that focuses on violence. “These two cartels are spreading like cancer around the world,” said Mike Vigil, a former Drug Enforcement Administration director of international operations. “The ultimate goal is for one cartel or the other to take dominance over Ecuador.” The influence of powerful Mexican cartels and other international crime syndicates makes stanching the carnage much more difficult for President Daniel Noboa, an ally of the Trump administration who was re-elected in April on pledges to curb violence. Killings are up by half in the first six months of this year, government figures show, and May was the bloodiest month on record. Ecuador’s homicide rate is approaching a high of about 50 per 100,000 people in 2025, roughly twice Mexico’s. In 2018, Ecuador’s murder rate was below six per 100,000, similar to the U.S.’s.
WSJ
August 27 1883: Krakatoa explodes with massive force
One of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history occurs on Krakatoa (also called Krakatau), a small, uninhabited volcanic island east of Sumatra and west of Java, on August 27, 1883. Heard 3,000 miles away—and believed to have produced the loudest sounds in human history—the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people. Fine dust from the explosion drifted around the earth, causing spectacular sunsets and forming an atmospheric veil that lowered temperatures worldwide by several degrees.
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Sources
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-27/eu-to-propose-removing-us-tariffs-this-week-to-meet-trump-demand
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025-08-26/us/politics/dnc-israel-gaza-war-resolution.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025-08-26/science/spacex-starship-test-launch.html
- https://www.ft.com/content/aec30c2d-ccac-47b0-b5a5-5c0858a4f62e
- https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/mexican-drug-cartels-ecuador-violence-29153688?mod=hp_lead_pos7
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