Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he’s not in contact with the Russian side on potential peace talks even as his dialog with US continues.
Speaking at a news conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Kyiv on Friday, Zelenskiy said he doesn’t want to set conditions for potential peace talks with Vladimir Putin as he could use them as an excuse to continue the war.
In a bombshell of a development, federal agents conducted a raid on the Maryland residence of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday morning, according to various breaking sources.
One source connected to the investigation has described that the search was aimed at locating potentially classified documents that authorities suspect Bolton may still have in his possession.
There are no indicators as of yet that Bolton, who was Trump's national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, has been arrested or taken into custody.
"NO ONE is above the law," FBI Director Kash Patel posted to X Friday morning, but without giving direct reference to the Bolton house raid. "FBI agents on mission."
According to NY Post, which first revealed the raid:
Federal agents went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post.
...The probe — which is said to involve classified documents — was first launched years ago, but the Biden administration shut it down “for political reasons,” according to a senior US official.
The FBI are reportedly sorting through papers and boxes:
🚨 BREAKING: Federal agents are RIGHT NOW in John Bolton's home "going through things" following an early morning FBI RAID in the DC area over national security concerns.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 22, 2025
Yes. We did, indeed, vote for this.
This is Bolton's primary residence.
"This deals with classified… pic.twitter.com/PmIOAxTgtA
Trump has been a longtime fierce critic of Bolton, after Bolton had long ago started going after Trump. Just this week, Bolton was on CNN and prime news shows blasting Trump's dealings with Putin and the Ukraine negotiations.
"I don’t think there’s a peace deal anywhere in the near future," he said while criticizing the commander-in-chief's tactics while recently speaking to CNN.
Back in January Bolton had been among former top officials, and Trump adversaries, to get their costly security protections stripped.
Axios also recalls that Bolton wrote in a foreword to his memoir that was published last year the words: "a mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be President."
Publication of the book had been delayed so that the White House could review its content for any potential security breaches or disclosure of sensitive information.
NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) August 22, 2025
Mainstream media is being quick to suggest the house raid is an act of retribution. "Bolton was vocal in his criticism of the president after working in the first Trump administration. Trump has aggressively used the power of the presidency to punish political foes," Axios observes.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-raids-maryland-home-john-bolton-patel-says-no-one-above-law
President Trump's elimination of the de minimis duty-free rule at the end of next week is set to fuel a global postal bottleneck, more specifically, with U.S. inbound packages valued at or over $100 likely facing delays as shippers scramble to figure out how the tariff collection process will work.
In just one week, President Trump's executive order will end duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value imports (items valued less than $800), closing a loophole long exploited by China to flood the U.S. with low-cost junk. The administration stated in late July that the primary goal is to end the flow of deadly synthetic opioids hidden within these small packages. Starting next week, all foreign shipments, except verified gifts under $100, will face new duties.
Under the new rules, there is quite a bit of confusion about how the new duties will be collected and how to submit the required data.
A report from Bloomberg lists a number of U.S. inbound postal supply lines beginning to experience bottlenecks because of the tariff collection confusion:
Asia: Korea Post and SingPost are halting standard parcel services, while Japan warns of delays.
Europe: Norway, Finland, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, and the UK are suspending or limiting services; Deutsche Post/DHL halted business parcels via postal networks.
Australia: Transit shipments through Australia to the U.S. are paused, though direct U.S. deliveries remain.
Multinational logistics company DHL cited confusion over how duties will be collected in a new letter to customers on Friday. The shipper remains operational.
"Key questions remain unresolved, particularly regarding how and by whom customs duties will be collected in the future, what additional data will be required, and how the data transmission to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection will be carried out," DHL stated in the letter.
It's not just DHL; other shippers, including FedEx and UPS, are figuring out how to collect the new tariff fee. Online sellers are also scrambling to comply.
Millions of low-value packages per day will lose their duty-free treatment by the end of next week and be subject to standard tariff rates or temporary flat fees of $80 to $200 per item for six months.
For more details on rates. Customs and Border Protection outlined last week in a bulletin how the flat fees would be calculated, corresponding to the countries' tariff rates.
"It is a real concern that the dominoes are falling and there will be a ripple effect where more and more posts announce that they will be suspending packages to the US," warned Kate Muth, executive director of the International Mailers Advisory Group, which represents the U.S. international mailing and shipping industry, quoted by Bloomberg.
The FDA has identified critical lapses at a production facility operated by Novo Nordisk that is used by several drugmakers, raising quality concerns for companies, including Regeneron and Scholar Rock, whose therapies are manufactured there.
The problems were reported on Thursday by STAT News, which obtained a copy of the FDA report. They include unaddressed instances of contamination by “atypical extrinsic particles” such as cat hair. The production plant, located in Indiana, “failed to determine a root cause of the contamination, assess the potential impact to the rest of the lot, or evaluate whether similar issues may have occurred in upstream batches,” the agency’s investigator wrote.
There appear to be no commercial drug lots affected by the hair contamination.
The FDA report additionally flagged bacterial contaminations and pest infestations, for which the facility was unable to adequately identify the root cause or assess the impacts on product batches. For years—with some cases dating as far back as June 2022—the plant also fielded complaints from different clients regarding “foreign matter” or “particles” detected in lots produced at the facility.
The site also “failed to investigate all critical equipment failures that have the potential to impact drug products,” the investigation revealed. Just in the period from late February 2024 to May 2025, the plant opened roughly 10 work orders for “recurrent leaks and/or other failures” of a certain system, for which some repairs were substantially delayed, according to the report.
According to reporting from STAT, the facility in question was once owned by Catalent and is one of the three plants handed over to Novo Nordisk when its parent company Novo Holdings acquired the CDMO giant in February last year. The takeover cost the Danish firm $16.5 billion. In a statement to STAT on Thursday, Novo said that it is taking all of the FDA’s observations “seriously” and has already filed a “comprehensive response” to the report.
“Appropriate actions are being taken to address each observation promptly and holistically,” a company spokesperson said.
In the meantime, these issues have already caused problems for Regeneron, which earlier this month revealed that two FDA decisions for the high-dose version of its blockbuster eye drug Eylea will be delayed due to problems at the Novo-managed manufacturing facility. On Wednesday, the pharma announced that it expects the verdicts to come in the fourth quarter. Regeneron’s applications concern the use of Eylea HD for macular edema after retinal vein occlusion, as well as a four-week dosing schedule for the drug across its approved indication.
Similarly, Scholar Rock earlier this month reported the challenges at the facility as the company awaits an FDA decision for apitegromab to treat spinal muscular atrophy. Executives said on a second quarter earnings call on August 6 that the inspection was not specific to apitegromab and that so far, the FDA appears to be on track for the September decision date.
Biohaven Ltd. (NYSE: BHVN) announced the Food and Drug Administration no longer plans to hold an advisory committee meeting for its troriluzole drug application.
The FDA's Division of Neurology 1 communicated the decision on August 21, according to the company's statement. The division previously indicated in May it would convene an advisory committee to discuss the New Drug Application for troriluzole, intended to treat adult patients with Spinocerebellar Ataxia.
The FDA extended the Prescription Drug User Fee Act date for the application by three months in May to allow time for review of the company's recent submissions responding to agency information requests. The regulatory decision timeline remains unchanged, with the FDA expected to make a determination during the fourth quarter of 2025.
Spinocerebellar Ataxia is a group of hereditary neurological disorders that affect movement and coordination. Troriluzole is being developed as a potential treatment for adult patients with the condition.
Google has struck a six-year cloud computing deal with Meta Platforms worth more than $10 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, the search giant's second big agreement recently after one with OpenAI.
Under the agreement, Meta will use Google Cloud's servers, storage, networking and other services, the source, who asked not to be named because the discussions are confidential, said.
Google and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The deal was first reported by the Information.
The news comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments in July that the company would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers.
The company raised the bottom end of its annual capital expenditures forecast by $2 billion, to a range of $66 billion to $72 billion last month.
Meta is seeking outside partners to help it fund the massive infrastructure needed to power AI by offloading $2 billion in data center assets, the company disclosed in a filing earlier this month.
In June, Reuters reported that OpenAI was planning to add Alphabet's Google Cloud service to meet its growing needs for computing capacity, a surprising collaboration between two prominent competitors in the artificial intelligence sector.
Amid this flurry of deals, Google parent's cloud-computing unit delivered an almost 32% jump in second-quarter revenue in July, which surpassed expectations.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-signs-10-billion-plus-230020207.html
Bavarian Nordic A/S’s chief executive officer says the proposed buyout offer from two private equity firms underscores the capital needed to back the Danish biotech’s ambition of becoming a global vaccine powerhouse.
Nordic Capital and Permira share Bavarian’s vision of turning “unloved” vaccine assets into growth engines, which will demand substantial new funding, CEO Paul Chaplin said in an interview on Friday.
