Federal regulators sued Amazon on Monday, alleging the company has pocketed tens of billions of dollars by “secretly and systemically overcharging” advertisers on its platform.

A bipartisan group of 22 state attorneys general joined the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington and marks the third major lawsuit against Amazon by federal regulators.

The latest complaint alleges that Amazon secretly pushed up the prices that 1.2 million brands and sellers pay to place ads on Amazon’s website and mobile app by manipulating the bidding process. Amazon, which has grown into one of the world’s largest advertising platforms, sells its ads through special auctions, which are fairly common in the industry.

“In executing its scheme to misrepresent and rig its auctions against its customers, Amazon has deceived its customers and deprived them of the benefits of competition and fair and transparent dealing,” the government’s lawsuit argues.

Amazon, in its response on Monday, argues that the FTC misrepresented the reality of its ad auctions and cherry-picked findings. The company says the quality of its advertising improved over the years while the average cost-per-click of its ads remained flat when adjusted for inflation. It also notes the lawsuit offers no evidence of harm to shoppers.

Amazon has faced other federal lawsuits

The FTC’s case comes just over a year since Amazon agreed to pay a historic $2.5 billion settlement to resolve another federal lawsuit over its Prime membership program. The U.S. government had alleged the company’s web designs manipulated tens of millions of people into paying for subscriptions that were purposefully hard to cancel.

Amazon also faces another sweeping lawsuit by the FTC and 17 states that paints the company as a monopolist that suffocates competitors and raises costs for both sellers and shoppers. This case is slated to go to trial early next year.

In 2023, Amazon also paid $30 million to settle FTC’s allegations of privacy violations involving its voice assistant Alexa and doorbell camera Ring.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — As authorities in Nepal scramble to rescue more than 900 workers trapped in hydropower tunnels that are still under construction, a top group of the country’s private sector power producers has criticized the government’s initial hesitance in accepting help from other countries.

The floods and mudslides that were triggered by last week’s ice-and-rock avalanche have buried several Himalayan villages in the border region of Nepal and Tibet.

In a statement on Monday morning, local time, Nepal’s disaster management department said 903 people have died and 4,247 are currently considered missing, a sharp rise from the previous figures. At least 85 of those missing are Americans, the State Department said on Sunday.

The debris created by the various landslides has also blocked nine hydropower tunnels in Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, trapping 933 workers from Nepal, South Korea and China. Videos shared by the Nepali army show rescue personnel using drills and excavator machines to try to rescue those who were trapped.

Bhim Gautam, chief executive officer of the Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal, told NPR that Nepal does not have “enough technology, equipment and expertise” to mount successful rescue operations at hydropower projects. “Our expertise is only in dealing with small flooding. We have never faced a situation like this before,” said Gautam.

Last week’s floods, he said, not only blocked the entrances of the tunnels, but also made them difficult to locate. “In some cases, the rescue workers spent three days only in finding these tunnels.”

He said his industry’s leaders had to “pressure the government” to allow rescue workers from other countries. “Late last week, the government approved rescue teams from China, India and Australia to come,” Gautam said. “But it is so late now.”

Nepal’s finance minister, Swarnim Wagle, had last week rejected reports in local and international media that asserted the country had rejected help from foreign countries, insisting that assistance had been accepted only “according to the needs on the ground.”

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces relentlessly battered Kyiv and cities in the region around the Ukrainian capital for a fifth straight day Monday, leaving some supermarket shelves bare after repeated strikes on warehouses as Ukraine reels from attacks with jet-powered drones.

Russia has intensified its aerial attacks in recent months, more than four years after it invaded its neighbor. Almost constant air raid alerts in the Kyiv region in recent days have severely disrupted daily routines. Two major attacks in July killed almost 50 civilians, and a strike on Saturday killed at least 38 people.

Classes were due to resume at Ukrainian schools on Tuesday, but it was unclear whether parents would send their children. Schools have air raid shelters, and classes can also be held online.

“Right now, Russia’s tactic is to wear down Ukraine and Ukrainians — first and foremost, our people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media late Sunday.

Ukraine has also tried to make Russian civilians feel the burden of war by hammering major online retailers and oil facilities. The attacks have brought shortages for ordinary Russians, though its strikes have not been as deadly for civilians.

Ukraine builds technology to counter jet-powered drones

A pall of black smoke drifted over Kyiv on Monday morning. In Brovary and Boryspil, cities in the Kyiv region, the aerial attacks struck several warehouses and four people were wounded, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration.

Zelenskyy conceded on social media that Ukraine is struggling to counter fast-flying jet-propelled drones that Russia is increasingly deploying.

Between Thursday and Sunday, Russia fired almost 1,500 drones at Ukraine, and around 800 of them were jet-powered, Zelenskyy said.

Combat aircraft are currently trying to stop the jet-powered versions while Ukraine looks to develop more effective technology.

“Four companies have developed the relevant interceptor drones, and one company has the most successful technology,” Zelenskyy said. He didn’t elaborate.

A Kyiv official says Ukrainians won’t go hungry

Repeated Russian strikes on food distribution centers and retail hubs have disrupted Ukrainian logistics, leaving some supermarket shelves bare and fueling public concern about shortages.

Under the searing desert sun, Max Wilson watched water flow through a canal in north Phoenix. This unassuming strip of blue next to a busy road is the city’s lifeline to the Colorado River. Soon, there will be less water in it.

Wilson, who is the water resources management advisor for the City of Phoenix, has to make sure cuts to this canal’s supply don’t cause taps to go dry for more than 1.7 million people who depend on his system.

He is confident water will keep flowing out of kitchen sinks, showers and sprinklers across the nation’s fifth-largest city.

“Arizonans have been solving water problems for our entire history, and we didn’t forget how to do that overnight,” Wilson said. “We’re going to do it again now.”

The cuts, which kick in on Jan. 1, are the result of a new federal plan for managing the Colorado River. After more than 26 years of drought and climate change sapped the river’s supply, the nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are at record lows. The seven states that use the river’s water spent years trying to agree on a plan to rein in demand. Those negotiations failed, and the federal government had to step in with its own.

The result is a strategy that includes mandatory cuts of 27% to Arizona’s Colorado River supplies each year through 2028, with an option for steeper cuts after that.

Now, Central Arizona cities are charting a course through a future with less Colorado River water. Water managers across the Phoenix metro say they have robust backup plans in place to keep taps flowing, thanks to years of preparation and huge construction projects. Those upgrades, though, come with a big price tag, and will carry the area into a future that is still rife with uncertainty.

The sun sets on the Phoenix skyline on April 26, 2026. The nation’s fifth-largest city will get less water from the Colorado River, but groundwater, another nearby river system and expensive technology will help it adapt to those cuts.

Alex Hager/KJZZ

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Alex Hager/KJZZ

The Central Arizona Project — a system of canals and pumps which carry Colorado River water 336 miles across the desert to the Phoenix and Tucson areas — will be hit the hardest by new cuts. Colorado River water makes up 40% of the supplies Phoenix feeds to its customers.

As the possibility of more mudslides threaten towns along the Nepal-China border, the search continues for more than 2,400 people missing, including dozens of U.S. citizens, after last week’s catastrophic floods.

Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Foreign Secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai said Sunday that 734 bodies have been recovered four days after nearly 30-foot high waves of water swept through mountain valleys.

The Red Cross estimated that more than 90,000 people were affected by the flooding. Nepal says it has deployed thousands of rescue workers, with people still being found alive this weekend.

As of Sunday morning, 85 Americans are still unaccounted for, according to U.S. State Department Spokesperson Tommy Pigott.

“We’ve also now seen nine Americans be safely evacuated. We are currently unaware of any U.S. citizen deaths at this time,” Pigott said during an interview with ABC News “This Week.”

Among the Americans missing are tourists, hikers and those on a pilgrimage to the holy site of Mount Kailash, which is located in a remote part of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It’s considered a once-in-a-lifetime journey for several faiths.

Divya Chandrashekar told NPR that her brother-in-law Ragu Rajan, and his wife, Archana Suresh, had planned the trip to Mount Kailash for the past year.

The couple from Murphy, Tx. started their journey from Kathmandu on Aug. 25 and were crossing the Nepal-China border when the floods hit. Their last known location was near the Gyirong Port border post on the morning of the floods.

The Bhote Koshi, the Nepali name for “Tibetan river,” completely wiped out the border checkpoint and the Friendship Bridge that connects Nepal and China. Security footage posted by China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, showed a wall of mud and water hitting the buildings.

Chandrashekar described Rajan and Suresh as “spiritual, loved the outdoors, enjoyed their treks, very good parents.” She said the couple were planning to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in November.

Annnnd there’s a winner in the first-ever Fat Marmot Week!

The competition was among eight yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado vying to gain the most weight before winter hibernation. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s Marmot Project hosted Fat Marmot Week as a way to hype up these cat-sized alpine rodents, in the face of cuts to research funding.

Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate to survive the snowy high-mountain winters. They curl up, lower their body temperatures, and slow their breathing. They spend more than half the year like this, relying on their stored fat. Thus: Fat Marmot Week.

Marmot enthusiasts were encouraged to cheer on Dawn, G, Dan’s Hat, Citroen, Open Kite, 1, Dandelion, and Stonehenge as they spent the month of August bulking up.

Weekend Edition had the honor of exclusively announcing the popular vote winner — the marmot that the public crowned as the fattest of them all.

Congratulations to Dawn! Your chunky champion is a father who the RMBL says “enjoys the taste of rocks.”

Dawn, the inaugural winner of Fat Marmot Week, is a father who enjoys the taste of rocks.

Daniel Blumstein

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Daniel Blumstein

The Marmot Project also announced that Dawn was the competition’s “true” winner on Saturday, based on researchers’ estimation of the animals’ actual size. Clocking in with a 4.5lb weight gain for a total of 13lbs, congratulations to Dawn for gaining the most weight!

Weekend Edition staff also held an informal vote, picking Stonehenge, a resilient mother who lost her litter to a hungry badger earlier this year.

Stonehenge the marmot stands regal in a field.

Daniel Blumenstein

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Daniel Blumenstein

The competition was inspired by Alaska’s Fat Bear Week — when more than a million people cast votes for the chonkiest brown bear.

Fun fact: Marmots are the biggest true hibernators in the world. Bears do not hibernate, they go into a sort of deep sleep called “torpor.”

The Marmot Project has been researching these rodents since 1962. It’s one of the longest-running projects studying individually tagged mammals in the wild.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a giant billboard on the Canadian shoreline on Saturday, with the message “Lake Ontario — Now and Always,” hitting back at President Trump’s efforts to rename the lake “Lake America.” The sign, written in both English and French, was put up near the U.S. border, along a major road many Americans travel on when visiting Canada.

“President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario,” Doug Ford told reporters.

“We’re resilient and we’re strong Canadians who are always going to protect our sovereignty, always, and we’ll never ever back down from a bully, ever.”

Ford echoed Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney who last week said in a post on X, “Canadian women and men … know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario — today and forever.”

President Trump signed an executive order last week directing the federal government to rename the lake, which sits between New York and Canada. It’s the latest in his escalating dispute with Canada, and follows a similar move from the president last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.

“We have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office signing.

Trump went on to say he was renaming the lake because trade talks with Canada had gone badly.

“People — oftentimes they’ll ask me, who’s the worst to deal with on trade? And I said, that’s easy. Canada. They are the worst at trade. And they feel entitled, and just — we can’t have that,” Trump said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveils a sign for Lake Ontario at Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026.

Keito Newman/The Canadian Press/AP

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Keito Newman/The Canadian Press/AP

The spat comes as trade negotiations between the two countries collapsed last week, with Trump announcing he would impose a 50% tariff on a broad range of Canadian imports, escalating a trade war with the U.S.’ longtime ally. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by promising to match U.S. tariffs, “dollar for dollar.”

In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, President Trump said “Canada has been ripping us off for years – NO LONGER!”

JOHANNESBURG—Dolly Parton was truly a global star, her reach extending from the hills of Appalachia to the savannas of Africa, where she was beloved across the continent—from Lagos to Nairobi to Johannesburg.

At the news of her death this week, African country music stars and fans told NPR they could relate to Parton’s background and her ballads of rural hardship and struggle.

Esther Konkara, a singer known as “the Kenyan Dolly Parton,” said that growing up in a semi-arid, dusty Kenyan village, Dolly’s songs just spoke to her.

“I think by Dolly singing songs about growing up in rural areas back there in America, and a lot of us having grown up in rural areas and in poor backgrounds it resonates so well with us,” she explained.

“I think that’s why there is a lot of love for country music in Kenya,” the 39-year-old added.

So much so, in fact, that there’s now an annual Cowboys and Cowgirls Day festival where Kenyans — and fans from all over — don western garb and dance to country music.

Dolly Parton performing in Nashville, Tennessee in 2014.

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Terry Wyatt/Getty Images

Elijah Manyeki, who owns a niche but popular Nairobi store selling cowboy apparel, is the event’s main organizer.

“The whole of Africa, we are in shock, and we can’t believe Dolly she’s no more,” he told NPR, adding that he was holding a candlelight vigil and barbecue in Nairobi for Dolly fans to come together and remember her.

That connection isn’t unique to Kenya. In Nigeria, Ochiora Okogeri, known by his stage name The Country Man, is also feeling Dolly’s loss.

“Dolly sang about love, Dolly sang about heartbreak, she sang about simplicity and humble beginnings, you know, and these things are I think very relatable to most Africans, she was pretty down-to-earth in her songs.”

Dressed in a Stetson and cowboy boots, he also covers Dolly songs, and says his audience has a clear favorite.

“There was so much soul and truth in her songs, particularly ‘Coat of Many Colors‘ when I sing in Nigeria there is always a very open reception for it.”

Voters in the tiny Nordic nation of Iceland cast their ballots on Saturday on whether to restart talks on the country joining the European Union.

Polls closed at 10:00 p.m. local time and early results indicate an extremely tight race, according to RÚV, Iceland’s broadcaster. Hours after the last votes were cast, the “yes” camp was narrowly leading, it reported.

This is not the first time Iceland has considered joining the EU. The government was in talks with the EU back in 2013. Iceland had just come out of a banking collapse after the global economic crisis. Talks stalled in part because Icelanders worried they would lose sovereign control over their fisheries, their largest export.

If the “yes” vote wins, the country does not automatically become a member of the EU. Negotiations would reopen with Brussels, and if an agreement is reached, there would be a second referendum on whether Iceland should join the economic pact.

“This is a good day,” Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir told a reporter Saturday, outside a polling station in the capital of Reykjavik. “We have now reached the point where this is in the hands of the nation. Either we enter these negotiations, seek a good agreement and then see what happens, or we put the discussion about the European Union aside, at least for the time being.”

Frostadóttir has led a pro-EU coalition government since late 2024. In an interview in July with The Rest is Politics, a leading British podcast, she said the country already adheres to 75% of the EU rules. “Joining it is not going to sink the country and joining it is also not fundamentally going to change every aspect of Icelandic, you know, economy,” said the prime minister.

But many in the country with a population of just 400,000 worry they’ll be drowned out by the 27 other nations in the economic pact. There is concern that if Iceland becomes part of the EU, in addition to fishing limits, it would have to change its currency, the Icelandic króna, to the euro and join a single market.

The far-right British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, who enthusiastically supported President Trump’s immigration crackdown, has been arrested and deported for allegedly living in the U.S. illegally.

“On August 27, ICE arrested Milo Yiannopoulos, an illegal alien from the United Kingdom, at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport,” the agency said in a post on X. He entered the country legally in 2019 according to ICE, but he then overstayed. “Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing,” the agency said in its statement.

In a separate statement to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said Yiannopoulos was deported back to the U.K. on Friday.

Yiannopoulos rose to prominence through his provocative statements criticizing political correctness, feminism and Islam. He also drew criticism for his alleged ties to white nationalists.

Yiannopoulos broke the mold of other hard-right figures by identifying as a gay man.

Prior to his arrest, Yiannopoulos had incurred the wrath of some in the MAGA movement for his connection to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and his criticism of Trump.

Greene resigned from Congress earlier this year after a falling out with Trump and MAGA, saying “it was all a lie” because of the focus on other countries and wealthy donors. She also accused Trump of stonewalling the release of the Epstein files.

Fall from MAGA grace

Yiannopoulos first gained notoriety two decades ago as a writer for the conservative website Breitbart News. He resigned in 2017 after a video surfaced where he appeared to be endorsing sexual relationships between adult men and “younger boys,” for which he later apologized. That same year, he embarked on a tour of college campuses that was marked by student protests over what some deemed hate speech.

Among his more controversial proclamations, he equated feminism with cancer, said the U.S. has “a Muslim problem,” and created a scholarship exclusively for young white men.