Monday morning news: August 31, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

U.S. strikes Iranian rocket launchers » U.S. forces have struck Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz, marking their first military action in a month. Iran has vowed to retaliate.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps was reportedly preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the strait.

The U.S. recently cleared sea mines from the strait’s shipping routes. The Trump administration just days ago had shifted focus to economic pressure, but said the U.S. military would act if Teheran attempted to place more mines in the strait.

Venezuela oil deal » Republicans are applauding a new oil deal with Venezuela that President Trump announced over the weekend, calling it the biggest oil deal in the history of the world.

Republican Congressman Rick Crawford:

CRAWFORD: Not only from an energy security perspective, but from a, um, a, a, a geographic security, I mean, Western Hem security perspective, this is really a, a good deal for the United States and a good deal for Venezuela.

Under the deal, a new company gets the rights to 17 Venezuelan oil fields for at least 25 years, 65 billion barrels' worth. The U.S. gets a 55 percent stake in the venture, including the right to buy at cost. No text of the deal has been released.

GOP Congressman Brian Mast called it a blow to America's adversaries.

MAST: That's actually now going to go to the United States of America instead of China, not on Russian ships, so Russia isn't going to benefit from that.

Trump says it will bring gas prices down. Energy analysts say that may not happen quickly. Venezuela's oil fields are wrecked, and fixing them will take years and billions of dollars.

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez is also touting it as a great deal for her country.

RODRIGUEZ: [Speaking Spanish]

She says the money will build houses for Venezuelans who lost theirs in recent earthquakes, and for families who never had one.

But some Democrats in Washington aren't impressed. They say the U.S. raid that took out former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was about oil all along. They assert that American troops were risked so oil companies and Trump's allies could profit. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine called it—quote—“using our troops for a private oil grab.”

Flooding latest » The death toll from last week's Himalayan flood has passed 800.

More than 3-thousand people are still missing across Nepal and Tibet. Whole villages sit buried in gray mud, with homes and tractors sticking out.

Nepal's foreign secretary, Amrit Bahadur Rai:

RAI: Our immediate national priority remains clear to save lives, locate missing persons, rescue them, and provide urgent relief to survivors, and ensure that affected Nepalese as well as foreigners receive appropriate assistance and support.

About 90 Americans are among the missing. Many were on a pilgrimage to a mountain in Tibet. One American woman says she talked with her parents less than two hours before the water came.

AUDIO: They were just telling my sister about the amazing time that they had in Nepal and China, and how blessed they felt to be on the pilgrimage.

Her parents are still missing.

The flood started when bedrock under a Himalayan glacier gave way, a rockfall so violent it registered as an earthquake.

And Nepal warned people again Sunday to stay clear of the rivers, as China reported more water coming down from the mountains.

Deadly Russian strikes » A village outside Kyiv is counting its dead, 38 so far, and four people still unaccounted after deadly Russian attacks. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports:

BENJAMIN EICHER: A Russian strike hit an ammunition dump over the weekend, and the resulting blast and fire swept through the houses nearby.

No attack this year has killed more.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it terrible negligence, storing explosives near people's homes. And he has ordered an investigation.

Russia has stepped up its air campaign in Ukraine, now striking Kyiv in daylight, which used to be rare.

Moscow said Sunday it's preparing to strike Ukraine's power grid.

He says it’s payment for Ukrainian drones hitting Russian refineries and warehouses. But this is nothing new for Russia, which has wrecked Ukraine's power grid in past winters. Ukrainian officials warn this campaign could be the worst since the invasion began.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Space launch » At Florida’s Kennedy Space Center Sunday:

SOUND: [Falcon launch]

NASA’s newest space telescope has blasted off a Falcon heavy rocket …

AUDIO (Falcon launch):  … three, two, one. Ignition and liftoff. Go Falcon Heavy and go Roman Space Telescope.

SpaceX launched the $4 billion Roman Space Telescope. And NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said over the next several months, Roman will travel nearly one million miles away from Earth:

ISAACMAN: …  And begin transmitting imagery and data back home that will contribute to world-changing science, along with all of the captivating imagery that, uh, like we see from Hubble and James Webb. I have no doubt that Roman will become a household name alongside those great instruments of discovery

The telescope is named after the late Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer.

NASA predicts it will find “tens of thousands of planets, billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars.”

Box office » At the weekend box office, Wile E. Coyote hit the big screen:

CLIP (Coyote vs Acme):  (Meep, meep.) Have you ever set a big stack of TNT on the road hoping to blow up your nemesis, but the detonator itself explodes? It's not your fault. Acme is evil.

Coyote vs Acme: The blended live action-slash-animated feature debuted with an estimated $15 million dollars domestically for the weekend.

But that still wasn’t enough to dethrone Spiderman: Brand New Day, which finished in first place again with another $22 million stateside, now $2.3 billion dollars worldwide.

I'm Kent Covington. Coming up.. What the Fed Chairman had to say about the central bank’s role in inflation. David Bahnsen will talk about it on the Monday Moneybeat. Plus, a religious and ethnic minority in Iraq seeks justice years after a devastating attack.

This is The World and Everything in It.

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