NBA suspends Clippers owner Ballmer, fines team $30M, Kawhi Leonard $700K in cap circumvention case

By BETH HARRIS
Updated 4:24 PM PDT, September 2, 2026
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The NBA imposed a sweeping punishment against the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday for violating salary cap circumvention rules, suspending owner Steve Ballmer for one year, fining the team $30 million and forcing it to forfeit five first-round draft picks.

Also, two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard was hit with a $700,000 penalty, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank was banned for six months and team president of business operations Gillian Zucker was suspended for one year.

Lindsay Clancy jury still deadlocked, ends day without verdict after judge's "dynamite" instruction

By Kristina Rex, Matt Schooley, Mike Toole

Updated on: September 2, 2026 / 4:20 PM EDT / CBS Boston

The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial left for the day without a verdict after telling Plymouth Superior Judge William Sullivan that it remains deadlocked after more than 28 hours of deliberations. Deliberations are set to resume Thursday morning.

It was the second time they have told the judge they cannot reach a verdict, leading Sullivan to read what is known as a final "dynamite" instruction.

Putin Signals Desire to End Ukraine War, Rejecting a "Frozen" Conflict at SCO Summit

September 2, 2026

Sources: Reuters, Washington Post 

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Speaking to reporters following the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly declared that Moscow seeks a definitive end to the war in Ukraine rather than a temporary freeze. 

BC boaters warned to avoid floating island that has mystified experts

© THE CANADIAN PRESS

Story by Nono Shen 

22h • 4 min read

Geologist John Joseph Clague said when he first heard that a floating island, bigger than a football field, had been spotted on a lake in British Columbia's northern Interior, he dismissed it as an "AI stunt."

But Clague — a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University and an emeritus scientist of the Geological Survey of Canada — is now convinced that the island is very real, but is mystified by its origins.

Scientists may have detected the 1st direct evidence of dark matter

 Astronomy Dark Universe News 

"We expect dark matter events to be extremely rare, 

so only a handful could mark the first detection of 

WIMP dark matter."

By Robert Lea

Published 5 hours ago

In what could be a groundbreaking discovery, scientists report they may have detected the first direct evidence of dark matter. The potential detection came from the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, in the form of a single suspected interaction between a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), one of the leading hypothetical particle candidates for dark matter, and an everyday particle.

Majority of Americans against Lake Ontario name change, Canada tariffs: Poll

by Mira Bhakta

09/01/26 8:16 PM ET

A majority of Americans are against President Trump’s recent decisions to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” and impose additional tariffs on Canada, a new survey suggests.

The Ipsos/Reuters poll, published Tuesday, reported that 63 percent of respondents opposed Lake Ontario’s renaming, while 14 percent supported the decision and 21 percent said they did not know.

Fact Check: Did America just bomb a wedding in Iran with an air-launched precision cruise missile?

Iran War Atrocities

September 2, 2026

An American SLAM-ER missile has a very strong reputation for precision, which makes a simple “the missile just went wildly astray” explanation harder to sustain

A U.S. strike on September 1 hit a residential property in Kuhestak, southern Iran, while a wedding celebration was taking place, killing at least four people and injuring more than 60, according to Iranian authorities. Subsequent reporting has strengthened the evidence that an American weapon struck the area. While there is still no independent evidence establishing whether the wedding gathering itself was the intended target or whether civilians were killed when a nearby military or communications target was attacked, American intent remains unverified. What stands out is that the SLAM-ER has a very strong reputation for precision. It rarely misses its targets.

LEDs let archaeologists see the past in a new light

by Aarhus University

edited by Robert Egan

September 1, 2026

An archaeological excavation is a little like eating a layered cake: Once you have removed a layer, you cannot put it back. The problem becomes even trickier if two layers look almost exactly the same. Researchers from Aarhus University and Moesgaard Museum in Denmark have now developed a relatively inexpensive multispectral imaging system that gives archaeologists more ways of looking at the soil before they dig into it.

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey easily fends off Massachusetts primary challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton

2026 Election

Markey defeated his challenger, NBC News projects, after he stressed his progressive positions and touted endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders 

and Elizabeth Warren

Sept. 1, 2026, 5:27 PM PDT / 

Updated Sept. 1, 2026, 6:33 PM PDT

By Bridget Bowman

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey defeated Rep. Seth Moulton in the Senate primary in Massachusetts, NBC News projects, in a victory for the party’s progressive wing.  Markey was winning about two-thirds of the vote percentage points with 69% of the expected vote reporting.

A 30-year wait for justice in Tupac’s killing ends with a murder conviction in under 3 hours

Las Vegas — It took close to 30 years for someone to be arrested in the drive-by murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur, an extraordinary stretch that turned the young singer’s 1996 killing into the stuff of legend and conspiracy.

By contrast, it took less than three hours for a jury of 12 Clark County, Nevada, residents to convict Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former leader in the South Side Compton Crips, of first-degree murder – less time than the closing statements in the trial took.

Meet 'Castle Breaker,' Iran's missile wreaking havoc in US war

Exclusive: Defense experts told USA TODAY that Iranian missiles have significantly damaged U.S. bases and the infrastructure for U.S. allies in the region like Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Josh Meyer
USA TODAY
Aug. 31, 2026 Updated Sept. 1, 2026, 8:49 p.m. ET

Full Summary

Iran's newly deployed Kheibar Shekan "Castle Breaker" ballistic missile, with a 900‑mile range and maneuverable warhead, has reportedly penetrated U.S. defenses and caused significant damage to American bases and allied infrastructure across the Persian Gulf during the six‑month war with the United States and Israel.

Whistleblower warns Postal Service's new mail ballot system has "potentially catastrophic problems"

By Melissa Quinn, Madeleine May

Updated on: September 1, 2026 / 10:19 AM EDT / 

CBS NEWS

Add CBS News on Google

Washington — A whistleblower is warning of "potentially catastrophic problems" with the U.S. Postal Service's new system for handling mail ballots. The whistleblower is accusing the agency of flouting court rulings by continuing to work on implementing a Trump executive order to tighten mail voting rules before the November midterm elections.

Carney names Dominic Barton as chair of Invest in Canada

By Craig Lord 

The Canadian Press
Posted September 1, 2026 5:46 am
3 min read

Prime Minister Mark Carney is overhauling the leadership of the federal agency responsible for attracting foreign investment just weeks before a high-profile summit aimed at doing just that

Carney announced Monday that Dominic Barton, the former Canadian ambassador to China and a well-known name in corporate Canada, will chair the board of directors for Invest in Canada.

Nickel exposure reported at CATL battery plant in Hungary

28 August 2026
Produktion im CATL-Werk G1 in Arnstadt 

Foto Paul-Philipp Braun

The occupational safety authority in CATL’s battery plant in Debrecen, Hungary, has temporarily suspended work in three areas when nine employees were found to have experienced elevated nickel exposure. The incident affects CATL amid the already delayed ramp-up of its cell production.

Russia behind attempted drone 'attack' at Leipzig airport, Berlin says

Copyright (c) Copyright 2026, dpa (www.dpa.de). Alle Rechte vorbehalten

By Kirsten Ripper & Euronews

Published on 01/09/2026 - 17:52 GMT+2•Updated 22:59

Germany has for months reported suspicious drone sightings over military and industrial sites, but an incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport on the night of 4-5 August raised the alarm as a drone found there carried explosives.

Retailers are slashing their product lines because of tariffs and transportation costs

INDEPENDENT
Jasmine Fernández 

Tue, September 1, 2026 at 9:34 a.m. PDT

Roughly one in four U.S. businesses plan to shrink their product offerings over the next six months, according to a survey by the British Standards Institution.

The Hugging Face attack was worse than we thought

The AI industry is begging for a slowdown. 

Maybe we should listen?

Casey Newton

31 Aug 2026 — 10 min read

This is a column about AI. My fiancé works at Anthropic. 

See my full ethics disclosure here.

By now I’ve written enough about the OpenAI agents’ autonomous attack on Hugging Face that saying more smacks of piling on. OpenAI acknowledged it had a problem, undertook an investigation, and last week announced a series of changes it is making to its research infrastructure, testing, and monitoring in an effort to improve the alignment of its future models. Given the increasing capabilities of agents like OpenAI’s, this does seem like the least that the company can do. At the same time, given how lightly AI companies are regulated in the United States, it’s important to remember that OpenAI was not required to make this level of detail public.

Mark Ruffalo Receives Support From 170 Jewish Artists After ‘Outrageous Smear Campaign’ of Antisemitism

“Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism,” their open letter reads in response to Paramount’s comments

 JD Knapp

September 1, 2026 @ 8:05 AM

Mark Ruffalo received support from more than 170 Jewish public figures in an open letter on Tuesday calling accusations of antisemitism against the actor an “outrageous smear campaign.”