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A Syrian court handed Bashar Assad a death sentence in absentia, the Hormuz standoff kept oil climbing despite U.S. assurances, and Russia's latest overnight barrage killed civilians across Ukraine. Plus, a major legal setback for social media giants and the unpredictable roadblocks slowing Waymo's robotaxi expansion.

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A Damascus court sentenced Bashar Assad and his brother Maher to death for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Neither man is in Syria, and the verdict covers a 14-year conflict that killed roughly 500,000 people.

Atef Najib, Assad's maternal cousin, was also condemned for leading the Daraa crackdown that sparked the 2011 uprising. Najib appeared in court in a cage and prison uniform, one of the few defendants actually in custody.

Trump told reporters the US Navy has swept the strait clear of mines and now holds "100%" control of Hormuz. Tehran's foreign minister answered that the waterway stays closed until Washington meets Iran's conditions.

Houthi rebels renewed attacks on the Red Sea port of Mokha, and Yemen's military warned the strikes could reignite its civil war. Markets are not buying the all-clear, with crude climbing every day the strait stays blocked.

Russian missiles, drones and glide bombs killed at least nine civilians overnight, with six dead and 19 wounded in Zaporizhzhia. Three more died in the Dnipropetrovsk region, including a 15-year-old boy.

Zelenskyy said Russia fired North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles in the attack, evidence of deepening military ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. Kyiv has raised the alarm repeatedly about North Korean troops and munitions arriving at the front.

Turkey's parliament approved legislation creating a conditional pardon for thousands of Kurdish PKK militants, a significant step in the government's peace initiative with the insurgent group. The bill is designed to move fighters out of the mountains and into a political process that has restarted after years of collapse.

France outlawed cold-call telemarketing, requiring companies to obtain prior consumer consent before pitching goods or services by phone. It's one of Europe's strictest such measures and will force call-center operators across the continent to overhaul their business models.

A drone strike hit the Zawiya refinery west of Tripoli, Libya's largest working facility at 120,000 barrels a day. A tank holding 4.5 million litres of fuel took a direct hit and collapsed, the third such strike in two days.

North Carolina Republicans picked Jennifer Balkcom to replace Representative Chuck Edwards, who abandoned his re-election bid amid sexual harassment allegations. Balkcom has roughly 80 days to build a campaign in a district quietly redrawn into more competitive territory.

A New York judge temporarily blocked Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax on second homes after homeowners sued over the property surcharge. City Hall says it'll appeal, setting up a defining test of one of the mayor's signature revenue plans.

A federal appeals court allowed thousands of lawsuits to advance against Meta, Google, TikTok and other platforms over claims their products were engineered to be addictive to young users. The ruling cracks open the door to a potentially enormous discovery process into product design choices.

OpenAI wrapped a $7 billion employee share sale, a liquidity event that's been in motion since its record $122 billion funding round in March. The deal cleans up the cap table ahead of what could be one of the most watched IPOs in tech history.

Archer Aviation's stock climbed after the eVTOL maker agreed to acquire three business units from Boeing as part of a broader AI-in-aviation strategy. The transaction gives Archer additional engineering muscle at a moment when the sector is finally moving from prototype to production.

Intel plans a $15 billion stock offering after a 400% run in its shares over the past year, funneling proceeds toward physical AI, custom silicon and advanced packaging. The raise signals management thinks the AI rebuild story has room to run despite the vertical chart.

Rockefeller University researchers found that a shortage of the amino acid arginine disrupts production of MHC-I proteins, giving cancer cells and viruses cover to hide from the immune system. The finding opens a potential nutritional and pharmacological lever for improving how the body detects hidden threats.

Rocket Lab introduced GHOST, a portable spaceport system pitched as launching "anywhere, anytime and without compromise." The concept targets defense customers who want the option to put a rocket where fixed pads can't reach.

England is on course to eliminate hepatitis C, which would make it one of the first countries anywhere to stamp out the liver-attacking virus. The turnaround rides on aggressive treatment programs targeting hard-to-reach populations.

Defensive tackle Quinnen Williams and the Cowboys agreed to a three-year, $105.9 million extension that includes $101 million guaranteed and $63.35 million fully guaranteed at signing. The deal vaults him into the top tier of NFL interior defenders by pay.

Cooper Flagg's coveted one-of-one numbered rookie debut patch autograph card was pulled in Rhode Island on Monday night. It instantly becomes one of the most talked-about hits in modern basketball card collecting.

Major League Baseball locked in its 2026 postseason bracket, with four Wild Card Series opening on September 29 and a World Series start date now on the calendar. The schedule gives teams and travel-planning fans a clear runway into October.

Barack Obama will host a new podcast called "A Great Book," discussing works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Marilynne Robinson, with a September premiere. It's the former president's latest media venture and leans into the literary sensibility that has always been his sharpest brand.

Disney revealed that Demi Lovato will make a surprise cameo as Mitchie Torres in "Camp Rock 3", where she's also serving as executive producer. The reveal arrives just days before the sequel's debut, engineered for maximum nostalgia payoff.

Jon Cypher, the veteran actor who played Chief Daniels on "Hill Street Blues" and He-Man's ally in the 1987 "Masters of the Universe" film, died August 3 at his home in Oregon at age 94. His career spanned nearly half a century across television and film.

What it is: Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving unit, is expanding faster than at any point in its history, with driverless vehicles now operating in 15 U.S. cities and rolling out to more. That growth is producing a matching surge in what engineers call "edge cases" — the unscripted, one-off situations no simulator quite predicted. Millions of fully autonomous rides have already generated an enormous real-world data set, making each new city both a commercial opportunity and a fresh engineering challenge.

The detail: The cases range from mundane to surreal. Construction workers waving cars through in improvised sign language. Mattresses tumbling off pickup beds. Geese in the roadway. Drivers pulling emergency U-turns across double-yellow lines. Each incident gets logged, dissected and fed back into the training loop, but the volume is climbing quickly as the fleet enters cities with driving cultures Waymo has never encountered at scale. Engineers increasingly rely on these rare encounters to refine software that must make split-second decisions in environments where no two situations unfold exactly alike.

Why it matters: Waymo's safety story rests on the argument that autonomous vehicles get better with every mile driven, while human drivers do not. But the more cities the company enters, the more unfamiliar terrain it has to master — and the more high-visibility incidents get filmed by pedestrians and shared instantly. Local regulators, insurers and city councils are watching each viral clip carefully. Public confidence may ultimately prove just as important as technical performance in determining how quickly robotaxis become a mainstream mode of transportation.

What to watch: Whether Waymo's edge-case pipeline can compress from weeks to days, whether competitors like Zoox and Tesla's robotaxi push force faster scaling than the safety data supports, and whether any single high-profile incident tips regulators into pulling back permits. The next expansion cities will be the real stress test of Waymo's confidence.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team