The soldiers were treated on site and then transported to Winn Army Community Hospital for further treatment

International News via Reuters:

The man suspected of shooting and wounding five U.S. soldiers on Wednesday at the Fort Stewart base in the state of Georgia is also a U.S. soldier, a U.S. official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was citing initial information and said it could change.

The suspected gunman is in custody, and further details about his identity were not immediately available. Military officials were expected to hold a news briefing later on Wednesday.

The soldiers were treated on site and then transported to Winn Army Community Hospital for further treatment, Fort Stewart said in a Facebook post. Authorities did not immediately provide further details on the condition of the victims.

“There is no active threat to the community,” the post said.

Law enforcement responded to reports of a shooting in the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team area at 10:56 a.m. ET (1456 GMT), and the base was locked down shortly after 11:04 a.m. The suspect was arrested at 11:35 a.m., Fort Stewart said.

Governor Brian Kemp wrote on X that he and his family were “saddened by today’s tragedy” at the base.

“We are keeping the victims, their families, and all those who answer the call to serve in our hearts and prayers, and we ask that Georgians everywhere do the same,” he added.

President Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting and is monitoring the situation, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X.

Mass shootings are relatively common in the U.S., where guns are widely available, and military bases, which are among the highest-security places in the country, have not been spared.

The deadliest was at the Fort Hood Army base in 2009, when a major fatally shot unarmed soldiers in a medical building with a laser-sighted handgun, killing 13 people and injuring more than 30. Less than five years later, a soldier at the same Texas base fatally shot three service members and injured 16 others before killing himself.

In 2013, an employee of a government defense contractor killed 12 people at Washington’s Navy Yard. In 2019, a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people and wounded eight others at a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida.

Fort Stewart is located in Hinesville, about 225 miles (362 km) southeast of Atlanta and 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Savannah. Nearly 9,000 people live at the base, according to the 2020 Census.

The base supports approximately 15,000 active-duty Army military personnel, as well as thousands of military retirees, family members, and others, according to its website.

Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and Ismail Shakil in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Franklin Paul and Rod Nickel

The Canadian company’s merchant base has been resilient through early August after showing steady growth in the April-June period

International News via Reuters:

Shopify on Wednesday forecast upbeat quarterly revenue, saying there was no slowdown in consumer demand yet and sellers on its platform are holding up well under tariff pressures, sending its shares soaring 20%.

The Canadian company’s merchant base has been resilient through early August after showing steady growth in the April-June period, powering a 31% surge in its second-quarter revenue.

Shopify’s results assuaged some investor concerns over President Donald Trump’s shifting trade policies that have left many retailers unsure about demand, production, sourcing, and the costs of running their business.

“We haven’t seen any drops in U.S. demand, whether inbound, outbound or local. In fact, the U.S. accelerated in the second-quarter,” CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said on a post-earnings call, adding that Shopify saw growth in all merchant segments.

Sellers with more than $50 million in annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) and those below $2 million were particularly strong, he said.

Many merchants were also raising prices, Shopify said, without providing more details on the range of hikes.

Last week, e-commerce giant Amazon had said it was yet to see a notable rise in prices after reporting strong retail results.

“The tariff situation is still playing out, there’s still disruption that could happen, but I think we have a little bit more clarity into how consumers are going to react, and frankly, the lack of impact that it’s going to have on Shopify,” Third Bridge analyst Charlie Miner said.

Shopify expects revenue to rise at a mid- to high-twenties percentage rate in the third quarter, while analysts estimated a rise of 21.54%, according to data compiled by LSEG.

The company is also benefiting from its investments in artificial intelligence-powered features to help retailers with tasks such as building store websites, generating images and collating sales data.

Reporting by Deborah Sophia and Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Devika Syamnath

Since 2023, India has ramped up efforts to police the internet

International News via Reuters:

In January, an old post on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, became a concern for police in the Indian city of Satara. Written in 2023, the short message from an account with a few hundred followers described a senior ruling-party politician as “useless”.

“This post and content are likely to create serious communal tension,” inspector Jitendra Shahane wrote in a content-removal notice marked “CONFIDENTIAL” and addressed to X.

The post, which remains online, is among hundreds cited by X in a lawsuit it filed in March against India’s government, challenging a sweeping crackdown on social media content by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.

Since 2023, India has ramped up efforts to police the internet by allowing many more officials to file takedown orders and to submit them directly to tech firms through a government website launched in October.

X argues India’s actions are illegal and unconstitutional, and that they trample free speech by empowering scores of government agencies and thousands of police to suppress legitimate criticism of public officials.

India contends in court documents that its approach tackles a proliferation of unlawful content and ensures accountability online. It says many tech companies, including Meta and Alphabet’s Google, support its actions. Both companies declined to comment for this story.

Musk, who calls himself a free-speech absolutist, has clashed with authorities in the United States, Brazil, Australia and elsewhere over compliance and takedown demands. But as regulators globally weigh free-speech protections against concerns about harmful content, Musk’s case against Modi’s government in the Karnataka High Court targets the entire basis for tightened internet censorship in India, one of X’s biggest user bases. Musk said in 2023 that the South Asian nation had “more promise than any large country in the world” and that Modi had pushed him to invest there.

This account of the behind-the-scenes battle between the world’s richest person and authorities in the world’s most populous country is based on a Reuters review of 2,500 pages of non-public legal filings and interviews with seven police officers involved in content-removal requests. It reveals the workings of a takedown system shrouded in secrecy, some Indian officials’ ire over “illegal” material on X, and the broad spectrum of content that police and other agencies have sought to censor.

While the takedown orders include many that sought to counter misinformation, they also encompass directives by Modi’s administration to remove news about a deadly stampede, and demands from state police to scrub cartoons that depicted the prime minister in an unfavourable light or mocked local politicians, the filings show.

X didn’t respond to Reuters questions about the case, while India’s IT ministry declined to comment because the matter was before the court. Modi’s office and his home ministry didn’t respond to questions.

There have been no immediate signs of souring personal relations between Musk and Modi, who have enjoyed a warm public rapport. But the showdown comes as the South African-born entrepreneur, whose business empire includes EV maker Tesla and satellite internet provider Starlink, gears up to expand both ventures in India.

Even supporters of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have faced scrutiny of their online musings from police officials newly empowered by the IT ministry to target social media activity.

Koustav Bagchi, a lawyer and BJP member, posted an image on X in March that depicted a rival, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in an astronaut suit. State police issued a takedown notice, citing “risks to public safety and national security”.

Bagchi told Reuters the post, which is still online, was “light-hearted” and that he wasn’t aware of the takedown order. The chief minister’s office and state police didn’t respond to Reuters queries.

Of the earlier 2023 post, Shahane, the Satara police officer, told Reuters he couldn’t recall the takedown order, but said police sometimes proactively ask platforms to block offensive viral content.

‘CENSORSHIP PORTAL’

For years, only India’s IT and Information & Broadcasting ministries could order content removal, and only for threats to sovereignty, defense, security, foreign relations, public order, or incitement. Some 99 officials across India could recommend takedowns, but the ministries had the final say.

While that mechanism remains in place, Modi’s IT ministry in 2023 empowered all federal and state agencies and police to issue takedown notices for “any information which is prohibited under any law”. They could do so under existing legal provisions, the ministry said in a directive, citing the need for “effective” content removal.

Companies that fail to comply can lose immunity for user content, making them liable for the same penalties a user might face – which could vary greatly depending on the specific material posted.

Modi’s government went a step further in October 2024. It launched a website called Sahyog – Hindi for collaboration – to “facilitate” the issuance of takedown notices, and asked Indian officials and social media firms to get on board, memos contained in court papers show.

X didn’t join Sahyog, which it has called a “censorship portal”, and sued the government earlier this year, challenging the legal basis for both the new website and the IT ministry’s 2023 directive.

In a June 24 filing, X said some of the blocking orders issued by officials “target content involving satire or criticism of the ruling government, and show a pattern of abuse of authority to suppress free speech.” 

Some free-speech advocates have criticised the government’s stricter takedown regime, saying it is designed to stifle dissent.

“Can a claim that some content is unlawful be termed as indeed unlawful merely because the government claims so?” said Subramaniam Vincent, director of journalism and media ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. 

“The executive branch cannot be both the arbiter of legality of media content, and the issuer of takedown notices.”

RED DINOSAUR

Court filings reviewed by Reuters show federal and state agencies ordered X to remove around 1,400 posts or accounts between March 2024 and June 2025.

More than 70% of these removal notices were issued by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, which developed the Sahyog website. The agency is within the home ministry, which is headed by Modi aide Amit Shah, a powerful figure in the ruling BJP.

To counter X in court, India’s government filed a 92-page report drafted by the cybercrime unit to show X is “hosting illegal content”. The unit analysed nearly 300 posts it deemed unlawful, including misinformation, hoaxes, and child sexual-abuse material.

X serves as a vehicle for “spreading hate and division” that threatens social harmony, while “fake news” on the platform has sparked unspecified law-and-order issues, the agency said in the report.

The government’s response to X’s lawsuit highlighted examples of misinformation.

In January, the cybercrime unit asked X to remove three posts containing what officials said were fabricated images that portrayed Shah’s son, International Cricket Council chairman Jay Shah, “in a derogatory manner” alongside a bikini-clad woman. The posts “dishonour prominent office bearers and VIPs”, the notices said. 

Two of those posts remain online. Jay Shah didn’t respond to Reuters queries.

Other directives went beyond targeting fake news.

X told the court India’s railways ministry has been issuing orders to censor press reports about matters of public interest. These included February directives seeking the removal of posts by some media outlets, including two by Adani Group’s NDTV, that contained news coverage of stampede at New Delhi’s biggest railway station that left 18 dead. 

The NDTV posts are still online. NDTV didn’t respond to Reuters queries and the railways ministry declined to comment.

In April, police in Chennai asked X to remove many “deeply offensive” and “provocative” posts, including a now-inaccessible cartoon featuring a red dinosaur labelled “inflation”, which portrayed Modi and the chief minister of Tamil Nadu state as struggling to control prices.

The same month, police demanded the removal of another cartoon that mocked the state government’s lack of preparedness for floods by showing a boat with holes. X told the judge the cartoon was posted in November, and it could not “incite political tensions” several months later, as the Chennai police asserted. The post remains online.

The state government didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When Reuters visited the Chennai cybercrime police station that issued these directives, Deputy Commissioner B. Geetha criticised X for seldom acting on takedown requests.

X does not “fully grasp the cultural sensitivities”, she said. “What may be acceptable in some countries can be considered taboo in India.”

Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru, Arpan Chaturvedi and Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow, Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneswar and Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai; Editing by David Crawshaw.

The 3.7-kilometre (2.3-mile) structure has been under discussion since at least the late 1960s as a tool to develop Italy’s poorer south

International News via Reuters:

Italy’s government gave final approval on Wednesday to the construction of what will be the world’s longest single-span bridge, linking Sicily to the mainland, despite environmental, financial and other concerns that have delayed it for decades.

The 3.7-kilometre (2.3-mile) structure, set to break the record currently held by Turkey’s Canakkale Bridge across the Dardanelles, has been under discussion since at least the late 1960s as a tool to develop Italy’s poorer south.

The right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made it a priority and has set aside 13.5 billion euros ($15.63 billion) over the next 10 years to build it and surrounding facilities.

The Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning and Sustainable Development (CIPESS) gave its green light to the project during a meeting in Rome, paving the way for the start of construction work.

“It is not an easy task but we consider it an investment in Italy’s present and future, and we like difficult challenges when they make sense”, Meloni said at the meeting, her office said.

The bridge to Sicily, which has a population of 4.7 million, should be ready in 2032, the Messina Strait Company said.

The project has faced stiff opposition from those who question the wisdom of building such a bridge in an earthquake zone. Many also fear cost overruns, possible environmental damage and mafia infiltration in construction contracts.

Some citizens’ groups opposed to the bridge say it is unnecessary, and environmental associations this week filed a complaint with the European Union, flagging serious risks for the local environment. 

“CIPESS is a biased arbiter, we hope that real arbiters – third party figures, the Court of Auditors, the EU, the judiciary – will come and stop this game, which is devastating for our territory,” no-bridge campaigner Daniele Ialacqua told Reuters.

Yet the bridge also has strong support from those who believe a fast rail and road connection will provide a much-needed boost to Sicily and the rest of Italy’s southern regions.

The current ferry crossing takes about 20 minutes, plus boarding and disembarkation which can require hours at peak times. Trains to and from Sicily are also taken onboard ferries, in a process that takes around two hours.

Italy is seeking to categorise investment in the bridge as part of defence spending, which would help it meet pledges by NATO countries to boost military budgets to 5% of gross domestic product by 2035.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the co-ruling League party and Transport Minister said the infrastructure would have both civilian and military purposes.

“It is obvious that it is dual-use and can therefore be used for security reasons too,” he said in a press conference.

The Strait of Messina Bridge Project was awarded to the Eurolink consortium following an international tender.

Italy’s largest construction company, Webuild , leads the consortium, which includes Spanish group Sacyr and Japan’s IHI.

According to the Messina Strait Company, Wednesday’s approval will allow the start of preliminary works, including archaeological and geological surveys. Land expropriations will also be authorised.

The Court of Auditors, however, will first need to validate the committee’s decision. A source close to the matter said this could take a few weeks, and Salvini said work could start in September-October.  

Webuild has active construction projects worldwide including Saudi Arabia’s giant NEOM project. Sacyr participated in the Panama Canal expansion, and IHI has been involved in the Akashi suspension bridge in Japan and the Osman Gazi suspension bridge in Turkey.

Webuild has estimated that the construction could create more than 100,000 jobs.

 ($1 = 0.8639 euros)

Reporting by Angelo Amante; Additional reporting and writing by Giselda Vagnoni; Editing by Alvise Armellini, Muralikumar Anantharaman, Gareth Jones, Alexandra Hudson