Videos posted online on Sunday showed the iconic Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower engulfed in flames.

"This is truly painful," said Tagreed Abdin, an architect of the building, in a post on Twitter.

Air strikes and ground battles have continued in Khartoum and other towns and cities since fighting broke out in April.

Over one million people have been forced to flee the country, the UN has said.

Located near the River Nile, the 18-storey oil firm skyscraper is one of the most recognisable landmarks in Khartoum.

Ms Abdin said it defined the skyline of the city, and lamented "such senseless destruction".

President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, secretly met in Europe this weekend with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to two U.S. officials, a significant step in U.S. efforts to repair deeply strained relations with China.

Sullivan and Wang Yi held discussions Saturday and Sunday in Malta as “part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly managing the relationship,” one of the officials said.

Their talks could lay the groundwork for a much-anticipated meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping this fall aimed at easing tensions between the world’s two largest economies in the wake of the surveillance balloon saga and China's support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Administration officials have been preparing for a possible meeting in November around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit in San Francisco.

A meeting between the two leaders would come at a critical moment in the U.S.-China relations. There are a range of economic and security issues at stake, including export controls, the war in Ukraine and concerns in the U.S. that China could move on Taiwan.

The arrival of US soldiers for a peacekeeper training exercise in Armenia has rankled the Russian government, which has for decades acted as the sole security guarantor for the former Soviet republic. The 10-day “Eagle Partner” exercise, which began Monday, involves 85 US and 175 Armenian soldiers and aims to prepare the Armenians to take part in international peacekeeping missions.

The exercise, while small in scale, is the latest in a series of what Russia’s foreign ministry has deemed “unfriendly actions” taken by its traditional ally.

Armenia recently sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine for the first time, and its parliament is set to ratify the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute – meaning it would be obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he were to set foot in the country, which Russia has long viewed as its own backyard.

Armenia’s flirtation with new international partners has been spurred by its frustration that Russia has been unable or unwilling to defend it against what it sees as aggression from neighboring Azerbaijan, and has raised questions about Russia’s ability to retain its hold on countries and conflicts across the former Soviet empire.

Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan said his country was beginning to taste the “bitter fruits” of the “strategic mistake” of trusting Russia with near-exclusive responsibility for his country’s defense.

“Armenia’s security architecture 99.999% was linked to Russia,” he told Italian newspaper La Repubblica earlier this month. “But today we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons… Even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s needs.”

Edit: As Furball commented, Pashinyan is the Prime Minister of Armenia

Over 98,000 utility customers in Maine are currently without power, according to Poweroutage.us., as post-tropical cyclone Lee made landfall in Nova Scotia in eastern Canada.

Lee made landfall on Long Island in Digby County, Nova Scotia at around 4 p.m. Saturday with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The storm will then move across eastern Canada Saturday night and Sunday.

“Lee is expected to be at or just below hurricane strength when it reaches Nova Scotia later today," the National Hurricane Center said in an update. "Weakening is forecast tonight and Sunday while Lee moves across Atlantic Canada."

Formerly a hurricane, Lee became a post-tropical cyclone Saturday because it no longer possesses the characteristics to be considered tropical. The new designation is not a downgrade in impacts as Lee is still producing hurricane-force winds at 75 mph and may bring hurricane conditions to Eastern Canada when it makes landfall Saturday.

At least five of the major candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, have endorsed doing away with the Department of Education, a favorite target at August's GOP debate.

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has gone a lot further. The list of departments he wants to abolish includes not only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Nuclear Regulatory Commission but also the Internal Revenue Service -- and even the FBI.

ABC News spoke with half a dozen experts about how eliminating departments would work. They described such pledges as political talking points easier said than done, with some calling the proposals either impractical or unfeasible.

"Some of the implications are either dangerous in terms of the ability of the federal government to fulfill its mission or downright impossible, that is making promises candidates are not going to be able to keep," said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its school of public policy.

"It's a long shot," said Kevin Kosari, a senior fellow at the center-right think tank American Enterprise Institute. "Government agencies have a habit of sticking around."

The idea of dismantling these agencies isn't novel. Republicans have long run on the idea that the federal government is too big and needs to be streamlined. Abolishing the Department of Education, in particular, has been a Republican Party goal since the agency was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Amid continued demand for drugs used for weight loss, including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, some people are instead turning to laxatives.

The trend of using over-the-counter laxatives as alternatives to the drugs is touted on social media as "budget Ozempic," but it's a trend that doctors say is dangerous, as laxatives don't lead to weight loss and can carry significant health risks if misused.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, laxative misuse is recognized as a type of extreme weight loss behavior and can be a sign of a serious eating disorder.

"Obviously, I see the reasoning for this because Ozempic is so expensive and so popular now, but there is a totally different pharmacology," said Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent and a board-certified OB-GYN. "This is not something people should be following."

The Wall Street Journal reports that searches for laxative pills have "more than tripled" in the past year on Amazon, while the manufacturers of Metamucil and Benefiber, two brands of fiber supplements, have reported "double-digit sales growth."

The Environmental Protection Agency waited a month to consult some of its top experts about the risk of dangerous chemical exposure around East Palestine, Ohio, following the fiery derailment of a Norfolk Southern train hauling toxic materials, internal emails show.

That delay left at least two EPA scientists surprised and concerned. And it occurred while the agency was deferring to the railroad giant and its web of contractors to spearhead environmental testing, including crafting protocols for sampling soil, water and air for chemicals — a move many saw as a glaring conflict of interest.

The Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3 while hauling toxic and flammable materials, including hundreds of thousands of pounds of vinyl chloride, a common organic chemical used in the production of plastics and that’s been linked to several types of cancer.

EPA officials confirmed to HuffPost that the agency did not direct and was not consulted about the so-called “controlled burn.” They said EPA’s role at that time was to “coordinate and conduct air monitoring from outside the evacuation area,” yet acknowledged the agency never considered monitoring for dioxins, a family of extremely toxic compounds that can form when chlorinated chemicals like vinyl chloride combust.

Enck and Stephen Lester, a toxicologist and the science director for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, who both reviewed the emails and have closely followed the response in East Palestine, accused the agency of misjudging the dioxin risk and failing to uphold its mission to protect public health.

“Virtually every step of this process they’ve done it wrong,” Lester said. “I’ve been doing this for more than 40 years. I’ve seen EPA’s work at hundreds of sites around this country, contaminated sites, and this is as bad as I’ve ever seen them be. And that is shocking to me.”

The family of a man fatally shot in New Mexico by police officers responding to the wrong house sued the department for wrongful death and other claims in federal court, according to a complaint filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico.

Robert Dotson, 52, was shot and killed in the doorway of his house in Farmington after local police officers opened fire after they said they saw he had a gun.

Police knocked on Dotson's door at 11:30 p.m. on April 5, according to the complaint filed in court. Dotson grabbed his gun from the top of the refrigerator and went to open the front door. The complaint says "police vehicles were parked down the street and did not have their lights on."

Three officers standing outside the door immediately opened fire, according to the complaint. Dotson was hit by 12 bullets. His wife, Kimberly, wearing just her robe, came down the stairs to find out what happened, the complaint says, and the officers fired an additional 19 bullets at her but missed.

New Mexico State Police issued a statement saying that Farmington police were responding to a domestic violence call but went to the wrong address.

Two votes in the Wisconsin state Capitol Thursday demonstrate Republicans' controversial efforts to shape election rules in the battleground state going into the 2024 election cycle.

The first vote saw GOP lawmakers move ahead with a complicated procedural attempt to oust the state's highest election official. The second seeks a complete overhaul of how Wisconsin's gerrymandered legislative maps are crafted in the future, and is seen as an effort to preempt action by the new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court.

Both moves have long-term implications for democracy in a coveted swing state where presidential races are often decided by less than a percentage point.

The new court will hear decisions about the 2024 election. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard challenges by former President Donald Trump and his allies to Joe Biden's narrow victory in the state — and came within one justice's vote of throwing out the outcome.

And the removal of the top elections official could mean chaos for the state's voting administration just months before the 2024 presidential primary.

Cannabis reform is moving one step closer to reality at the federal level, with a committee hearing on a bipartisan bill to expand banking services for legal marijuana businesses expected to take place at the end of the month, according to multiple people directly involved in the process.

The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee is expected to hold a markup on the bill, known as the SAFE Banking Act, the week of Sept. 25, three sources familiar with the talks told NBC News. The markup process allows senators to debate and consider amendments for the legislation and is viewed as a key step in advancing the bill to the Senate floor.

Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee support the bill and expressed confidence that the bill would have enough support to pass the Senate when it comes up for a full vote, a step Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to take as soon as this fall.

The SAFE Banking Act would make it lawful for legal marijuana businesses to access major financial and banking institutions. Under current law, banks and creditors could face federal prosecution if they provide services to legal businesses selling the drug, leaving business owners unable to utilize banks as the drug remains against the law on the federal level.

Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexican-drug-cartels-american-weapons-smuggled-across-border/

Mexican drug cartels have been smuggling a vast arsenal of even military-grade weapons out of the U.S. with the help of American citizens, a CBS Reports investigation has found.

Exclusively-obtained U.S. intelligence documents and interviews with half a dozen current and former officials reveal that the American government has known this for years but, sources said, it's done little to stop these weapons trafficking networks inside the United States, which move up to a million firearms across the border annually, including belt-fed miniguns and grenade launchers.

Dozens of cartel gunrunning networks, operating like terrorist cells, pay Americans to buy weapons from gun stores and online dealers all across the country, as far north as Wisconsin and even Alaska, according to U.S. intelligence sources. The firearms are then shipped across the southwest border through a chain of brokers and couriers.

When CBS News pressed the Justice Department about its findings, a senior official confirmed that "We absolutely recognize the problem here that … the lion's share of firearms trafficked to Mexican cartels are coming from the United States."

Yemen’s Houthi rebels will head to Saudi Arabia amid efforts to negotiate a permanent ceasefire to end the long-running war in Yemen, according to the Saudi state news agency, a Houthi official and reports quoting diplomatic and government sources.

The visit, expected on Thursday night, raises hopes of a breakthrough in the quagmire conflict that has left hundreds of thousands dead through direct and indirect causes such as famine.

Ali al-Qhoom, a member of the Houthi political council, had earlier said the rebels’ delegation would fly to Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, on an Omani plane. A delegation from Oman, which has played the role of mediator, arrived in Yemen’s Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, on Thursday, according to Yemeni government officials.

“Optimism exists regarding the mediation and the Omani efforts to achieve peace in Yemen,” he posted on social media.

Al-Qhoom said talks will be focused on a full reopening of Houthi-controlled ports and Sanaa airport, payment of wages for public servants from oil revenues, rebuilding efforts, and a timeline for foreign forces to quit Yemen, among others. Sources speaking to the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity also said the same. The topics are long-standing Houthi demands.