Trump's approval rating plunges to 'extremely rare' level as midterm message flatlines

Matthew Chapman
October 1, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump looks at media members after returning to the White House from Scotland, Britain, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

President Donald Trump's handling of inflation has become a defining liability of his presidency, with new polling showing roughly 8 in 10 Americans disapproving of his approach to the cost of living.

A new AP-NORC poll released Thursday found Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of cost-of-living issues by a staggering 82 percent to 17 percent margin. Reuters-Ipsos and Marquette Law School polls also put his approval in the high teens, while Marquette and CNN separately found disapproval at 80 percent. Such a level of unity against the president, wrote CNN's Aaron Blake, is "extremely rare" in American politics.

Even within Trump's own coalition, cracks are showing, with at least half of Republicans disapproving across four separate polls, 29% of self-identified MAGA Republicans souring on his handling per Fox News polling, and between 63 percent and 72 percent of white voters without college degrees, historically among his strongest supporters, expressing disapproval as well.

Few issues in recent presidential history have generated this kind of consensus. Economic troubles came close for past presidents; George W. Bush faced heavy criticism over the 2008 financial crash, and Jimmy Carter dealt with similar backlash amid runaway inflation and unemployment decades earlier, but neither reached quite the same depths Trump is seeing now.

Past scandals offer a similar contrast. Ronald Reagan weathered serious backlash over Iran-Contra, and Richard Nixon faced widespread public anger during Watergate, yet both stayed below the threshold Trump has now crossed on economic frustration alone. Even Gerald Ford's deeply controversial decision to pardon Nixon didn't generate disapproval this severe.

The closest Trump himself previously came to matching these numbers was over his decision to pardon violent January 6 defendants, which also fell a few points short of where his inflation numbers sit now.

Despite the historic unpopularity, Trump pushed back in a new Time magazine interview published Thursday, insisting Americans shouldn't blame him for affordability struggles and pointing fingers at Biden instead, even though inflation is currently running higher than when Trump took office. Polling suggests that messaging isn't landing: a clear majority of Americans hold Trump's own policy choices responsible for today's high prices, a far larger share than blamed Biden's policies at a similar point before the 2022 midterms.

Reporter spots nefarious plot behind Trump's exclusive crypto dinner

Matthew Chapman
October 1, 2026 
RAW STORY


President Donald Trump's latest crypto dinner looks like a predatory scheme to steal money from investors, Russ Buettner of The New York Times told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday.

It isn't the first round of shady crypto dealings, he noted, as the whole enterprise has made Trump and his family vastly wealthier.

"Overall, this past year of crypto wealth and Donald Trump's life, I think, has been more income, pure profit than anything else," said Buettner. "Probably the sum total of his entire life and business before ... absolutely more than his inheritance, and the money from 'The Apprentice' and his best business deals all combined."

The other notable aspect, he said, is that "they were so roundly criticized for the first go-round because they offered these coins as he was entering office; 58 people bought them. We can't tell who bought a lot of them and sold them immediately. The period when they owned it raised the price a lot. Those people made all more than $10 million each. Almost everybody else who bought it after that lost a ton of money, I think to the tune of $700 million."

"Which is just incredible when you think about it," said Cooper.

Buettner agreed.

These tokens, he added, are "essentially a baseball card where you don't get the baseball card. It's just a piece of electronic, ephemeral. And it doesn't have any value unless somebody else wants to pay you more for it. You can't use it, typically, to buy other things. And they were really roundly criticized even by the crypto industry for doing what's called a rug pull, which is the equivalent of, like, a pump-and-dump scheme."

BUYING ALASKA VOTES

US ally shoots down Trump's $50 billion investment boast: 'Far beyond what was agreed'

Tom Boggioni
October 1, 2026
RAW STORY


US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick speaks about an energy infrastructure project in Alaska as US President Donald Trump and US Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) listen in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 30, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A $50 billion investment deal touted by President Donald Trump during a Wednesday Oval Office event is running into pushback from the ally he says agreed to it.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters South Korea would invest more than $50 billion in the long-stalled Alaska LNG pipeline project, plus another $120 billion in U.S. nuclear power plants, as part of a "broader trade package."

That earned applause in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican who has pushed the pipeline for years, celebrated on X: "Alaska LNG is happening thanks to a $50 billion+ investment from South Korea that we announced today at the White House. This project will deliver low-cost energy for Alaskans for generations and create 10,000+ good-paying jobs. A historic day for our state!"

But South Korea's government says the celebration is premature, the Wall Street Journal reported early Thursday morning.

Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan pushed back on the U.S. framing, saying "the announcement went far beyond what was agreed, as the countries agreed to proceed with the Alaska project only on the premise that commercial reasonableness is guaranteed," according to the Korea Times.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung echoed the objection, insisting no blank check had been written.

"We agreed to begin working on the Alaska LNG project on the conditions that, first, its commercial viability is confirmed and, second, it complies with Korea's legal procedures," Lee said.

According to the Journal, Seoul has reportedly secured "a $20 billion annual investment ceiling and a $200 billion overall cap" as part of the broader trade framework, guardrails that leave the specific Alaska pipeline commitment far from finalized despite Wednesday's applause line.


"The clashing versions add another twist to protracted, and often contentious, talks between Washington and Seoul over last year’s trade pact. South Korea has pledged $350 billion in U.S. investments, plus an additional $100 billion for American energy purchases, in exchange for dropping tariffs on most goods from 25% to 15%," the Journal reported.

Trump's trade war wrecked industry he swore he was defending: 'Everyone is losing'

Bennito L. Kelty
October 1, 2026 
RAW STORY




President Donald Trump's trade war with Canada is battering the American dairy producers he has repeatedly claimed to be protecting.

In a Thursday article for "The Bulwark," economics editor Catherine Rampell said U.S. dairy "was supposed to be the one industry President Donald Trump was actually helping." Instead, she wrote, "American dairy farmers are now saying: Please, stop helping."

Trump often points to dairy as proof that Canada cheats the U.S. on trade, and he has put Canada's dairy tariffs at 250 percent or 400 percent, depending on the day. Rampell noted that those steep rates apply only to sales above a tariff-free quota set under the USMCA, the trade deal Trump negotiated in his first term. Citing the International Dairy Foods Association, she reported that U.S. producers have never come close to hitting that cap. The U.S. also sells roughly three times as much dairy to Canada as it buys.

Mateo Kehler, CEO of Vermont's Jasper Hill Farm, told Rampell his Canadian customers disappeared almost overnight last year as tariffs, counter-tariffs and boycotts piled up. His farm's Winnimere cheese recently won Best of Show from the American Cheese Society.

"I can't figure out who's winning here," Kehler said. "Everybody I know is losing."

He added that he doesn't fault Canadian shoppers.

"Honestly, if I were a Canadian consumer, I would not be buying anything from the U.S. either," he said. "This is a time for resistance, and I applaud Canadians for voting with their dollars."

The pressure has grown in recent weeks. Canada began imposing a 25 percent tariff on U.S. cheese last month, and this week Trump banned some Canadian dairy imports, mostly whey products, along with Canadian motorcycles and alcohol, according to Rampell.

Pete Hardin, longtime editor of the Wisconsin dairy publication the Milkweed, said two Wisconsin cheese-plant owners told him their large Canadian orders had been canceled.

"The notion that for dairy, Canada is a problem to the U.S. is a joke, in my opinion," Hardin said.

Rampell had a blunter view, writing that "whatever the f— Trump is doing now is making things worse. For everyone."

Trump started a fight that's giving his rival 'unthinkable' popularity: WSJ

Tom Boggioni
September 30, 2026 

RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at a working lunch with leaders of G7 and the Middle East, in Evian-les-Bains, France, June 16, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/File Photo

At the same time Donald Trump's approval numbers are hitting lows never seen before, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is enjoying a burst of popularity that's letting him push his agenda through with little resistance.

The reason? His refusal to be bullied by the American president has Canadians and political rivals lining up behind him as his party adds new members.

Carney is barreling forward with "a rewiring of Canada's economic, national-security and foreign policies" that, in some cases, would once have been "unthinkable" and unpopular, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

A political novice until he won the premiership last year, Carney has vanquished opposition that might have felled his predecessors thanks to a confrontation with Trump that has given him "unthinkable" popularity.

Polls show Carney's Liberals would win a majority if an election were held today.

According to the Journal, "Polls show that Carney’s Liberals would win a majority if an election were held today. A survey released Tuesday from Nanos Research found that Carney was the preferred choice for prime minister of more than 60% of respondents, the highest level it has recorded for him."

That has lawmakers from "across the political spectrum" defecting to the Liberals over the past year, and his opponents are struggling to land a punch; Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has spent recent months fending off critics in his own party."

Even in Alberta, a conservative stronghold, people view Carney more favorably than Poilievre or Premier Danielle Smith, according to the report.

"I cannot remember, in my adult life, a prime minister having this good an 18 months," said Darrell Bricker, chief executive of Ipsos told the Journal. "There has been very little pushback against any of the things that he's proposed."

Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University, said Carney likely wanted to pursue many of these policies regardless, but the conflict with the U.S. "gives him a logic, gives him a narrative that might make more sense to people."

She added: "The way he's describing it is essentially we're in an emergency situation, we're in a kind of something that's similar to a war. He's made this about our sovereignty, and so it all kind of fits together."

'Catastrophic': Swiss glaciers lose fifth of mass in five years

Elodie Le Maou with Agnes Pedrero in Geneva
Thu, October 1, 2026 




Matthias Huss with a four-metre-long measuring stake indicating the amount of ice that melted over the past year on the Scex Rouge glacier (Fabrice COFFRINI)

Switzerland's glaciers, which are disproportionately impacted by climate change, have lost nearly 20 percent of their mass in five years, experts said Thursday, with 2026 registering the second-biggest melt on record.

Swiss glaciers saw 5.5 percent of their volume melt away this year, the Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS) network found in a new study, published after a record hot summer preceded by a winter with little snowfall.

"The glaciers this year have lost enormous quantities of ice," said GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss, describing 2026 as "a catastrophic year".

Perched on the Scex Rouge glacier, at an altitude of nearly 3,000 metres, he gazed across the landscape in despair.

"This is a glacier that isn't surviving," he said.

"There will be probably no ice in 10 or maybe 15 years."

He carefully dismantled the four-metre-long aluminium measurement stake inserted at the centre of the glacier.

In late July, when it was installed, it was completely embedded, but now more than three metres protrude from the grey surface of the ice.

"It's not that we are surprised, because we know how fast the glaciers are melting," Huss said.

"But to see the colours of the mountains where there is no snow left, there is just these rocks and these dark glaciers that are a relic from the past... it's just incredible."


Between 2022 and 2026, the melt rate at Switzerland's glaciers was "more than twice as high as in any previously monitored five-year period", the GLAMOS report said, noting an ice volume loss of almost 20 percent since 2021.

While Switzerland's glaciers have long been shrinking, the melt has recently sped up dramatically.

While 10 percent of Swiss ice volume disappeared between 1990 and 2000, 27 percent was lost in the past 10 years, the report showed.

GLAMOS based its findings on extensive measurements at 23 reference glaciers in September, which it extrapolated to the nearly 1,300 glacial formations still found in Switzerland.

- 'No chance of surviving' -

The report comes after a summer where the months of June, July and August were each the hottest ever recorded in Switzerland since measurements began in 1864, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology.

This year, the protective snow cover on the glaciers had already partially disappeared during the June heatwaves, and had completely disappeared by September, even at high altitudes, GLAMOS said.

"Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions," GLAMOS said in a statement.

Due to significant melting this year, the researchers even had to reposition measurement stakes -- including on the highest-altitude glaciers -- further up after the ice melted away in the original locations.

The average ice thickness of some glaciers decreased by 2.5 to 4.0 metres, while the more exposed glacier tongues saw losses of up to 10 metres of thickness over the summer.

- Rhone and Aletsch Glaciers -

Although temperatures were higher this year, the ice loss did not surpass the record set in 2022, since many glaciers saw more snow before the summer melt than they had four years ago.

Less dust from the Sahara Desert also settled on the glaciers this year, allowing more sunlight to be reflected back into the atmosphere rather than being absorbed by the snow.

There were exceptions, however.

Four major glaciers experienced record melting this year, including the iconic Rhone Glacier and the Aletsch -- the biggest glacier in the Alps.

As the glaciers retreat, concern is meanwhile growing over the future availability of water resources.

Between July and September this year, the glaciers lost a total of around 2.2 trillion litres of water.

Huss said that quantity was "difficult to imagine".

"It's more than four times the annual freshwater consumption of Swiss households," he pointed out.

‘The Lion King’ Got It Backward. 6 Years of GPS Data Just Revealed Lions May Be the Villains in This Famous Rivalry

Jeremy Phillips
Wed, September 30, 2026
A-Z Animals.


Pair of adult Lions in zoological garden© ArtMediaFactory/Shutterstock.com

Key takeaways

GPS data from six years of tracking lions and hyenas in Namibia and Botswana revealed that hyenas tend to avoid lions, with 8 out of 10 tracked hyenas moving away from lions within 10 kilometers.

In The Lion King, the hyenas are the villains: sneaky, greedy, always creeping toward the lions' food. Real hyenas spend a lot of their time doing the opposite.

For six years, scientists in Namibia and Botswana fitted lions and spotted hyenas with GPS collars that logged where each animal was every five minutes. When they lined up the tracks of lions and hyenas moving near each other, one pattern showed up again and again. The hyenas were walking away from the lions, and the lions weren't walking away from them.

The rivalry we think we know

I grew up on that movie too, and it plants a pretty clear picture: hyenas as the thieves, lions as the noble ones defending their turf. Our own coverage of the real rivalry tells a different story. Hyenas tend to avoid lions, and lions often treat hyenas as pests they'll attack given the chance. Pop culture loves the idea of sneaky hyenas stealing a lion's kill, but in reality it usually runs the other way. The Ngorongoro Hyena Project, a team of biologists who study wild hyenas, says lions steal more food from hyenas than hyenas steal from lions, and there isn't much a hyena can do about it besides lying down and waiting for the lion to finish.

Lion vs. Hyena: The Similarities and Differences Between These African Predators

So if you could watch every step both animals took, day after day, who would actually be moving toward whom?

Six years of collars

This wasn't a researcher parked in a truck with binoculars. Seventeen lions and 14 spotted hyenas wore GPS collars that recorded a position every five minutes during their most active hours, and over six years, from 2013 to 2018, those collars sent back 349,163 positions. Picture a dot on the map every five minutes, for six straight years, whether or not a human was anywhere nearby to see it.

The study ran in two places: Etosha National Park in Namibia and the Chobe-Linyanti area in Botswana. Ten times, a lion and a hyena happened to have collars logging positions at the exact same five-minute moments, which let the researchers line up their movements step by step and see who was heading toward whom. The team says this kind of tracking can stand in for watching the animals directly, in places where following them on foot just isn't possible.

When Numbers Matter: 30 Hyenas Challenge a Male Lion
©Mark Sheridan-Johnson/Shutterstock.com

The hyenas kept leaving

Here's the part that would surprise anyone who grew up rooting against the hyenas: they were the ones with cold feet. Within 10 kilometers of a lion, 8 of the 10 tracked hyenas spent more of their steps moving away than toward it. Zoom in closer, to 5 kilometers, and all nine pairs with usable data showed the hyena retreating, every single one strongly enough that it wasn't just chance.

A hyena's odds of moving toward a lion were 0.461, a coin landing on "away" slightly more often than "toward". The researchers say that lean showed up no matter which of the three separate ways they checked the numbers.

One pair makes the whole pattern easy to picture. Lion OF-34309 and hyena SA-33872 had their collars logging at the same moments, and the two animals moved in opposite directions. The lion's toward-ratio was 0.687, a clear and significant approach. The hyena's was 0.299, just as clearly a retreat. Same two animals, same patch of ground, and one of them was closing the distance while the smaller of the two was opening it.

See What Happens When the King of the Jungle Gets Annoyed with a Group of Hyenas
©AfricaWildlife/Shutterstock.com

So were the lions the ones chasing?

Here's where the headline needs to get more specific, because the lions didn't behave as one group. Across the whole population, lions showed no consistent lean toward hyenas at all: the overall chance of a lion moving toward a hyena was 0.517, which sits right on the coin-flip line of 0.5. Only three of the ten pairs showed a significant approach by the lion.

But here's the sentence that matters most. The researchers write plainly: "If hyena activity were aversive to lions, we would expect lion movement relative to hyenas to be biased toward retreat in at least some dyads. We see none."

No lion in the study avoided a hyena, not one.

Inside the Fierce Rivalry Between Lions and Hyenas
©MintImages/Shutterstock.com

And the lions weren't all the same. Male lions leaned toward hyenas: across three male-lion pairs, the mean toward-ratio was 0.573, and all three male pairs came in above the coin-flip line. Female lions, meanwhile, sat at 0.486, which is basically a coin flip. The researchers had actually guessed this before they ran the numbers, predicting that male lions would track hyenas more consistently than females, which is part of why they take the pattern seriously even though it's small.

I'll be honest, two animals is a small number. The male-lion result rests on just two unique lions across those three pairs, and the difference between males and females wasn't statistically significant, meaning there weren't enough animals to be fully sure it isn't chance. And none of this tells us why. The collars record positions and times, not motives. "Villain" is the movie's word, not the scientists'. What the data shows is a lopsided rivalry: the hyena moves off, the lion holds its ground, and if that lion is male, it drifts a little closer.

Why nobody caught this before

This is the part I keep thinking about. Earlier studies that looked at whole landscapes, tracking which parts of a park each species used, found that spotted hyenas don't systematically avoid lions. From far away, that looks like the two species sharing the neighborhood without much fuss. Zoom in to a single afternoon, though, and the hyena in front of a lion is leaving. The fine-scale, step-by-step data caught something the landscape-level studies were never built to see.

Wild Dog Pack Miscalculates Attack On Lone Lioness
©A-Z Animals

That zoomed-in avoidance fits with other things we already know about hyenas adjusting around lions. Hyenas have been found to be more active in daylight in places where lions are present, likely to dodge competition. And hyenas only steal food from lions when they have the numbers to drive them off, rarely doing it when male lions are around, because the presence of a male lion is a significant deterrent to that kind of mobbing. That lines up neatly with the GPS finding: the one kind of lion hyenas are least willing to crowd is the same kind of lion the collars show drifting toward them. The researchers add that hyenas don't respond to lions with one fixed rule; individual hyenas are known to react differently depending on the situation.

The hyenas in the movie creep toward the lions, cackling and scheming. The hyenas wearing collars in Namibia and Botswana spent six years doing the opposite, keeping their distance from an animal that never once leaned away from them. It's sense, given who actually steals from whom. The scientists won't call anyone a villain, and this piece won't either: the collars record where each animal went, not what it wanted.

But if you had to point at who's leaning into this rivalry, the tracks point at the lions, and at the males most of all.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HYENAS

Kurdish leader in Iraq slams 'shameful' withdrawal of US forces

DPA
Sun, September 27, 2026 


PAK Peshmerga members stand stand amidst the debris at the PAKShar camp in Erbil's Ashkawt Saqa district. The Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) is a prominent opponent of the Iranian regime based in the Kurdistan Region. (is associated with: «Kurdish leader in Iraq slams 'shameful' withdrawal of US forces»)

Ismael Adnan/dpa

Key takeaways

Prime Minister of Iraq's Kurdish region criticizes US withdrawal from the country as "shameful" due to vulnerability to attacks.

The prime minister of Iraq's Kurdish region has described the imminent withdrawal of US forces from the country as "shameful."

"The threat is real - we are vulnerable, we are being attacked," Masrour Barzani told the Financial Times. "Now, to be left alone without any, let's say, appropriate defensive system, it's shameful."

The Kurdish regional government could not purchase its own air defence systems, he said. Only the central government in Baghdad could do so.

The withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is due to be completed by September 30, this coming Wednesday. The move was agreed in 2024, after the combat mission against the extremist militia Islamic State was declared over in 2021.

US forces invaded Iraq in 2003, when ruler Saddam Hussein was toppled. After the mission ended in 2011, US troops returned in 2014 to fight Islamic State.

Since the start of the Iran war in February, the Iraqi Kurdish region has been struck by hundreds of rockets and drones, including an attack on Barzani's own office.

Iran regards the autonomous Kurdistan Region as an ally of the West and Israel on Iraqi soil. Erbil is home to a multinational base where US and German soldiers are stationed. That base has also come under fire. US forces repelled some of the attacks.

The Kurds are an ethnic group of an estimated 30 million people living mainly in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. They have fought for decades for their own state and were long persecuted and suppressed in both Iraq and Iran.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq emerged after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Before that, the region had been protected by a no-fly zone enforced by the US military from 1991. Relations today between the Kurdish government, based in Erbil, and the central government in Baghdad are marked by ongoing disputes.

Archaeologists Just Found the Place Where the World’s Greatest Conquerer Studied Under Aristotle

Michael Natale
Fri, September 25, 2026


Where Alexander the Great Learned to Conquer

DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI - Getty Images

This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.

Few men of history have fascinated scholars and laymen alike quite like Alexander the Great. Born to King Philip II of Macedon in 356 B.C.E., educated under Aristotle, and ascending to the throne at only 20 years of age, Alexander's keen mind and military might became the stuff of legend. It's a reputation that has only grown over the centuries, rather than lessened.

For example, some 300 years after Alexander's death, the writer Plutarch penned a treatise called On Tranquility of the Mind, which depicted an ambitious Alexander hearing a discourse by the philosopher Anaxarchus about an infinite number of worlds. Alexander began to weep, lamenting, "Is it not worthy of tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite,⁠ we have not yet become lords of a single one?" But over time, the popular version of the story inverted his grief—mourning what he'd already won rather than what remained unconquered. By the time you heard the reason for Alexander's tears in the 1988 film Die Hard, it had transformed into "there were no more worlds to conquer."

But where might Alexander have wept at Anaxarchus' words? On what ground did the young conqueror sit and receive his lessons from Aristotle, or hone his warrior reflexes? A new excavation near Naousa in northern Greece may have uncovered just where some of the events that shaped the life of Alexander the Great took place.

Since excavations began in 2024, Archaeology Magazine reports, "parts of a palaestra, a stadium, covered walkways, teaching rooms, and water systems" have been uncovered in a 30-acre stretch of ancient Mieza identified as the Royal Gymnasium, where Alexander studied alongside fellow future kings Ptolemy and Cassander.

This past year saw a focus on the gymnasium's eastern side, which featured the Didaskaleion, also known as the "teaching building." In addition to uncovering stone benches commonly used by audiences during lectures at the education facility, the excavation also discovered details of two rooms known as "andrones," spaces fitting roughly 20 people and used primarily for "drinking parties and social gatherings." Each of these rooms contained traces of ten "dining couches," but even more intriguingly, well-preserved mosaic floors.

The archaeological team found that the "quality and construction" of these mosaic floors bear a strong resemblance to the palace at Aigai, the largest structure from classical Greece that can still be visited today. Built during the reign of Alexander's father, Philip II, and possibly designed by Pytheos (of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus fame), the palace was the center of Macedonian royal life, and it endures today as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Comparing that site to the gymnasium at Mieza allows researchers to date the latter structure to the reign of Philip II—and in doing so, to bring the world where Alexander the Great was raised and educated into sharper focus.

The man that was Alexander the Great keeps getting lost in the mist of the myth. Discoveries like this one, which show us where he may have learned, and trained, and even drank and socialized, help illuminate the real history behind the Macedonian king...even if we keep on misquoting him.

A Bizarre Discovery Has Revealed the Secrets of the Roman Empire’s Most Shocking Spectacle

Tim Newcomb
Thu, September 17, 2026 





Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:

The incredibly popular amphitheater animal hunts of the Roman empire, known as venationes, required careful planning.


Ancient Roman law documents show the emperor had a monopoly on lion usage to create the spectacles.


Efforts to circumvent the law with fraud were met with fines—in gold.

Romans flocked to amphitheaters throughout the empire—including the famous Colosseum—to witness "venationes," or staged animal hunts. The Roman army thrilled audiences as they went up against fearsome beasts, the highlight of which were lions. But ensuring that there were enough of those beasts to stage the brutal entertainment throughout the empire required the government to establish a monopoly on the kings of the jungle.

A group of researchers led by Rosa M. Carreño Sánchez of Carlos III University of Madrid analyzed ancient Roman law documents covering the capture, transport, and safety of animals used during the hunts—which were even more popular than gladiatorial combat. "These texts suggest the possible existence of an imperial monopoly on the capture of lions and reveal some of the practical problems arising from the organization of venatorial spectacles," the authors wrote in a study published in the Revista General de Derecho Romano.

Roman amphitheaters filled with crowds clamoring for the venationes—the hunt of exotic animals that sometimes featured a range of animals alongside lions. Getting the animals in place was a tricky process that required careful planning. In a statement, Carreño Sánchez explained that her team analyzed two imperial constitutions preserved in the Theodosian Code and later carried into the Justinian Code to understand how imperial power exercised strict control over the animals from capture to spectacle.

"In late antiquity, faced with the growing scarcity of big cats, a state monopoly on lions was established to guarantee the supply of animals for the emperor's spectacles and to prevent competition from private individuals," Carreño Sánchez added. "In other words, all lions belong to the emperor."

The staging of hunts lasted centuries longer than gladiatorial combats, which eventually came under fire from Christians hoping to promote the equality of all humans and eliminate the morally degrading contests. That shift didn't impact the venationes, however, with the animal-forward displays growing in popularity and spreading beyond Italy into Hispania. Italica, near modern Seville, had one of the empire's largest amphitheaters—built to host venationes and more—in a city of barely 8,000 people.


Ancient texts show that the Roman army assigned soldiers to track, capture, and guard wild beasts throughout the empire. Once captured, though, getting the lions to the shows proved problematic. The imperial government required its provinces to supply transport personnel out of their local budgets, and any delays could indicate that locals used the beasts for their own fraudulent and unauthorized spectacles. To discourage such acts, the imperial administration imposed severe fines—in gold, mind you—to any military commanders unable to meet the timeline.

"Unlike literary sources or films, which only show us the final outcome in the arena, an analysis of Roman law allows us to understand what went on behind the scenes," Carreño Sánchez said, "the management of resources, territorial conflicts, and the enormous logistical effort required by one of the most popular spectacles of antiquity."

 U2's Bono addresses the controversy over rapper Macklemore's removal from Ed Sheeran's US stadium tour

Paul Brannigan
Wed, September 30, 2026 

Key takeaways

Rapper Macklemore was removed from Ed Sheeran's US stadium tour following his "Free Palestine" speeches, sparking controversy and leading to other support acts withdrawing from the tour.

Credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival | Earl Gibson III/Deadline via Getty Images

U2 frontman Bono and drummer Larry Mullen have shared their thoughts on the controversy surrounding rapper Macklemore's removal from Ed Sheeran's US stadium tour following his onstage "Free Palestine" speeches.

The controversy has its origins in a speech that US rapper Macklemore (Benjamin Haggerty) made onstage on September 4 while supporting Sheeran at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Addressing the crowd, the Seattle rapper said, "A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so that I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very, very dear to my heart: Free Palestine." He went on to perform his song Hind's Hall, which condemns Israel's military action in Gaza.

Following criticism by the campaign group StopAntisemitism, Macklemore doubled down on his comments the following evening, directly addressing his "Jewish brothers and sisters" in the audience.

"Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide, is in no way a criticism of you," he said.

Following Macklemore's comments, the Israeli American Council launched a petition demanding his removal from the tour, and on September 14, it was revealed that Macklemore would no longer be performing on the tour. Promoters Messina Touring Group told Rolling Stone that it had been informed by venues that they would not allow Macklemore to perform at future shows.

Macklemore then alleged that American businessman Robert Kraft, who owns the Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, had personally vetoed his future participation in the tour, and encouraged other stadium owners to do the same. In solidarity with Macklemore, fellow support acts - Billie Eilish's brother Finneas, Danish band Lukas Graham, Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe and Irish folk band Beoga - all withdrew from the tour.

During a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, Bono and Larry Mullen were asked for their views on the controversy. U2 worked with Ed Sheeran on the song Yours Eternally on this year's Days of Ash EP, a song which addresses Russia's invasion of Ukraine, via lyrics taking the form of a letter written by a Ukrainian soldier.

"We shouldn't sort of personalise this," Bono says when asked about Sheeran. "I think Brian Eno referred to it today: he said pop stars are kinda like little fish in a large sea of huge forces and religion and politics, and so I don't want to dwell on what Ed and Macklemore, that incident.

"I will say this: when we did Yours Eternally, he [Sheeran] was saying, 'You're not going to get me into politics?' Right, and I was saying, This this soldier who inspired us, he loved you Ed, and you've worked on this song. And he said, 'Yeah, but I just want to keep my thing free'. So you can't be pushing people around."

Larry Mullen then quotes from Brian Eno once more, saying, 'He was just saying that artists choose whether they want to be involved, and they are entitled to choose whether they want to be involved or not. And it's not our job to criticise that, no matter how we feel."

He continues, "Brian Eno was saying that it takes time for these things to evolve, and people to come to realisations, and not to personalise this. And Bob Geldof was saying a similar thing. And I really appreciated hearing that because it is confusing and it is complicated. But we are absolutely clear about promoters or billionaire owners, and the idea that they could have some influence on what you say, or what you do on a stage, and we've talked about this. If you applied that logic to you too, we would have been out of business on Sunday, Bloody Sunday."

"I think what Eno was saying is, You have to persuade people by reason, you can't try to force people into a position," Bono concludes.

The world's leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A resolution passed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) states that Israel's conduct meets the legal definition as laid out in the UN convention on genocide.

Israel's military campaign, a response to the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israeli soil that saw around 1,200 people killed and 251 people taken hostage, has resulted in the death of over 73,780 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel denies any genocidal intent.

The conflict in Gaza has been on-going for decades, with official UN figures for the 15 years before the 2023 escalation recording 7277 Palestinian deaths and 162,121 Palestinian injuries in occupied Palestinian territory and Israel since 2008, and 368 Israeli deaths and 6,670 Israeli injuries during the same time span in the region.