A friend remarked to me over the weekend about the apocalyptic scenes of fire raging in Tehran. The strike on an oil depot has sent plumes of smoke across Iran's capital. An environmental catastrophe is unfolding, with reports of rain turning black and increasing respiratory problems.
To see the entire building completely consumed in an inferno was truly shocking. I think it's just raised serious questions about the proximity of critical national infrastructure to these vape shops. I think there are significant concerns that essentially Scotland's busiest station can be wiped out by this kind of incident.
The Israeli military announced that it dropped as many bombs on Iran as Israel used during the entirety of the 12-day war last year over just a third of the time this week, signalling the severity of the Israeli military's bombardment without even counting the bombardments carried out by U.S. forces.
Three people were killed in a Russian drone attack on a civilian car in the city of Mykolaivka in the Kramatorsk district of Ukraine's Donetsk region, the state's emergency service said in a statement. The three people, as well as another person injured in the attack, were workers at the Sloviansk Thermal Power Station, the Kyiv Independent news outlet reported. A woman died after being injured in a Russian drone attack in Ukraine's Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Fierce fighting continues on the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces despite the frigid winter temperatures, said Ukraine's Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskii, who stated the front line now stretches about 1,200km (750 miles) in length along eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. Increasing technological improvements in drone warfare on both sides of the conflict mean that the so-called kill zone where troops are in greatest danger on the front line is now up to 20km (12 miles) deep, Syrskii told reporters.
Leonardo is the latest in a series of half a dozen storms to batter the Iberian Peninsula this year. A man has lost his life in Portugal after floodwaters engulfed his car, and in Spain, a girl has been reported missing after being swept away by a river as Storm Leonardo has battered the Iberian Peninsula with torrential rain and gale-force winds.
When Emilia Machel, 30, and her three children rushed to the Chiaquelane site for displaced people on the afternoon of January 17, much of her hometown of Chokwe in Mozambique's Gaza Province was already flooded. The Limpopo River, which begins in neighbouring South Africa and flows into Mozambique, had reached dangerously high levels after heavy rain fell on the Southern Africa region from late December to mid-January.
The powerful storms that blew through Berkeley over Christmas pummeled the city-owned Cazadero camp in Sonoma County, where howling winds toppled trees and damaged dozens of structures at the remote retreat that has hosted music and performing arts programs for generations. Now staff are working to clear mountains of debris and downed redwoods so the camp can reopen in time for programs this spring.
A Russian drone attack killed a 62-year-old Ukrainian man as he was riding a bicycle in the Velyka Pysarivka community of Ukraine's Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Russian forces launched 850 attacks on Ukraine's Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring 14 people and damaging houses, cars and infrastructure, Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
A devastating Russian aerial assault on Ternopil in western Ukraine has killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens more, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko has confirmed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that 22 people were still missing at the site of Wednesday's Russian attack on Ternopil. Russia unleashed 476 drones and 48 missiles across Ukraine, striking vital energy and transportation infrastructure and forcing emergency power cut-offs during freezing weather. In Ternopil, the attack obliterated the upper floors of a residential building. Smoke billowed from the structure as firefighters battled the blaze while distraught residents gathered below, anxiously awaiting word about missing loved ones.
The Ukrainian capital Kyiv was subjected to "massive" Russian air strikes in the early hours of Friday morning, leaving at least 11 people injured and buildings damaged in "almost every district." Among the injured were five people who had to be hospitalized, including one man in a critical condition and a pregnant woman, according to officials. Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said air defense units were in operation to repel the "massive enemy attack" but that "sections of heating networks were damaged."
In August, 2005, Anand Irimpen, a cardiologist and a professor at Tulane University, evacuated New Orleans during the approach of Hurricane Katrina. He and his family watched it make landfall from a hotel room in Dallas. "The storm passed by and I was ready to go home," Irimpen told me. "But then my wife said, 'The levees broke. We can't go back.'" The damage to New Orleans lingered; they ended up staying in Dallas for months.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was located 22 kilometers (14 miles) west-southwest of the town of Khulm, and that it struck at 12:59 a.m. at a depth of 28 kilometers (17 miles). Sharafat Zaman, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Health, said 534 injured people and 20 bodies had been brought to hospitals in Balkh and Samangan provinces. Rescuers were on the scene and the figures were changing, he added.
Cloudflare's latest internet disruptions report reads like a global disaster log, with exam-related shutdowns, natural calamities, stray bullets, and even a Starlink software failure all taking chunks out of global connectivity. In its Q3 2025 internet disruption summary, the content delivery network said it observed "a wide variety of known causes" for global outages between July and September - from government-directed shutdowns in Sudan, Syria, and Iraq to cable cuts in Angola, Haiti, and the United Arab Emirates, along with power failures, cyberattacks, and natural disasters.
