2026 News Archive

The Cernavodă plant, which produces 20% of Romania's electricity, is not expected to be restarted within the next 10 days.

Heat is spiking again on Thursday with a rare warning in place and more records falling.

On Aug. 2, Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East will witness a solar blockbuster with extra-long totality. If you want to see it, book soon.

Man dies in Bas-Uele after travelling from Haut-Uele, as head of WHO says outbreak on track to be deadliest ever The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a sixth province, officials have said, a day after the head of the World Health Organization said the outbreak was on track to surpass the deadliest in history, which killed at least 11,000 people more than a decade ago. The current outbreak has killed more than 2,100 people out of more than 4,500 cases, according to the latest government figures released on Tuesday. At the same point in the 2014-16 outbreak in west Africa, the previous most deadly outbreak, 755 cases had been recorded, according to WHO data...

Readers recall the breathtaking sight and community spirit of the rare celestial treat – and the handmade contraptions they saw it through On Wednesday evening, millions of people in Europe watched a rare solar eclipse. We asked some of them to share their photographs and experiences of this celestial treat. Here are some of their responses...

Summerhall, Edinburgh Fadi Murad’s unconventional drama is a collage structured with the free-form imagination of a poet Last year, a group of Scottish producers staged a four-day mini festival called Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine. One of the excerpts was a scratch performance by Fadi Murad, which now returns as a full-length show. It is not a conventional drama. Rather, Come Back Home is structured with the free-ranging imagination of a poet, an impressionistic collage that resists straightforward interpretation. Murad’s theme is one of loss and the pull of home, focusing in particular on the death of his mother in a car accident when he was nine. He speaks touchingly from a child’s perspective of what it meant to lose the nurturer in his life, the one he turned to in just such a moment of distress. And he shares video footage of his younger self singing Mad World by Tears for Fears at her memorial. It is as cute as it is sad. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 31 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

CEO announces steps after reports that system is used to target immigrants or people seeking out-of-state abortions For nearly a decade, the company Flock Safety has gradually built out a network of cameras across the US that allows law enforcement officials to conduct about 20bn license plate scans every month. In that time, the company had largely left the decision to turn on safety measures up to its customers. Many of those organizations did not turn them on...

Randall Lane left his job last month after accepting money from founder of firm that does business with magazine The top editor of Forbes left his job last month and was reportedly dismissed for accepting $6m from the founder of a firm that does business with the magazine. The New York Times reported this week that Randall Lane was paid by RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, worked with Forbes since 2016 to publish rankings of wealth advisers. The payment was made after Shook sold a majority stake in the company to a private equity firm a year ago...

Tech billionaire’s $158.3bn deal an outlier in report showing widening gap of CEO to worker pay at top companies Elon Musk received over 2.5m times as much compensation at Tesla as the company’s average worker, according to a new report on the growing gap between top corporate executives and their workers. Musk’s $158.3bn pay deal was an outlier but came as the gap between CEO and worker pay continued to grow. Excluding Musk, last year the average ratio of CEO to worker pay for the top S&P 500 companies was 312 to 1, up from a 285:1 ratio in 2024. With Musk, the average pay ratio was 5,387:1, according to the executive pay watch report released this week by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US...

President signed memorandum giving private sector a role in fighting ‘transnational criminal organizations’ Donald Trump signed a memo on Wednesday that aims to give private companies the power to carry out offensive cyber-attacks against foreign criminal entities. The president ⁠signed a ​national security presidential memorandum directing his administration to “leverage the capability and innovation of the private sector to help conduct these ⁠cyber operations under the direction, control and authority of the US government”, the White House said...

Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament A.A. Rahim said that the use of facial recognition technology and covert surveillance on peaceful protesters was unconstitutional

Bonnie Tyler's friend Mal Pope heard Total Eclipse of the Heart playing throughout Mumbles in Swansea.

The former GB Olympian posted images of her in hospital while on holiday in France.

One of the most famous teams in the world is about to change hands for the second time in less than a year for more than $12bn. Will anyone push back? One of the most brutal lessons we must learn as fans is that the team we shed blood, sweat and tears for is seen by those who own it as just one of many assets. That gap has never felt as wide as it does this week. On Wednesday, ESPN reported that the Los Angeles Lakers are set to change hands, for the second time in 10 months, for $12.5bn, a sum that would be a record for any North American sports team. (The deal must be approved by the NBA’s board of governors before it can go through.) The buyers aren’t diehards who saved up every penny like the good Dr Jerry Buss in the 1970s. Those days are gone. If and when the deal is approved, the new owners will be venture capitalist Josh Kushner and his business partner, Bob Iger. Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, the titleless Wormtongue to Donald Trump’s Saruman. Iger used to run Disney. These men have connections across the political world and influence in every corner of the American empire. A franchise woven into a city’s identity should never become an asset vastly wealthy people move around like a chip around a poker table. But that is exactly what the Lakers are about to become. The way the deal came together should terrify anyone who still thinks sports belong to the fans. Mark Walter took control of the team from the Buss family last October at a valuation of roughly $10bn. Now he is set to cash out around $2bn richer. That’s not how this is supposed to work. The old guard, like Buss, used to guard their NBA teams like heirlooms and pass them down. Walter is set to flip the team after less than a year...

Former world No 4 slumps to 6-3, 7-5 first-round loss Draper still recovering from long-term arm injury The minuscule amount of confidence and self-belief Jack Draper currently has to call upon in the most difficult period of his career was underscored in the first game of his opening match in Cincinnati. Draper began his service game by shanking a forehand into the back fence, which he followed up with two double faults. He immediately fell down a break and never recovered. A few fleeting positive moments followed, but this miserable start set the tone for another excruciating day for the former world No 4 as he could not escape the mental fatigue borne out of battling serious injury for 15 months and counting. Draper fell 6-3, 7-5 to Martín Landaluce, the world No 64...

With a top-eight finish offering at least a playoff place, the temptation to spend big in pursuit of the Premier League will grow – but so will the risks The Championship’s collective wage bill grew to a record £903m in 2024-25, according to Deloitte’s latest Annual Review of Football Finance. Clubs are paying players enormous sums in their pursuit of Premier League football. With the playoffs expanding this season, the number of owners willing to risk even more money in the hope of securing promotion is only likely to increase. In isolation, the figure of £903m does not signify much. Compared to the Premier League’s £4.4bn salary outlay, it almost looks small. But England’s top division can afford that gargantuan commitment to wages whereas the second tier cannot. The 24 clubs in the Championship earned £942m, meaning salaries consumed 96% of revenue. If there was any surprise in their collective net debt being £1.4bn at the end of 2024-25, it was only that it had reduced from the £1.5bn it was a year earlier...

United unable to financially compete with rivals Rashford back after Barcelona loan but could leave Michael Carrick has stated that Manchester United will not make a £100m signing this summer due to their finances, with the manager also insisting that Marcus Rashford “is our player” despite the forward and club preferring him to depart. In the current window United have invested a total of £85m on Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos but have never spent £100m on a single transfer...

Israeli forces have ordered Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank to evacuate their homes in Qusra

A passenger train derailed near Lewes in East Sussex, England, injuring at least 11 people, and two of them seriously.

Military and government sources say the paramilitary RSF and allies advance into town of Kurmuk in Blue Nile state.

The military’s failure to keep extremists away from two Palestinian families trapped in their West Bank homes made clear the chaos gripping the Israeli-occupied territory.

Earthquake damages Cali's hospitals, forcing medical staff to prioritize critical patients as rescue teams work nonstop.

Bill Hunter says the weekly 5k race at locations across the UK and beyond is for everyone, and should be celebrated, while Helen Beioley says it is the perfect excuse to meet friends and consume a croissant after I am sorry that the parkrun spoils Janet Knowlson’s experience of her local park (Letters, 7 August). I wonder if she has ever spoken to a parkrunner or a volunteer? Many would tell of the camaraderie and their improved physical and mental health. Strangers become friends and even partners. We do not take over the park, as she alleges, rather we recognise that we share the space with other park users and are respectful of their rights and needs. Parkrun is for everyone and anyone, from children upwards, and not only runners. It is only competitive if you want it to be, and is equally welcoming to walkers. Parkrun is a huge success story, both in the UK and many other countries, and should be celebrated. It receives no public funding and each event relies on an army of volunteers, without whom it wouldn’t happen. Long may it continue. Bill Hunter Honley, West Yorkshire • In response to Janet Knowlson’s letter complaining about the disruption to her daily peaceful walk through her park by parkrun, please can I suggest that she avoid just this one specific hour a week? Parkrun is an inclusive joy for hundreds of thousands of runners and walkers of all shapes, sizes, ages and levels of fitness. For me, it’s the perfect excuse to meet up with mates and wallop down a huge almond croissant as a post-run(walk) reward. Helen Beioley France Lynch, Stroud..

President’s order calls for several changes to childhood vaccinations – and experts say it’ll lead to confusion On Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order pushing for revisions to how children in the US are vaccinated. The executive order calls for several changes. These include fewer vaccinations overall and a recommendation that the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine be replaced with separate shots for each disease administered during separate medical visits. The latter direction is currently impossible to implement because no stand-alone shots for these diseases are licensed in the US...

A jury in Chicago in the US awarded the sum to Michael Ryan's family after his widow Naoise Connolly Ryan brought a civil suit against Boeing.

United's preseason outlay pales in comparison with some of their fellow title contenders.

UK records its hottest day of the year as the temperature in west London reaches 38.1 degrees Celsius.

Ruling latest setback in Trump administration response to Gaza war protests that swept college campuses.

Emergency services said they were working at the scene of a derailment near Lewes, in East Sussex, on Thursday. Nine other people were less seriously hurt.

Topos Azteca, a Mexican volunteer rescue group that works worldwide and helped after the Sept. 11 attacks, arrived in Colombia after searching for survivors in Venezuela.

Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet. An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56 million years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate...

State department says it has reached administrative settlement with company’s US arm to resolve breaches The UK defence company BAE Systems is to pay a $36m (£26.7m) civil penalty after breaching US arms exports regulations more than 100 times. The US Department of State announced on Thursday that it had reached an administrative settlement with the US arm of BAE to resolve 104 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations...

The suspect has been identified as a Russian citizen who planned to kill one of Moscow's critics in Warsaw.

A new report finds key federal agencies have stopped providing oversight of civil rights laws nationally.

Artists in Gaza painted a mural honouring former Burger King employee Arianna Hamilton.

Wednesday’s eerie spectacle united crowds beneath the sky, continuing a human fascination that stretches from ancient myth to modern physics “I’d describe it as a magical eeriness.” Lisa Redfern’s description to the Guardian conveys the combination of beauty and wrongness that accompanied Wednesday’s partial solar eclipse in Britain. Crowds across the country assembled as the sun’s power seemed to wane, twilight changed tone abruptly, the temperature fell and the familiar landscape took on an unnatural appearance. In a divided world, there is comfort in coming together in awe. Ms Redfern, speaking from Cornwall, was right that Britons “may not see another one. We have to make the most of these moments.” The country has to wait 55 years for another comparably deep partial eclipse. To experience the true marvel of the eclipse, one had to be in the path of totality – which this week crossed over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. There the sun was completely obscured. Britain saw a partial version, with the moon covering part of the sun, with only a thin yellow crescent showing. Totality is another world of wonder: for a few minutes a black disc appears where the sun should be, surrounded by a fiery corona in a purplish firmament. It is 64 years before a total eclipse of the sun will be seen over Britain. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please..

NGOs say agreement held back by tenuous human health commitments and lobbying from plastic industry The latest version of the long overdue plastic treaty is even less ambitious than the previous one, according to experts. A year after UN plastics treaty negotiations collapsed in Geneva in 2025, diplomats met informally in Nairobi between 30 June and 3 July, aiming to flesh out a new “no surprises” document...

Zoo Southside, Edinburgh Letícia Rodrigues takes on the titular challenge in this show about shame, rage and how female bodies are surveilled A smiling woman steps on to the weighing scales in front of the stage. She is glamorous with bobbed blond hair, gleaming nails and a trendy red trouser suit. She is exactly 84kg, she states. It is an opening gesture reminiscent of an old-school diet club like the one her mother first took her to at the age of eight. Letícia Rodrigues’s show is autobiographical, albeit dramatised through a character called Gorda who, like her, is Brazilian and has been deemed overweight for most of her life. So she is planning to lose the fat in each of her shows. The weigh-in will be followed by a weigh-out at the end of the hour. The goal is to be 116 grams thinner and so the show is also a training session, she says...

Solar eclipses are far easier to manage than Europe’s cross-border electricity politics In the end, the solar eclipse did not cause the electricity grid to flicker. The early drop-off in solar generation was manageable, just as the National Energy System Operator (Neso), the state-owned body responsible for keeping the lights on, predicted. Gas-fired generators still had to be paid nose-bleed prices to fire up, and power via high-voltage interconnectors to continental Europe was also expensively sourced. But the system worked. A summer of heatwaves, however, has highlighted European grids’ reliance on those interconnectors – including seven between the UK and the continent – in an age of extreme weather and greater use of intermittent renewables. On Thursday, another low-wind “heat dome” day, a fifth of power to the British grid was coming from the continent at 10am. Cables from France alone were meeting 11%, or 3.54 gigawatts, of demand, or more than twice as much as the output at that time from the UK’s entire fleet of windfarms...

The drought roasting much of Europe this summer is taking a heavy toll on crops across the continent, from potatoes in the Netherlands to corn in Bosnia. Triodos, a Dutch bank with a focus on sustainability, has warned that this could reduce gross domestic product across the EU by 1 percent for 2026 – or around €180 billion.

If you know Nigeria's city of Lagos, you're surely familiar with the hum of its traffic jams. But a new sound is emerging... or rather, one is disappearing. As soaring fuel prices have hit Nigeria in recent years, some motorists are turning to electric vehicles. But in Africa's biggest oil producer, the transition remains fraught with challenges.

Rescuers in Colombia made a last-ditch effort to locate earthquake survivors early Thursday, as the critical 72-hour window for finding people alive drew to a close. Our journalist Rosa Perez gives us the lastest information.

Kyiv and Moscow have been trading attacks on each other's grain warehouses, as concerns mount that global food prices could rise as a result. Russia struck Ukraine's largest grain shipment port on the Danube overnight, causing damage and setting off a fire. The attack came a day after Ukraine hit Novorossiysk, a major grain hub in Russia's part of the Black Sea.

Chinese state media have released footage of a joint naval drill with Indonesia in waters east of Taiwan.

It comes after one of its planes suddenly lost altitude last week, with a number of passengers injured.

US senators call for inquiry as USS Lincoln has record-long period without port stop amid war on Iran.

There are reports of food shortages, broken plumbing and other potential harms aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea since November.

Mangione faces two federal stalking crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.

Mike Pender responds to an article by Felicity Lawrence in which she reflects on why food firms are panicking and suing Felicity Lawrence’s alarming piece on ultra-processed foods (Why are ultra-processed food firms panicking and suing? Because they know time is running out, 7 August) made no mention of the UK’s Food Standards Agency, whose primary statutory objective is to protect public health from risks arising from the consumption of food. The FSA is an independent, non-ministerial government department. Its advice to ministers, and guidance to consumers, is informed by the most up-to-date scientific evidence, free of political or commercial considerations...

Safety advice was followed by almost all the public but the historic event left behind huge quantities of litter and abandoned Lime bikes It started with the glasses, as people desperate to see the most complete eclipse in decades formed long queues for the proper protective eyewear. Then, when they sold out almost everywhere, they came for the colanders. Sales of the kitchen staple, which could be used to safely view the partial solar eclipse that enraptured millions, increased markedly, retailers have said...

Kew Gardens in London hits 38.1C and 40C-plus expected in parts of Europe with continent trapped under heat dome Europe heatwave – latest updates The UK has recorded its hottest day of the year so far with a provisional temperature of 38.1C in southern England as Europe sweltered under a major heat dome. As temperatures on the continent approached 40C at the peak of the summer’s fifth heatwave, the thermometer at Kew Gardens in west London surpassed the previous high of 38C on 28 June, the Met Office said...

Zambian president Hakainde Hichilema has cast his vote in the capital Lusaka, as he bids for a second term.

From the Loire to the Danube, via the Rhine and the Po, European rivers are facing exceptionally low water levels. After a start to the summer marked by record temperatures, the drought is threatening river transport, energy production, ecosystems and water supplies.

The winning country in Eurovision will be ineligible to host the contest the following year if involved in an armed conflict or a "sensitive geopolitical situation" that could impact the safety of the event, organisers said on August 12. The rules for the contest were updated following an annual review by the European Broadcasting Union.

Amid the rubble and debris of Gaza's bombed-out landscape, beekeepers are rebuilding their livelihoods, handling swarms and collecting what little honey they can from the colonies that survived the war. Ibrahim al-Dabbeh, head of the Cooperative Association of Beekeepers in the Gaza Strip says "the war destroyed more than 95% of the bee sector". Rebuilding these hives means trying to revive an industry pushed to the brink of extinction.

France is yet to comment on Yann Vezilier's pardon and previously called the accusations "unfounded".

Russia maintained an iron grip on Crimea since seizing it from Ukraine in 2014. Many Russian civilians go there to enjoy the beaches. But now Ukraine is hitting Crimea hard, upending daily life.

Under local regulations in the region, "it is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract or pursue a polar bear".

Analysts say Saudi Arabia is strengthening its position with regional allies as the Houthis increase their attacks.

Israeli forces on Thursday moved against rogue settlers laying siege to Palestinians amid unusually strong US criticism, even as Israel inaugurated an emblematic settlement elsewhere in the West Bank. Our correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky tells us more.