finds

An explorer recently came across an abandoned chapel in the UK, and was left stunned by what he found inside. Many people were left feeling “sad” after seeing the footage

Most people recognise that the UK offers all sorts of wonderful discoveries, but occasionally explorers stumble upon the most extraordinary abandoned buildings. Recently, an urban explorer uncovered a derelict Welsh chapel, and what he discovered inside left him breathless and utterly stunned.

The man, who goes by Escapade on TikTok, recently posted footage of the property online and viewers were left heartbroken by what they witnessed inside. Whilst the chapel remains utterly beautiful, something unexpected was discovered within the building, with many people quick to admit how “sad” they found it, despite it being a spectacular location to both visit and explore.

Escapade described it as a “hidden beauty”, though he didn’t reveal its exact whereabouts. It’s not the first occasion someone has recently discovered an abandoned site that tells a haunting tale either.

In the clip, you can observe plants and flowers consuming the structure and several windows have been smashed. He confessed it was so overgrown he could “barely get in the door.”

Yet, when he ventured inside, the building was virtually untouched. The pews stayed intact, and the main windows were mesmerising as daylight continued to stream through the coloured glass.

An organ also sat in a state of decay, providing only a glimpse of what the chapel resembled in its heyday. So much heritage appears to be preserved within its walls.

Despite appearing untouched for years, the building clearly holds significant historical value. Whilst mould now covers the walls, he described the site as a “hidden gem”, noting the considerable beauty that remains within the structure.

The footage has racked up thousands of views since being posted, with numerous people leaving comments. Many described the chapel as “beautiful.”

One person said: “It’s so sad that we have turned our backs on these places.” Another added: “So beautiful. Sad it’s been left.”

A third replied: “I’d love to renovate that to a home. It’s gorgeous.” Meanwhile, a fourth commented: “What a beautiful window, but so sad to see the church in this condition.”

Someone else also chimed in with: “I find it so incredibly sad when buildings end up this way.” One more added: “It’s beautiful and needs to be saved.”

Whilst there exists a community of urban explorers who investigate derelict buildings, this practice isn’t typically recommended. Properties in advanced states of decay can pose serious safety hazards, making exploration potentially dangerous.

Additionally, permission should normally be obtained before entering any building. Even abandoned properties remain under someone’s ownership.

Consequently, entering without authorisation may constitute unlawful trespassing. This is crucial to remember.

Nov. 2 (UPI) — A rhesus monkey missing in rural Mississippi was found Sunday, according to authorities searching for the last few primates that escaped from a crashed truck hauling nearly two dozen of them nearly a week ago.

The monkey was found by a homeowner on their property in Heidelberg, located about 87 miles southeast of Jackson, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department said in a brief statement posted to its Facebook account.

The animal is now in the possession of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, according to the sheriff’s department, which added that it had no further details about the monkey at this time.

The search continues for two additional monkeys that escaped Tuesday, when a truck transporting 21 rhesus monkeys crashed along a rural stretch of Mississippi highway. Following the crash, the sheriff’s department said three monkeys were still missing.

Authorities initially stated the animals weighed 40 pounds and posed “potential health threats,” as they allegedly carried hepatitis C, herpes and COVID-19.

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department later recanted this statement, saying that the truck’s driver had stated the animals were infected with diseases, but the Tulane National Primate Research Center, which supplies monkeys to other research organizations, said the primates in question “are not infectious.”

Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab says satellite images appear to show mass killings in Sudan’s western city of el-Fasher.

The fall of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has resulted in mass killings by the group, according to an analysis of satellite imagery viewed by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

The RSF had laid siege to el-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur in western Sudan, for more than a year and a half. Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced the withdrawal of his forces from their last stronghold in the wider Darfur region late on Monday, a day after the paramilitary RSF seized control of the main Sudanese army base in el-Fasher and declared victory there.

The fall of el-Fasher has “resulted in the carpet-bombing of large swaths of the city by Sudan Armed Forces, an unknown number of civilian casualties caused by both sides, and almost 15 months of IPC-5 Famine conditions in areas caused by RSF’s siege of the city”, the HRL report said. The HRL determined this by reviewing satellite imagery and open source and remote sensing data from Monday.

“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said.

The RSF has long been accused of targeting non-Arab communities in Darfur, and the HRL, aid groups and experts have previously warned of mass violence and displacement if el-Fasher fell.

HRL’s report showed images containing clusters of objects and ground discolouration that it believes to be evidence of human bodies. The HRL appears to back up other accounts from aid groups that reported chaotic scenes on the ground, including killings, arrests and attacks on hospitals.

“The actions by RSF presented in this report may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity (CAH) and may rise to the level of genocide,” the report said.

The war in Sudan between the RSF and the SAF began on April 15, 2023 and has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands killed and more than 12 million people displaced. There are also fears that Sudan could once again split, more than a decade after the creation of South Sudan.

Darfur is an RSF stronghold while the SAF controls the Sudanese capital Khartoum, as well as the north and east of the country. The RSF advance comes shortly after talks last week by the Quad – a bloc of nations comprised of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – which laid out a roadmap aimed at ending the war in Sudan.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery are crippling Gaza City’s efforts to clear debris and rebuild critical infrastructure, the city’s mayor says, as tens of thousands of tonnes of unexploded Israeli bombs threaten lives across the Gaza Strip.

In a Sunday news conference, Mayor Yahya al-Sarraj said Gaza City requires at least 250 heavy vehicles and 1,000 tonnes of cement to maintain water networks and construct wells.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from az-Zawayda in Gaza, said only six trucks had entered the territory.

At least 9,000 Palestinians remain buried under the rubble. But the new equipment is being prioritised for recovering the remains of Israeli captives, rather than assisting Palestinians in locating their loved ones still trapped beneath rubble.

“Palestinians say they know there won’t be any developments in the ceasefire until the bodies of all the Israeli captives are returned,” Khoudary said.

Footage circulating on social media showed Red Cross vehicles arriving after meetings with Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, to guide them to the location of an Israeli captive in southern Rafah.

An Israeli government spokesperson said that to search for captives’ remains, the Red Cross and Egyptian teams have been permitted beyond the ceasefire’s “yellow line”, which allows Israel to retain control over 58 percent of the besieged enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, said Israel spent two weeks insisting that Hamas knew the locations of all the captives’ bodies.

“Two weeks into that, Israel has now allowed Egyptian teams and heavy machinery to enter the Gaza Strip to assist in the mammoth task of removing debris, of trying to get to the tunnels or underneath the homes or structures that the captives were held in and killed in,” she said.

Odeh added that Hamas had been unable to access a tunnel for two weeks due to the damage caused by Israeli bombing. “That change of policy is coming without explanation from Israel,” she said, noting that the Red Cross and Hamas have also been allowed to help locate potential burial sites under the rubble.

Netanyahu: ‘We control Gaza’

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to reassert political authority at home, saying that Israel controls which foreign forces may operate in Gaza.

“We control our own security, and we have made clear to international forces that Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable to us – and that is how we act and will continue to act,” he said. “This is, of course, accepted by the United States, as its most senior representatives expressed in recent days.”

Odeh explained that Netanyahu’s statements are intended to reassure the far-right base in Israel, which thinks he’s no longer calling the shots.

Those currently overseeing the ceasefire do not appear to be Israeli soldiers or army leadership, she explained, with Washington “requesting that Israel notify it ahead of time of any attack that Israel might be planning to conduct inside Gaza”.

Odeh noted that Israel’s insistence on controlling which foreign actors operate in Gaza – combined with the limited access for reconstruction – underscores a broader strategy to maintain political support at home.

Unexploded bombs a threat

Reconstruction in Gaza faces further obstacles from unexploded ordnance. Nicholas Torbet, Middle East director at HALO Trust in the United Kingdom, said Gaza is “essentially one giant city” where every part has been struck by explosives.

“Some munitions are designed to linger, but what we’re concerned about in Gaza is ordnance that is expected to explode upon impact but hasn’t,” he told Al Jazeera.

Torbet said clearing explosives is slowing the reconstruction process. His teams plan to work directly within communities to safely remove bombs rather than marking off large areas indefinitely. “The best way to dispose of a bomb is to use a small amount of explosives to blow it up,” he explained.

Torbet added that the necessary equipment is relatively simple and can be transported in small vehicles or by hand, and progress is beginning to take place.

The scale of explosives dropped by Israel has left Gaza littered with deadly remnants.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, told Al Jazeera that Israel dropped at least 200,000 tonnes of explosives on the territory, with roughly 70,000 tonnes failing to detonate.

Children have been particularly affected, often mistaking bombs for toys. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported the case of seven-year-old Yahya Shorbasi and his sister Nabila, who were playing outside when they found what appeared to be a toy.

“They found a regular children’s toy – just an ordinary one. The girl was holding it. Then the boy took it and started tapping it with a coin. Suddenly, we heard the sound of an explosion. It went off in their hands,” their mother Latifa Shorbasi told Al Jazeera.

Yahya’s right arm had to be amputated, while Nabila remains in intensive care.

Dr Harriet, an emergency doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, described the situation as “a public health catastrophe waiting to unfold”. She said children are being injured by items that look harmless – toys, cans, or debris – but are actually live explosives.

United Nations Mine Action Service head Luke David Irving said 328 people have already been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance since October 2023.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of bombs, including landmines, mortar rounds, and large bombs capable of flattening concrete buildings, remain buried across Gaza. Basal said clearing the explosives could take years and require millions of dollars.

For Palestinians, the situation is a race against time. Al Jazeera’s Khoudary said civilians are pressing for faster progress: “They want reconstruction, they want freedom of movement, and they want to see and feel that the ceasefire is going to make it.”

CONAKRY, Guinea — It was the middle of the day when Omar Diaw, known by his artist name “Chimere” — French for chimera — approached a blank wall off the main thoroughfare in Guinea’s capital and started spray-painting.

“They know who I am,” he said confidently. Though it wasn’t clear who ”they” were, civilians and police didn’t bat an eye as Diaw’s fellow artists unloaded dozens of paint cans onto the roadside in Conakry.

Graffiti has thrived for years in Diaw’s native Senegal, where the modern urban street art first took off in West Africa. But when he moved to Guinea in 2018 to explore a new place, he said such art was nearly nonexistent.

“It was thought that graffiti was vandalism,” he said.

To win over the public, Diaw took a gentle approach, using graffiti for public awareness campaigns. One of his first was to raise awareness about COVID-19 preventive measures.

“We had to seduce the population,” he said.

The port city of Conakry faces rapid urbanization. Diaw’s graffiti has become an undeniable part of its crowded, concrete-heavy landscape.

His larger-than-life images of famous Guinean musicians and African independence leaders now dwarf the overloaded trucks that drive by. Drying laundry hung over the portrait of the West African resistance fighter Samory Toure.

The tag of Diaw’s graffiti collective, Guinea Ghetto Graff, is on murals all over the city.

Graffiti as it’s known today began in the 1960s and ’70s in the United States. It arrived in West Africa via Dakar, Senegal, in 1988, when the region’s first graffiti artist, Amadou Lamine Ngom, started painting on the city’s walls.

Known by his artist name, “Docta,” Ngom and a group of fellow artists were commissioned the following year to paint murals for an awareness campaign aimed at cleaning up Dakar’s streets.

Ngom, 51, said that at the beginning, aside from such campaigns, he did graffiti mostly at night. He later changed his approach.

“I decided to do it in broad daylight,” he said. “So as not to copy what’s happening in the United States, Europe or elsewhere. To create graffiti that resembles the African reality, taking into account our reality, our values.”

Ngom, who later mentored the teenage Diaw, said communities grew to respect the public artwork since it reflected their lives and experiences.

With the public’s backing, “the authorities didn’t have a choice,” Ngom said.

These days, graffiti has grown more assertive in Senegal, becoming part of the political messaging around antigovernment protests. In Guinea, Diaw’s graffiti has addressed issues such as migration.

Diaw said Conakry’s governor supports much of his work and has given him carte blanche to do it wherever he wants.

As his latest work beside the thoroughfare took shape, passersby began to stop and admire the portrait of Guinea’s military leader, Gen. Mamadi Doumbouya, who took power in a 2021 coup.

A 22-year-old driver, Ousmane Sylla, said he was familiar with Diaw’s gigantic paintings near Conakry’s airport.

“It reminds us of old Guinean musicians. It reminds us of history,” he said. “Graffiti is good for Africa, it’s good for this country, it’s good for everyone. I like it, and it changed the face of our city.”

The next step might be bringing in a wider range of artists.

“I would really like to see more women become a part of this, because they say that [graffiti] is for men,” said Mama Aissata Camara, a rare female artist on Guinea’s graffiti scene.

Risemberg writes for the Associated Press.

A British soldier charged with murder over the Bloody Sunday massacre has been acquitted by a Belfast court, in a verdict condemned by victims’ relatives and Northern Ireland’s political leader.

The former British paratrooper, known as Soldier F under a court anonymity order, was accused of murdering James Wray and William McKinney and attempting to murder five others when soldiers opened fire on unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers in Derry more than 50 years ago.

Belfast Crown Court was silent on Thursday as Judge Patrick Lynch read the verdict acquitting Soldier F of two charges of murder and five of attempted murder. Soldier F listened to the verdict from behind a thick blue curtain, hidden from view in the packed courtroom.

On January 30, 1972, British paratroopers opened fire on unarmed civil rights protesters as more than 10,000 people marched in Derry. British soldiers shot at least 26 unarmed civilians. Thirteen people were killed, while another man died from his injuries four months later.

The massacre became a pivotal moment in the Troubles, helping to fuel nearly three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking civil rights and a united Ireland, pro-British unionists wanting Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, and the British Army. A 1998 peace deal largely ended the bloodshed.

Lynch said in his verdict that he was satisfied that soldiers had lost all sense of military discipline and opened fire with intent to kill and that “those responsible should hang their heads in shame”.

But he said the case fell short of the burden of proof.

“Delay has, in my view, seriously hampered the capacity of the defence to test the veracity and accuracy of the hearsay statements,” he said.

An initial investigation into the massacre — the Widgery Tribunal, an investigation held in 1972 — largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of responsibility.

A second investigation, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry, found in June 2010 that there had been no justification for any of the shootings and found that paratroopers had fired at fleeing unarmed civilians.

Following the Saville Inquiry, police in Northern Ireland launched a murder investigation, with prosecutors finding that one former soldier would face trial for two murders and five attempted murders.

Prosecutors have previously ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge 16 other former British soldiers.

Soldier F was not called to give evidence during the one-month trial that was heard without a jury. He had previously told investigators he no longer had a reliable recollection of the massacre.

Mickey McKinney, brother of William McKinney, one of the two victims named in the case, denounced the verdict outside the courtroom on Thursday.

“Soldier F has been discharged from the defendant’s criminal dock, but it is one million miles away from being an honourable discharge,” McKinney said. “Soldier F created two young widows on Bloody Sunday, he orphaned 12 children, and he deprived dozens of siblings of a loving brother,”

McKinney said he “firmly” blamed the British government for the trial’s outcome.

“The blame lies firmly with the British state, with the RUC [the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Irish police], who failed to investigate the murders on Bloody Sunday properly, or indeed at all,” McKinney said.

Following Thursday’s verdict, a spokesperson for the UK government said the UK is “committed to finding a way forward that acknowledges the past, whilst supporting those who served their country during an incredibly difficult period in Northern Ireland’s history”.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who is vice president of the Sinn Fein pro-Irish unity party, called the verdict “deeply disappointing”.

“The continued denial of justice for the Bloody Sunday families is deeply disappointing,” she wrote on X. “Not one British soldier or their military and political superiors has ever been held to account. That is an affront to justice.”

New data has shed light on the alarming rise of “anti-LGBTQIA+ targeted hate and rhetoric.”

On 20 October, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) released a new report offering a five-year overview of the online and offline anti-LGBTQIA+ landscape.

“This Dispatch provides an overview of anti-LGBTQ+ mobilisation and how it is exacerbated by tech platforms,” researchers Guy Fiennes and Paula-Charlotte Matlach wrote.

“It incorporates activity which meets ISD’s definition of targeted anti-LGBTQ+ hate (‘activity which seeks to dehumanise, demonise, harass, threaten or incite violence against an individual or community based on their LGBTQ+ identity’), as well as activity which discriminates against LGBTQ+ people (and those perceived to be LGBTQ+), and which erases LGBTQ+ voices or rolls back LGBTQIA+ rights.”

Divided into two parts, the first half of the study presents statistics from various organisations highlighting the offline hate LGBTQIA+ people have faced across the US, UK and wider Europe.

In the US, more than 20 per cent of hate crimes recorded were motivated by anti-LGBTQIA+ bias for the third consecutive year, according to FBI crime data released in August 2025.

NGO GLAAD reported 918 anti-LGBTQIA+ incidents across the US in 2024, including seven fatalities and 140 bomb threats. Among those incidents, 48 per cent of victims were trans, non-binary or gender-nonconforming individuals.

The ISD report also included data from the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, which found that LGBTQIA+ people are five times more likely to be victims of violent crime in the US compared to non-LGBTQIA+ people, and nine times more likely to experience violent hate crimes.

While the latest UK crime statistics reported an 11 per cent decrease in annual anti-trans hate crimes and a two per cent decrease in hate crimes related to sexual orientation, there was a sharp increase in both categories between 2021 and 2022.

“ISD calculated that in the five years between 2020 and 2025, anti-trans hate crimes in the UK rose by 50 per cent, and sexual orientation crimes rose by 18.1 per cent overall. The vast majority of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crimes are likely unreported,” the report revealed.

Across wider Europe, a 2023 EU Agency for Fundamental Rights survey found that violence and harassment against LGBTQIA+ people had increased from 11 per cent to 14 per cent, while anti-LGBTQIA+ bullying in schools jumped from 46 per cent to 67 per cent.

When examining government and legislative actions, all three countries showed an increase in anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment led by government officials and lawmakers. The Trump administration, the UK’s Reform Party and Hungary were listed among the biggest offenders.

In the second half of the report, the ISD explored the online harm endured by the LGBTQIA+ community over the past five years.

Following a recent analysis of US-based violent extremist accounts and groups targeting the community, researchers found that “online hate spiked in response to real-world events and political developments.”

The data also revealed that the trans community is increasingly targeted by violent extremist accounts across various platforms, imageboards and forums.

“Anti-trans hate speech rose from 35 per cent of all anti-LGBTQIA+ speech in October to November to 46 per cent in December to January. There is a notable overlap between groups that direct violence and hate speech against LGBTQIA+ people and groups identified as threats to US national security and the government,” researchers explained.

Elsewhere, the study highlighted GLAAD’s 2025 Social Media Safety Index report, which found a lack of moderation of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate on social media platforms, alongside over-moderation of LGBTQIA+-inclusive accounts and content.

The report also examined the negative impact of AI content moderation systems, revealing that they have been “found to censor queer users who use ‘slurs’ to self-label (e.g. queer, gay, or femboy).”

“AI-driven censorship of LGBTQIA+ content that it labels as ‘sexualised’ or ‘offensive’ reflects offline biases that unfairly label queerness as inherently sexual and inappropriate,” researchers added.

You can read IDS’ full report here.

A New York jury has found that French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan helped to prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, making it liable for atrocities that took place under his rule.

The eight-member jury on Friday sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75m in damages, after hearing testimony describing horrors committed by Sudanese soldiers and the Popular Defence Forces, the government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed.

The plaintiffs – two men and one woman, all now American citizens – told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burned with cigarettes, slashed with a knife, and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted.

“I have no relatives left,” Entesar Osman Kasher told the court.

The trial focused on whether BNP Paribas’s financial services were a “natural and adequate cause” of the harm suffered by survivors of ethnic cleansing and mass violence in Sudan.

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas said in a statement to the AFP news agency that the ruling “is clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds to appeal the verdict”.

Bobby DiCello, who represented the plaintiffs, called the verdict “a victory for justice and accountability”.

“The jury recognised that financial institutions cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions,” DiCello said.

“Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fuelled by US dollars, that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped,” he said.

BNP Paribas “has supported the ethnic cleansing and ruined the lives of these three survivors”, DiCello said during closing remarks on Thursday.

The French bank, which did business in Sudan from the late 1990s until 2009, provided letters of credit that allowed Sudan to honour import and export commitments.

The plaintiffs argued that these assurances enabled the regime to keep exporting cotton, oil and other commodities, enabling it to receive billions of dollars from buyers that helped finance its operations.

Defence lawyer Dani James argued, “There’s just no connection between the bank’s conduct and what happened to these three plaintiffs.”

The lawyer for BNP Paribas also said the French bank’s operations in Sudan were legal in Europe and that global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) partnered with the Sudanese government during the same period.

Defence lawyers also claimed that the bank had no knowledge of human rights violations occurring at that time.

The plaintiffs would have “had their injuries without BNP Paribas”, said lawyer Barry Berke.

“Sudan would and did commit human rights crimes without oil or BNP Paribas,” Berke said.

The verdict followed a five-week jury trial conducted by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year denied a request by BNP Paribas to get the case thrown out ahead of trial.

Hellerstein wrote in his decision last year that there were facts showing a relationship between BNP Paribas’s banking services and abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government.

BNP Paribas had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions.

The US government recognised the Sudanese conflict as a genocide in 2004. The war claimed some 300,000 lives between 2002 and 2008 and displaced 2.5 million people, according to the United Nations.

Al-Bashir, who led Sudan for three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan.

He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on genocide charges.

In the months that followed al-Bashir’s ousting in 2019, army generals agreed to share power with civilians, but that ended in October 2021, when the leader of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, seized control in a coup.

In April 2023, fighting broke out between the two sides, and forces on both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.

The report says 10 small, ocean-dependent nations will experience the biggest increase in dangerous heat days, despite collectively producing only 1 percent of global heat-trapping gases.

A new study by World Weather Attribution and United States-based Climate Central has calculated the increase in dangerous “superhot days” – defined as warmer than 90 percent of comparable days between 1991 and 2020 – due to climate change.

The report, which is not yet peer-reviewed but uses established techniques for climate attribution, was released on Thursday. It highlights the significant effect of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Before the 2015 accord, the world was on track for a catastrophic 4C (7.2F) of warming by the end of the century, which would have resulted in an additional 114 superhot days per year.

By fulfilling current commitments to curb emissions, the world is now heading towards 2.6C (4.7F) of warming. Under this scenario, the Earth will still add 57 superhot days annually by 2100 – nearly two months of dangerously high temperatures – but this is half the increase of the worst-case scenario. Since 2015, the world has already added 11 superhot days on average.

Potsdam Climate Institute Director Johan Rockstrom, who was not part of the research team, said people should not be relieved that we are no longer on the 4-degree warming pre-Paris trajectory because the current track “would still imply a disastrous future for billions of humans on Earth”.

The report does not say how many people will be affected by the additional dangerously hot days, but coauthor Friederike Otto of Imperial College London said “it will definitely be tens of thousands or millions, not less”. She noted that thousands die in heatwaves each year already.

The study also underscores the profound unfairness of the impact of climate change across the world, showing a massive disconnect between carbon pollution and expected heat exposure.

The 10 countries that will experience the biggest increase in dangerous heat days are almost all small, ocean-dependent nations like Panama, the Solomon Islands, and Samoa. These countries are expected to see the largest spikes, with Panama projected to face 149 extra superhot days a year. These 10 nations collectively produce only 1 percent of global heat-trapping gases.

In stark contrast, the top carbon-polluting countries – the United States, China, and India – are predicted to get only between 23 and 30 extra superhot days. Despite being responsible for 42 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide, they will face less than 1 percent of the additional superhot days.

University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who was not part of the study team, said this heat inequality drives “yet another wedge between have and have-not nations”, potentially sowing seeds of geopolitical instability.

In the last few weeks, USC has found itself caught in a political tug-of-war that could potentially change campus life permanently.

Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened on Oct. 2 to cut “billions” in state funding, including the popular Cal Grants that many students rely upon, if California schools bowed to pressure from the Trump administration.

Newsom’s messaging came in response to a White House directive that asked USC and eight other major national universities to commit to President Trump’s views on gender identity, admissions, diversity and free speech in exchange for priority access to federal dollars.

The topic was covered in depth by my colleagues Jaweed Kaleem and Melody Gutierrez.

Let’s jump into their article and see what options lie ahead for USC.

What the White House told USC

USC and other universities were asked to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which commits them to adopt the White House’s conservative vision for America’s campuses.

The Oct. 1 letter also suggests colleges should align with Trump’s views on student discipline, college affordability and the importance of hard sciences over liberal arts.

The compact asks universities to accept the government’s definition of gender — excluding transgender people — and apply it to campus bathrooms, locker rooms and women’s sports teams.

But the White House letter to USC and other campuses is more stick than carrot.

The government says it will dole out new federal money and give preference to the universities that accept the deal over those that do not agree to the terms.

Signing on would give universities priority access to some federal grants, but White House officials say the government money would not be limited solely to those schools.

How Trump wants to cut back on international students

The federal compact would also severely restrict international student enrollment to 15% of a college’s entire undergraduate student body. Plus, no more than 5% could come from a single country.

That provision would hit USC hard, where 26% of the fall 2025 freshman class is international. Half of those students hail from either China or India.

Cutting into that rate would be a financial blow to USC, where full-fee tuition from international students is a major source of revenue. The university has already endured hundreds of layoffs this year amid budget troubles.

How Newsom is responding

Newsom wrote that “if any California university signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding — including Cal Grants — instantly.”

He added, “California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom.”

Students become eligible for Cal Grants through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or California Dream Act Application. In 2024-25, $2.5 billion in Cal Grants were doled out to California students.

What is USC doing?

The school’s faculty members strongly denounced Trump’s offer at a meeting Monday, calling it “antithetical to principles of academic freedom.”

But interim President Beong-Soo Kim told the roughly 500 attendees that the university “has not made any kind of final decision.”

One of the nine schools presented with Trump’s deal, MIT, forcefully rejected the White House’s proposal last week. (It is unclear how the White House selected the nine schools that were offered the deal.)

Notes from a reporter’s notepad

Kaleem, one of the Times reporters on this story, noted that universities throughout Southern California, including USC, UCLA and others in the UC or Cal State systems, find themselves under siege from the White House, whether they were offered Trump’s proposal or not.

“Grants for funding and research are being held up because of investigations into antisemitism or diversity or other issues,” he said. “There are very few universities untouched by the push from Trump on higher education.”

Kaleem spoke with several politically active students and professors at USC who see Newsom’s gesture as a blessing in disguise.

“They felt the governor’s threat to take away money actually gives the USC campus cover to resist Trump more forcefully,” Kaleem said.

Now USC administrators could defy the White House under the guise of trying to avoid losing funding from the state, according to those who spoke with Kaleem.

“They could say they can’t be blamed because they’re being forced to resist Trump,” he said. “It’s an interesting potential strategy.”

For more, check out the full article here.

Today’s top stories

Part of the debate over the ongoing federal government shutdown focuses on funding for the treatment of undocumented immigrants at hospital emergency rooms.

(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)

Trump claims Democrats want to use federal funds to give undocumented residents healthcare. That’s misleading

• Undocumented immigrants cannot access federal programs, but California law provides state-funded Medi-Cal coverage costing the state $11.2 billion annually.
• President Trump claimed recently that Democrats “want to have illegal aliens come into our country and get massive healthcare at the cost to everybody else.”
• Democrats called Trump’s assertion an absolute lie, accusing Republicans of wanting to slash federal healthcare benefits to Americans in need to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.

Beutner launches bid for L.A. mayor, vowing to fight ‘injustices’ under Trump

• Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner kicked off his campaign for mayor on Monday with a video message that hits not just Mayor Karen Bass but also President Trump and his immigration crackdown.
• Beutner vowed to counter Trump’s “assault on our values,” while also criticizing City Hall over homelessness, housing costs and rising city fees.

Three more L.A. County deaths tied to synthetic kratom

• The deaths have been linked to kratom, a compound that is being synthetically reproduced and sold over the counter as a cure-all for a host of ailments, the county Department of Public Health announced Friday.
• The compound was found to be a contributing cause of death in three residents who were between the ages of 18 and 40, according to the county health department.
• That brings the total number of recent overdose deaths related to kratom in L.A. County to six.

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

This morning’s must read

Other must reads

For your downtime

The Griselda’s Revenge cocktail from the Black Lagoon pop-up bar.

(Black Lagoon)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: What frustrates you the most about parking in L.A.?

Karen writes: “My frustration is that the city started making people pay to park along the road up to the Griffith Observatory. That was the one free and delightful place to get both some sight-seeing and some good walking in after the hunt for a spot. It felt very unfair and opportunistic of the city to limit access to city parks by charging that fee.”

Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … your photo of the day

Theatergoers take their seats to see “Les Miserables” on Oct. 8 in Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Jason Armond at opening night of “Les Misérables” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

Have a great week, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff writer
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

Oct. 11 (UPI) — A hidden breeding facility in Spain was found to contain the remains of 250 animals and 171 live animals that were endangered and recovered to receive veterinary care.

The illicit breeding facility was located in the back of a warehouse in Meson do Vento in Ordes, Spain, the Spanish Civil Guard announced Saturday.

The warehouse manager has been detained and faces charges for alleged animal abuse, professional intrusion in the field of veterinary medicine and illegal possession of protected species.

Most of the deceased animals were dogs and birds, including Chihuahuas, and some of the animals found living fed on the remains in the absence of food.

Many were in “different stages of decomposition, some even mummified,” the Civil Force said, as reported by CBS News.

Exotic birds, dwarf horses, chinchillas, chickens and ducks were among those found living, as well as dogs.

The kennels and cages housing the animals were covered in excrement, which contributed to the dangers faced by the remaining animals.

Civil Guard officers also found a large supply of expired medicines and other veterinary materials that lacked prescriptions.

Spanish authorities have discovered several animal trafficking rings this year, including one in which two men had more than 150 exotic species kept and an unlicensed pet store in Nules.

Officers also broke up an online ring based in the Balearic Islands that trafficked large cats, including pumas, lynx and white tigers.

The site of the latest illicit pet breeding facility was located in northwestern Spain and about 350 miles north of Lisbon.

Ubiquitous and almost uniformly dull, the year of dispiriting political advertising seems like it just won’t end. It’s not just voters who get tired of what’s turning up on TV.

A firm that tracks campaign ads finds “a painful proportion of them are all the same” — but plucks out five ads that is says are exceptions to the dull norm. That’s five offbeat, attention-grabbing ads that Kantar Media CMAG selected out of more than 6,000 that have aired this year — from local races all the way up to the scrum for the White House.

“These ads stand out because they’re unusually creative, personal or authentic,” said an article by Kantar Vice President Elizabeth Wilner for Ad Age.

That doesn’t mean they are particularly uplifting or nice. Just memorable. Among the ads singled out by Wilner:

–Rep. Allen West’s spot, comparing his preparations to deploy to Iraq in 2003 to the activities about that time of his Democratic opponent, who got arrested in a bar brawl. Even Democratic activists who loathed the content of the ad said it helped the Florida GOP lawmaker open up a lead over his opponent, Patrick Murphy.

–South Dakota U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem let her grandmother do the talking to describe the congresswoman’s position on Medicare and President Obama’s healthcare law. The result was a lot more engaging than it might sound.

–Alaska state Sen. Bettye Davis described her recipe for politics by mixing up a pot of gumbo like they do in her native Louisiana.

–U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, doesn’t want voters in that state to forget how her opponent, Rep. Todd Akin, talked about women’s bodies being able to somehow ward off pregnancy after “legitimate rape.” Her ad features an antiabortion Republican “and rape survivor” saying that Akin’s backward views and the possible “criminalizing” of abortion had her turning to McCaskill.

–An ad from conservative advocacy group Crossroads GPS went after Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio by mimicking the DirecTV ads—the ones that show consumers falling into dire straits because of their allegiance to cable TV. (“Don’t reenact scenes from ‘Platoon’ with Charlie Sheen.”) The spot captures some of the glow of the amusing DirectTV campaign.

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Twitter: @latimesrainey

US scientist Dr Fred Ramsdell was on the last day of a three-week hike with his wife Laura O’Neill and their two dogs, deep in Montana’s grizzly bear country, when Ms O’Neill suddenly started screaming.

But it was not a predator that had disturbed the quiet of their off-grid holiday: it was a flurry of text messages bearing the news that Dr Ramsdell had won the Nobel Prize for medicine.

Dr Ramsdell, whose phone had been on airplane mode when the Nobel committee tried to call him, told the BBC’s Newshour Programme that his first response when his wife said, “You’ve won the Nobel prize” was: “I did not.”

To which Ms O’Neill replied that she had 200 text messages that suggested he had.

Dr Ramsdell, along with two other scientists, won the prize for their research into how the immune system attacks hostile infections.

The winners share a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor (£870,000).

After Ms O’Neill received the messages, the couple drove down to a small town in southern Montana in search of good phone signal.

“By then it was probably three o’clock in the afternoon here, I called the Nobel Committee. Of course they were in bed, because it was probably one o’clock in the morning there,” Dr Ramsell said.

Eventually, the immunologist was able to reach his fellow laureates, friends and officials at the Nobel Assembly – 20 hours after they first tried to reach him.

“So it was an interesting day,” he said.

Dr Thomas Perlmann, the secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly, told the New York Times it was the most difficult attempt to contact a winner since he assumed the role in 2016.

While the committee was trying to reach him, he “was living his best life and was off the grid on a preplanned hiking trip,” a spokesperson for his lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, said.

When asked by the BBC whether he thought it might be a trick that his wife might play on him, Dr Ramsdell said: “I have a lot of friends, but they’re not coordinated enough to pull off this joke, not with that many of them at the same time.”

It was the latest incident in an often comic history of laureates learning they had won the prize.

In 2020, economist Paul Milgrom unplugged the phone when the Nobel committee called – in the middle of the night – to tell him he had won the Nobel for economics.

Instead, his co-winner Bob Wilson was forced to walk over to Milgrom’s house, dressed in his pyjamas, and deliver the news through the security camera on his front door.

When a journalist informed the novelist Doris Lessing she had won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature, she responded: “Oh, Christ.”

Israel falsely claimed a Hamas camera was the target of a deadly strike that killed 22 people, including journalists.

Israel’s justification for bombing a Khan Younis hospital in southern Gaza, claiming it targeted a Hamas camera, is false, according to an investigation by the news agency Reuters.

Israeli forces planned the August 25 attack on Nasser Hospital using drone footage that, a military official said, showed a Hamas camera that was the target of the strike. But a Reuters review of visual evidence and interviews with witnesses established that the camera in question actually belonged to the news agency and had long been used by one of its own journalists.

The “double-tap” attack killed 22 people, including five journalists – one of whom worked for Al Jazeera. Their deaths bring the number of journalists killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza to more than 200 since the genocidal war began nearly two years ago.

A day after the hospital strike, the army said troops had fired on a “suspicious” camera draped in cloth, claiming it was operated by Hamas. Drone footage later showed the device on a hospital stairwell, covered with a prayer rug belonging to Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri – who was killed in the strike – not Hamas, Reuters found.

At least 35 times since May, al-Masri had positioned his camera on the same stairwell to record live broadcasts distributed worldwide. He often used the rug to shield it from heat and dust.

“The claim that Hamas was filming Israeli forces from Nasser Hospital is false and fabricated,” said Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Gaza’s Government Media Office. “Israel is trying to cover up a full-fledged war crime against the hospital, its patients and medical staff.”

Reuters said it reviewed more than 100 videos and photos from the scene and interviewed more than two dozen people to reconstruct the events of the attack.

Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem described the stairwell as “a makeshift newsroom” where journalists had gathered before the strike. Al-Masri’s live broadcast froze moments before the blast, which killed him along with several civil defence workers. A second explosion struck as rescuers rushed in.

“We were rescuing the martyrs and wounded … then a huge explosion among us,” said Reuters cameraman Hatem Khaled.

Israel has repeatedly targeted hospitals and other sites protected under international humanitarian law, including schools, shelters, mosques and churches. Its attacks have also killed journalists, medical staff, first responders and humanitarian workers. Despite repeated global calls for investigations, Israel continues to act with impunity while carrying out genocide in Gaza.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says Israel has never published the results of a formal investigation nor held anyone accountable for the killings of journalists.

“None of these incidents prompted a meaningful review of Israel’s rules of engagement, nor did international condemnation lead to any change in the pattern of attacks on journalists over the past two years,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

SCRAPPING the two-child benefit cap may not help with a child’s early development and being ready for school, a report says.

The new study says ending the policy would massively help reduce child poverty but it currently has “no adverse” impact on kids by the end of their reception year.

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Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to end the cap from ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell.

But ending the policy that came into effect in 2017 would cost between £2 billion and £3.5 billion by the end of the decade.

The government has a goal of raising the proportion of children starting school ready to learn from the current 68 per cent to 75 per cent by 2030.

Report author Tom Waters, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “This suggests that it might be hard for the Government to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ – simultaneously reducing child poverty and raising school readiness – through scrapping the two-child limit.”

The government is expected to set out its strategy to tackle child poverty this Autumn.

Cabinet Minister Bridget Phillipson said scrapping the cap is “on the table” while drumming up support for her bid to be Labour’s deputy leader, following Angela Rayner leaving the role.

Sept. 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Secret Service announced it has disrupted a telecommunications network in New York that it said could have shut down telecom services in the tri-state area, as well as posed a threat to the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week.

The Secret Service dismantled a network of electronic devices in the area that were used to conduct multiple threats at senior U.S. government officials, which created a threat to the agency’s protective operations, a press release said.

The investigation led to the discovery of more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites. This could enable encrypted, anonymous communication and was capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute. Officials said the servers were so powerful they could have disabled cell phone towers and launched distributed denial of services attacks with the ability to block emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. They found the devices in five locations within 35 miles of New York.

“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” said U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran in a statement. “The U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission is all about prevention, and this investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled.”

McCool said the investigation is ongoing, and agents are working to learn if the target was the U.N.

He said the Secret Service discovered the network while investigating a large number of threats to officials the service was protecting that grew earlier this year.

“Following multiple telecommunications-related imminent threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials this spring, the U.S. Secret Service began a protective intelligence investigation to determine the extent and impact these threats could have on protective operations,” he said.

Officials declined to name the officials who were threatened.

“Each SIM basically has the equivalent data of a cell phone. So we’re working through every call, every text, every search made on those SIM cards,” an official told CBS News. “Early analysis indicates that this network was used for communication between foreign governments and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement here in the U.S.”

WASHINGTON — Use of solitary confinement in immigration detention is soaring under the Trump administration, according to a report published Wednesday by Physicians for Human Rights using federal data and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed at least 10,588 people in solitary confinement from April 2024 to May 2025, the report found. Contributors also included experts from Harvard University’s Peeler Immigration Lab and Harvard Law School.

The use of solitary confinement during the first four months of the current Trump administration increased each month, on average, at twice the rate found between 2018 and 2023, researchers found, and more than six times the rate during the last several months of 2024.

“Every month from February through May, which are the full calendar months of the new administration, the number of people placed in solitary in ICE [custody] increased by 6.5%,” said Dr. Katherine Peeler, medical advisor for Physicians for Human Rights, and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “That was really dismaying.”

Solitary confinement, in which detainees are held alone for at least 22 hours a day, is used in ICE detention facilities as a form of punishment or to protect certain at-risk immigrants.

In a statement Thursday, assistant Homeland Security secretary Tricia McLaughlin said ICE prioritizes the safety and security of people in its custody.

Detainees are placed into disciplinary segregation “only after they are found guilty by a disciplinary hearing panel,” she said.

Any detainee scheduled for removal, release, or transfer is also placed into administrative segregation for 24 hours, she added. According to ICE’s National Detention Standards, “such segregation may be ordered for security reasons or for the orderly operation of the facility.”

The United Nations has called solitary confinement longer than 15 consecutive days a form of torture.

ICE defines vulnerable detainees as those with serious medical or mental health conditions, disabilities, and those who are elderly, pregnant or nursing, at risk of harm due to sexual orientation or gender identity, or victims of abuse.

Among those categorized as vulnerable, the report states that solitary confinement lasted twice as long, on average, during the first three months of 2025 compared with the first fiscal quarter of 2022, when the agency started reporting those statistics.

This year, vulnerable detainees spent an average of 38 consecutive days in isolation, compared with 14 days in late 2021, according to the report.

The report notes that use of solitary confinement in immigration detention has risen “at an alarming rate” over the last decade, and that billions of dollars authorized earlier this year by Congress to expand detention will likely exacerbate the issue. It calls on the federal government to end the practice against immigrants who are detained for civil deportation proceedings, and for states and members of Congress to exercise oversight.

Nearly 59,000 immigrants were held in ICE custody as of Sept. 7, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization.

The researchers at Physicians for Human Rights analyzed individual cases in New England and found “systemic use of solitary confinement for arbitrary and retaliatory purposes,” such as requesting showers, sharing food or reporting sexual assault.

In California, detainees were placed in solitary confinement 2,546 times from September 2018 to September 2023, said Arevik Avedian, a lecturer and director of empirical research services at Harvard Law School.

Last year, ICE changed the way it reports that data. Instead of placements, in which the same person could be counted multiple times for different stints in solitary confinement, ICE now reports the number of individuals.

In California, ICE reported that 596 people were placed in solitary confinement from April 2024 to May 2025, she said.

During the period of 2018-2023, two California facilities ranked in the top five with the highest number of solitary confinement placements, she said — the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, and the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.

This year, the data reflect ICE’s investment in Republican-led states. According to the report, facilities with the most solitary confinement stints included Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, Montgomery Processing Center in Texas, Buffalo Service Processing Center in New York, South Texas ICE Processing Center, and Eloy Detention Center in Arizona tied with Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center.

A previous report by the same authors found that ICE had used solitary confinement more than 14,000 times between 2018 and 2023, including one Otay Mesa detainee who was held for 759 days.

WITH the chilly season well and truly here, many retailers have been launching new autumn stock.

But it looks like Tesco might have to remove an item after one eagle-eyed mum spotted a spelling mistake on their kid’s clothing.

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The error was picked up by mother-of-three Rebecca Jeffs, from Northamptonshire, who took to TikTok to tag the popular supermarket.

According to Rebbeca, who posts under the username @rebeccaanicole_x, she stumbled across an adorable autumn-themed two-piece whilst shopping at Tesco.

The cosy co-ord consisted of comfy joggers, as well as a matching cream sweatshirt with a pumpkin design.

On the front side there was a little pumpkin, as well as a sticker that said ”Look at my back”, urging customers to check out the rest of the design.

However, what the major retailer clearly didn’t realise is the spelling mistake they’d missed during the printing process.

Sharing the epic blunder on social media, the mum-of-three said in the video: ”The cutest outfit but turns out it has a mistake.

”Didn’t even notice. If anyone’s picked this up, has yours got this mistake?!” Rebecca wondered in the caption where she also tagged the retailer.

As well as having several adorable pumpkins printed on the back of the cosy sweatshirt, there was also text in a bold fond that was supposed to read as ”best little pumpkin picker”.

While at first glance the text looks absolutely fine, there is a letter missing – and dozens of social media users admitted it took them a while to spot it.

One TikToker commented: ”The dyslexia in me didn’t spot a mistake, I had to look in the comments to see what was wrong.”

”Genuinely thought for a second the mistake was it was beige and who takes there kid pumpkin picking in a beige outfit,” another joked.

A fellow mum said: ”I got this for my girl the other day i didn’t even realise.”

”What’s the mistake?” someone else was struggling to spot the missing letter.

Are you still looking at the text and everything looks like it should?

”It says best lttle instead of best little. It took me an embarrassingly long time to work it out,” one of the 250k viewers finally figured it out.

”Maybe nobody will really notice as took a lot of us ages to realise,” a shopper joked.

Want to test your eyesight even more? Earlier this year, Primark shoppers spotted a ‘‘spelling mistake’’ on new Rita Ora top – and you can’t unsee it.

Fashion fans were also gasping as Matalan launched an £18 jumper with glaring spelling mistake.

The IAEA has urged Syria to cooperate fully over allegations it had been building a covert nuclear reactor at the site – allegations Syria denies.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has said its inspectors discovered uranium particles at a site in Syria it suspects was once used as part of a clandestine nuclear programme run by the former government of Bashar al-Assad.

Last year, inspectors visited and took environmental samples at “three locations that were allegedly functionally related” to the remote desert site Deir el-Zour, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokesman Fredrik Dahl said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Analysis revealed a significant number of anthropogenic natural uranium particles in samples taken at one of the three locations. Some of these uranium particles are consistent with the conversion of uranium ore concentrate to uranium oxide,” said Dahl. This would be typical of a nuclear power reactor.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi reported these findings to the agency’s board of directors on Monday in a report on developments in Syria.

The report also stated that “the current Syrian authorities indicated that they had no information that might explain the presence of such uranium particles.”

The IAEA urged Syria on Tuesday to cooperate fully over allegations that it had been building a covert nuclear reactor at Deir Az Zor.

Syria has repeatedly denied these allegations.

The Deir Az Zor site only became public knowledge after Israel – which is the Middle East’s only state with nuclear weapons, although it has not declared its own programme – launched air strikes in 2007, destroying the facility. Syria later levelled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions.

An IAEA team visited some sites of interest last year while al-Assad was still in power. After al-Assad’s fall last December in a rebel offensive on the capital Damascus, the new government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa agreed to cooperate with the agency and again provided inspectors access to the site where the uranium particles had been found.

They took more samples there and “will evaluate the results of all of the environmental samples taken at this location and the information acquired from the planned visit to the site, and may conduct follow-up activities, as necessary”, Dahl said on Tuesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press news agency in June during a visit to Damascus, Grossi said al-Sharaa had expressed an interest in pursuing nuclear energy for Syria in the future. The IAEA said Syria granted its inspectors access to the location for a second time to gather more samples.

A number of other countries in the region are pursuing nuclear energy in some form. Grossi said Syria would most likely be looking into small modular reactors, which are cheaper and easier to deploy than traditional large ones.

He also said the IAEA is prepared to help Syria rebuild the radiotherapy, nuclear medicine and oncology infrastructure in a health system severely weakened by nearly 14 years of civil war.

Trusting her natural ability, and the work she is doing with coach Wim Fissette to further improve, has also been the key to Swiatek turning around her season.

After a slump by her lofty standards at the start of the year, the former long-time world number one started the final major of the season as most people’s pick for the trophy.

The recently crowned Wimbledon champion, who won the US Open in 2022, underlined her credentials on the American hard courts with victory at the Cincinnati Open.

Swiatek was far from her best against 29th seed Kalinskaya, with a low serve percentage particularly damaging, and her relief was demonstrated by an animated celebration.

“I’m happy that I came back, kept being positive and figured it out,” Swiatek added.

In the other night-session match, Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia made light work of Greece’s Maria Sakkari after the pair took to court at 11:15pm local time.

Haddad Maia, seeded 18th, moved fast to wrap up a 6-1 6-2 victory, booking a last-16 match with Wimbledon runner-up Amanda Anisimova.