In Pictures

Pakistan has welcomed Sikh pilgrims from India in the first major crossing since their deadly conflict in May closed the land border between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

More than 2,100 pilgrims were granted visas to attend a 10-day festival marking 556 years since the birth of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, a decision that was in line with efforts to promote “interreligious and intercultural harmony and understanding”, Pakistan’s high commission in New Delhi said last week.

In May, Islamabad and New Delhi engaged in their worst fighting since 1999, leaving more than 70 people dead. The Wagah-Attari border, the only active land crossing between the two countries, was closed to general traffic after the violence.

On Wednesday, the pilgrims will gather at Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak’s birthplace west of Lahore, before visiting other sacred sites in Pakistan, including Kartarpur, where the guru is buried.

The Kartarpur Corridor, a visa-free route opened in 2019 to allow Indian Sikhs to visit the temple without crossing the main border, has remained closed since the conflict.

Four days of conflict erupted in May after New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, allegations Pakistan denied.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded in the 15th century in Punjab, a region spanning parts of present-day India and Pakistan. While most Sikhs migrated to India during partition, some of their most revered places of worship are in Pakistan.

A magnitude 6.3 earthquake has shaken northern Afghanistan, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 500, a health official says, adding that the numbers could increase.

The quake’s epicentre on Monday was located 22km (14 miles) west-southwest of the town of Khulm, and it struck at 12:59am (20:29 GMT on Sunday) at a depth of 28km (17 miles), the United States Geological Survey said.

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.

In the nearby province of Badakhshan, the quake damaged or destroyed 800 houses in one village in the Shahr-e-Bozorg district, said Ihsanullah Kamgar, spokesperson for the provincial police headquarters.

However, due to a lack of internet service in the remote area, there were still no accurate casualty figures, he added.

Yousaf Hammad, a spokesperson for the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said most of the injured suffered minor wounds and were discharged after treatment.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, the Ministry of Defence announced that rescue and emergency teams had reached the quake-affected areas in Balkh and Samangan, which suffered the most damage, and were transporting the injured and assisting others.

The Defence Ministry said a rockslide briefly blocked a main mountain highway linking Kabul with Mazar-i-Sharif but the road was later reopened. It said some people who had been injured and trapped along the highway were transported to hospital.

Iraqi farmer Umm Ali has watched her poultry die as salinity levels in the country’s south have reached record highs, rendering already scarce water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock.

“We used to drink, wash and cook with water from the river, but now it’s hurting us,” said Umm Ali, 40, who lives in the once watery Al-Mashab marshes of southern Iraq’s Basra province.

This season alone, she said, brackish water has killed dozens of her ducks and 15 chickens.

“I cried and grieved, I felt as if all my hard work had been wasted,” said the widowed mother of three.

Iraq, a country heavily affected by climate change, has been ravaged for years by drought and low rainfall.

Declining freshwater flows have increased salt and pollution levels, particularly in the south, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before spilling into the Gulf.

“We haven’t seen such high levels of salinity in 89 years,” Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources spokesman, Khaled Shamal, said.

Last month, salinity levels recorded in the central Basra province soared to almost 29,000 parts per million compared with 2,600ppm last year, according to a Water Ministry report.

Freshwater should contain less than 1,000ppm of dissolved salts, while ocean water salinity levels are about 35,000ppm, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The Tigris and the Euphrates converge at Basra’s Shatt al-Arab waterway “laden with pollutants accumulated along their course”, said Hasan al-Khateeb, an expert from Iraq’s University of Kufa.

In recent weeks, the Euphrates has seen its lowest water levels in decades, and Iraq’s artificial lake reserves are at their lowest in recent history.

Khateeb warned that the Shatt al-Arab’s water levels had plummeted and it was failing to hold back the seawater from the Gulf.

Farmer Zulaykha Hashem, 60, said the water in the area had become very brackish this year, adding that she must wait for the situation to improve to irrigate her crop of pomegranate trees, figs and berries.

According to the United Nations, almost a quarter of women in Basra and nearby provinces work in agriculture.

“We cannot even leave. Where would we go?” Hashem said, in a country where farmers facing drought and rising salinity often find themselves trapped in a cycle of water crisis.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration, which documents climate-induced displacement in Iraq, has warned that increased water salinity is destroying palm groves, citrus trees and other crops.

As of October last year, some 170,000 people had been displaced in central and southern Iraq due to climate-related factors, according to the agency.

Water scarcity pushed Maryam Salman, who is in her 30s, to leave nearby Missan province for Basra several years ago, hoping her buffalo could enjoy the Shatt al-Arab.

Rising salinity is not the only problem now, said Salman, a mother of three children.

“Water is not available … neither summer nor winter,” she said.

The Tigris and the Euphrates originate in Turkiye, and Iraqi authorities have repeatedly blamed dams across the border for significantly reducing their flows.

Iraq, a country with inefficient water management systems after decades of war and neglect, receives less than 35 percent of its allocated share of water from the two rivers, according to authorities.

Khateeb from the University of Kufa said, in addition to claiming its share of the rivers, Iraq must pursue desalination projects in the Shatt al-Arab.

In July, the government announced a desalination project in Basra with a capacity of 1 million cubic metres per day.

Local residents said the brackish water is also impacting fish stocks.

Hamdiyah Mehdi said her husband, who is a fisherman, returns home empty-handed more frequently.

She blamed the Shatt al-Arab’s “murky and salty water” for his short temper after long days without a catch, and for her children’s persistent rash.

“It has been tough,” said Mehdi, 52, noting the emotional toll on the family as well as on their health and livelihood.

“We take our frustrations out on each other.”

Dozens of dilapidated stone buildings are all that remain of the once-thriving border village of Martoli, in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. Nestled in the Johar Valley and surrounded by Himalayan peaks, the most notable being Nanda Devi, once considered the tallest mountain in the world, this village had traded sugar, lentils, spices, and cloth for salt and wool with Tibetans across the border.

The nomadic inhabitants of several villages spent the winter months in the plains gathering goods to be traded with Tibetans in the summer. However, the border was sealed following an armed conflict between India and China in 1962, disrupting life in the high villages and leaving people with little incentive to return.

Kishan Singh, 77, was 14 when he left with his family to settle in the lower village of Thal. He still returns to Martoli every summer to till the land and cultivate buckwheat, strawberries, and black cumin.

His ancestral home has no roof, so he sleeps in a neighbour’s abandoned house during the six months he spends in this village.

“I enjoy being in the mountains and the land here is very fertile,” he says.

In late autumn, he hires mules to transport his harvest to his home in the plains, where he sells it at a modest profit.

The largest of the Johar Valley villages had about 1,500 people at its peak in the early 1960s. Martoli had about 500 residents then, while some of the dozen or so other villages had 10 to 15 homes each.

Now, only three or four people return to Martoli each summer.

A few villagers are returning in summer to the nearby villages of Laspa, Ghanghar, and Rilkot, as they can now travel by vehicle to within a few kilometres (miles) of their villages on a recently built unpaved road.

Among the scattered remnants of earlier stone houses in Martoli, a new guesthouse has appeared to cater for a few trekkers who pass through the village en route to the Nanda Devi Base Camp.

Under blazing skies at a tea plantation in India’s northeastern state of Assam, worker Kamini Kurmi wears an umbrella fastened over her head to keep her hands free to pluck delicate leaves from the bushes.

“When it’s really hot, my head spins and my heart begins to beat very fast,” said Kurmi, one of the many women employed for their dextrous fingers, instead of machines that harvest most conventional crops within a matter of days.

Weather extremes are shrivelling harvests on India’s tea plantations, endangering the future of an industry renowned for beverages as refreshing as the state of Assam and the adjoining hill station of Darjeeling in West Bengal state, while reshaping a global trade estimated at more than $10bn a year.

“Shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns are no longer occasional anomalies; they are the new normal,” said Rupanjali Deb Baruah, a scientist at the Tea Research Association.

As changing patterns reduce yields and stall output, rising domestic consumption in India is expected to shrink exports from the world’s second-largest tea producer.

While output stagnates in other key producers such as Kenya and Sri Lanka, declining Indian exports, which made up 12 percent of global trade last year, could boost prices.

Tea prices at Indian auctions have grown by just 4.8 percent a year for three decades, far behind the 10 percent achieved by staples such as wheat and rice.

The mildly warm, humid conditions crucial for Assam’s tea-growing districts are increasingly being disrupted by lengthy dry spells and sudden, intense rains.

Such weather not only helps pests breed, but also forces estate owners to turn to the rarely used practice of irrigating plantations, said Mritunjay Jalan, the owner of an 82-year-old tea estate in Assam’s Tinsukia district.

Rainfall there has dropped by more than 250mm (10 inches) between 1921 and 2024, while minimum temperatures have risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), the Tea Research Association says.

The monsoon, Assam’s key source of rain, as summer and winter showers have nearly disappeared, brought rainfall this season that was 38 percent below average.

That has helped to shorten the peak output season to just a few months, narrowing the harvesting window, said senior tea planter Prabhat Bezboruah.

Patchy rains bring more frequent pest infestations, leaving tea leaves discoloured, blotched brown, and sometimes riddled with tiny holes.

These measures, in turn, add to costs, which are already rising at 8 to 9 percent a year, driven up by higher wages and prices of fertiliser, said Hemant Bangur, chairman of the leading industry body, the Indian Tea Association.

Planters say government incentives are insufficient to spur replanting, crucial in Assam, where many colonial-era tea bushes yield less and lose resilience to weather as they age beyond the usual productive span of 40 to 50 years.

India’s tea industry has flourished for nearly 200 years, but its share of global trade could fall below the 2024 figure of 12 percent, as the increasing prosperity of a growing population boosts demand at home.

Domestic consumption jumped 23 percent over the past decade to 1.2 million tonnes, far outpacing production growth of 6.3 percent, the Indian Tea Association says.

While exports of quality tea have shrunk in recent years, India’s imports have grown, nearly doubling in 2024 to a record 45,300 tonnes.

That adds expense for overseas buyers, said executives of India’s leading merchants, at a time when global competitors such as Kenya face similar problems.

In Porciuncula, Brazil, small-scale coffee farmer Jose Natal da Silva is losing sleep – not just to protect his arabica crops from pests, but over fears raised by a new 50% United States tariff on Brazilian goods announced by President Donald Trump.

The tariff, widely seen as a political move in defence of far-right Trump ally ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, who faces trial for an alleged coup plot, could slash demand and prices for Brazilian coffee in its top export market.

Brazil is the world’s largest coffee exporter, sending 85 percent of its output abroad. The US buys 16 percent of that, making it Brazil’s biggest coffee customer. Experts warn the tariff will hurt competitiveness, especially for family farmers who produce two-thirds of Brazil’s coffee and have fewer resources to weather downturns or shift to new markets.

Last year’s climate change-driven drought already devastated crops. Now, falling arabica prices, down 33 percent since February, are compounding losses. “We struggle for years, and suddenly we might lose everything,” said da Silva, who grows 40,000 trees and other crops to survive.

Nearby in Varre-Sai, Paulo Menezes Freitas, another smallholder with 35,000 trees, fears he may be forced to abandon coffee farming. He says the tariff also affects essential imports like machinery and aluminium. “It feels like the ground is crumbling under us,” he said.

Despite the blow, Brazil’s coffee exporters remain cautiously optimistic. The Council of Coffee Exporters of Brazil (Cecafe)’s Marcio Ferreira believes US buyers can’t afford to stop importing Brazilian beans. But on the ground, small farmers fervently hope for a rollback before livelihoods vanish.

When John Warmington first began diving the reefs outside his home in Vanuatu’s Havannah Harbour 10 years ago, the coral rose like a sunken forest – tall stands of staghorns branched into yellow antlers, plate corals layered like canopies, and clouds of darting fish wove through the labyrinth.

“We used to know every inch of that reef,” he said. “It was like a friend.”

Now, it is unrecognisable.

After Cyclone Pam battered the reef in 2015, sediment from inland rivers smothered the coral beds. Crown-of-thorns starfish swept in and devoured the recovering polyps.

Back-to-back cyclones in 2023 crushed what remained. Then, in December 2024, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake shook the seabed.

What remains is a coral graveyard – bleached rubble scattered across the seabed, habitats collapsed, and life vanished.

“We have come out of the water in tears,” said Warmington, who has logged thousands of dives on this single reef. “We just see heartbreak.”

That heartbreak is becoming more common across this Pacific island nation, where intensifying cyclones, rising seas, and saltwater intrusion are reshaping coastlines and threatening daily life.

Since 1993, sea levels around Vanuatu’s shores have risen by about 6mm (0.24in) per year – significantly faster than the global average – and in some areas, tectonic activity has doubled that rate.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu will have its day in the world’s highest court. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will issue an advisory opinion on what legal obligations nations have to address climate change, and what consequences they may face if they do not.

The case, led by Vanuatu and backed by more than 130 countries, is seen as a potential turning point in international climate law.

The opinion will not be legally binding, but could help shape future efforts to hold major emitters accountable, and secure the funding and action small island nations need to adapt or survive.

It comes after decades of frustration for Pacific nations that have watched their homelands disappear.

In Tuvalu, where the average elevation is just two metres (6.6ft), more than a third of the population has applied for a climate migration visa to Australia.

By 2100, much of the country is projected to be under water at high tide.

In Nauru, the government has begun selling passports to wealthy foreigners – offering visa-free access to dozens of countries – in a bid to generate revenue for possible relocation efforts.

Vanuatu has already sought opinions from other international courts, and is pushing for the recognition of ecocide – the destruction of the environment – as a crime under the International Criminal Court.

Not all of these effects can be attributed solely to climate change, said Christina Shaw, chief executive of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society.

Coastal development, tectonic subsidence, volcanic eruptions, deforestation, and pollution are also contributing to ecosystem decline.

“Vanuatu’s environment is quite fragile by its very nature in that it is young with narrow reefs, has small amounts of topsoil, and is impacted regularly by natural disasters,” she said. “But we do have to think about the other human impacts on our environment as well.”

The damage is not limited to homes, gardens, and reefs – it is reaching into places once thought to be untouchable.

On the island of Pele, village chief Amos Kalsont sits at his brother’s grave as waves lap against broken headstones half-buried in sand.

At high tide, both his brother’s and father’s graves sit just a few arm’s lengths from the sea. Some homes and gardens have already been moved inland, and saltwater intrusion has tainted the community’s primary drinking water source.

Now, the community is considering relocating the entire village – but that would mean leaving the land their grandparents cleared by hand.

Many in Vanuatu remain committed to building something stronger and hope the rest of the world will support them.

Back in Havannah Harbour, John Warmington still dives the reef he considers part of his family. While much of it has gone, he and his wife Sandy have begun replanting coral fragments in the hope of restoring what remains.

Sweat covers Isaac Barnes’s face under his beekeeper’s veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It is a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning temperatures rise.

Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey, and reproduce.

They noticed flying bees gathering nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days by using fewer but harder wingbeats to keep their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees, like people, may cope by retreating to a cooler environment such as the shade or their nest.

“Just like we go into the shade, sweat, or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat,” said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study’s authors.

Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become more difficult. Habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases, and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators.

Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual US Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56 percent of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010.

Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the United States are used to pollinate crops such as almonds, apples, cherries, and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields.

Back at Isaac Barnes’s hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by maize and soya bean fields.

For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he cannot apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it is applied when it is too hot, the bees could die.

Last year, they lost nearly a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health before pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier.

It is only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress are contributing to pollinator decline.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget would eliminate the research programme that funds the US Geological Survey Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation’s wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy.

US Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his country’s pollinators are in “grave danger”, and he will fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said.

“Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press news agency.

Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would generally be more difficult for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to rise or become scarce.

“Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the US, such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,” said Harrison.

Syria’s armed Bedouin clans have announced their withdrawal from the Druze-majority city of Suwayda after weeklong clashes and a United States-brokered ceasefire.

Fighting between Druze fighters and Sunni Muslim clans killed more than 250 people and threatened to unravel Syria’s already fragile post-war transition.

Israel also launched dozens of air strikes in the southern province of Suwayda, targeting government forces, who had in effect sided with the Bedouins.

The fighting also led to a series of sectarian attacks against the Druze community, followed by revenge attacks against the Bedouins.

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has been perceived as more sympathetic to the Bedouins, tried to appeal to the Druze community while remaining critical of its fighters. He later urged the Bedouins to leave the city, saying they “cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country’s affairs and restoring security”.

Dozens of armed Bedouins alongside other clans from around the country who came to support them remained on the outskirts of Suwayda as government security forces and military police were deployed on Sunday to oversee their exit from the entire province. The Bedouin fighters blamed the clashes on Druze factions loyal to spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and accused them of harming Bedouin families.

The Syrian government on Monday began evacuating Bedouin families trapped inside Suwayda.

Syrian state media said on Sunday that the government had coordinated with some officials in Suwayda to bring in coaches to evacuate about 1,500 Bedouins from the city. Interior Minister Ahmad al-Dalati told the SANA news agency that the initiative would also allow displaced civilians from Suwayda to return because the fighting has largely stopped and efforts for a complete ceasefire are ongoing.

Syrian authorities did not give further details about the evacuation or how it ties into the broader agreement after failed talks for a captive exchange deal.

At a minimalist matcha bar in Los Angeles, United States, powdered Japanese tea is prepared with precision, despite a global shortage driven by the bright green drink’s social media stardom.

Of the 25 types of matcha on the menu at Kettl Tea, which opened on Hollywood Boulevard this year, all but four were out of stock, according to the shop’s founder, Zach Mangan.

“One of the things we struggle with is telling customers that, unfortunately, we don’t have” what they want, he said.

With its deep grassy aroma, intense colour and pick-me-up effects, the popularity of matcha “has grown just exponentially over the last decade, but much more so in the last two to three years”, the 40-year-old explained.

It is now “a cultural touchpoint in the Western world” – found everywhere from ice-cream flavour boards to Starbucks.

This has caused matcha’s market to nearly double over a year, Mangan said.

“No matter what we try, there’s just not more to buy.”

In the Japanese city of Sayama, northwest of Tokyo, Masahiro Okutomi – the 15th generation to run his family’s tea production business – is overwhelmed by demand.

“I had to put on our website that we are not accepting any more matcha orders,” he said.

Producing the powder is an intensive process: the leaves, called “tencha”, are shaded for several weeks before harvest, to concentrate the taste and nutrients.

They are then carefully deveined by hand, dried and finely ground in a machine.

“It takes years of training” to make matcha properly, Okutomi said. “It’s a long-term endeavour requiring equipment, labour and investment.”

“I’m glad the world is taking an interest in our matcha … but in the short term, it’s almost a threat – we just can’t keep up,” he said.

The matcha boom has been propelled by online influencers like Andie Ella, who has more than 600,000 subscribers on YouTube and started her own brand of matcha products.

At the pastel-pink pop-up shop she opened in Tokyo’s hip Harajuku district, dozens of fans were excitedly waiting to take a photo with the 23-year-old Frenchwoman or buy her cans of strawberry or white chocolate-flavoured matcha.

“Matcha is visually very appealing,” said Ella.

To date, her matcha brand, produced in Japan’s rural Mie region, has sold 133,000 cans. Launched in November 2023, it now has eight employees.

“Demand has not stopped growing,” she said.

Last year, matcha accounted for more than half of the 8,798 tonnes of green tea exported from Japan, according to Japan’s Agriculture Ministry data – twice as much as 10 years ago.

Tokyo tea shop Jugetsudo, in the touristy former fish market area of Tsukiji, is trying to control its stock levels given the escalating demand.

“We don’t strictly impose purchase limits, but we sometimes refuse to sell large quantities to customers suspected of reselling,” said store manager Shigehito Nishikida.

“In the past two or three years, the craze has intensified. Customers now want to make matcha themselves, like they see on social media,” he added.

The global matcha market is estimated to be worth billions of dollars, but it could be hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Japanese products – currently 10 percent, with a rise to 24 percent in the cards.

Shortages and tariffs mean “we do have to raise prices. We don’t take it lightly”, said Mangan at Kettl Tea, though it has not dampened demand so far.

“Customers are saying, ‘I want matcha before it runs out’.”

Japan’s government is encouraging tea producers to farm on a larger scale to reduce costs.

But that risks sacrificing quality, and “in small rural areas, it’s almost impossible”, grower Okutomi said.

The number of tea plantations in Japan has fallen to a quarter of what it was 20 years ago, as farmers age and find it difficult to secure successors, he added.

“Training a new generation takes time… It can’t be improvised.”

Firefighters are battling wildfires for the second day in Turkiye’s western province of Izmir, according to local authorities and media reports.

The blaze in Kuyucak and Doganbey areas of Izmir was fanned overnight by winds reaching 40-50kmph (25-30mph), and four villages and two neighbourhoods had been evacuated, Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said on Monday.

Helicopters, fire-extinguishing aircraft and other vehicles, and more than 1,000 people were trying to extinguish the fires, he told reporters in Izmir.

Turkiye’s coastal regions have been ravaged by wildfires in recent years as summers have become hotter and drier, which scientists relate to climate change.

An Israeli air attack on Tehran’s Evin Prison during this month’s 12-day war has killed at least 71 people, Iran’s judiciary says, days after a ceasefire ended hostilities between the two arch foes.

The strike on Monday, the day before the ceasefire between Israel and Iran took hold, destroyed part of the administrative building at Evin, a large, heavily fortified complex in northern Tehran that rights groups said holds political prisoners and foreign nationals.

“According to official figures, 71 people were killed in the attack on Evin Prison,” judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said on Sunday of an attack that was part of the bombardment campaign Israel launched on June 13.

According to Jahangir, the victims at Evin included administrative staff, guards, prisoners and visiting relatives as well as people living nearby.

The judiciary said Evin’s medical centre and visiting rooms were targeted.

A day after the strike, the judiciary said Iran’s prison authority had transferred inmates out of Evin Prison without specifying their number or identifying them.

The inmates at Evin have included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and several French nationals and other foreigners.

Dozens of antigovernment protesters have been arrested amid clashes with riot police in Serbia’s capital during a massive rally against populist President Aleksandar Vucic, demanding an early parliamentary election.

The protest by tens of thousands of demonstrators was held after nearly eight months of persistent dissent led by Serbia’s university students, which has rattled Vucic’s firm grip on power in the Balkan country.

“We want elections!” the huge crowd chanted on Saturday as they filled the capital’s central Slavija Square and several blocks around it, with many unable to reach the venue.

Serbia’s Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said some protesters attacked the police. He said police used their powers to restore public order and “arrest all those who attacked the police”.

Some demonstrators wore scarves and masks over their faces as they clashed with law enforcement, using rubbish bins as protection against baton-wielding police. Police used pepper spray before pushing protesters with their shields.

Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party have repeatedly refused the demand for an early vote and accused protesters of planning to incite violence on orders from abroad, which they did not specify or provide evidence of.

While numbers have shrunk in recent weeks, the massive turnout for Saturday’s anti-Vucic rally suggested that the resolve persists, despite relentless pressure and after nearly eight months of almost daily protests.

Serbian police said 36,000 people were present at the start of the protest on Saturday. An independent monitoring group that records public gatherings said about 140,000 people attended the student-led rally.

Serbian presidential and parliamentary elections are due in 2027.

Six people have died from floods in China’s Guizhou province, state media said, after more than 80,000 people were driven from their homes this week.

Towns and villages by a key river in China’s Guangxi lay half-submerged as floodwaters from a province upstream roared into the mountainous region, with the expected landfall of a tropical cyclone later on Thursday compounding disaster risk.

The flooding that overwhelmed the counties of Rongjiang and Congjiang in Guizhou province on Tuesday has spread downstream to other parts of southwest China, including rural settlements in Guangxi by the Liu River, which originates from Guizhou.

On Thursday, state broadcaster CCTV said “exceptionally large floods” had swept through Guizhou’s Rongjiang county since Tuesday.

China is enduring a summer of extreme weather.

This week, authorities issued the second-highest heat warning for the capital, Beijing, on one of its hottest days of the year so far.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated last week in Hunan province – neighbouring Guizhou – due to heavy rain.

Thousands have taken to the streets in Kenya to mark a year since antigovernment protests culminated in the storming of Parliament, despite fears they would be confronted by state-backed gangs and police violence.

According to rights groups, at least 60 people were killed last year by security forces during weeks of protests over tax increases and the dire economic situation facing young Kenyans, reaching a climax when thousands stormed Parliament on June 25.

Activists and families of victims had called for peaceful anniversary marches, but some instead urged people to “occupy State House” – a reference to the official residence of President William Ruto – and many schools and businesses were closed amid fears of unrest.

Police blocked main roads leading to the capital’s business district, and government buildings were barricaded with razor wire.

The marches were largely peaceful early on Wednesday, with protesters – mostly young men – waving Kenyan flags, roses, and placards bearing pictures of those killed last year, while chanting “Ruto must go”.

In Nairobi, there were signs of violence, with some protesters throwing stones and police firing tear gas.

Protests were also reported in Mombasa and several other counties.

Anger has intensified over police brutality, especially after a teacher was killed in custody earlier this month.

A group of peaceful protesters was also attacked last week by a gang of motorbike-riding “goons”, as they are known in Kenya, armed with whips and clubs and acting in tandem with the police.

Iran launched waves of air strikes at Israel as the deadline approached for a ceasefire to which Tehran is reported to have agreed.

The launches came on Tuesday after 4am local time (7:30 GMT) in Tehran, the time Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would stop its attacks if Israel ended its air strikes.

Waves of missiles sent Israelis to bomb shelters for almost two hours in the morning.

Several people were reported killed in the early morning barrages, but there was no immediate word of further attacks.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue services said at least eight more people were injured.

The Israeli military later said people could leave the shelters but cautioned the public to stay close to protection in the coming hours.

Trump’s announcement that Israel and Iran had agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire” came soon after Iran launched a limited missile attack on Monday on a US military base in Qatar, retaliating for the US bombing of its nuclear sites.

Israel said later on Tuesday that it has agreed to the ceasefire after having “achieved all objectives” in its war with Iran.

Iran has carried out a barrage of missile attacks against Israel, hours after the United States attacked key Iranian nuclear sites.

Loud explosions were heard in coastal hub Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Sunday shortly after the Israeli military reported incoming Iranian missiles and activated air defences.

Sirens rang in Israeli cities, with rescue services and media reports saying at least 20 people were injured.

Israeli police reported “the fall of weapon fragments” in an area near the northern port of Haifa, where local authorities said emergency services were heading to an “accident site”.

Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the southern city of Beersheba have been the three Israeli areas targeted by Iran frequently.

Reporting on missile strikes is subject to strict military censorship rules in Israel, where at least 50 impacts have been officially acknowledged nationwide and 25 people have been killed since the war started on June 13, according to official figures.

Iran has warned of “everlasting consequences” after President Donald Trump claimed the US attacks “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Fordow and Natanz.

Meanwhile, Iran’s National Nuclear Safety System Centre and the United Nations nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), say there has been no increase in radiation levels following the US strikes.

For more than three decades, a familiar refrain has echoed from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.

Since 1992, when Netanyahu addressed Israel’s Knesset as an MP, he has consistently claimed that Tehran is only years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. “Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb,” he declared at the time. The prediction was later repeated in his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism.

The sense of imminent threat has repeatedly shaped Netanyahu’s engagement with United States officials. In 2002, he appeared before a US congressional committee, advocating for the invasion of Iraq and suggesting that both Iraq and Iran were racing to obtain nuclear weapons. The US-led invasion of Iraq followed soon after, but no weapons of mass destruction were found.

In 2009, a US State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed him telling members of Congress that Iran was just one or two years away from nuclear capability.

Three years later, at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu famously brandished a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate his claims that Iran was closer than ever to the nuclear threshold. “By next spring, at most by next summer … they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said in 2012.

Now, more than 30 years after his first warning, Israel has conducted attacks against Iran while Netanyahu maintains that the threat remains urgent. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” he argued recently, suggesting the timeline could be months, even weeks.

These assertions persist despite statements from the US Director of National Intelligence earlier this year saying Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.

For Netanyahu, the message has scarcely changed in decades — a warning that appears to transcend shifting intelligence assessments and diplomatic developments.