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U.S. shipments of central air conditioners and air-source heat pumps surged in June, although slower growth for the first half of the year suggested the monthly increase followed uneven demand earlier in 2026.

Manufacturers shipped a combined 1.02 million central

Hotel guests labelled ‘vultures’ as they ‘shoved and barged people’ for sunbeds at a Spanish holiday hotspot, with ‘grown men jumping walls’ and ‘throwing towels over heads’

A British holidaymaker was left stunned during her Spanish getaway as the notorious sunbed wars erupted each morning.

Jetting off abroad is meant to be a relaxing escape, ditching the everyday bustle for days spent lounging around a pool under the Mediterranean sun. Yet, if you’re staying at a hotel or resort in a European holiday hotspot, you might find yourself scrambling for that sought-after sun lounger.

Since the summer holidays kicked off last month, footage has been flooding social media of tourists queuing in hotel lobbies in the early hours of the morning, before racing to secure their sunbeds by frantically throwing down their towels. It’s become a brutal game of run-and-grab, and holidaymakers will go to extreme lengths to get their hands on a coveted sunbed.

Lisa Smith saw the madness unfold during a week’s holiday at the four-star Dorada Palace in the Spanish coastal resort town of Salou. “This happened every day, people would start queuing from 8am, sometimes put chairs near the doors until more people came, then the chairs got moved,” she exclusively told The Mirror.

“It was mad watching them because they were all so focused on that door, waiting for it to be open. Once the door was open, they went crazy, they just ran, jumped over walls, threw towels over people’s heads, just so they could claim a bed first.”

Following frantic scenes, Lisa said: “Some people slipped, so instead of helping someone up, they would jump over them. It was like an Olympic sport to them. They would high-five each other when they secured a bed. It was extremely embarrassing to watch.

“They weren’t bothered that people were filming them. People stood on their balconies with their phones out, ready to film them, and they would see them and laugh, as they didn’t care.”

While staying at the Dorada Palace, Lisa recorded two videos of the sunbed chaos unfolding in the morning and shared them both on TikTok (@lisasmith274). The videos quickly went viral, securing more than 2 million views collectively, as they showed hectic scenes of holidaymakers desperately racing outside with their towels in hand and towards the prized sunbeds.

In one video, she captioned: “Never seen nothing like it… Grown men jumping walls to get their beds.”

Even when Lisa attempted to move a sunbed, she received an unhappy response from a fellow holidaymaker. “One day, when we were getting a bed, we secured one, then I saw one in the distance, so I decided to drag it over to where the other one was, and this person threw their towel on it whilst I was moving it,” Lisa explained.

“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m moving the bed, you can’t do that’, I’ve actually got hold of it, I refused to give him the bed, so I continued to pull it across. They were vultures, in my opinion. They shoved and barged people for the beds.”

And after all that stress, some holidaymakers didn’t even make the most of their sun lounger, which they fought so hard to secure. “They would leave their sunbeds for hours before returning,” Lisa revealed. “We did move them ourselves in the end, and there were nine of us, and we only had two beds – the rest were chairs.”

Would you run to secure a hotel sunbed in the morning? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

England’s Jazmin Sawyers was finally able to put previous disappointments at major championships behind her by winning the women’s long jump at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The 32-year-old bounced back from serious injury to celebrate a gold medal on a night when there was a silver for England’s mixed 4x400m relay team and a bronze for pole vaulter Owen Heard.

Sawyers finished just outside the medals in fourth place at the previous games in Birmingham four years ago, failed to qualify for the final of the 2023 World Championships and was then forced to miss the 2024 Olympics.

She had to undergo surgery after rupturing her Achilles tendon on her take-off leg and so, rather than competing in Paris ended up commentating for the BBC.

But the Stoke-on-Trent born athlete put all those setbacks behind her on a memorable evening at Scotstoun with her fourth jump of 6.93m proving to be enough to claim the gold medal ahead of Nigeria’s Ruth Usoro (6.87m) and Brooke BuschKuehl of Australia (6.80m).

“It hasn’t properly hit me how this is the thing I’ve been telling myself all the horrible bits are for,” she said.

“The feeling is overwhelming. I will do the horrible bits 100 times over, I’ll do it and do it and do it. This is amazing.”

Sawyers will now turn her attention to competing for Great Britain at the European Championships in Birmingham, which start on 10 August, but is keen to hang on to the memories Glasgow has given her.

“Twelve years ago almost to the day, I won a silver here in Glasgow (2014 Commonwealth Games) at my first major championships. It was a shock silver and I’ve held Glasgow close to my heart ever since,” she added.

“It was the start of my career and so sensational and I had the time of my life. I take that as one of the best moments of my entire career, but when you’ve done that there’s only one thing to do which is to upgrade.”

The head of Operation Aspides, the European-led task force created to provide security for ships transiting the Red Sea region, tells TWZ that there has been a major increase in the number of commercial vessels seeking escorts since the U.S. and Israel started attacking Iran in February. Security concerns in that region have spiked after the Houthi rebels of Yemen imposed a blockade on Saudi shipping and began attacking the kingdom’s vessels and oil infrastructure. Late Thursday, the leader of the Houthis promised additional escalation against the Saudis.

“We have witnessed a significant increase in requests from commercial vessels seeking Aspides’ support for their safe transit through the High Threat Area (South Red Sea/Strait of Bab-al-Mandeb [BAM]/Gulf of Aden),” Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, Commander of EUNAVFOR Aspides, told TWZ in an email. “In particular, the number of protection requests increased by 39% from February 2026 (the start of the US-Israel-Iran confrontation) until now.”

“The increasing number of protection requests clearly demonstrates that, in times of insecurity, the shipping industry views Aspides as a credible and reliable maritime security provider,” Gryparis added. “We are working daily to maintain and strengthen bonds with the shipping industry, as mutual understanding and effective collaboration are essential to maritime security and the preservation of Freedom of Navigation.”

As we were one of the first to report, Aspides was launched in February 2024 during the previous Houthi campaign against shipping that ended last September. It was created to provide “a shield…to act in purely defensive mode to protect merchant vessels, and two non-executive tasks of ‘accompanying’ to deter with [its] presence and to strengthen maritime situational awareness,” a now former top EU official told reporters at the time.

Since its founding, the task force “has facilitated the safe passage of more than 2,240 merchant vessels and has provided close protection to more than 690 merchant vessels of different flags and interests,” the Aspides commander explained.

Aspides did not provide assistance to vessels recently attacked by the Houthis because the task force was not asked, Gryparis told us.

“Those vessels were sailing within the territorial waters under the responsibility of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (KSA MRCC),” he stated. “Consequently, assistance was provided by the Saudi Arabian authorities. The vessels in question had not registered their transit with the Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean (MSCIO) and had not requested protection from EUNAVFOR Aspides.”

In addition to the blockade and strikes on Saudi assets, the Houthis are reportedly considering imposing a toll on Bab al-Mandeb Strait transits. Gryparis told us that such a move, which has yet to be enacted, would not alter Aspides’ goals.

“Such a development would not change the mandate or the mission of Operation Aspides,” the admiral proffered. “Our mission remains clear: to contribute to Freedom of Navigation, protect the lives of seafarers, support the secure flow of global trade by protecting merchant shipping, improve Maritime Situational Awareness, and contribute to regional stability.”

“Of course, any measure that could affect the free passage of commercial shipping has the potential to impact Freedom of Navigation and the confidence of the shipping industry,” he added. “How states or private shipping companies decide to address such a development would be a political and commercial decision for them.”

“From our perspective, we will continue to implement our mandate within our means and capabilities, continuously assess the maritime security environment, provide protection to eligible merchant vessels in accordance with our mandate, and support the shipping industry through Maritime Situational Awareness and the timely dissemination of information and recommendations via the Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean (MSCIO),” Gryparis noted.

In a fiery speech, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi warned Saudi Arabia of an all-out escalation. He described his group’s actions as being in response to a Saudi “siege” on the Houthis in Yemen.

“The indicators show that the Saudi [side] is heading toward comprehensive escalation,” al-Houthi proclaimed. “We will seek God’s help against it — we will meet his comprehensive escalation with comprehensive escalation.”

“In this phase, regarding what the Saudi [side] has done, the outcome has been good since establishing the equation of (siege for siege) — in targeting Saudi oil tankers, in preventing their movement, turning back 16 ships, and also in shooting down the Saudi [-operated] aircraft that come to conduct reconnaissance and penetrate our airspace — armed drones,” the Houthi leader continued.

For its part, Saudi Arabia is creating its own maritime coalition to protect transits in the region.

“Recognizing the growing challenges facing global maritime security, and the resulting need to strengthen collective naval defense cooperation to protect freedom of navigation and international trade routes, and to secure global energy supply routes through the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden,” the Saudi Defense Ministry announced on Thursday. “The founding states affirm that the establishment of the Multinational Naval Defense Coalition represents a strategic step toward strengthening maritime security in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, consolidating defense cooperation among the member states, and supporting stability and prosperity — in a manner that contributes to complementing international efforts to protect international peace and security, in accordance with the provisions of international law.”

About 50 nations were asked to join and 14 so far have signed up. It is unclear at the moment how this will differ from Aspides.

Meanwhile, Iran claims it has completely shut down the Strait of Hormuz to vessels in the wake of recent U.S. attacks.

“Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) says that passage through the Strait of Hormuz is currently impossible because of the continued ‘aggressive actions’ of US military forces in the region, adding that applications for transit would only be processed once stability returns,” the official Iranian Press TV media outlet claimed. Iran, however, frequently makes statements that are outright fabrications or extremely exaggerated. TWZ cannot independently verify this claim.

Traffic through that strategic chokepoint had already been significantly reduced by Iran since the launch of Epic Fury.

In a post on X, U.S. Central Command pushed back on that claim, saying the Strait remains open to shipping.

“CLAIM: Once again, the Iranian government claims it has closed the Strait of Hormuz. This is FALSE,” the command stated. “FACT: The Strait of Hormuz remains open for commercial vessel transit. Iran does not control it. Thousands of ships have sailed through the international waterway over the past four months.”

Regardless of the dueling claims, traffic through the Strait has slowed to a trickle, according to the Kpler global trade intelligence firm.

“The latest maritime risk data points to growing divergence across the region’s two strategic chokepoints,” Kpler stated on X. “Strait of Hormuz crossings fell 77% day on day to just five vessels, with all transits concentrated through the Iranian Unilateral Scheme, suggesting reduced operational confidence and limited routing flexibility. At the same time, Bab el Mandeb remained active, recording 47 crossings despite ongoing sanctioned vessel movements, shadow fleet activity and a dark transit. With US and Iranian public positions still at odds, operators are closely monitoring traffic volumes, routing behaviour and any diplomatic developments that could reshape risk across regional shipping lanes in the days ahead.”

Adding to concerns about energy exports, Egyptian officials yesterday confirmed that the port facility of Damietta was hit by a drone strike on Wednesday, the first public acknowledgment that the country has come under fire during this conflict. Cairo did not say who launched the attack, but Trump hinted it was the Iranians. The New York Times reported that two Iranians, who asked not to be named to discuss security matters, “said the explosion was a drone attack designed to show that global shipping and energy supplies could be more deeply disrupted if Iran chose to escalate. The individuals did not say whether Iran or an Iran-allied militia in the region had launched the attack, or from where.”

Iran, for its part, suggested Israel was to blame. Regardless, the incident raised the specter of another part of the region being brought into fighting that is largely centered on the flow of energy supplies.

While tensions on the waters are heating up, the pace of kinetic strikes on land targets seems to be slowing.

Kuwait reported its air defenses shot down several drones earlier on Friday.

“The sinful Iranian aggression targeted a number of vital and military facilities, where the hostile targets were dealt with and destroyed, resulting in material damage due to the fall of shrapnel, with no human casualties recorded, praise be to God,” the Kuwaiti Defense Ministry reported on X. “The armed forces affirm their continued execution of their missions and duties with high efficiency, within the framework of ongoing readiness and permanent preparedness, and taking all necessary measures to protect the sovereignty of the homeland, preserve its security and stability, in coordination with the competent authorities, in a manner that preserves the safety of citizens and residents.”

Tit-for-tat attacks between the U.S. and Iran have also slowed, with the last American strikes launched on July 29. However, during a cabinet meeting at Camp David, U.S. President Donald Trump indicated that more offensive action could be in the offing.

“We just want to win,” he stated. “We’ll be hitting them very hard. At some point, they will say we can’t take it anymore.”

When asked about a recent report that he had been given a proposal to “go big,” the president said that has already happened.

“We’ve already gone big,” Trump responded. “What’s big?”

That’s it for now. We’ll update this when there is more information to share.

UPDATE: 8:06 PM EDT –

The Houthis’ Sanaa-based Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC) sent us a statement pushing back on claims that the Yemeni rebel group is seeking tolls on the BAM.

“The Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC) has recently become aware of the circulation of a number of reports and claims across certain news websites and media platforms alleging that the Republic of Yemen [Houthis] intends to impose tolls for transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

The HOCC categorically denies the accuracy of these claims and confirms that it has neither taken nor considered any decision to impose fees for transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The HOCC further emphasizes that transit throughthe Bab al-Mandab Strait is free of charge.

Furthermore, the services provided by the HOCC — including the Safe Transit Service for vessels — are, as is well known, entirely free of charge. The Safe Transit Service is a voluntary and cost-free service offered by the HOCC to vessels/companies (falling outside the scope of the declared ban) that wish to confirm the safe transit of their vessels through the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. All vessels outside the scope of the declared ban may transit safely. Additionally, for added assurance, such vessels may submit a Safe Transit Request by email to the following address: clearances@hocc.gov.ye at any time, and a response will be provided within a few hours.

Accordingly, the HOCC categorically confirms that any individual or entity requesting the payment of money in exchange for transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait does not represent the Republic of Yemen or HOCC in any capacity whatsoever. The HOCC urges shipping companies not to make any payments or provide any information to unauthorized individuals or entities.

The HOCC warns against any unauthorized use of its name or logo, or any false claim of representation, for the purpose of collecting fees or other payments in connection with transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait. It further calls upon anyone who is asked to pay such fees to refrain from making any payment, document the incident whenever it is safe and practicable to do so, and report the matter via the email address: compliance@hocc.go.ye, attaching all available details and supporting evidence that may assist in verifying the incident and taking the necessary action.

The HOCC calls upon all media outlets and news websites to adhere to professional standards, exercise due diligence and accuracy when reporting news and information, and refrain from publishing or circulating any information concerning transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait before verifying it through the HOCC’s official channels.“

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Oil prices have jumped amid the latest outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude, the main international benchmark, rose more than 4 percent on Monday as Washington and Tehran traded attacks amid their escalating standoff over control of the critical waterway.

Brent futures for September delivery stood at $79.26 a barrel as of 05:00 GMT, the highest since June 22.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Sunday that it had carried out dozens of strikes on Iran to degrade its ability to attack vessels in the strait, hours after striking hundreds of targets in the country.

US forces launched the earlier round of strikes after accusing Iranian forces of “blatantly” attacking a Cyprus-flagged container ship, the MV GFS Galaxy, as it was transiting the strait.

“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital maritime corridor for global trade. Iran does not control it,” CENTCOM said in a statement late on Sunday.

“US forces are postured and prepared to ensure that freedom of navigation remains available to commercial shipping despite Iran’s continued unwarranted aggression, harassment, threats, and arbitrary declarations.”

Iranian forces on Sunday launched a wave of missile and drone attacks against the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain in response to the US strikes.

Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which claims the right to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, earlier reiterated that vessels attempting to cross the waterway without using its preferred route would “not be covered by safe passage guarantees”.

“The consequences arising from transit through unauthorized routes shall be the responsibility of the owner, operator, and vessel commander,” the authority said.

After ticking up following Washington and Tehran’s signing of a memorandum of understanding on ending the war last month, maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has declined sharply amid the renewed fighting between the sides.

Just six vessels were tracked crossing the strait between 18:00 GMT on Thursday and 06:00 GMT on Friday, compared with 18-22 daily crossings earlier this month, according to maritime intelligence platform Windward.

Nine vessels were tracked in the waterway between 18:00 GMT on Saturday and 06:00 GMT on Sunday, four of which were flying the Iranian flag, according to Windward.

Roughly 130 vessels transited the strait, a conduit for one-fifth of the global oil trade in peacetime, each day before the start of the war.

Oil prices, which had returned to pre-conflict levels following the signing of the memorandum on June 17, are now about 9 percent higher than before the US and Israel launched their initial strikes on Iran in late February.

Mukesh Sahdev, founder and chief oil analyst at XAnalysts in Sydney, Australia, said he expects the per-barrel price of Brent to remain in the upper $70s during August and September amid the heightened geopolitical uncertainty.

“There could be occasional spikes and dips outside that range,” Sahdev said in a note to clients on Saturday.

“Long-haul procurement forces refiners to make supply decisions weeks in advance,” Sahdev added.

“Those decisions have already reduced immediate reliance on the Middle East, and the latest escalation is likely to reinforce rather than reverse that trend.”

Fabien Yip, a market analyst at IG in Sydney, Australia, said prices are unlikely to approach the much higher levels seen earlier in the war despite the latest turmoil.

“Oil’s return towards pre-war levels in June reflected markets pricing in a best-case outcome for the fragile US-Iran arrangement; last week’s re-escalation exposes how fragile that assumption was,” Yip said in a note to clients on Monday.

“Near-term, the risk premium should keep prices supported, though a repeat of the earlier spike appears unlikely, as demand remains slow to recover while stranded-tanker releases and OPEC+ output quota expansion continue to add barrels to an already oversupplied outlook.”

Major Asian stock markets fell on Monday amid the renewed fighting in the Middle East.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell more than 2 percent in afternoon trading, while South Korea’s Kospi plunged more than 8 percent.

Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index dipped about 0.2 percent.

Published on
25/06/2026 – 10:43 GMT+2

Micron, one of only a handful of companies able to make advanced memory chips at scale, said on Wednesday that revenue in the third quarter reached $41.4 billion (€36.5bn), more than four times the $9.3 billion (€8.2bn) it recorded in the same period last year.

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The figure also comfortably beat the roughly $35.7 billion (€31.4bn) analysts had forecast, while profit climbed even more dramatically.

The Idaho-based group posted net income of $28.24 billion (€24.9bn), or $24.67 per share, against less than $2 billion (€1.7bn) a year ago. Adjusted earnings of $25.11 a share sailed past the $20.49 expected.

The market reaction to the impressive results was immediate.

Micron shares rose more than 15% in after-hours trading to around $1,213, leaving the company valued at roughly $1.16 trillion (€1tn).

The stock has now climbed about 700% over the past year, one of the most dramatic re-ratings of any large company through the AI boom, reflecting a fundamental shift in the economics of the AI build-out.

The vast data centres being constructed by hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta, which have collectively earmarked hundreds of billions of dollars in capital spending this year, depend on enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory, a specialised chip that sits alongside the processors made by Nvidia and others.

Micron has said its entire 2026 output of these chips is already sold out under fixed-price contracts.

According to CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, the results reflect what he called the strategic value of memory in the AI era.

The company pointed to a series of multi-year customer agreements that it expects to make earnings more durable and predictable, a notable claim in an industry long defined by brutal boom-and-bust cycles.

Margins to rival the biggest names

What has startled analysts most is Micron’s profitability.

The company reported a gross margin of around 85% for the quarter, a level that now rivals or exceeds those of far larger technology names such as Nvidia and Meta, an extraordinary position for a memory maker historically squeezed by volatile chip prices.

The tightness of supply, with new factories not expected to add meaningful output until 2028, has handed producers exceptional pricing power.

Micron’s guidance was more striking still.

The company expects revenue of around $50 billion (€44bn) in the current quarter and adjusted earnings of roughly $31 a share, implying the boom is accelerating rather than fading. It is ramping up investment to match, lifting planned capital spending to about $27 billion (€23.7bn) this fiscal year and signalling a further jump in 2027, management told analysts during the earnings call.

The results offer reassurance to investors betting that AI infrastructure spending remains robust, with Micron’s order book serving as a real-time gauge of that demand.

The open question, as ever in the memory industry, is how long the upswing can last before supply catches up. Even the most bullish observers acknowledge that risk has not completely disappeared.

A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.

The Sheriff’s Office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”

Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.

Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line as though it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.

“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show.

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the office said in a news release.

Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to the Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.

BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving

Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in Yosemite National Park.

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.

“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.

Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.

Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know whether Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.

“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing, `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.

Bynum writes for the Associated Press.

The outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus strain has reached 782 confirmed cases.

The number of confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s Ebola outbreak has surged to 782, with 178 deaths, marking one of the largest daily jumps so far as regional conflict, patient escapes, and limited contact tracing undermine containment efforts.

The Ministry of Public Health confirmed 72 new cases on Sunday over the previous 24 hours, a record single-day increase, with 29 additional deaths.

The Bundibugyo virus strain has a 22.8 percent death rate so far, with 40 patients recovering, officials said.

“We remain committed to supporting affected countries until transmission is stopped. We call on partners and donors to urgently mobilise resources to strengthen the response and save lives,” Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Sunday.

The outbreak stems from the rare Bundibugyo strain, which has no approved vaccine or treatment, unlike the Zaire virus responsible for the DRC’s previous 16 Ebola outbreaks.

Contact tracing coverage has plummeted to 56.5 percent, a sharp decline from the 95% target, Health Ministry officials said.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, warned that “no one knows the true scale” of the outbreak due to dangerous gaps in surveillance and testing.

Eastern Ituri province remains the outbreak’s epicentre, harbouring nearly 95 percent of all confirmed cases. The virus has since breached into North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and spread across the border to Uganda.

Ituri’s humanitarian crisis exacerbates the medical emergency. Nearly one million residents have fled overlapping armed conflicts involving multiple groups, including the M23 rebel movement that controls Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. The area has endured decades of instability, with United Nations reports documenting massacres of more than 100 civilians in gold-rich Ituri villages as various factions vie for control of the region’s mineral wealth.

Thousands of artisanal miners routinely shuttle between clandestine mining sites scattered across the mineral-dense region, creating transmission hotspots that evade health monitoring. The outbreak is believed to have originated in the mining-intensive Mongbwalu Health Zone in Ituri province.

The World Health Organization announced it is ramping up diagnostic testing and contact surveillance operations. However, MSF reports a critical funding gap of $21.5m hampering response efforts.

A flight attendant has said she can’t stand it when passengers break one common phone rule, as it could actually be quite dangerous for the pilot and other passengers

When boarding a plane, there are several things passengers are required to do to ensure their own safety and that of fellow travellers. Once everyone has taken their seats, cabin crew will deliver safety information that must be listened to, and it’s frequently essential that you take their warnings seriously.

If you’re someone who flies regularly, you may believe you no longer need to absorb this safety information as you’ve encountered it numerous times before. But one cabin crew member on social media has insisted it’s always crucial that you remain attentive, as flouting the rules could result in injury, disruption to the aircraft, and possibly harm to your own possessions.

Yasmeen, a flight attendant working out of Los Angeles, posted a video on TikTok from a recent flight, revealing she was left stunned by what one passenger was doing while the aircraft was airborne.

The cabin crew member was travelling as a passenger on this occasion, but explained that her professional experience means she understands just how risky it can be to disregard the rule that the other traveller was so openly flouting.

In the footage, Yasmeen revealed that another passenger seated across the aisle had received a phone call mid-flight and proceeded to answer it with the phone on loudspeaker, allowing everyone within earshot to listen in on their conversation.

Not only is blaring your phone on speaker thoughtless when crammed into a confined space with dozens of other passengers, but you’re meant to switch your mobile to aeroplane mode upon boarding, which blocks all signal and prevents you from making or taking calls.

Yasmeen said: “As a flight attendant, I’m actually about to jump out of my skin.”

Viewers of her clip were split, though. Some insisted they’d never dream of leaving their phone on during a flight, while others claimed they’ve “taken full Zoom calls” on planes previously, suggesting it shouldn’t be a problem.

One person said: “I just don’t understand. With all this technology, and supposedly we went to the moon, but we can’t use our phones on the plane?”

Another added: “I don’t understand what some of y’all don’t understand. You are NOT supposed to be making phone calls while in the air!”

A third wrote: “I’ve taken full Zoom calls on the plane. It’s not against the rules to be on a call.”

Why do phones need to be on aeroplane mode when flying?

Phones, tablets, and other wireless-enabled devices should be switched to aeroplane mode as a safety measure. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), any device that emits radio waves has the potential to interfere with navigation and radar systems, as well as disrupt pilots’ headsets.

The extent to which mobile phones impact aviation technology hasn’t been thoroughly researched, but pilots have reported hearing background noise and interference from handsets while in the air, particularly during landing. This could prove distracting to pilots at a critical stage of the flight, so it’s advisable to simply keep your phone on aeroplane mode throughout.

Failing to switch your phone to aeroplane mode is unlikely to bring the plane down, but even if it doesn’t irritate your pilot, it could also result in unnecessary strain on your own device.

Ways not putting your phone on aeroplane mode can affect you include:

• Severe battery drain: Your phone will be working overtime to try and find a signal in the air by attempting to connect to towers on the ground, which can drain your battery.
• Costly roaming charges: On international flights, flying over multiple countries and having your phone connect to their towers could land you with hefty roaming fees that you weren’t prepared to pay.

Today, the U.S. Marine Corps celebrated the end of more than half a century of Harrier ‘jump jet’ operations with a sundown ceremony at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina. For more than 20 percent of the history of the republic, the British-originated jump jet helped to defend America. The story of how the U.S. military first got involved in the program is a little-known but fascinating one. Michael Pryce, who has worked on various aircraft projects, from the Harrier to the Tempest, explains, and, in the process, connects the dots between the AV-8 and its replacement with the Marine Corps, the F-35B Lightning II.

Read our coverage of the Marine Harrier sundown here.

Right from the start, the Harrier had been of immense interest to Britain’s ‘cousins’ across the pond. In the 1950s, the threat of nuclear war led to the creation of jump jets, and NASA, plus the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army soon found that developing rockets seemed easy in comparison to this new class of combat aircraft.

Despite valiant efforts, no American jump jet could be made to work.

A video shows the Ryan X-13 Vertijet during tests. It was one of many Cold War-era jump jet projects that ended in failure:

VERTIJET

All three services got involved in trials of the Hawker Siddeley P.1127 Kestrel, the first iteration of what would become the Harrier, initially in a joint British-American-West German trials squadron. Then, six of the Kestrels were taken to America to continue testing there, and they were renamed as XV-6As once on U.S. soil. Unlike other jump jet projects, the P.1127 utilized four adjustable exhaust nozzles beneath the wing, which rotated to provide thrust for vertical, backward, or hovering flight as well as conventional forward movement.

The thing that impressed the Americans was the sheer simplicity of the British jump jet. With just one engine, and ‘not an electron’ needed in its flight controls, the Kestrel soon transformed into the Harrier, and in 1968 the U.S. Marine Corps decided they would acquire them. Despite not having flown any of the Kestrel trials, they knew they wanted to bring the jump jet into the front line as soon as possible.

The British makers of the Harrier, Hawker Siddeley, first found out about the U.S. Marines’ interest when two men in uniform walked into the Hawker Siddeley hospitality chalet at the 1968 Farnborough Airshow and said they wished to fly the jet. Within two weeks, they had. It was the start of the Marines’ love affair with the Harrier, but it was not America’s first encounter with the British jet.

Over 10 years before, another American had walked into Hawker’s fancy tent at another Farnborough airshow and asked to see their design for what would become the Harrier. Col. Willis “Bill” F. Chapman of the U.S. Air Force was an American in Paris, there to find European weapons that America could fund. Jump jets were all the rage, and the Hawker P.1127 seemed to him to be the most promising.

As leader of the 340th Bomb Group in Italy in World War II, Chapman had seen dozens of his B-25 bombers wiped out, first by a volcanic eruption and then by a Luftwaffe attack. He knew nuclear missiles could do much worse. Soon, he had funded the Pegasus engine, the heart of the Harrier, and struck up a strong friendship with the Hawker design team led by Ralph Hooper, driving their design forward, from the drawing board into the sky.

In 1968, one of the U.S. Marines who walked in at Farnborough would play an equally vital role in getting the Harrier into Marine service. Col. Tom Miller had flown in Korea and Vietnam, and scored a speed record in a McDonnell F4H Phantom for good measure. Deeply impressed by the Harrier, he went into battle on ‘The Hill’ to secure it for the Corps, then on to lead it into service as the commander of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point — the same unit that retired the Harrier today, 55 years later.

The rest of the history of the Harrier is well known. From the initial, British-built AV-8A to the jointly-developed, with mostly American technology, second-generation AV-8B Harrier II, the Harrier found more use, and created more jobs, in America than in Britain. The American connection was the making of the British jump jet, and helped cement relations between the two countries’ pilots, engineers and ground crews over decades.

In the 1980s, there were attempts to make a new, supersonic successor, with the speed of the Marines’ F/A-18A Hornet and the vertical flight ability of the Harrier. Once again, the Americans turned to British designers. In 1981, Hooper and a team of engineers from the Harrier factory at Kingston-upon-Thames went to work at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis, Missouri, to design the ultimate jump jet. Over drawing boards and at tailgate parties after ball games, they evolved a great beast of a jet, the P.1218, with two crew, two engines and the latest tech, to succeed the U.S. Navy’s F-14A Tomcat fleet interceptor and A-6E Intruder all-weather strike aircraft. Despite arriving at a joint design, money was limited, and the work was re-focused on research with NASA — the start of what in time would become the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Although the U.S Navy buys jets for the Marines, the big twin-engined design was of less interest to the Corps than another of Hooper’s designs, a smaller, single-engine jet that weighed the same as the Hornet. This supersonic jump jet was seriously studied in the United Kingdom, with tests and design work over many years. The U.S. Marines were involved too, officers visiting the Kingston factory to talk about its prospects. When Britain delayed jump jet plans in favor of what became the Eurofighter Typhoon, it meant Hooper’s single-engined P.1216 design, with its wild-looking twin-boom configuration, seemed to miss its chance with the Marines. The British designer retired too, but he did not let that stop him.

Keen to see a supersonic jump jet in Marine service, he turned to Miller once again. As the accompanying letter in this article shows, in 1992 he gave Miller the technical plans of the new jump jet, and Miller showed it around at Marine HQ at a vital time — just as 10 years of research was turning into the serious acquisition program for the Joint Strike Fighter.

The emerging requirements specified a weight the same as the Hornet — the same, too, as Hooper’s P.1216. Speed, range and weapons load were close too. While avionics and stealth had advanced beyond the British jet’s capabilities, the knowledge that the man who made the Harrier thought a practical jump jet of Hornet size would work helped get the ball rolling on the third generation of jump jets. Miller’s support ensured the Corps got behind it, leading to the Lockheed Martin F-35B now taking over Cherry Point.

Making a fighting jump jet that works is extremely challenging. The Harrier had its problems — without rigid training, accident rates echoed those of its 1950s origins. The F-35B has had to overcome its own hurdles too.

In the early 2000s, Hooper was called in to help fix those. The transatlantic story of the Harrier may have ended today, but the people who found ways to cut bureaucratic corners by trusting each other, and who cracked the technical code of making the Harrier work, continue to support the next generation of F-35Bs.

The ‘Harrier Mafia’ worked their own way, but always in line with the motto of the Marine Corps. “Semper Fi” was a value shared by British pilots who flew American Harriers in combat operations on exchange as much as by the men and women who made, and supported, 55 years of Harrier operations at Cherry Point.

Jump Jet: The Secret History of the Harrier by Michael Pryce is published on August 27 and is available for pre-order.

Contact the editor: thomas@thewarzone.com