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All roads may lead to Rome, but not all rivers lead to the ocean.

You might have heard the phrase ‘all rivers flow to the sea’ – often used to mean that different paths will all lead to the same end at some point, While it’s a pleasing idiom, it’s not geographically true. In fact, one of the longest rivers in the world never reaches the sea at all.

The Volga is the longest river in Europe, flowing through central and southern Russia. Its basin sprawls across two-fifths of the European part of Russia.

The river begins in the Valdai Hills as a tiny trickling spring, before turning into the Volga.

It winds for a whopping 3,531 kilometres through forests and steppes before emptying into the Caspian Sea which, rather misleadingly, is not a Sea at all, but a colossal lake.

The river is connected to five different seas via an intricate network of manmade canals which were built over the centuries, although the Caspian is its main and natural mouth.

The canal system allows ships to travel from the Volga to the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, the Baltic Sea and the White Sea.

The sprawling Volga Delta, where the river splits into more than 500 channels, is also a world-famous wildlife sanctuary.,

It is a spawning ground for the Beluga sturgeon, which means that the lower stretches of the Volga are the epicentre of wild black caviar – one of the most sought after and expensive delicacies in the world.

The river was also a lifeline during World War II, providing a lifeline for Russian troops during the Battle of Stalingrad.

The Soviet Army was pinned against its west bank, so all supplies had to be ferried across the mile-wide stretch of water under constant barrage from the German artillery.

As winter set in and the river began to freeze, it became too icy for boats to cross but not yet thick enough for trucks to drive on.

Russian forces were nearly starved of ammunition until it froze solid.

However, as the German army focused all its energy on fighting across the riverbank, the Soviets snuck across the eastern side of the river to launch a surprise attack and completely surrounded the German forces.

Dell’s management highlights persistent shortages, especially in DRAM and NAND, as limiting supply, with additional constraints in CPUs, optics, and other components. Supply issues are cited as the primary limiter to fulfilling record AI and infrastructure demand.

Aug. 26 (UPI) — Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to 48 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories on Wednesday, in settlements resolving lawsuits over the mental health risks its social media platforms pose to children as well as spearate privacy claims.

Court filings state that the settlements, pending judicial approval, include payments of $16.68 billion to 51 U.S. jurisdictions, more than $1 billion to Texas and another $459 million to 46 states, Puerto Rico and Northern Mariana Islands to resolve privacy claims tied to the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

The filings also state that Meta must implement safeguards on its platform for minors, including limits on daily use, blocking access at night, more parental tools, stricter age-assurance standards, the hiding of likes on posts and banning cosmetic-procedure filters, among other measures.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that his state may receive between $1.5 billion and $2.1 billion in the settlement.

“Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of difference for children and their families,” Bonta said in a statement. “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months.”

Meta said that 70% of the funds will be distributed over a 10-year period, with the remaining 30% to be released only after Alphabet-owned YouTube and ByteDance’s TikTok implement a one-hour dayily limit, night mode and age-assurance measures as well as each pay a matching $5.3 billion.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta said the structure was designed to enforce an industry-wide adoption of the measures it has agreed to and ensure teens receive the same level of protection across major social media platforms.

“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away,” C.J. Mahoney, chief legal officer at Meta, said in a statement.

As part of the settlement, all parties, including Meta, waive all rights to appeal the final judgment.

“The focus of this case was to protect our kids: stopping notifications and alerts at night and when they are in school, encouraging them to take breaks from social media, protecting them against harmful features,” Phil Weiser, Colorado attorney general, said in a statement.

The cases brought by U.S. states are among several across the globe investigating social media companies over the harms they pose to children. Elsewhere, countries, such as Australia, have implemented age restrictions and called for the end to addictive features that encourage compulsive use, such as endless scrolling.

Meta still faces additional lawsuits in the United States still. Several school districts and individuals have filed lawsuits against Meta and other social media platforms for contributing to mental health problems among children.

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — Nico Hansen finished with one save and had his third consecutive shutout to help the Colorado Rapids beat LAFC 1-0 Wednesday night.

The Rapids (9-10-1) have won three consecutive games, all by shutout, and four of five since the World Cup break.

LAFC (10-7-4) is winless in three straight for the first time this season.

The Rapids took a 1-0 lead in the 22nd minute on an own goal by Jeremy Ebobisse. Youssef Maziz played a free kick from the right side into the area that was redirected by Ebobisse off the back post and into the net.

Cabral Carter made his first start in MLS and finished with three saves.

LAFC and the Rapids played to a 0-0 tie in Los Angeles on April 22.

The Motion Picture Assn. has struck its first agreement with an artificial intelligence company, saying Monday that ByteDance has strengthened copyright guardrails into its AI video and image tools that drew legal threats from every major Hollywood studio in February.

ByteDance, a Chinese company, is the former majority owner of TikTok’s U.S. operations.

The MPA, the trade association that lobbies for major studios such as Disney, Netflix and Sony Pictures Entertainment, said it has had constructive engagement with ByteDance over the last several months to rein in Seedance, a text-to-video generation tool, and Seedream, which produces images using text commands.

“Today’s agreement illustrates our belief that copyright is a cornerstone of the film and television industry – and reinforces our commitment to protect creative content,” said MPA Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Rivkin.

MPA declined to share the specific guardrails in the agreement.

The agreement comes as some studios have expressed concerns about AI models training on their copyrighted material without permission or compensation. In February, MPA issued a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging Seedance 2.0 was trained on copyrighted material and generating unauthorized videos featuring characters such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and visuals replicating a scene from sci-fi series “Stranger Things” without studios’ permission. It was the first time the MPA had filed a cease-and-desist letter to a major AI firm.

“ByteDance is engaged in pervasive and widespread infringement of our members’ valuable intellectual property that it must stop immediately,” MPA’s global general counsel Karyn Temple wrote in a Feb. 20 letter to ByteDance’s global general counsel John Rogovin.

ByteDance in response said it was taking steps to strengthen its safeguards to prevent unauthorized use of IP or likeness.

Since then, ByteDance has released Seedream 5.0 Pro and Seedance 2.5, which reflect “ByteDance’s continued advances in IP protections,” the tech company and MPA said in a news release.

“ByteDance respects the intellectual property rights that underpin creative industries around the world, and we believe responsible innovation in AI goes hand in hand with meaningful protections for rightsholders,” ByteDance’s Rogovin said in the statement.

Seedance has emerged as a leader in AI tools among some indie filmmakers, who say it is more cost-effective than other options. AI tech companies are eager to find ways to partner with studios to make their tools better, but are also facing competition from rivals to gain more customers as quickly as possible. That has caused some companies to quickly launch their AI products without first putting in more mechanisms to prevent images from appearing without copyright holders’ permission.

Since records began, only four days have been hotter than today in the UK.

The highest temperature ever recorded was on 19 July 2022 when temperatures at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, reached 40.3C. That marked the first and only day that readings above 40C have been seen in the UK.

Before that, the record was 38.7C at Cambridge Botanic Gardens on 25 July 2019.

Faversham in Kent reached 38.5C on 10 August 2003, while on 18 July 2022 a temperature of 38.2C occurred at Pitsford, Northamptonshire.

Amber warnings for “extreme heat” are in place for a swathe of England from London to Sheffield, parts of Cheshire and Greater Manchester, into Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in the South West and Shropshire and Herefordshire in the west.

Temperatures were also forecast reach 35C in Wales, where a drought has been declared across the whole country.

Meanwhile, a yellow thunderstorm warning is in place for Northern Ireland until 06:00 on Friday, while rain is forecast for much of Scotland.

In England, the extreme heat in this heatwave is now believed to have peaked, with cooler temperatures of 30-34C expected for the Midlands, East Anglia and much of southern England by Friday, ceding to 26C by Sunday.

More than 27 million people are facing water use restrictions, including hosepipe bans.

A vast oil spill from a leaking tanker reached Oman’s coastline on Wednesday, its environment agency said.

This oil spill threatens to become one of the world’s worst in years after spreading largely unchecked for several weeks, experts say.

On Monday, Oman said it was working to contain the spill, which had by then affected roughly 390 square kilometres (150sq miles), according to analysis by the country’s environment agency.

The slick now covers an area of more than 2,000sq km (770sq miles), said John Amos, an oil spill specialist who reviewed satellite imagery obtained by Reuters. It could affect about 40km (25 miles) of coast near Ras Madraka, as well as Masirah Island, Oman’s Environment Authority said.

Here’s what we know.

What happened?

Oil has been leaking from the tanker Caroline Bezengi since it ran aground about 22 nautical miles (41km) from the Omani coastal town of Sharbithat some time after the crew reported a suspected explosion on June 8. It had been en route from Russia to India.

Reuters reported that the tanker was carrying an estimated 800,000 barrels of sanctioned oil and that it ran aground on June 30.

An investigation by the news agency AFP found that the ship had been stranded for several weeks near Oman’s al-Qibliyyah Island.

In the meantime, the oil has been spreading towards Oman’s coastline.

The Oman News Agency (ONA) quoted the country’s environment authority saying that “today’s monitoring results showed that some beaches in the Ras Madrakah area were affected by oil pollution”.

The Indian Ocean town sits about 200km (125 miles) from al-Qibliyyah.

The slick is now concentrated around the Hallaniyat Archipelago off the southern coast, where a marine reserve was established last year to protect sensitive ecosystems home to diverse marine life, including rare sea turtles.

On Wednesday, the ONA reported that “a coastal stretch of up to 40 km in the [Ras Madrakah] area is expected to be affected”.

The southern beaches of Masirah Island, which lies 15km (nine miles) off the coast of Oman, could be contaminated “in the coming hours”, affecting a 10-20km (six-to-12-mile) stretch of coastline, it said.

An unnamed spokesperson for the United Nations International Maritime Organization said it was “closely monitoring” the leakage.

How did this happen?

British maritime security company Vanguard told AFP that the tanker had suffered “explosions” in early June as it sailed off the coast of Yemen, causing water to enter several sections of the vessel. It ran aground off the coast of Oman some time after this.

There has been no official explanation for the explosions and no party has claimed an attack. However, the vessel was navigating two separate wars on its journey from Russia to India. Tankers have been frequently targeted in the Gulf region in recent months as the US war on Iran has continued.

In April, the Caroline Bezengi sailed from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, a flashpoint in the Russia-Ukraine war.

It is believed to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to circumvent Western sanctions on its oil exports. It last sailed under a Cameroonian flag.

Rentoor Shipmanagement and Villar Shipmanagement, both based in China, are registered as the ship’s owner and operator, respectively, according to the open-source database OpenSanctions.

Russia’s shadow fleet includes ageing vessels that have often been criticised for poor maintenance, lack of insurance and lacklustre safety standards.

Ukraine has previously carried out assaults on shadow fleet vessels believed to be carrying Russian oil.

The Caroline Bezengi then passed through the Suez Canal at the end of May, ship-tracking data shows, before sailing through the Red Sea and past Yemen, where the Iran-aligned Houthi fighters have entered a wider regional war between the United States, Israel and Iran and are targeting Saudi Arabia-flagged ships.

What damage could the oil spill cause?

Last week, advocacy group Greenpeace warned that the spill was on the verge of causing an “environmental disaster”.

Christopher D’Elia, a specialist in oil spills and a professor emeritus at Louisiana State University in the United States, told Al Jazeera the estimated 800,000 barrels of crude on board the Caroline Bezengi would amount to a “fairly large spill”.

“This spill raises a lot of issues,” D’Elia told Al Jazeera.

“These illegal tankers don’t comply with the ‘polluter pays’ principle that is the basis for how the US and other developed nations regulate spills,” D’Elia said.

“The ‘responsible party’ must finance the cleanup in the US. In this case, there is no responsible party.”

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported on Wednesday that a separate oil spill in the Strait of Hormuz had reached the island of Qeshm, affecting beaches and an environmentally sensitive mangrove forest.

State-run news agency IRNA said the slick had affected areas on Qeshm’s southern coast, as well as parts of the smaller neighbouring island of Hengam.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said pollution had been observed at three locations and on the sea surface, adding that its source seemed to be a “foreign bulk carrier”, without specifying the name of the ship.

The risk of oil spills in the Gulf has risen sharply because of strikes on tankers during the five-month US-Iran war. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has reported 65 incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and across the Middle East since the beginning of March.

“Any party that benefits from commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is legally and morally obligated to take action to compensate for and remedy the environmental damage caused to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman,” he said.