A 3,800-year-old citadel of the Caral civilisation – one of the world’s oldest – has reopened for visitors in Peru after eight years of comprehensive restoration and research.
Researchers have identified the Penico archaeological site as a vital trading centre that connected early Pacific coastal communities with those in the Andes and Amazon regions.
Located in the Supe Valley, about 180km (110 miles) north of Lima and only 19km (12 miles) from the Pacific Ocean, Penico was an unremarkable hilly landscape until excavations commenced in 2017.
Archaeologists believe the site could provide crucial information about the enigmatic collapse of the Caral civilisation, which flourished between 3,000 and 1,800 BC.
The opening ceremony featured regional artists playing pututus – traditional shell trumpets – as part of an ancient ritual honouring Pachamama, Mother Earth, with ceremonial offerings of agricultural products, coca leaves, and local beverages.
“Penico was an organised urban centre devoted to agriculture and trade between the coast, the mountains and the forest,” archaeologist Ruth Shady, who leads research at the site, told the AFP news agency. She said the settlement dates to between 1,800 and 1,500 BC.
The site demonstrates sophisticated planning, strategically built on a geological terrace 600 metres (2,000ft) above sea level and parallel to a river to avoid flooding.
Research by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture has uncovered 18 distinct structures, including public buildings and residential complexes. Scholars believe Penico was built during the same period as the earliest civilisations in the Middle East and Asia.
According to Shady, researchers hope the site will shed light on the crisis they believe hastened the Caral civilisation’s decline. This crisis, she explained, was linked to climate change that caused droughts and disrupted agricultural activities throughout the region.
“We want to understand how the Caral civilisation formed and developed over time, and how it came to be in crisis as a result of climate change,” she said.
The Nasser hospital in southern Gaza has said 24 people have been killed near an aid distribution site.
Palestinians who were present at the site said Israeli troops opened fire as people were trying to access food on Saturday.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said there were “no known injured individuals” from IDF fire near the site.
Separately, an Israeli military official said warning shots were fired to disperse people who the IDF believed were a threat.
The claims by both sides have not been independently verified. Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza.
Footage seen by the BBC later on Saturday showed what appeared to be a number of body bags at Nasser hospital’s courtyard surrounded by nurses and people in blood-stained clothes.
In another video, a man said people were waiting to get aid when they came under targeted fire for five minutes. A paramedic accused Israeli troops of killing in cold blood.
The videos have not been verified by the BBC.
Reuters said it had spoken to witnesses who described people being shot in the head and torso. The news agency also reported seeing bodies wrapped in white shrouds at Nasser hospital.
There have been almost daily reports of people being killed by Israeli fire while seeking food in Gaza.
Israel imposed a total blockade of aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip in March, and later resumed its military offensive against Hamas, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on the Palestinian armed group to release Israeli hostages.
Although the blockade was partially eased in late May, amid warnings of a looming famine from global experts, there are still severe shortages of food, as well as medicine and fuel.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, says there are thousands of malnourished children across the territory, with more cases detected every day.
In addition to allowing in some UN aid lorries, Israel and the US set up a new aid distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), saying they wanted to prevent Hamas from stealing aid.
On Friday, the UN human rights office said that it had so far recorded 798 aid-related killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the GHF’s sites, which are operated by US private security contractors and located inside military zones in southern and central Gaza.
The other 183 killings were recorded near UN and other aid convoys.
The Israeli military said it recognised there had been incidents in which civilians had been harmed and that it was working to minimise “possible friction between the population and the [Israeli] forces as much as possible”.
The GHF accused the UN of using “false and misleading” statistics from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Earlier this month, a former security contractor for the GHF told the BBC he witnessed colleagues opening fire several times on hungry Palestinians who had posed no threat. The GHF said the allegations were categorically false.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 57,823 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
At least 79 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Israeli attacks across Gaza, with dozens of children dying from malnutrition during Israel’s punishing months-long blockade, as ceasefire talks reportedly stall.
Among the victims on Saturday, 14 were killed in Gaza City, four of them in an Israeli strike on a residence on Jaffa Street in the Tuffah area, which injured 10 others.
At least 30 aid seekers were killed by Israeli army fire north of Rafah, southern Gaza, near the one operating GHF site, which rights groups and the United Nations have slammed as “human slaughterhouses” and “death traps”.
According to Al Jazeera Mubasher, Israeli forces fired directly at Palestinians in front of the aid distribution centre in the al-Shakoush area of Rafah.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli army opened fire indiscriminately on a large crowd during one of the attacks.
“Many desperate families in the north have been making dangerous journeys all the way to the south to reach the only operating distribution centre in Rafah,” he said.
“Many of the bodies are still on the ground,” Mahmoud said, adding that those who were wounded in the attack have been transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Amid relentless daily carnage rained upon starving aid seekers and the ongoing Israeli blockade, Gaza’s Government Media Office said 67 children have now died due to malnutrition, and 650,000 children under the age of five are at “real and immediate risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks”.
“Over the past three days, we have recorded dozens of deaths due to shortages of food and essential medical supplies, in an extremely cruel humanitarian situation,” the statement read.
“This shocking reality reflects the scale of the unprecedented humanitarian tragedy in Gaza,” the statement added.
Israel is engineering a “cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday, as the world body reported that since May, when GHF began its operations, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
“Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.
Mass displacement, expulsion ‘illegal and immoral’
As the Israeli military announced on Saturday that its forces attacked Gaza 250 times in the last 48 hours, Israeli officials have continued to push a plan to forcibly displace and eventually expel Palestinians.
Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” which will house 2.1 million Palestinians on the rubble of parts of the city of Rafah, which has been razed to the ground.
But Palestinians in Gaza have rejected the plan and reiterated that they would not leave the enclave. Rights groups, international organisations and several nations have slammed it as laying the ground for “ethnic cleansing”, the forcible removal of a population from its homeland.
Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the majority of Israelis are “really appalled” by Katz’s plan, which would be “illegal and immoral”.
“Anybody who will participate in this disgusting project will be involved in war crimes,” Elder said.
The message underlying the plan, he said, is that “there can’t be two people between the river and the sea, and those who deserve to have a state are only the Jewish people.”
As Israel announces its intention to force the population of Gaza into Rafah, Middle East professor at the University of Turin, Lorenzo Kamel, told Al Jazeera that the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and their concentration in restricted areas is nothing new.
In 1948, 77 years ago to this day, 70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the village of Lydda during what became known as the “march of death”.
“Many of them ended up in the Gaza Strip,” Kamel said, adding that the Israeli authorities have been forcing Palestinians into spaces similar to concentration camps for decades.
“This is not something new, but it has accelerated in the past months,” he said. The plan to gather the Gaza population on the ruins of Rafah is therefore “nothing but another camp in preparation for the deportation from the Gaza Strip”.
Ceasefire talks hang in the balance
Negotiations taking place in Qatar to cement a truce are stalling over the extent of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the Strip, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported on Saturday.
The indirect talks are expected to continue, despite the latest obstacles in clinching a deal based on a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire.
A Palestinian source said Hamas has not accepted the withdrawal maps which Israel has proposed, as they would leave about 40 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, including all of Rafah and further territories in northern and eastern Gaza.
Matters regarding the full and free flow of aid to a starving population, and guarantees, were also presenting a challenge.
Two Israeli sources said Hamas wants Israel to retreat to lines it held in a previous ceasefire, before it renewed its offensive in March.
Delegations from Israel and Hamas have been in Qatar since Sunday in a renewed push for an agreement.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill last year that could have led to reparations for Mexican American families forced from their homes in Chavez Ravine in the 1950s, few knew the Dodgers had weighed in.
Newsom’s explanation was brief. He supported making amends for the injustice that occurred when Los Angeles officials uprooted three communities, seizing land for a housing project that would ultimately fall through before selling it to the Dodgers to enable the team’s move from Brooklyn. But the governor didn’t like that the bill would create a state-level task force rather than a local commission.
“A task force to study the events that occurred should be established at the local level,” Newsom wrote.
But previously unreported records show that the Dodgers lobbied state officials on the bill — as did the baseball team’s previous owner, Frank McCourt, who still shares ownership of the Dodger Stadium parking lots. McCourt’s lobbyists at the time included a firm led by Newsom’s friend Jason Kinney, whose French Laundry birthday dinner Newsom infamously attended at the height of the pandemic.
The records show that the Dodgers and McCourt lobbied on Assembly Bill 1950 — but not what side they took, if any. Did they oppose the legislation? And if so, did that lead to Newsom’s veto? It’s hard to know, because neither the Dodgers nor McCourt responded to my requests for comment.
As for Newsom, a spokesperson told me the governor’s office wasn’t lobbied on the bill — despite McCourt’s real estate company reporting otherwise.
Whatever actually happened, the Dodgers’ involvement raises questions about what went on behind the scenes. The public deserves answers — especially now that President Trump’s immigration raids have placed the team in the political spotlight, forcing its owners to grapple with the political and cultural power they wield.
For nearly two weeks after federal agents began rounding up brown-skinned people across the region, the team refused to comment, despite its more-than-40%-Latino fan base. For many fans, the silence felt like a betrayal — particularly after the team’s recent visit with Trump. A Dodgers employee even told Latina musician Nezza not to sign the National Anthem in Spanish before a game. (She did it anyway.)
I’ll get back to the ICE raids and reparations bill shortly. But first, let’s note that this is hardly the first time that the Dodgers have hesitated to stand for social justice — despite being the franchise of Jackie Robinson.
Since last summer, 28,000 people have signed a petition urging the team to end its relationship with oil company Phillips 66, which advertises its 76 brand gasoline throughout Dodger Stadium. State officials have accused the oil giant of participating in a “decades-long campaign” to cover up the climate crisis — a crisis that affects everybody but is especially harmful to low-income families and people of color, including L.A.’s Latino communities.
A 76 gasoline ad above the right-field scoreboard at Dodger Stadium, seen during a July 4 game against the Astros.
(Kevork Djansezian / Los Angeles Times)
In March, California Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) called on the Dodgers to drop Phillips 66 as a sponsor. In a letter to controlling owner Mark Walter, she pointed out that Angelenos breathe some of the nation’s most polluted air. She also alluded to the link between fossil fuels and more devastating wildfires.
“For decades, the Dodgers have been ahead of the curve. On issues from banning cigarette ads to making history by signing Jackie Robinson, this team has occupied a unique place in American sports,” Gonzalez wrote.
How have the Dodgers responded? At least publicly, they haven’t. Every time I’ve written about Phillips 66, they’ve declined to respond. I suspect they’re hoping the whole issue will just go away.
News flash: It’s not going away. Especially after the ICE raids.
To understand the connection between immigration and environmental justice, I’d recommend listening to Alicia Rivera. She’s an organizer with Communities for a Better Environment, and she’s spoken at rallies outside Dodger Stadium protesting Phillips 66. Even before Trump launched his harsh anti-immigrant crackdown last month, she was explaining how deportations and dirty air are part of the same system of injustices.
As drivers entered the Dodger Stadium parking lots before a game in May, she talked about her young grandson, and her fears over what kind of world he would inherit: How much worse would wildfires get? Would fossil-fueled weather disasters in other countries prompt even more refugees to flee to the U.S.?
“Workers are being detained, arrested in the middle of the street, people who don’t even identify themselves are deporting them. And these oil companies have been complicit in denying us to know the truth, paying millions to pay so-called scientists to deny that their products have caused climate change,” Rivera said.
When I asked Rivera if dumping 76 would be a worthy response to the ICE raids — a way for the Dodgers to show that they care about Latino fans — she had a simple answer: “Of course. That would be a major breakthrough.”
“I see a consistent pattern of disregard for the well-being of the people they are profiting from,” she said.
Community organizer Alicia Rivera speaks at a rally outside Dodger Stadium on Sept. 22.
(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)
That pattern arguably goes back decades.
The Chavez Ravine bill wouldn’t have forced the Dodgers to pay a cent to displaced families or their descendants; all it would have done is create a task force to study reparations. But the team has long shied away from so much as discussing the land’s grim backstory.
Only five entities paid lobbyists to weigh in on AB 1950, per an open-source database that compiles state records. Two of them — Fieldstead and Co. and Inclusive Action for the City — went on record supporting the legislation. I confirmed that a third group, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, was also in support.
Only the Dodgers and McCourt’s real estate company, McCourt Partners, haven’t publicly taken a stance.
The Dodgers lobbied the Legislature on AB 1950, while McCourt lobbied both the Legislature and the governor’s office, the records show.
Again, it’s tough to know what happened behind the scenes. Lawmakers passed the bill overwhelmingly, but only after a Senate committee nixed plans for a local task force — exactly what Newsom claimed he wanted.
As far as Wendy Carrillo is concerned, though, the lobbying records speak for themselves.
Carrillo was the state Assembly member, no longer in office, who wrote AB 1950. When I told her what I’d learned, she was outraged. She felt the records confirmed her suspicion that the Dodgers helped kill the bill.
She accused the team of “being disconnected from the very fan base that they have.”
“That same criticism can be made toward their visit to Trump at the White House, and their lack of understanding this moment in Los Angeles amid the growing ICE raids,” Carrillo said.
Dodgers owner Mark Walter looks on as President Trump speaks at the White House in April. The team visited Washington, D.C., to celebrate its 2024 World Series championship.
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Indeed, many fans are far from satisfied with the team’s response to Trump’s cruelty. Which is no surprise, given that the Dodgers still seem eager to avoid angering Trump. Team president Stan Kasten was maddeningly vague in his statement touting the $1 million for immigrants, describing the raids as “what’s happening in Los Angeles” and acknowledging only that said happenings have “reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people.”
In contrast, L.A. women’s soccer team Angel City spoke up immediately about the “fear and uncertainty” created by the raids. Its players wore “Immigrant City Football Club” shirts that declared, “Los Angeles is for everyone.”
To Carrillo, the Dodgers’ latest failure to show true solidarity with its Latino fan base is another manifestation of the team’s original sin — its decades-long refusal to acknowledge the Mexican American communities of Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde, which were bulldozed to make way for Dodger Stadium.
Carrillo, who’s running for state Senate in a district that would include Dodger Stadium, wants Walter and his co-owners — who include basketball legend Magic Johnson and tennis star Billie Jean King — to support a memorial for displaced Chavez Ravine families. And to offer more vocal support for persecuted immigrants today.
The team said its $1 million in donations would be followed by “additional announcements.” So far, crickets.
Owning up to Chavez Ravine’s sordid history would be a great step. So would getting rid of the 76 ads.
Both actions would infuriate the MAGA crowd — but so would just about anything the Dodgers might do in response to the ICE raids. In fact, the backlash has already started. A group co-founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, has filed a civil rights complaint against the Dodgers.
Whatever they do next, the Dodgers will make some enemies. Just like they did when they signed Jackie Robinson and broke baseball’s color barrier. The only question is whether they’ll once again stand for justice.
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.
July 7 (UPI) — Authorities in northern California have confirmed the recovery of the bodies of seven people who had been reported missing following last week’s explosion of a warehouse storing fireworks near Sacramento.
“In accordance with standard procedure and out of respect for the families, the identities of the deceased will be withheld until formal identification is complete and next of kin have been notified,” Yolo County said in a statement Sunday.
The fireworks warehouse, located near County Roads 23 and 86A in the Esparto area of Yolo County, exploded Tuesday at about 5:50 p.m. following a fire that erupted on the compound.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
On Sunday, authorities executed a controlled explosion at the site “to safely remove hazardous materials identified at the scene,” Yolo County said in a statement.
The explosion was scheduled to occur between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. PDT.
“Residents may hear loud noises or notice smoke and odors in the area during this time,” the county said. “This is expected and part of the controlled process … There is no immediate threat to public safety, and all necessary safety protocols are in place.”
Authorities had confirmed on Friday that remains of at least some of the seven people reported unaccounted for had been found.
The fire and the ensuing explosion resulted in the Oakdale Fire, which burned 78 acres before it was 100% contained on Sunday, according to Cal Fire.
Netflix has added the romantic drama We Live In Time to trtheir streaming platform and viewers are not only obsessed by it but revealed they can’t stop ‘sobbing’
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s chemistry on screen has been praised by viewers
Netflix has once again done what is does best by adding gripping drama to its streaming platform. And this time, the romantic drama We Live In Time has gripped the nation by storm.
The British based TV show, starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, follows the couple’s love story over a decade.
Alumut, played by Florence, who is a chef and former figure skater accidentally hits and knocks over Tobias, played by Andrew, with her car.
Viewers are then taken on their love journey as the pair navigate their way through ten years of different points in their lives.
The film was first released in cinemas across the nation in January this year before landing on Netflix. But it’s already fast become a huge hit among subscribers.
The official plot reads: “Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) are brought together in a surprise encounter that changes their lives. !”
Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh star in new Netflix romantic drama(Image: Peter Mountain)
It adds: “As they embark on a path challenged by the limits of time, they learn to cherish each moment of the unconventional route their love story has taken, in filmmaker John Crowley’s decade-spanning, deeply moving romance.”
And viewers are loving it. One fan took to X and said that she could not sobbing after watching the highly acclaimed drama.
The fan said: “Finally watched we live in time and I’m so grateful I didn’t watch in the cinema I’ve not stopped sobbing.”
But that fan is by no means the only one. According to reports, the drama has received 79% on film website Rotten Tomatoes.
Those reviewing the drama on the site praised the believable chemistry between both lead characters.
After the show’s debut at at the Toronto Film Festival last year, the Guardian awarded it four stars and described it as “irresistible” and a “smart and sensitive crowd pleaser.”
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s chemistry on screen has been praised by viewers(Image: Peter Mountain)
It then added: “It’s such a joy to watch two such assured and natural performers allowed the room to exercise both movie star and actor muscles as well as showcase their ease with both comedy and drama.”
The review went on to add: “Their chemistry is just so electric that it would be hard to imagine how any of it could work quite so well without them.”
And in an interview with Radio Times, the director, John Crowley was asked about the chemistry between the two lead stars.
He explained: “I had an instinct that the two of them would work well together, and that’s not based on anything. That’s just a hunch, right? So it’s very unscientific.”
July 4 (UPI) — The remains of at least some of the seven people missing at the site of Tuesday’s deadly fireworks warehouse explosion in Yolo County, Calif., have been found, authorities said.
Personnel with the Yolo County Coroner’s Division accessed the site on Thursday and located human remains, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office announced on Friday.
“Out of respect for the families, the identities of the deceased will not be released publicly until official identification has been made and the next of kin have been formally notified,” the YCSO announced.
Coroner’s office staff have contacted the families of the seven people who are missing and will continue to provide them with updates.
The search for missing victims began Thursday afternoon, and stretchers containing what appeared to be human remains were seen outside the site, KCRA reported.
The fireworks warehouse site is located near county roads 23 and 86A in the Esparto area of Yolo County.
The facility caught fire at 5:50 p.m. PDT on Tuesday and produced a plume of black smoke that could be seen for miles before triggering multiple explosions.
Officials with the Esparto Fire Protection District have asked Cal Fire arson and bomb investigators to lead the investigation into the explosion’s cause.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also has some of its investigators at the site.
Cal Fire officials on Wednesday announced seven were missing but did not begin searching for survivors until the site was deemed safe on Thursday.
The California Fire Marshal’s office and other agencies delayed the search due to the potentially dangerous chemicals and unignited fireworks that remained after the explosion.
Yolo County is located directly west of Sacramento in northern California, and the warehouse location is 36 miles northwest of the city.
Masked federal agents are snatching up immigrants. It’s been less than two weeks since the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. President Trump’s long-threatened tariffs could finally kick in next week.
Given all that, most people probably aren’t focused on climate change.
But they should be. Because Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the Senate this week and was poised to clear the House early Thursday, would do more than gut Medicaid, cut student loan relief and increase funding for deportations. It would kill federal support for solar and wind power, undoing President Biden’s historic climate law and punishing Americans with deadlier air, more lethal heat waves and higher electric bills.
I’m usually a climate optimist. But it’s hard to find reasons for hope right now.
The Senate bill would eliminate tax credits for solar and wind farms that don’t come online by the end of 2027 — a brutal deadline for projects that take years to permit, finance and construct. That would slam the brakes on new development and also jeopardize hundreds of projects already in the works — not only solar and wind farms, but also factories to build solar panels, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries and other clean energy technologies.
Solar and wind farms that start construction by June 2026 would get tax credits no matter when they come online, a last-minute concession to the handful of Republican senators with a modicum of sense.
As if needing to counterbalance that concession, Republican leaders added lucrative tax credits for metallurgical coal, an incredibly dirty fossil fuel that’s mostly shipped to China and other countries to make steel.
The bill would also end tax credits for rooftop solar, electric vehicles and energy-efficient home upgrades — while reducing royalty rates for coal mined on public lands, and requiring more oil and gas leasing on those lands.
“The fossil fuel industry helped pay for this government, and now they’re getting their reward,” Bill McKibben, the preeminent climate author and activist, wrote in his newsletter.
That’s part of the explanation. Another part, I think, is that most voters aren’t paying close attention.
Polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Americans want cleaner energy, and climate action writ large. But polls also show that climate ranks low as a priority for most Americans.
Wind turbines in the California desert, seen from Highway 58.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
So when it comes time for Trump and his allies to pay for their deficit-ballooning tax cuts — which mostly benefit the rich — clean energy is an easy target. They can tell outrageous lies about solar and wind being unreliable and expensive, and many people will either believe them or not care enough to seek out the truth.
Indeed, Trump wrote on social media last month that renewable energy tax credits are a “giant SCAM.” He claimed that wind turbines “and the rest of this ‘JUNK’” are “10 times more costly than any other energy.”
That’s not even remotely true. Authoritative sources, including the investment bank Lazard, report that solar and wind are America’s cheapest sources of new electricity, even without tax credits. Those low costs help explain why solar, wind and batteries made up 94% of new power capacity in the U.S. last year. Even in Texas, they’re booming.
For now, at least. John Ketchum, president of Florida-based NextEra Energy, warned the Trump administration in March that shelving renewables and battery storage would “force electricity prices to the moon.”
Lo and behold, research firm Energy Innovation estimates the Senate bill would cause average household energy costs to increase $130 annually by 2030. The firm also predicts 760,000 lost jobs by 2030.
“Families will face higher electric bills, factories will shut down, Americans will lose their jobs, and our electric grid will grow weaker,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Assn.
The point about the grid growing weaker is key. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, one of three Republicans to vote against the bill, mentioned a global turbine shortage that’s slowing the construction of gas-fired power plants. He stated plainly what energy executives know: that renewables and batteries are needed for a reliable grid.
“What you have done is create a blip in power service,” Tillis told his colleagues.
For one thing, solar and wind projects require big upfront investments, after which the fuel, be it sun or wind, is free. Gas plants are often less expensive to build, but they can subject consumers to huge utility bill swings when fuel costs soar — during geopolitical turmoil, for instance, or during climate-fueled weather disasters.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Eland solar and storage plant, located in Kern County, generates electricity for a record-low price.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Also relevant: Fossil fuel subsidies are so deeply entrenched in the U.S. tax code that they rarely make news. Coal, oil and gas benefit from tens of billions of dollars in subsidies every year, by some estimates.
And that’s without accounting for the bigger wildfires, harsher droughts, stronger storms, hotter heat waves and other harms of fossil fuel combustion, including air pollution that kills millions of people worldwide each year. Oil, gas and coal companies don’t pay those costs. Taxpayers do.
So, yes, solar and wind still need a leg up. But even under Biden’s climate law, the U.S. hasn’t been reducing heat-trapping emissions enough to help keep global warming to less-than-catastrophic levels.
And now, under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the U.S. will be moving backward instead of forward.
So if you care about the climate crisis, what can you do?
I wish I could say California was doubling down on climate leadership, like it did during Trump’s first term. Sadly, Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t prioritized clean energy as he readies a possible presidential run. Again and again, he and his appointees have yielded to the fossil fuel industry and its allies — on plastics recycling, oil refinery profits, emissions disclosures and more.
Other Golden State leaders are doing no better. This week, lawmakers passed an awful law pushed by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) that will pause new energy efficiency rules for homes until 2031. Meanwhile, a potentially transformative “climate superfund” bill — which would charge fossil fuel companies for their pollution and use the money to help Californians cope with climate disasters — is languishing in Sacramento.
The landscape is bleak. But we’re not doomed.
The planet will almost certainly warm beyond an internationally agreed upon target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But 2 degrees is a lot better than 2.5 degrees, and way better than 3 degrees. Climate change isn’t a game we win or lose. Every bit of avoided warming means safer, healthier lives for more people.
Yes, the U.S. is a climate train wreck right now. But global warming is just like immigration or healthcare: Nothing will change if most of us do nothing. So don’t tune out. Don’t surrender to despair. Bring up climate when you talk to your friends and call your representatives. Make protest signs about it. Let it guide your vote.
As McKibben wrote: “Our job from here on out … is to make ourselves heard.”
“It may not work tomorrow. It may not work until we’ve gotten more decent people into office. But it’s our job, and not to be shirked,” he wrote. “And in some sad way it’s an honor: We’re the people who get to make the desperate stand for a country and a planet that works.”
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.
A coalition of groups including environmental activists and Native Americans advocating for their ancestral homelands converged outside an airstrip in the Florida Everglades on Saturday to protest the imminent construction of an immigrant detention center.
Hundreds of protesters lined part of U.S. Highway 41 that slices through the marshy Everglades — also known as Tamiami Trail — as dump trucks hauling materials lumbered into the airfield. Cars passing by honked in support as protesters waved signs calling for the protection of the expansive preserve that is home to a few Native tribes and several endangered animal species.
Christopher McVoy, an ecologist, said he saw a steady stream of trucks entering the site while he protested for hours. Environmental degradation was a big reason why he came out Saturday. But as a south Florida city commissioner, he said concerns over immigration raids in his city also fueled his opposition.
“People I know are in tears, and I wasn’t far from it,” he said.
Florida officials have forged ahead over the last week in constructing the compound dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” within the Everglades’ humid swamplands.
The government fast-tracked the project under emergency powers from an executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis that addresses what he casts as a crisis of illegal immigration. That order lets the state sidestep certain purchasing laws and is why construction has continued despite objections from Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and local activists.
The facility will have temporary structures such as heavy-duty tents and trailers to house detained immigrants. The state estimates that by early July, it will have 5,000 immigration detention beds in operation.
The compound’s proponents have said its location in the Florida wetlands — teeming with alligators, invasive Burmese pythons and other reptiles — makes it an ideal spot for immigration detention.
“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Under DeSantis, Florida has made an aggressive push for immigration enforcement and has been supportive of the federal government’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has backed Alligator Alcatraz, which Secretary Kristi Noem said will be partly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Native American leaders in the region have seen the construction as an encroachment onto their sacred homelands, which prompted Saturday’s protest. In Big Cypress National Preserve, where the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport is located, 15 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages remain, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites.
Others have raised human rights concerns over what they condemn as the inhumane housing of immigrants. Worries about environmental effects have also been at the forefront, as groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Friends of the Everglades filed a lawsuit Friday to halt the detention center plans.
“The Everglades is a vast, interconnected system of waterways and wetlands, and what happens in one area can have damaging impacts downstream,” Friends of the Everglades executive director Eve Samples said. “So it’s really important that we have a clear sense of any wetland impacts happening in the site.”
Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis spokesperson, said Friday in response to the litigation that the facility was a “necessary staging operation for mass deportations located at a preexisting airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment.”
Until the site undergoes a comprehensive environmental review and public comment is sought, the environmental groups say construction should pause. The facility’s speedy establishment is “damning evidence” that state and federal agencies hope it will be “too late” to reverse their actions if they are ordered by a court to do so, said Elise Bennett, a Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney working on the case.
The potential environmental hazards also bleed into other aspects of Everglades life, including a robust tourism industry where hikers walk trails and explore the marshes on airboats, said Floridians for Public Lands founder Jessica Namath, who attended the protest. To place an immigration detention center there makes the area unwelcoming to visitors and feeds into the misconception that the space is in “the middle of nowhere,” she said.
“Everybody out here sees the exhaust fumes, sees the oil slicks on the road, you know, they hear the sound and the noise pollution. You can imagine what it looks like at nighttime, and we’re in an international dark sky area,” Namath said. “It’s very frustrating because, again, there’s such disconnect for politicians.”
DUBAI — President Trump said on Friday that he expects Iran to open itself to international inspection to verify that it doesn’t restart its nuclear program.
Asked during a White House news conference if he would demand during expected talks with Iran that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, or some other organization be authorized to conduct inspections, Trump responded that the Islamic Republic would have to cooperate with the group “or somebody that we respect, including ourselves.”
Earlier, Iran’s top diplomat said that the possibility of new negotiations with the United States on his country’s nuclear program has been “complicated” by the American attack on three of the sites, which he conceded caused “serious damage.”
The U.S. was one of the parties to the 2015 nuclear deal in which Iran agreed to limits on its uranium enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief and other benefits.
Nuclear talks
That deal unraveled after Trump unilaterally pulled out the U.S. during his first term. Trump has suggested he’s interested in new talks with Iran and said the two sides would meet next week.
In an interview on Iranian state television broadcast late Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left open the possibility that his country would again enter talks on its nuclear program, but suggested it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
“No agreement has been made for resuming the negotiations,” he said. “No time has been set, no promise has been made, and we haven’t even talked about restarting the talks.”
The American decision to intervene militarily “made it more complicated and more difficult” for talks on Iran’s nuclear program, Araghchi said.
Friday prayers
Many imams, during Friday prayers, stressed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s message from Thursday that the war had been a victory for Iran.
Cleric Hamzeh Khalili, who is also the deputy chief justice of Iran, vowed during a prayer service in Tehran that the courts would prosecute people accused of spying for Israel “in a special way.”
During the war with Israel, Iran hanged several people whom it already had in custody on espionage charges, sparking fears from activists that it could conduct a wave of executions after the conflict ended. Authorities reportedly have detained dozens in various cities on the charge of cooperating with Israel.
Israel relentlessly attacked Iran beginning on June 13, targeting its nuclear sites, defense systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists.
In 12 days of strikes, Israel said that it killed around 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, while hitting eight nuclear-related facilities and more than 720 military infrastructure sites. More than 1,000 people were killed, including at least 417 civilians, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Activists group.
Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted, but those that got through caused damage in many areas and killed 28 people.
Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Friday that in some areas, it had exceeded its operational goals, but needed to remain vigilant.
“We are under no illusion, the enemy has not changed its intentions,” he said.
The U.S. stepped in on Sunday to hit three of Iran’s nuclear sites with bunker busters dropped by B-2 bombers — explosives designed to penetrate deep into the ground to damage the heavily fortified targets. Iran, in retaliation, fired missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar on Monday, but caused no known casualties.
Trump and Khamenei claims
Trump said that the American attacks “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. However, Khamenei on Thursday accused the U.S. president of exaggerating the damage, saying the strikes didn’t “achieve anything significant.”
In response, Trump told reporters Friday that the sites were “bombed to hell.” He even directed a message to the supreme leader: “Look, you’re a man of great faith. A man who’s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth. You got beat to hell.”
A senior Israeli military official said Friday that their intelligence shows that Israel’s strikes on various targets neutralized Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to 90% for “a prolonged period.” It was unclear whether that contradicted a preliminary U.S. report that suggested the program had been set back months.
There has been speculation that Iran moved much of its highly-enriched uranium before the strikes, something that it told the IAEA that it planned to do.
Even if that turns out to be true, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told Radio France International that the damage done to the Fordo site, which was built into a mountain, “is very, very, very considerable.”
Among other things, he said, centrifuges are “quite precise machines,” and it’s “not possible” that the concussion from multiple 30,000-pound bombs wouldn’t have caused “important physical damage.”
“These centrifuges are no longer operational,” he said.
Araghchi himself acknowledged “the level of damage is high, and it’s serious damage.”
He added that Iran hadn’t yet decided whether to allow in IAEA inspectors to assess the damage, but they would be kept out “for the time being.”
Rising and Amiri write for the Associated Press. AP writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Julia Frankel and Sam Mednick in Jerusalem contributed to this story.
No pop artist today has a more tangled relationship to a venue than the Weeknd has with SoFi Stadium.
First, he chose SoCal’s flagship stadium as the site to film the denouement of his cult-campy HBO series “The Idol” during one of his concerts. Unfortunately, during the set, he lost his voice four songs in and had to send fans home for the night so he could recover and make up the date. For such a perfectionist, that must have been a body blow.
He rebounded a few months later with a triumphal return and the concert doc “The Weeknd: Live at SoFi Stadium.” But that nerve-racking experience stuck with him. He revisited it in his recent feature film (and album) “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” where a fictional version of the Weeknd loses his voice onstage, kicking off a surrealist, violent night with Jenna Ortega. A brief interlude from that LP is titled “I Can’t F— Sing.”
So Abel Tesfaye must have had a range of mixed feelings when he walked out at SoFi on Wednesday night, the first of four nights at the site of some of his greatest triumphs and most bitter disappointments as a live performer. “This is bigger than me — it’s a reflection of the power of music and its impact on people,” Tesfaye told The Times in a brief email just before the show.
The Weeknd performs during his After Hours til Dawn Stadium Tour at SoFi Stadium.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
This slickly cryptic, immaculately performed 2½-hour set covered the whole of his era-defining catalog. But is this run of SoFi dates a swan song to one of the most successful recording projects of our time?
Since first emerging as an anonymous voice atop gothic, coked-up R&B productions on a trilogy of 2011 mixtapes, Tesfaye’s tastes and his unlikely commercial success grew together.
An underground fan base turned up for the nihilism of “Wicked Games” (“Bring the drugs, baby, I could bring my pain”). But with assists from Max Martin and Daft Punk, he became a bona fide pop star. His mournful Ethiopian melodic lilt stood out like nothing else in Top 40, and he hung onto enough art-freak sensibility that he could headline the Super Bowl halftime show with dancers in full-face plastic-surgery bandages. His ’80s-noir, 2019 single “Blinding Lights” remains the most-streamed song on Spotify, ever.
Darryl Eaton, his agent at CAA, told The Times that the 200,000 tickets sold for this SoFi run alone is “like selling out an entire American city.”
Yet Tesfaye has recently hinted at retiring the Weeknd as a premise. “It’s a headspace I’ve gotta get into that I just don’t have any more desire for,” he told Variety recently. “It never ends until you end it.”
Whether he wants to release less conceptual, more personal music, or if he’s simply run out of gas with this all-consuming pop entity he’s created, this SoFi run is likely one of the last chances L.A. fans will get to see the Weeknd. Tesfaye will surely keep making music and films, but it makes cinematic sense that he’d come back to the scene of his most painful night onstage to put this all to bed.
After a brief and typically roiling set from Tesfaye’s recent collaborator Playboi Carti, Tesfaye emerged in black and gold, eyes lit with LED pinpicks, over a ruined cityscape. Opening with the “BoJack Horseman”-riffing “The Abyss,” he grimly promised, “I tried my best to not let you go / I don’t like the view from halfway down … I tried to be something that I’ll never be.” It sure felt like he was saying goodbye to this way of being an artist.
The show kicked into gear with Tesfaye surrounded by a trim live band and minimalist, moving-sculpture dancers in rose-colored robes. He didn’t need much more to let that once-in-a-generation voice carry everything. Tesfaye’s a uniquely dedicated live vocalist on the stadium circuit (it’s kind of honorable that any serious vocal troubles might mean the show’s over). For all his high-concept misdirections in videos and films, you could feel the troubled intimacy that’s kept fans invested in this music over so many aesthetics.
For all his close reads of Michael Jackson’s records on singles like “Can’t Feel My Face,” Tesfaye’s not an especially physical dancer onstage. But he knows exactly how to inhabit and set-dress this music to make it eerie and monolithic, even at its poppiest.
The Weeknd.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
“After Hours” made a seductive case for letting an obviously toxic man back into your life (“Different girls on the floor, distracting my thoughts of you”). After finally taking off his face mask, he played “Take My Breath” like a revving, neo-disco floor-filler that still winked at the darker choke-kinks of his old music.
When he cranked up the pyro on the midcareer lurker ballad “The Hills,” the front rows of SoFi got a bracing reminder of how volatile this music is even when it sits atop streaming charts. Alongside Carti on their collaborations “Timeless” and “Rather Lie,” Tesfaye grounded his pal’s smeary Atlanta noise with evilly pretty melody. This is a voice you just can’t help but believe, even when it’s calling you to self-destruction.
The Weeknd performs at SoFi Stadium.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
If this tour is indeed at the end of his tenure as the Weeknd, at more than three dozen songs, Wednesday’s set delivered every possible angle of valediction — the thrumming decadence of “Often,” the desperate sincerity of “Die for You” and “Is There Someone Else?” Newer material like “Cry for Me” and “São Paolo” showed that, whatever his exhaustion with this aegis, he’s got tons of startling ideas still brimming.
When Tesfaye buried the hatchet with the Grammys back in February, it was a generous gesture to an organization that inexplicably locked him out of honors for “Blinding Lights,” which he should, obviously, have contended for. When he played that double-time, neo-New Wave single toward the end of his Wednesday set, it felt like a strange pearl that he’d discovered — one of the biggest pop songs of all time, played by a guy whose music emerged from a murk of MDMA licks and mournful threesomes.
With perhaps the exception of his (exceedingly stylish if critically skeptical) film career, he’s always found his voice, over and over again. SoFi Stadium has dealt the Weeknd his greatest defeat and some of his finest hours as a performer. Now it’s sending him off to Valhalla, wherever that takes Abel Tesfaye.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida officials are pursuing plans to build a second detention center to house immigrants, as part of the state’s aggressive push to support the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he’s considering establishing a facility at a Florida National Guard training center known as Camp Blanding, about 30 miles southwest of Jacksonville in northeast Florida, in addition to the site under construction at a remote airstrip in the Everglades that state officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The construction of that facility in the remote and ecologically sensitive wetland about 45 miles west of downtown Miami is alarming environmentalists, as well as human rights advocates who have slammed the plan as cruel and inhumane.
Speaking to reporters at an event in Tampa, DeSantis touted the state’s muscular approach to immigration enforcement and its willingness to help President Trump’s administration meet its goal of more than doubling its existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds.
State officials have said the detention facility, which has been described as temporary, will rely on heavy-duty tents, trailers, and other impermanent buildings, allowing the state to operationalize 5,000 immigration detention beds by early July and free up space in local jails.
“I think the capacity that will be added there will help the overall national mission. It will also relieve some burdens of our state and local [law enforcement],” DeSantis said.
Managing the facility “via a team of vendors” will cost $245 a bed per day, or approximately $450 million a year, a U.S. official said. The expenses will be incurred by Florida and reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In the eyes of DeSantis and other state officials, the remoteness of the Everglades airfield, surrounded by mosquito- and alligator-filled wetlands that are seen as sacred to Native American tribes, makes it an ideal place to detain migrants.
“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” he said. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Democrats and activists have condemned the plan as a callous, politically motivated spectacle.
“What’s happening is very concerning, the level of dehumanization,” said Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group American Friends Service Committee.
“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” she said.
DeSantis is relying on state emergency powers to commandeer the county-owned airstrip and build the compound, over the concerns of county officials, environmentalists and human rights advocates.
Now the state is considering standing up another site at a National Guard training facility in northeast Florida as well.
“We’ll probably also do something similar up at Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said, adding that the state’s emergency management division is “working on that.”
US President Donald Trump has announced that the United States has “totally obliterated” three Iranian nuclear sites in what he called “spectacularly successful” strikes.
The military used so-called “bunker buster” bombs and missiles to target the heavily fortified Fordow facility as well as Natanz and Isfahan sites.
Trump’s decision to join Israel’s military campaign marks a sharp escalation in the region, which has seen more than 21 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The US intervention comes more than a week after Israel launched an unprovoked strike on Iranian nuclear and military sites after accusing Tehran of making an atomic bomb.
Iran, as well as the United Nations nuclear watchdog, has rejected the claims that Tehran was on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons.
How did the attack happen, and which sites were targeted?
Trump announced the bombing of three of Iran’s main nuclear sites:
Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant – A heavily fortified, deeply buried uranium enrichment site near the northern city of Qom.
Natanz Nuclear Facility – Iran’s main uranium-enrichment complex, located near Isfahan in central Iran.
Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center – A key conversion and research facility south of Isfahan city.
According to US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a large formation of seven B-2 stealth bombers, each with two crew members, was launched from the US on Friday at midnight as part of Operation Midnight Hammer.
US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the US on Sunday, June 22, 2025, after the US military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel’s effort to destroy the country’s nuclear programme [Alex Brandon/AP]
To maintain tactical surprise, a decoy group flew west over the Pacific, while the main strike group headed east with minimal communications during an 18-hour flight.
At 5pm EST (1:30am local time and 21:00 GMT), a US submarine in the region launched more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, striking surface infrastructure targets in Isfahan.
At 6:40pm EST (2:10am Iran time and 22:40 GMT), the lead B-2 dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) on Fordow, followed by a total of 14 MOPs dropped across Fordow and Natanz.
All three nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—were hit between 6:40pm and 7:05pm EST (1:30am-2:10am local time; 22:40-23:10 GMT). The final wave of Tomahawk missiles struck Isfahan last to preserve surprise.
In total, more than 125 US aircraft participated, including stealth bombers, fighter jets, dozens of tankers, surveillance aircraft, and support crews.
The Pentagon described it as the largest B-2 combat operation in US history and the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown. Force protection across the region was elevated in anticipation of potential retaliation.
Where are Iran’s nuclear sites?
Iran’s nuclear programme is spread across several key sites. While Iran insists its programme is peaceful and aimed at energy and medical research, the US and Israel remain deeply suspicious.
Iran’s resumption of uranium enrichment after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018 has only deepened tensions. Israel, which had vehemently opposed the nuclear deal under US President Barack Obama, has vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by any means necessary. On June 13, it launched strikes on Iran a day ahead of a sixth round of US-Iran nuclear talks.
(Al Jazeera)
Attack on Fordow
Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, located about 95km (60 miles) southwest of Tehran, is built deep inside a mountain, reportedly up to 80-90 metres (260-300 feet) underground, to survive air strikes and bunker buster attacks.
(Al Jazeera)
According to Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, three locations show damage: two craters resulting from bunker-busting bombs, and a damaged air defence site designed to shield the nuclear reactor.
Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the chairman of the Iranian parliament, claimed that the US attack was not surprising and that no irreversible damage was sustained during the strikes. He added that authorities had evacuated all three sites in advance.
(Al Jazeera)
Attack on Natanz
Natanz nuclear facility, the largest uranium enrichment site in Iran, is located in Isfahan province.
In a previous attack on June 15, the above-ground section of a pilot fuel enrichment plant, where uranium was enriched up to 60 percent, was destroyed by an Israeli strike, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Natanz’s key electricity infrastructure, such as the substation, main power building, emergency supply, and backup generators, was also destroyed. There was no direct hit on the underground cascade hall, but the power loss may have damaged centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.
(Al Jazeera)
Attack on Isfahan
Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center is a key conversion and research facility south of Isfahan city. It plays a critical role in preparing raw materials for enrichment and reactor use.
This is the third time Isfahan has been struck since Israel launched attacks across Iran on June 13, prompting fears of a regional escalation.
Bunker buster bombs
The strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites were conducted using B-2 stealth bombers armed with so-called “bunker buster” bombs, alongside submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Experts have long noted that the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant—buried deep within a mountain—could only be destroyed by the US’s 30,000-pound (13,600kg) Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the world’s most powerful bunker-busting bomb. The US remains the only country known to possess this weapon.
(Al Jazeera)
No signs of contamination
Iran’s nuclear agency said on Sunday that radiation monitoring and field assessments show no signs of contamination or risk to residents near the targeted sites.
“Following the illegal US attack on the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities, no contamination has been recorded,” the agency posted on social media. “There is no danger to residents around these sites. Safety remains stable.”
In a separate statement, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran vowed that its nuclear activities would continue despite the strikes, saying it “assures the great Iranian nation that, despite the hostile conspiracies of its enemies, the efforts of thousands of committed and revolutionary scientists will ensure that this national industry—built on the blood of nuclear martyrs—will not be stopped”.
The IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, also did not notice an increase in radiation levels near the targeted sites.
The attacks came as Israel and Iran have been engaged in more than a week of aerial combat, with more than 400 killed in Iran and 24 casualties reported in Israel.
Six Iranian scientists, two of whom were prominent nuclear scientists, were also killed in Israeli strikes.
June 20 (UPI) — Calling Iran an “evil regime,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday visited the Weizmann Institute of Science, close to where an Iranian missile hit earlier this week.
“This is the world-renowned Weizmann Institute, where the most advanced research in human biology is conducted — medical research, genetic research,” Netanyahu told reporters during the tour of the institute in the city of Rehovot in central Israel, some 12.5 miles south of Tel Aviv with a population of 150,000 people.
“This research was shattered by a missile from the evil regime. They seek to destroy human progress. That is the essence of this regime. They have enslaved and oppressed their people for nearly 50 years — half a century. Iran is the leading terrorist regime in the world. It must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. This is Israel’s mission: to save itself from the Iranian threat of annihilation. In doing so, we are saving many, many others.”
Netanyahu’s tour of the site where two buildings were completely destroyed came a day after the prime minister said in a post on X, “We will make the tyrants from Tehran pay the full price.”
Iranian missile strikes also hit the largest hospital in Southern Israel earlier in the week. The two countries are engaged in hostilities over Iran’s nuclear program.
The Weizmann Institute is known as the research crown jewel of Israeli science, with laboratories dedicated to studying health issues such as cancer, heart disease and neurodevelopmental disorders.
“It’s completely gone. Not a trace. Nothing can be saved,” Professor Oren Schuldiner told The Economic Times.
Officials estimate the damage from Iranian missiles to the institute at more than $500 million. Thousands of hours of research have also been lost.
“The most valuable resource of the Weizmann Institute, aside from property, are samples that have been stored for decades in labs for scientific research — and all of it is gone, with no backup,” Biomolecular Sciences Department Professor Tslil Ast told Y Net News.
Netanyah also toured an Israel Defense Forces base Friday where he praised intelligence officers for their work in the recent operations carried out in Iran.
“I am here at an IDF Intelligence base with the head of IDF intelligence, and with our amazing people, the soldiers, both conscripts and reservists, who are doing sacred work in providing us with the intelligence that wins wars,” Netanyahu said, accompanied by Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi and other top officials.
“I cannot exaggerate the importance of the work that has been done, and which is being done at the moment, in achieving the total victory. Head of IDF Intelligence, thank you very much. For myself, the citizens of Israel and the Government of Israel, please convey my gratitude to everyone.”
Tensions in the region continue to escalate, with representatives from the European Union and Britain meeting for ciris talks on Friday with the Iranian counterparts.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday set a 14-day deadline to decide on possible American military involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict.
On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the goal of Western allies is “obtaining from Iran a lasting rollback of its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.”
It was the second attack on Isfahan as the conflict enters a second week, killing at least 430 people in Iran and 24 in Israel.
A key nuclear site in Iran’s Isfahan province has come under Israeli attack, with local officials saying there were no radiation leaks.
Early on Saturday, smoke could be seen rising from an area near a mountain in the city of Isfahan after Israeli air strikes hit the nuclear site overnight, triggering the air defence system.
It was the second attack on Isfahan as the conflict between the Middle Eastern nations entered a second week, killing at least 430 people and wounding nearly 3,500 others in Iran, according to Iran’s health ministry.
No casualties were reported in the Isfahan attack, authorities said.
(Al Jazeera)
Israeli forces also hit a military installation in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz in Fars province, according to Iranian media.
On the Israeli side, explosions were heard above Tel Aviv, where buildings were seen on fire.
In central Israel, the emergency services released images showing fire on the roof of a multi-storeyed residential building. Local media reports said the blaze was caused by falling debris from an Iranian missile that was intercepted.
At least 24 people have been killed by Iranian missile attacks in Israel, according to local authorities, in the worst conflict between the longtime enemies.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that Israel has killed Saeed Izadi, who led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) overseas arm, in a strike on an apartment in the Iranian city of Qom.
Calling his killing a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force”, Katz said in a statement that Izadi had allegedly financed and armed the Palestinian group Hamas ahead of its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
IRGC said five of its members died in Israeli attacks, according to Iranian media. They did not mention Izadi, who was on United States and British sanctions lists.
Hostilities broke out on June 13 when Israel launched air strikes on several sites across Iran, including military and nuclear facilities, prompting Tehran to launch retaliatory strikes.
Israel claims it attacked Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb, although Iranian negotiators were engaged in talks with the US to curb its enrichment programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and US intelligence have both said there were no signs that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, despite Tehran having enriched uranium beyond the threshold needed for civilian purposes.
However, Trump on Friday said US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard was “wrong” in saying that Iran was not developing a nuclear bomb.
Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told Al Jazeera that Tehran remains open to dialogue at the United Nations and other such forums.
“We believe in listening to the other side. That’s why our diplomats are present in Geneva, to hear the other side out,” Mohajerani said, adding that any diplomacy must begin with global recognition of Israel’s attack on Iran.
Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said Iranians are angry over Israel “not just targeting nuclear facilities and military complexes”.
“The reality on the ground is ordinary people are being attacked on a daily basis,” he said.
“Many in the Iranian capital have chosen to leave, but we have to keep in mind we’re talking about 10 million people living in Tehran city and 14 million in Tehran province. It’s putting pressure on surrounding areas.”
The head of the UN atomic watchdog, Rafael Grossi, told the Security Council that an Israeli strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant would cause a nuclear disaster. The Israeli military had said on Thursday that it had struck the facility, but later clarified that the comment had been made in error.
US President Donald Trump says he is still weighing his options regarding United States military intervention amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran.
Standing on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday, Trump said, “The next week is going to be big,” adding that Iranian officials are eager to negotiate. However, he warned them that “it’s very late to be talking,” after they reached out to him.
Officials and experts have suggested that the US’s 30,000-pound (13,000kg) bunker buster bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a facility believed to be central to Tehran’s nuclear programme and carved deep into a mountain.
The United States is the only country to possess these bombs, which it delivers using B-2 bombers. If deployed against Iran, it would represent a major shift from primarily intercepting missiles on Israel’s behalf to conducting active offensive strikes against Iran.
What are bunker buster bombs?
“Bunker buster” is a general term for bombs designed to destroy targets located deep underground that conventional bombs cannot reach.
The US military’s most powerful bunker buster is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. Weighing about 30,000 pounds (13,600 kg), including a 2,700kg (6,000-pound) warhead, this precision-guided bomb is made of high-strength steel and built to penetrate up to 200 feet (61 metres) underground before exploding.
The B-2 Spirit, a US stealth bomber, is currently the only aircraft designed to deploy the GBU-57 and can carry two bunker buster bombs at a time. The US Air Force says multiple bombs can be dropped sequentially, either by the same aircraft or by several, allowing each strike to burrow deeper, amplifying the overall impact.
(Al Jazeera)
Israel also operates US-made bunker busters, including the GBU-28 and BLU-109, which are typically dropped from fighter jets such as the F-15. These weapons, however, have a much shallower penetration range and are not capable of reaching extreme depths of fortified sites like Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. In 2024, Israel reportedly used successive BLU-109 bombs to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in his underground headquarters in Beirut.
How deep is Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility?
Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, located about 95km (60 miles) southwest of Tehran, is built into the side of a mountain, reportedly up to 80-90 metres (260-300 feet) underground, to survive air strikes and bunker buster attacks.
Construction of the Fordow facility is believed to have begun in about 2006, and it became operational in 2009, the same year Iran officially acknowledged it.
(Al Jazeera)
Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, Iran agreed to halt enrichment at Fordow and convert the site into a research centre. However, after the US withdrew from the agreement in 2018, Iran resumed uranium enrichment at the facility. Iran has insisted its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.
Fordow is reportedly defended by Iranian and Russian surface-to-air missile systems, though those defences may have already been targeted in Israel’s ongoing strikes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has framed the campaign as a mission to dismantle Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities, describing them as an existential threat. Officials have confirmed that Fordow is a key target.
“This entire operation … really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordow,” said Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, in an interview with Fox News.
Other nuclear sites targeted
Israel is believed to have destroyed the above-ground section of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the country’s largest nuclear site.
According to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the resulting power loss may have also caused damage to the underground enrichment halls at the facility.
(Al Jazeera)
Before and after satellite imagery reveals the extent of the damage at Natanz.
Israeli attacks have also damaged the Isfahan enrichment facility in central Iran.
Potential nuclear and chemical contamination
On Monday, Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, said there was a possibility of both radiological and chemical contamination from the damaged Natanz site.
Speaking at an emergency IAEA session in Vienna, Grossi said radiation levels remain normal outside Iran’s Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites, both of which were hit in Israeli strikes. However, he warned that ongoing military escalation increases the risk of a radiological release.
Fordow is located about 32 kilometres (20 miles) south of the city of Qom, Iran’s seventh-largest city with a population of some 1.4 million and a major religious and political centre.
