2 Americans stabbed outside the Acropolis in Greece
Atop the Acropolis ancient hill with Parthenon temple during a heat wave on July 20, 2023 in Athens, Greece. (Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)
(ATHENS, Greece) — Two Greek-American tourists were rushed to the hospital Tuesday morning after they were stabbed outside the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
The incident occurred at approximately 8:05 a.m., just after the Acropolis Museum’s opening, police said.
Prior to the incident, an individual brandishing a knife outside the museum’s entrance was threatening pedestrians, prompting a bystander to place an emergency call to authorities, according to eyewitnesses and authorities.
Before law enforcement arrived, the assailant stabbed a couple, a 53-year-old man and a 48-year-old woman. The male victim suffered severe blood loss, police said.
The male victim’s injuries required urgent care due to blood loss, but both victims are reported to be in stable condition. The female victim suffered minor injuries to her hands and legs.
Police have taken a 60-year-old suspect into custody.
The rapid-response unit within the Hellenic Police and the Athens Police Directorate immobilized and disarmed the suspect, detaining the individual on the scene.
Stock image of handcuffs. (Westend61/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The man arrested and charged after a 3-year-old boy wound up in a crocodile enclosure at a British zoo was released on bail Friday as the investigation continues, police said.
The unidentified 30-year-old suspect from Norfolk was released after investigators said he “was assessed as unfit for police interview,” according to the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
The incident occurred on Thursday afternoon at Johnsons of Old Hurst, a family-run farm and zoo located in Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, when the unidentified boy “ended up in the crocodile enclosure,” police said.
The boy sustained “serious injuries” while in the enclosure and was pulled out by staff from the zoo. He received medical treatment at the scene before being taken to the hospital, according to the police.
He was listed in critical but stable condition as of Friday. The suspect, who will remain on bail until September, is not known to the victim, according to police.
The suspect was arrested under suspicion of attempted murder.
Johnsons of Old Hurst said its tropical house, which is home to multiple species of crocodiles and other reptiles, will remain closed until further notice “out of respect to the family.”
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the boy and his family following the incident that occurred today,” Johnsons of Old Hurst said in a statement on social media Thursday.
-ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
Sea ice concentration, June 14, 2026. (National Snow and Ice Data Center)
(ANTARCTICA) — A massive chunk of sea ice in West Antarctica has not refrozen following a winter heatwave in the region – a dramatic change that could further contribute to global sea level rise, experts told ABC News.
Graphics based on satellite imagery from the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center taken on Sunday show a large portion of sea ice measuring approximately 150,000 square miles – roughly the size of Montana – is not included in what is typically already frozen at this time of year, which is mid-winter in the Southern Hemisphere, experts told ABC News.
Every winter, Antarctic sea ice grows and decays, Peter Neff, a glaciologist at the University of Minnesota who specializes in ice core records, told ABC News. But since 2015, Antarctic sea ice has entered a “new, much reduced state,” in which less and less is re-freezing due to rising air and sea temperatures, Neff said.
This year, the level of sea ice in West Antarctica is about 50% lower than average, Neff estimated.
“This is a dramatic but not surprising observation in the context of the huge changes that have been occurring in Antarctica, particularly in this region of Antarctica, over the past decade,” Chuck Amsler, a professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told ABC News.
If the West Antarctica Ice Sheet were to collapse in its entirety, it has the potential to contribute more than 10 feet in sea level rise, according to a 2025 study by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a partnership between U.S. and U.K. agencies.
It is possible that this year’s June sea ice level in the area may surpass last year’s record low, Rose Malanga, a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who conducted field research in Antarctica earlier this year, told ABC News. In June of both this year and 2025, the region had some of the lowest sea ice levels on record, Ellen Buckley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Earth Science and Environmental Change, told ABC News.
Data gathered by the Copernicus Earth observation program in June 2025 showed there was 12.6 million square kilometers of Antarctic sea ice, which is about 1.3 million square kilometers less than the 1991-2020 average.
Contributing factors likely include strengthening westerly winds, a phenomenon that’s connected to global warming due to climate change, as well as how the ocean is responding to those surface winds, Neff added.
A low-pressure anomaly north of the Bellingshausen Sea, which is adjacent to West Antarctica’s Antarctic Peninsula, is likely causing warm air from higher latitudes to warm the region and prevent sea ice formation, Buckley said.
“Winds drive how the ocean moves, but satellites can’t see into the ocean, so without being able to get down there, especially during the wintertime, we have very limited ability to do research,” he said.
The news of the lack of sea ice comes on the heels of above-average temperatures in the region, records show.
From January through April, the Bellingshausen Sea, where the ice would typically form, has seensea surface temperatures anywhere from 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above average, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. Throughout May, the sea surface conditions cooled slightly but remained about 1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average temperatures.
In June, the Bellingshausen Sea surface temperature varied by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Air temperatures over the Bellingshausen Sea are forecast to be up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit above average from Tuesday through the weekend.
The area that has not yet refrozen is located upwind of the regions on the Antarctic Peninsula that just experienced this warming. The heat wave can contribute to the lack of sea ice extent because there is not reflective white ice surface to keep it cold, Neff said.
“With this kind of situation where there isn’t sea ice forming in the winter, that means in the spring there will be less sea ice to melt,” according to Buckley.
The question of why the Antarctic sea ice freeze and thaw cycle has been behaving differently in the last 10 years, compared to the previous 30 years, is a “huge area of research” right now, Neff said, especially in the western region of the continent, which is being monitored closely by scientists.
Glaciologists have taken a particular interest in Antarctica’s western shelf due to its potential to cause a severe rise in sea levels. Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” already contributes to 4% of overall sea level rise, while Pine Island Glacier is one of Antarctica’s fastest-melting glaciers.
Deterioration of the remaining portion of the Thwaites Glacier’s floating ice shelf has been accelerating in recent months and is likely to break off in the coming weeks or months, Neff said, adding that while it won’t completely destabilize the glacier it will contribute significantly to global sea level rise.
The Antarctic Peninsula is warming about five times faster than the global average. The most severe heat event occurred in March 2022, when the continent recorded temperatures between 54 degrees and 72 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
“The warm events are expected to be coming more frequently,” Neff said.
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke and Sam Wnek contributed to this report.
This handout photograph taken and released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine on July 16, 2026, shows Ukrainian firefighters working to extinguish a fire at the site of a Russian air attack in Kyiv. (Handout/State Emergency Service of Ukrai)
(LONDON) — At least 200 Ukrainian drones were launched toward Moscow overnight into Thursday morning, the city’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said, as Kyiv continued its nightly long-range strike campaign deep into Russia.
From Wednesday evening until 9 a.m. local time on Thursday, “More than 200 drones were flying towards the Moscow region. Most of them were neutralized by air defense systems at a distance,” Sobyanin wrote in a post to Telegram. Ten drones “were destroyed as they approached Moscow,” the mayor said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces downed at least 375 Ukrainian drones overnight. The ministry said in a post to Telegram that drones were intercepted over 18 Russian regions — including Moscow — as well as Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Ukraine has been significantly expanding its drone campaign — referred to in Kyiv as “long-range sanctions” — in recent months, targeting major Russian cities, Russian oil infrastructure, military and logistics targets.
Ukraine has been significantly expanding its drone campaign — referred to in Kyiv as “long-range sanctions” — in recent months, targeting major Russian cities, Russian oil infrastructure, military and logistics targets.
The Russian Defense Ministry publishes only the number of Ukrainian drones and other projectiles it claims to have intercepted. Sobyanin releases real time statements when Ukrainian drones are reported shot down while heading toward the capital.
ABC News cannot independently verify the figures from either the ministry or the mayor. But the increasing scale and rate of such reports could be seen as indicative of Ukraine’s growing ability and willingness to target sites within Russia.
So far this year, Sobyanin has reported the downing of 1,420 Ukrainian drones on approach to Moscow, according to his Telegram posts, collated and analyzed by ABC News. Across all of 2025, Sobyanin only reported the downing of 734 Ukrainian drones near the city.
More than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made clear Kyiv’s intentions to return the war back to Russian soil. Key targets have included Moscow and the so-called “second capital” St. Petersburg.
“Our responses to Russia’s prolonging of the war and strikes on our cities and communities are completely fair,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram in May. “The Moscow region has Russia’s densest concentration of air defenses. But we are getting through,” he added.
Ukraine’s Wednesday night attacks also reportedly targeted the Engels-2 airbase in Saratov — a key hub for Russian long-range aviation, including strategic bombers. Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in a post to Telegram, “Engels is on fire.”
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, meanwhile, announced that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at Saratov airport during the overnight attacks. Restrictions were also put in place at airports in Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Samara, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, Cherepovets and Gelendzhik.
Flights operating from all four of Moscow’s international airports were also put under temporary flight restrictions overnight, Rosaviatsiya said.
Russia continued its own long-range strike campaign against Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 18 missiles and 146 drones into the country overnight into Thursday morning, of which 12 missiles and 129 drones were intercepted, suppressed or failed to reach their targets.
Six missiles and 16 drones impacted across 15 locations, the air force said.
Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram that at least two people were killed by a Russian missile strike in Kyiv, with five other people injured. Other targeted regions included Kharkiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv and Donetsk, Zelenskyy said.
“Moscow is relying on terror through ballistic missiles and continues its attacks,” Zelenskyy wrote.
