Hong Kong streets flood as powerful Typhoon Ragasa churns toward landfall
Sawayasu Tsuji/Getty Images
(LONDON) — Typhoon Ragasa swept along the southern coast of China on Wednesday, bringing lashing rain, fierce winds and coastal flooding as it made its way toward landfall.
The powerful storm was forecast to make landfall in the evening near Guangdong, China, where local officials called for about two million people to be evacuated. The storm was expected to churn through China and along the northern borders of Vietnam and Laos, according to local weather officials.
It was expected to weaken as it approached landfall near the Leizhou Peninsula, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which is run by the U.S. Navy.
Ragasa had left a trail of destruction in recent days as it passed Taiwan — where officials said at least 15 people had died — and the Philippines and moved toward mainland China.
At the height of the storm, Hong Kong issued it’s highest-level warning — a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. That level was since lowered and, by mid-afternoon, the storm had passed by the city, but officials were still urging caution.
Parts of Hong Kong were flooded, the Hong Kong Observatory said, adding that there “may be hidden danger” in the city.
“Although the tropical cyclone is moving away from Hong Kong, gales are expected to persist for some time,” the observatory said in a mid-afternoon update. “Please continue to stay indoors until winds moderate. Do not touch electric cables that have been blown loose.”
Ragasa was churning on Wednesday afternoon about 98 nautical miles — or about 112 miles — west-southwest of Hong Kong, according to the U.S. Naval tracking center.
It had maximum sustained winds at the time of 105 knots, or about 120 mph, with gusts up to an estimated 130 knots, the center said, and driving waves up to 38 feet.
Jane Goodall and her son Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick appearing on the ABC TV special ‘Jane Goodall and the World of Animal Behavior: The Lions of the Serengeti’ in Africa, 1976. Walt Disney Television Photo Archive/ABC via Getty Images
(CALIFORNIA) — Jane Goodall, the famed primatologist, anthropologist and conservationist, has died, according to the institute she founded. She was 91 years old.
Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a speaking tour of the United States, the institute said in a statement on social media on Wednesday.
The British primatologist’s “discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” according to the institute.
Goodall was only 26 years old when she first traveled to Tanzania and began her important research on chimpanzees in the wild. Throughout her study of the species, Goodall proved that primates display an array of similar behaviors to humans, such as the ability to develop individual personalities and make and use their own tools.
Among the most surprising discoveries Goodall made was “how like us” the chimpanzees are, she told ABC News in 2020.
“Their behavior, with their gestures, kissing, embracing, holding hands and patting on the back,” she said. “… The fact that they can actually be violent and brutal and have a kind of war, but also loving an altruistic.”
That discovery is considered one of the great achievements of 20th-century scholarship, according to the Jane Goodall Institute.
Goodall’s love of animals began practically at birth, she told ABC News. As a child growing up in London and Bournemouth, she dreamed of traveling to Africa and living among the wildlife. When she was 10, she read the books “Doctor Dolittle” and “Tarzan,” and the inspiration changed the trajectory of her life.
The initial arrival into Tanzania’s Gombe National Park proved to be challenging. The terrain was steep and mountainous, the forests were thick, and threats from buffalo and leopards lurked in the wilderness. But her lifelong ambition had finally been realized, and Goodall knew she was where she was meant to be.
“It was what I always dreamed of,” she told ABC News.
Goodall later earned a PhD in ethology, the study of animal behavior, from the University of Cambridge. Her thesis detailed the first five years of study at the Gombe reserve.
In 1977, Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute with Genevieve di San Faustino. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. with offices in 25 cities around the world, the organization aims to improve the treatment and understanding of primates through public education and legal representation.
Goodall’s research garnered both scientific honors and mainstream fame, and she was credited with paving the way for a rise in women pursuing careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) over the years. The number of women in STEM has increased from 7% to 26% in the six last decades, according to The Jane Goodall Institute, which cited census information from 1970 to 2011.
In 1991, she also founded Roots & Shoots, a global humanitarian and environmental program for young people.
She was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in April 2002. The anthropologist continued to lend her voice to environmental causes well into her 80s and 90s.
In 2019, Goodall acknowledged the climate crisis and the importance of mitigating further warming, telling ABC News that the planet is “imperiled.”
“We are definitely at a point where we need to make something happen,” she said. “We are imperiled. We have a window of time. I’m fairly sure we do. But, we’ve got to take action.”
Goodall even partnered with Apple in 2022 to encourage customers to recycle their devices to reduce individual carbon footprint and cut down on unnecessary mineral mining around the world.
“Yes, people need to make money, but it is possible to make money without destroying the planet,” Goodall told ABC News at the time. “We’ve gone so far in destroying the planet that it’s shocking.”
Goodall emphasized in 2020 that there is still much to learn from “our closest-living relatives.”
“They’re still teaching us,” she said during the diamond jubilee anniversary of studying the species.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Goodall hypothesized that humans brought outbreak upon themselves, given that bats were the suspected driver of cross-species contraction of the virus.
“We have disrespected the natural world. We’ve disrespected animals, and we’ve been cutting down forests. Animals have been driven into closer contact with people. Animals have been hunted, killed and eaten. They’ve been trafficked,” she told ABC News in 2020. “So, animals of different species have been crowded together in the wild animal meat markets in Asia, bush meat markets in Africa, and this creates a fantastic environment for a virus or bacteria, virus in this case, to jump from an animal to a person.”
Goodall’s place in pop culture history was further cemented in 2022 when toymaker Mattel announced a special edition Barbie doll modeled after Goodall in honor of the 62nd anniversary of her first visit to Tanzania’s Gombe National Park.
“My entire career, I’ve wanted to help inspire kids to be curious and explore the world around them,” Goodall said in a statement at the time.
The doll is dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, and holds a pair of binoculars and a notebook. The doll itself is also sustainable, made from ocean-bound plastic.
Goodall was the recipient of several honors throughout her life. In 1995, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for “services to zoology” and promoted to Dame Commander in 2003. Goodall’s other honors included the French Legion of Honor, Japan’s Kyoto Prize and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She is survived by a son, Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, from her first marriage to Dutch nobleman and wild photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick, as well as three grandchildren. Her second husband, former Tanzanian parliament member Derek Bryceson, died of cancer in 1980.
A general view of the aftermath following an overnight wave of Russian strikes on November 14, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Kyiv was attacked by a wave of Russian drones and missiles on the night of November 14, with the Ukrainian president alleging that Russia had launched 430 drones and 18 missiles, damaging dozens of high-rise buildings. Search and rescue operations are ongoing as damage is reported across nine districts of the capital. (Photo by Maksym Kishka/Frontliner/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — At least 5 people have been killed with over two dozen injured, including a pregnant woman, from ongoing Russian attacks in the Kyiv region early Friday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on Telegram.
Sections of certain heating networks in the region were damaged from the attack, and some buildings were without heat supply, the mayor added.
At least 15 buildings have been damaged in Kyiv so far from the attacks, the Kyiv City State Administration said in a post on Telegram.
Ukrainian officials said that 430 drones and 18 missiles were launched as debris from the strike rained down on Kyiv.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Ukrainian forces were forced to withdraw from several positions in the Zaporizhzhia region, the southeastern front, due to intense Russian assaults, according to a spokesperson for the army.
Russian forces have launched more than 400 artillery strikes per day and Ukrainian troops faced the destruction of defensive fortifications, Southern Defense Forces spokesman Vladyslav Voloshyn told ABC News.
The withdrawal affected the areas around Novouspenivske, Nove, Okhotnyche, Uspenivka and Novomykolaivka, according to Voloshyn.
“The situation there remains difficult, in part because of weather conditions that favor the attacks. But we continue to destroy the occupier, and I thank every one of our units, every warrior involved in defending Ukraine’s positions,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday.
Ukraine is also facing the potential fall of Pokrovsk — a city home to around 60,000 people at the time of Russia’s 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine — to Russia after 18-month battle of attrition. This could be one of the most serious defeats of the war for Ukraine.
