Man with weapon arrested near former Prince Andrew’s home
(NEW YORK) — A man has been arrested for possession of an offensive weapon near the U.K. home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, police said Thursday.
The suspect, who was not named, “was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and possession of an offensive weapon,” Norfolk Police said in a statement to ABC News.
He remains in custody, according to police.
Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, lives on his brother King Charles III’s privately owned Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England.
Buckingham Palace has not commented on the arrest.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Burrowing sea anemone from the San Julian Peninsula in Argentina. (The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census/Agustín Garese)
(NEW YORK) — Marine scientists have discovered a record number of new species living in the depths of the world’s oceans over the past year.
A total of 1,121 new marine species were discovered in a single year, marking a “significant step” in the research needed to understand and protect the oceans, according to the scientists behind The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, the world’s largest mission to accelerate ocean species discovery.
The whopping number of discoveries marks a 54% jump in identifications in a single year, the researchers said.
Among the new species discovered include corals, crabs, shrimps, sea urchins and anemones — some found living at depths of more than four miles beneath the ocean surface.
The “Ghost Shark” Chimaera, a distant relative of sharks and rays, was discovered in the Coral Sea Marine Park off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Chimaeras are among the most mysterious inhabitants of the deep ocean, the researchers said. They predate dinosaurs and diverged from rays and sharks into their own distinct evolutionary lineage nearly 400 million years ago.
Symbiotic bristle worms were found living within a “glass castle” on volcanic seamounts in Japan. The “castle” is actually intricate chambers of a glass sponge, whose skeleton is made of crystalline silica.
The ribbon worm, a predator marked by striking pigmentation, was discovered close to the surface, between depths of 3 and 16 feet.
A striking new species of shrimp — the Mediterranean shrimp — was also found in a sea cave off Marseille, France, the researchers said. It is marked by a vivid orange banding and intricate appendages.
The species were identified amid 13 expeditions across some of the world’s most remote and least-explored ocean regions, as well as nine discovery workshops, the researchers said.
“This year, Ocean Census has shown what is possible when scientific ambition is matched by global collaboration at scale,” Mitsuyuku Unno, executive director of the Nippon Foundation, said in a statement. “Through expeditions reaching polar depths to tropical seas, and the science to turn samples into discoveries, this team is revealing the extraordinary richness of ocean life.”
Up to 90% of ocean species remain undiscovered, previous research has suggested.
Documenting the breadth of species living in the oceans is necessary for policymakers and marine managers to properly protect the ocean, the researchers said.
The average time between a species’ initial discovery and its formal “description” in scientific literature is historically about 13.5 years, which puts species at risk of extinction before they are even catalogued, the researchers said.
“With many species at risk of disappearing before they are even documented, we are in a race against time to understand and protect ocean life,” Michelle Taylor, head of science at Ocean Census, said in a statement. “For too long, thousands of species have remained in a scientific “limbo” because the pace of discovery couldn’t keep up.”
To address this, marine scientists are now recognizing “discovered” as a formal scientific status that can immediately be recorded.
People inspect the aftermath of a Russian missile strike on Aug. 20, 2026, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Apartment blocks and warehouses were hit across the city overnight following a large barrage of missiles, with a children’s hospital and school also damaged. (Diego Fedele/Getty Images)
LONDON — A “massive” Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv on Wednesday night killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post to social media on Thursday.
“Throughout the night, our emergency services have been working at the sites of Russian strikes,” Zelenskyy wrote. “The attack was massive — the Russians prepared for a long time and combined different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones to inflict as much damage as possible on civilian infrastructure.”
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched an unspecified number of ballistic missiles into the country overnight as well as 46 cruise or air-to-ground missiles of various types. Russia also launched 168 drones, the air force said.
“The main direction of the attack was the Kyiv region,” the air force wrote in a post to Telegram. It added that 41 cruise missiles of various types and 145 drones were shot down or otherwise suppressed, with munitions reported impacting across 28 locations.
The air force did not say whether any ballistic missiles were shot down. Earlier this month, the air force stopped publishing the number of ballistic missiles fired or intercepted in Russia’s nightly barrages.
Around the capital, Zelenskyy said that residential buildings, a children’s hospital and school were among the sites damaged. The president also reported overnight Russian attacks in the southern Odesa and northern Chernihiv regions.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in posts to Telegram that damage was reported in the Sviatoshynskyi, Solomianskyi and Darnitskyi areas of the city, including fires at warehouses and residential buildings.
Recent months have seen an expansion of Russian missile attacks all across Ukraine, as officials in Kyiv warn that Ukrainian stocks of anti-missile interceptor munitions are dangerously low and, in some cases, exhausted.
Ukraine is working on its own ballistic missile interceptor program — the FREYJA — but officials in Kyiv have said they do not expect the weapon to be operational until 2027.
Zelenskyy on Thursday again appealed to foreign partners to route more ammunition to Kyiv. “Unfortunately, while Moscow is investing in ballistics and escalation, there isn’t always the necessary response from the world to such attacks,” he wrote.
“As long as Ukraine lacks sufficient anti-ballistic defenses, Russia will not seriously consider peace. We are doing everything we can to ensure protection, and work on the FREYJA program continues every day. However, interceptors for ‘Patriot’ systems are not yet available, and they are needed every day,” Zelenskyy wrote.
In a later post, the Ukrainian leader said that the country’s defense against ballistic missiles is “entirely dependent on the supply of missiles for ‘Patriot’ systems to Ukraine, and therefore, it depends on our partners.”
“We cannot simply stand by idly and watch as the Russians destroy lives with ballistic missiles. Ukrainian soldiers can operate effectively when the courage and professionalism of our people are supported by the appropriate assistance from our partners,” Zelenskyy added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha reported a “horrible and sleepless night in Kyiv,” in a post to X. “This was one of the most brutal Russian attacks to date, with ballistic missiles raining down on our capital one after another,” he wrote.
Russia’s Defense Ministry described the overnight attack as having targeted “military industrial enterprises, a transport and logistics hub and warehouses in Kyiv and the Kyiv region.”
The Defense Ministry also said that it shot down at least 726 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions plus Crimea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. At least 28 drones were shot down over the Moscow region, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on Telegram.
A display indicates the temperature of 41 degrees Celsius during a sweltering summer day on June 27, 2026 in Berlin, Germany. (Maryam Majd/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — One of the most brutal heat waves to impact Europe in the last 50 years broke temperature records in multiple countries, according to Copernicus, Europe’s climate change service.
Western Europe, the region most affected by the heat wave during the second half of June, experienced its warmest June on record, the agency said.
The average land temperature in Europe in June 2026 was the second-highest on record, at 19.14 degrees Celsius, or 66.45 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Copernicus. This marks 1.78 degrees Celsius, or 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 1991 to 2020 average for the month.
Rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures “reflect a climate system continuing to accumulate heat” — resulting in increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean and growing risks for people and ecosystems, Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement.
“June 2026 underscored how profoundly the climate is changing,” Burgess said. “Western Europe recorded its warmest June on record, and continued record warmth in the global ocean.”
Many June and some all-time records for daily maximum temperature were broken in several countries, according to Copernicus.
Weather officials in the United Kingdom said temperatures on June 24 rose in some areas to 35.7 degrees Celsius, or about 96.2 degrees Fahrenheit, topping a June 1976 record of 35.6 C.
In France, the country’s national heat index — a daily average — hit 30 degrees Celsius, or about 86 degrees Fahrenheit, on June 24 — the highest-ever temperature recorded, according to weather officials at Meteo-France, the national weather service. High temperatures in Paris were in the triple digits in the days after.
The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower closed early several days in a row as a result of the high temperatures.
The high temperatures also impacted cities like Madrid and Rome, which hit the high 90s during the last week of June.
Reuters reported there were more than 5,000 excess deaths in Germany alone — mostly residents 75 and older — and another 4,700 deaths in France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands between June 20 and 28.
“Heat stress is often called the ‘silent killer’ – and European homes, workplaces and schools were not built for these temperatures,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an X post.
Overall, the planet experienced its second-warmest June globally, according to Copernicus.
In addition, much of Western Europe, including Italy, large parts of central and eastern Europe and the southern U.K., experienced drier-than-average conditions, associated with persistent high-pressure and heatwave conditions, according to Copernicus.
River flow was also below average across Europe, consistent with the widespread dry conditions, according to Copernicus. Large parts of France, much of central and eastern Europe and parts of northeastern Europe were especially impacted.
Globally, June 2026 was the second-warmest on record, with an average surface air temperature of 16.5 degrees Celsius, about 61.8 degrees Fahrenheit — about .56 degrees Celsius, or about 1 degree Fahrenheit — above the June average for 1991 to 2020.
Sea surface temperature at extrapolar oceans, or oceans outside the Arctic and Antarctic, was the highest on record for June at 20.86 degrees Celsius, or 69.5 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Copernicus.
Surface sea temperatures also remain “exceptionally high” across a large portion of the tropical Pacific, where El Nino conditions are present and forecast to strengthen in the coming months, the agency said.
