Trump’s Iran Blockade Enters Dangerous New Phase in Gulf of Oman

A US military helicopter reportedly fired at the rudder of a Panama-flagged container ship after it ignored repeated warnings and attempted to breach America’s naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The reported strike triggered a fire aboard the Vela Nova in the Gulf of Oman, although all 17 crew members were accounted for and no casualties had been reported.

The incident could mark another forceful enforcement of President Trump’s effort to isolate Iran by sea.

It also exposes the growing danger to commercial vessels operating across waters that connect the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Sea and major Asian shipping routes.

England Braces For 37°C Heat—How To Keep Your Home Cool Without Air Conditioning

Every region of England has been placed under an amber heat-health alert as temperatures threaten to reach approximately 37°C in parts of the country.

The alert covers the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East and West Midlands, East of England, London, South East and South West.

The alerts were updated across all nine English regions on Tuesday, 11 August, and are expected to remain in place until 9pm on Friday.

The most intense heat is forecast for Thursday, when temperatures could rise widely into the mid-30s across parts of southern, eastern and central England.

Congo’s Ebola Death Toll Blasts Past 2,000 As Outbreak Accelerates

More than 2,000 people have now died in the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. Congo’s latest public-health data lists 4,381 confirmed cases and 2,011 deaths across five provinces, giving the outbreak a crude fatality rate of almost 46 per cent.

The milestone was reached less than three months after Congo officially declared the outbreak in May.

The death toll has doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 in less than a month, exposing a response struggling to match the speed and geographic reach of the virus.

Fighter-Jet Signals and US Weapons Data at Centre of South Korea Spy Arrests

South Korea has arrested two Chinese military veterans in separate cases that allegedly reached deep into the daily operations of the US–South Korean alliance.

One man is accused of intercepting fighter-jet communications from a hotel near a joint airfield; the other of obtaining military information through a South Korean worker at the headquarters of US Forces Korea.

The allegations expose two different vulnerabilities at once: signals travelling beyond a base perimeter and people with legitimate access being cultivated for information.

Yet the most consequential question remains unanswered. Police have not established publicly that the suspects worked together or acted on orders from the Chinese state.

Your Dog May Understand Your Face Better Than You Realise

Dogs may understand far more from a human face than a wagging tail or comforting nudge suggests.

Brain scans have now revealed that dogs respond differently to happiness, fear, anger and sadness, offering new evidence that they do not simply divide human expressions into “good” and “bad.”

The University of Vienna-led research found that happy faces activated a network extending from the temporal cortex into the caudate nucleus, a region associated with reward processing.

When scientists examined activity across the entire brain, they also found patterns that distinguished fear from anger and sadness.

China’s Economic Heartland Is Being Swallowed By Typhoon Dolphin

Typhoon Dolphin has driven a vast flood emergency deep into China, inundating parts of the country’s industrial heartland after already disrupting Shanghai and the eastern coast.

The immediate threat is now spreading across Hubei and Henan while Beijing prepares for an extraordinary concentration of rain.

The storm has weakened since landfall, but its remaining circulation is colliding with cooler air and continuing to draw moisture northwards.

This means Dolphin’s greatest danger may no longer be its winds, but prolonged rain falling across densely populated cities, manufacturing centres, transport corridors and already saturated terrain.

Bashar al-Assad Sentenced to Death as Syria Confronts Its Bloody Past

Bashar al-Assad has been sentenced to death in absentia by a Syrian court, delivering the first Syrian conviction against the former president since his family’s five-decade rule collapsed. The ruling is historic, but its immediate effect is limited: Assad remains beyond the court’s reach under Russian protection.

The Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus convicted Assad of offences including premeditated murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity.

His younger brother Maher al-Assad and several former officials also received death sentences, while former Daraa security chief Atef Najib was present in court to hear his conviction.

Trump Media Is No Longer Just a Social-Media Company

Trump Media and Technology Group has reported a $238.1 million net loss for the second quarter of 2026, compared with approximately $20 million one year earlier. Set against quarterly revenue of just $1.7 million, the figure looks devastating at first glance.

Yet the headline conceals the most important detail: $190.4 million of the loss came from unrealised declines in digital assets, pledged digital assets and equity securities.

These were accounting losses caused by changing market values, rather than $190 million physically leaving the company during the quarter.

The Strange Marine Threat Stalking Europe’s Nuclear Power Stations

France strengthened Gravelines after last year’s complete outage—but another vast swarm has still knocked out most of its available generating capacity.

A massive jellyfish swarm has forced three reactors at France’s Gravelines nuclear power plant to shut down, almost exactly one year after the same site suffered an even larger disruption.

Reactors 2, 3 and 4 were taken offline late on Monday, 10 August. Reactor 1 was reduced to 50 per cent of its output as a precaution, while reactor 5 was already unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Only reactor 6 remained fully operational, according to the latest confirmed account of the incident.

EDF said the shutdowns presented no danger to the plant, its workers or the surrounding environment. This was an operational response to disruption at the cooling-water intake, not a nuclear accident or a loss of control inside the reactors.

The scale is nevertheless significant. Gravelines has six 900-megawatt reactors and a total capacity of 5.4 gigawatts. The three shutdowns removed up to 2.7 gigawatts of nameplate capacity, while the restriction on reactor 1 reduced another 450 megawatts.

Three Reactors Were Taken Offline

From the Gods to That Ending: Every Major Odyssey Change Ranked

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey retains the Cyclops, Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, Penelope’s suitors and Odysseus’s desperate voyage home. Yet beneath that familiar adventure, the film makes sweeping changes to Homer’s ancient poem.

Some episodes are shortened or removed to fit a feature film.

Others fundamentally alter Odysseus, the gods and the meaning of the story.

Ranked from the least to the most consequential, these are the 12 biggest differences—with the largest change appearing last.