GUATEMALA CITY: At least six people were killed and another 20 injured on Sunday when Guatemala’s Fuego volcano erupted violently, spewing a stream of red hot lava and belching a thick plume of black smoke and ash high into the sky.
“It’s a river of lava that overflowed its banks and affected the Rodeo village. There are injured, burned and dead people,” Sergio Cabanas, the general secretary of Guatemala’s Conred disaster agency, said on radio.
“We are evacuating and rescuing people and have reports of 20 wounded, six dead and disappeared,” said Cabanas.
The eruption also forced the Guatemala City’s La Aurora international airport to shut down its only runway.
The runway was closed due to the presence of volcanic ash and in order to guarantee passenger and aircraft safety, Guatemala’s civil aviation authority said in a Tweet.
The active volcano is located some 25 miles (40 km) southwest of the capital Guatemala City and is close to the colonial city of Antigua, popular with tourists and known for its coffee plantations.
Workers and guests were evacuated from the La Reunion golf club near Antigua. A video circulating on social media showed a black cloud of ash rising from just beyond the golf club. The lava river was running on the other side of the volcano.
The huge plumes of smoke that could be seen from various parts of the country and the ash that rained down in four of Guatemala’s departments caused some alarm among residents.
Officials initially asked residents to remain calm.
David de Leon, spokesman for the National Disaster Prevention Authority said a change in wind was to blame for the volcanic ash falling on parts of the city.
Volcano lava river runs into Guatemala village, several killed
Volcano lava river runs into Guatemala village, several killed
- The lava river was running on the other side of the volcano
- The active volcano is located some 25 miles (40 km) southwest of the capital Guatemala City
Affair between CEO and HR exposed at Coldplay concert in Massachusetts
MASSACHUSETTS: A “kiss cam” moment from a Coldplay concert at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts this week has gone viral on social media after ‘exposing’ an alleged affair.
The group was performing “The Jumbotron Song,” when the camera showed a man and woman cuddling as they watched the stage.
The two panicked and attempted to leave the frame in hopes to cover their faces.
Coldplay accidentally exposed an alleged affair between Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his colleague Kristin Cabot at one of their recent concerts. pic.twitter.com/hsJHV2u5UM
— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 17, 2025
“Whoa, look at these two,” the band’s lead singer Chris Martin said. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” he jokingly said.
The man and woman were identified as Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and HR Chief Kristin Cabot.
Several internet users noted that Byron’s wife had recently removed his last name from her social media profiles.
There has been no official response from Byron or Cabot although fake ‘apologies’ have circulated the internet.
Pakistan says mobilizing all resources to ensure public safety after rains kill nearly 190
- Heavy rains this week flooded several cities as Pakistan braces for a tough monsoon amid erratic and extreme weather changes
- PM Shehbaz Sharif has called for formulating a coordinated plan to prevent losses in view of growing intensity of weather events
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Thursday that the government was mobilizing all resources to ensure public safety as rain-related death toll jumped to 178 since late June.
The statement came after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited the NDMA’s the National Emergencies Operation Center and called for formulating a coordinated plan to prevent losses in view of growing intensity of cloud bursts, heavy monsoon showers and flash floods.
Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province has been the hardest hit with 103 deaths, followed by 38 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 20 in Sindh, 16 in Balochistan and one in Azad Kashmir since June 26, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
“Despite the challenges posed by the ongoing rains, we’re working round the clock to ensure everyone’s safety,” Naqvi said on X.
“Rescue teams are on alert, drains are being cleared, and all resources are being mobilized.”
He urged people to follow adviseries and promptly report any emergencies to authorities.
On Thursday, Army Aviation helicopters carried out rescue operations, evacuating 40 people from in hard-to-reach areas in Punjab’s Jhelum district.
“Widespread thunderstorm with isolated heavy falls and torrential rains were expected Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Lahore, Sahiwal, Bahawalpur, Multan and DG Khan divisions, according to the NDMA.
The authority said the wet spell was likely to subside by Saturday.
Monsoon season brings South Asia 70 to 80 percent of its annual rainfall, arriving in early June in India and late June in Pakistan, and lasting through until September.
The annual rains are vital for agriculture and food security, and the livelihoods of millions of farmers. But increasingly erratic and extreme weather patterns are turning the rains into a destructive force.
In 2022, record-breaking monsoon rains combined with glacial melt submerged nearly a third of Pakistan, killing more than 1,700 people and displacing over 8 million. In May, at least 32 people were killed in severe storms, including strong hailstorms.
Harris English, Matt Fitzpatrick in 5-way tie for lead at Open Championship
- Scores were bunched together up and down the leaderboard as dealing with the elements became part of the challenge at Royal Portrush Golf Club
- Fitzpatrick pulled even with the leaders with a chip-in on the par-3 16th hole
PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland: Harris English and England’s Matt Fitzpatrick joined Denmark’s Jacob Skov Olesen, China’s Haotong Li and South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout with 4-under par 67s to share the first-round lead of the Open Championship on Thursday at Portrush, Northern Ireland.
Scores were bunched together up and down the leaderboard as dealing with the elements became part of the challenge at Royal Portrush Golf Club. Golfers battled wind gusts and, for those playing in the middle of the day, rain that was bothersome at times.
“Wind is something that obviously makes links golf challenging, but the rain adds a whole new element to it, especially when you’re hitting the tee balls,” said World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who’s one stroke back after shooting 68.
English reached 5 under for the solo lead with his seventh birdie of the round before a bogey on No. 14 and pars the rest of the way.
“That’s why I come over and play the Scottish (Open) is to get used to links golf,” English said afterward. “I played really well last week. I didn’t have the Sunday that I wanted, but I felt like my game was sharp and I did what I needed to do to get ready for this week.”
Thailand’s Sadom Kaewkanjana and Englishmen Matthew Jordan and Tyrrell Hatton matched Scheffler with 68s.
There are 10 golfers at 2-under 69, including Danish twin brothers Nicolai and Rasmus Hojgaard, Lee Westwood of England, 2023 Open champ Brian Harman, Rickie Fowler and England’s Justin Rose. Lucas Glover, aided by an eagle on the second hole, reached 4 under through seven holes before a couple of bogeys on the back nine left him at 2 under as well.
Phil Mickelson, the tournament’s 2013 champion, stood at 2 under at the round’s midway mark before finishing with a 1-under 70. He provided an early thrill by holing a shot from the bunker for a par on the third hole.
“I didn’t make a ton of long ones, but I made a lot of short ones and a lot of good up-and-downs and lag putting,” Mickelson said. “You find that going back on past experience, you don’t have to press it. You don’t have to force it.”
Other scores of interest included Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, Ireland’s Shane Lowry and Spain’s Sergio Garcia at 70.
“It was a tough enough day, especially either chopping out of the rough or out of the fairway bunkers most of the time,” McIlroy said. “So to shoot under par was a good effort.”
McIlroy is trying to win his second Open in front of his home-country fans, and Lowry was the champion the last time the major was held here in 2019.
Fitzpatrick pulled even with the leaders with a chip-in on the par-3 16th hole. His attempt from well below the hole hit the pin and dropped in.
“A bit of luck obviously. Sometimes you need that,” he said. “Obviously, it just came out a little bit harder than I anticipated and on the perfect line.”
Earlier, Fitzpatrick posted an eagle on the par-5 second hole.
“Felt like I did everything well,” Fitzpatrick said. “Just drove it well, approach play was good and chipped and putted well. It was just an all-around good day.”
Olesen, who turned pro last year and has two prior starts in PGA Tour events, used an eagle on the par-5 12th hole to move into the lead. His second bogey of the round on the final hole cost him the midday solo lead.
Li had a bogey-free round with a pair of birdies on each side.
“I’ve been playing quite solid the whole year so far until the last couple weeks, so hopefully keep the momentum and have some good results come in,” Li said.
Bezuidenhout has been making adjustments with mechanics, and some of those are working out so far this week.
“I’ve been going through some swing changes and stuff,” he said. “It’s nice to see that paying off.”
Scheffler notched birdies on Nos. 16 and 17 for a strong closing stretch. Two of his five birdies in the round came on par-3s.
Chris Gotterup, who was coming off the weekend’s victory in the Genesis Scottish Open, shot 72. He went 2 under through 12 holes before three consecutive bogeys on Nos. 13-15.
US Open champion J.J. Spaun, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Cantlay and Australian Jason Day shot 2-over 73. Brooks Koepka and Collin Morikawa struggled to rounds of 4-over 75, and Bryson DeChambeau shot a 7-over 78 without a birdie. DeChambeau was tied for 144th at day’s end.
At least 4 dead and 1,300 evacuated after heavy rain in South Korea
- The Interior and Safety Ministry says a collapsed overpass retaining wall in Osan killed one person on Wednesday
- Parts of South Chungcheong province have seen up to 420 millimeters of rain
SEOUL: Two days of heavy downpours in South Korea have killed at least four people and forced more than 1,300 others to evacuate, officials said Thursday.
One person was killed when their car was buried by soil and concrete after a retaining wall of an overpass collapsed in Osan, just south of Seoul, during heavy rain on Wednesday, the Interior and Safety Ministry said.
Three other people were separately found dead Thursday in a submerged car, a stream, and a flooded basement in southern regions. Ministry officials said they were still investigating whether those deaths were directly caused by heavy rain.
The heavy rain has forced the evacuation of 1,382 people from their homes, the ministry said in a statement, adding 46 flights have been canceled.
Parts of southern South Chungcheong province have received up to 420 millimeters (16.5 inches) of rain since Wednesday, according to the ministry.
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
- In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet’s changing climate
BRUSSELS: In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet’s changing climate.
Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth’s atmosphere looked like back then.
“We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future,” said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world’s oldest ice — without breaking the bank.
Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometers of fresher ice and snow.
But that’s hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive.
A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million).
To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible.
Just like the water it is made of, ice flows toward the coast — albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB.
And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface.
In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover — leaving thick layers of ice exposed.
Named after their coloration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory.
“Blue ice areas are very special,” said Izeboud.
Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, around 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station.
Some old meteorites had been previously found there — a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained.
A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totalling about 60 meters in length.
These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June.
Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialized labs in France and China for dating.
Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old.
This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize.
“It’s like a treasure hunt,” Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for “Indiana Jones.”
“We’re trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we’ll go back and we’ll drill there,” he said.
“We’re dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice.”
Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming.
Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — but the puzzle has some missing pieces.
By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB.
But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then — a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect.
“We don’t know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today,” Legrain said.
His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. “The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past,” he said. “It’s really like magic when you feel it.”
