Southern and central states from California to Mississippi face heat indexes above 100F amid another heat dome

At least 40 million people were under extreme heat warnings across central and southern parts of the United States on Sunday as high temperatures and severe humidity gripped large swaths of the country for a second straight day.

Heat indexes well above 100F (38C) stretched from Minnesota down to Mississippi, extending west into southern California and Nevada. Parts of the south-west were expected to see highs of 120F (49C), according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures of 95-105F (35-40C) are expected, spanning Gulf of Mexico coast to the Great Plains and the midwest

About 70 million people in the US are set to face excessive heat advisories as dangerously hot temperatures scorch much of the country’s southern and central states.

The third major “heat dome” event to hit the US in the past month is gathering strength over the weekend, spanning a vast swathe of the country, from the Gulf of Mexico coast to the Great Plains and the midwest.

Forecasters warn of US coastal flooding, heavy rain and dangerous surf as the storm tracks west

Tropical Storm Bertha made landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday afternoon, and is moving westward toward the Texas coast, where it is expected to reach later on Thursday, bringing rainfall, winds and rising water levels.

In a Thursday morning update, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said that Bertha was moving west and that the center of the tropical storm was expected to move near or along the Louisiana and upper Texas coasts over the next several hours before moving inland over Texas on Thursday evening.

Torrential rains in West Virginia have caused flash flooding that inundated homes and businesses. Authorities say the floods washed out bridges and led to numerous water rescues in portions of the state. Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia's governor, declared a state of emergency for all 55 counties on Tuesday night. No deaths were immediately reported. Morrisey sent 100 national guard members to the hardest-hit areas in the northern portion of the state with an additional 200 members expected to arrive by late Wednesday morning. The rains were part of wide-ranging storms that produced reports of tornadoes in several states

State’s governor had declared a state of emergency for all 55 counties, and deployed 500 national guard members

Patrick Morrisey, the West Virginia governor, said at least two people were unaccounted for in Upshur county, after torrential rain caused flash floods in parts of the state.

Speaking at a news conference, Morrisey said that during search-and-recovery operations state police found an overturned vehicle in Upshur county believed to be “connected to two individuals who were reported missing”.

In Kentucky and West Virginia, rescuers freed trapped residents as states face catastrophic floods and damage

Tropical storm Bertha made ‌landfall in ‌St Bernard parish, on the Gulf coast south-east of New Orleans, Louisiana, on Wednesday afternoon, the ⁠US national ⁠hurricane ⁠center said.

The Miami-based forecaster ‌added that maximum ​sustained winds were estimated ⁠to be ​45mph (75km/h) ‌with higher ​gusts.

Storm warnings stretch from Florida to Louisiana as Bertha brings heavy rain, flooding risk and possible tornadoes

Tropical Storm Bertha strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday but was expected to weaken this week as it chugs closer to the US, potentially bringing coastal flooding and heavy rain from the Florida Panhandle to Louisiana.

Those areas along the northern Gulf coast were under a tropical storm warning through Wednesday and could see rain and flooding into Thursday morning, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. New Orleans also was under a tropical storm warning.

Bertha could bring heavy rain on US Gulf coast, with its center located 110 miles south of Panama City, Florida

Tropical Storm Bertha formed Monday evening in the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle as it drifts erratically toward populated coastal areas, bringing a threat of heavy rain, storm surge and damaging wind gusts.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Fausto formed far from Mexico’s Baja California peninsula and posed no threat to land Monday night.

Ukraine put a grenade launcher on a robot that fits in the back of a minivan. Ukraine's Defense Ministry has codified the new "Zmii Mini Strike" reconnaissance-strike ground robotic complex for fire support and destroying enemy personnel and armor.

It runs on a silent electric motor, carries day and thermal cameras, and is compact enough to fit in a minivan's luggage compartment, a pickup bed, or a standard car trailer without special transport equipment.

Ukraine develops more and more robots every month 

Its design draws on more than four years of full-scale war and analysis of how ground robots actually perform in combat, and its engineers worked with one of Ukraine's most effective combat brigades during development.

The Zmii line is not new. Earlier models are already running missions with Ukraine's Defense Forces, but this armed-strike variant is the newest entry.

The Zmii Mini Strike joins a ground-robot inventory that Ukraine is expanding almost weekly.

Silent and small is how robot survives to shoot

The silent electric motor and the compact size of the drone are survival traits rather than combat ones. A quiet robot is harder to detect by sound, and a small one is harder to spot and hit. At the same time, a platform that deploys and packs up fast spends less time exposed.

However, the connectivity can be the catch. Defense Ministry adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov has warned that ground robots operate in a far more challenging communication environment than aerial drones, because terrain, tree lines, and cover can break the control signal, and a robot that loses its link drops out of the fight. A silent, well-armed gunner is only as useful as the link that keeps it firing.

Victims were Provo’s fire captain, his wife and their three sons, who were hiking in Bicknell amid heavy rains

Five family members who had set out for a day of hiking were killed after a flash flood swept through canyons of southern Utah on Friday, law enforcement officials said.

The victims were a captain in the Provo fire department, his wife and their sons, according to fire officials. A daughter who was not on the trip survived.

The Vatican's foreign minister stood in the rubble of a Russian strike in Kyiv. Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See's Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, visited the site of a Russian missile strike that destroyed residential buildings and killed civilians, Ukraine's State Emergency Service (SES) said on Facebook.

Ukraine's rescuers work those sites under the threat of the double-tap, which is a Russian tactic of striking a location a second time after emergency crews arrive, which Ukraine's prosecutors have documented repeatedly.

Visit is one thread of Vatican's humanitarian engagement in Ukraine

It came days after Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the pope's peace envoy, met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha in Kyiv on 16 July, where Sybiha pressed for a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from Russian-occupied Oleshky, where UN and Human Rights Watch monitors say thousands are trapped without food or medical care.

The SES thanked the Holy See for its humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people and for its solidarity, and said such visits are important evidence of international attention to the consequences of Russian aggression.

Vatican works humanitarian channels, not mediating role

The Holy See's engagement has focused on humanitarian work rather than mediation. Zuppi has run the Vatican's efforts on prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia and on the return of Ukrainian children abducted to Russia, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has said plainly that the Vatican performs no mediating mission.

Pope Leo XIV, elected in 2025, has taken a sharper line on the war than his predecessor. Meeting Zelenskyy in December 2025, Leo appealed to Russia to make a gesture toward peace and warned that excluding Europe from peace talks on Ukraine was unrealistic.

Zelenskyy has invited him to visit Ukraine, which the pontiff said he hoped to do without committing to a date.

Poor air quality from wildfires continues to plague New York City as several neighborhoods hit by thunderstorms

Saturday is delivering a double dose of dangerous weather across the north-eastern US, with smoky skies from Canadian wildfires giving way to severe thunderstorms that have already triggered a flash flood warning as torrential rain pounds parts of the region.

After a brief break on Friday, smoke from the wildfires moved back into New York City and surrounding communities on Saturday, sending air quality back into unhealthy levels.

Fires are also blazing across the US and the Trump administration has repealed several climate protections

US Republicans are threatening to sanction Canada and Canadian government officials after smoke from devastating wildfires has drifted across huge swathes of the US, creating hazy conditions and dangerous air quality for tens of millions of Americans.

Donald Trump on ⁠Friday blamed ⁠his country’s northern neighbor for ​the smoke spreading from ⁠wildfires and said he planned to call ​Mark Carney, the Canadian prime ‌minister, ‌ to ‌ask about Ottawa’s plans for dealing with the blazes.

Ukrainian partisan movement ATESH says it burned electronic warfare towers in Russia's Bryansk Oblast, the region Russia uses to launch ballistic missiles at Kyiv. ATESH agents targeted communication and EW nodes in the cities of Fokino and Karachev in a coordinated operation, the group reveals.

Ukrainian Volunteer Army spokesperson Serhii Bratchuk said on Kyiv24 TV that Russia has moved its launchers up to the Bryansk border, reducing flight time to the point that the air raid siren in Kyiv sounds after the first explosions ring out in the capital. Ukraine cannot intercept most of these strikes due to an acute shortage of Patriot missiles.

The past week's Russian ballistic strikes on Kyiv have all come from Bryansk. Russia fired six Iskander-M or S-400 ballistic missiles from Bryansk on the night of 11 July, which all six struck four Kyiv districts and wounded 10 people. The first explosions were heard more than a minute and a half before the air raid siren sounded.

On 8 July, five ballistic missiles hit Kyiv. On the night of 5-6 July, 23 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles launched from Bryansk, Oryol, and Kursk struck Kyiv, killing at least 16 and injuring 58.

Fokino and Karachev protect Russia's Bryansk launch infrastructure

The towers held EW complexes designed to suppress drones and their navigation systems, per ATESH. The claims have not been independently verified. 

Fokino is a closed city in Bryansk Oblast about 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Karachev is about 180 kilometers from the border. Both cities are within the zone where Russia has concentrated the ballistic-missile launchers that have been hitting Kyiv.

ATESH said the destruction of the Fokino and Karachev EW towers created a gap in Russian border defense and blinded local air defense, depriving it of the ability to target Ukrainian drones. Without EW cover in the Fokino-Karachev area, a direct tactical corridor opened for Ukrainian drones to strike deeper into the central regions of Russia. The strategic implication runs both ways: the EW towers ATESH burned also protected Russia's ballistic launchers from Ukrainian counterstrikes.

ATESH has hit Bryansk targets before. In October 2025, the group disabled a communications tower responsible for coordinating Russian occupation forces and border units in Bryansk Oblast. 

ATESH template: burn EW cover, enable Ukrainian strikes

ATESH is a Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar partisan movement founded in September 2022 in response to Russia's full-scale invasion. The group operates in occupied Ukrainian territories and in Russia itself, with members including Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, and Russians who were mobilized into the Russian army but now work for Ukraine.

ATESH's operational template through 2026 has been consistent: burn EW towers, damage air-defense transformers, and Ukrainian drones exploit the newly created corridor. In March 2026, ATESH burned three EW towers in Novgorod Oblast, opening a route for Ukrainian drones to reach a military aircraft repair plant in Staraya Russa.

Ukraine showed its Harpoon for the first time on 4 July. The launchers appeared in a video from Zelenskyy's working trip to Odesa Oblast, during which he held a coordination meeting with the Ukrainian Navy Command on missile and drone threats, sea threats, and Ukrainian deep strikes.

The Harpoon has been in service with the Ukrainian Navy since 2022 and has destroyed Russian ships, but its launcher configuration has been classified.

Defense Express experts spotted the launchers in the released footage. In addition to the Harpoon, photos were also released showing the launcher of the Norwegian-made NSM (Naval Strike Missile) anti-ship missile system developed by Kongsberg.

Norwegian NSM deliveries to Ukraine had never been officially announced and were only reported at the media level.

Ukraine's anti-ship inventory has expanded throughout the war. Ukrainian forces used domestic Neptune missiles to sink Russia's cruiser Moskva in April 2022. The US and its allies considered both Harpoon and NSM transfers to Ukraine that same May. The Ukrainian Navy confirmed the combat debut of the Swedish RBS 15 anti-ship missile in April 2026.

Harpoon launcher shows sea-container configuration

Ukraine received a Harpoon variant installed inside a sea container, with four transport-launch canisters. Although Harpoon missiles are not young, Boeing has been modernizing the platform, and in 2025, the company tested an updated Harpoon Block II variant.

NSM origin remains unknown

The NSM launcher shown in Ukraine has a distinctive Ukrainian paint scheme that does not match any documented source country. Poland was reported in 2023 as a potential source, with Ukraine possibly buying a battery or even a battalion of the NSM Coastal Defense System from Warsaw. But the Ukrainian variant's different painting leaves the actual source unknown.

The system was jointly developed by Kongsberg and Raytheon, with a coastal-launched range of 250 km. Kongsberg has expanded its presence in Ukraine through 2025 and 2026, including NASAMS integration and a planned joint venture for interceptor missile production.