The Casamonica crime family, a mafia-style organized crime syndicate that operates in and around Rome, has been blamed for a black coffin that was left in front of an anti-mafia activist’s home Sunday, police said.

The activist, Tiziana Ronzio, is president of the Toripiubella anti-mafia group, named after the Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood where the Casamonica’s main family villas were based until they were destroyed by the city in 2018 and 2019.

Police found garish decorations, including life-sized porcelain tigers used to hide cash, diamond encrusted swimming pools lined with golden horses and gilded mirrored ceilings in many of the rooms during the demolition. They also found several tons of drugs, police said, including heroin and cocaine. In 2022, two members of the family were convicted of attempting to traffic seven tons of cocaine from Colombia.

The coffin was found on Sunday outside Ronzio’s Rome residence in the Tor Bella Monaca district.

Ronzio said Sunday afternoon that she had seen the coffin and that people had sent her photos of it, but that she did not immediately realize that it was meant as a threat to her until her security detail informed her.

While she called the threat “stupid” and said it would not stop her, she also said that it “destabilized” her group, which regularly reports members of the group for crimes against local residents and often testifies in court on behalf of them.

“I’m not afraid, I’m moving forward,” Ronzio told local media. “These are stupid gestures which make us even more angry and want to fight.”

Ronzio has denounced several clan members in the past.

“There have been many things that one always lets slide,” she told Italy’s Sky24 news on Sunday evening, noting that she has experienced previous acts of intimidation, including written threats and feces left by her door by her own neighbors.

“I try to live it with detachment but it’s not easy – I live these things as if they didn’t concern me, to move forward,” she said, adding: “It’s difficult to live in the same place as the people you report to police,” she said.

While Ronzio’s home and office have been broken into multiple times, she told La Repubblica newspaper that “it’s not every day that you find a coffin under your house.”

“It can happen that an uncivilized person leaves a piece of furniture, a sofa, but not a coffin,” she said in the article, which was published Monday.

Several political groups have condemned the act of intimidation.

Writing on X Sunday, Rome’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri said: “Solidarity and closeness to Tiziana Ronzio for the horrible threat received today. The precious work that she has been carrying out for years together with many other honest citizens in Tor Bella Monaca will certainly not stop in front of intimidation. The city and its administration will continue to be at Tiziana’s side in support of her daily commitment on the territory for legality and justice.”

Tobia Zevi, Rome’s councilor for heritage and housing policies also expressed his support for Ronzio, saying that “the denunciation against organized crime (and) the courage and perseverance that have distinguished her work in difficult years will not be dented by the fear of yet another ignoble gesture against her.”

Scenes from ‘The Godfather’

The Casamonica clan was first identified as a mafia-style group by Italy’s Anti-mafia Investigation Directorate, or DIA, in the 1970s. The main families originated as nomadic Sinti groups that arrived in the capital from rural Italian provinces after the end of World War II and are estimated to be worth around 90 million euro ($101 million), according to the DIA. They are most often associated with extortion, racketeering and usury, but have also been involved in threats like the one against Ronzio – and in murder cases. There are thought to be around 1,000 members. A dozen people tied to the group are currently facing a trial for stealing electricity from a housing project in Rome.

The group made headlines in 2015 when they were somehow allowed by Rome authorities to hold a lavish funeral for the family patriarch, Vittorio Casamonica, that included a horse drawn carriage for his coffin and a helicopter that dropped rose petals over the Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood.

Given that the Casamonica clan are identified by Italian authorities as a criminal organization, it is unusual that they were given the go ahead to hold a public funeral, as other mafia groups have been prohibited from public funerals for bosses.

Still, that procession was given police protection and a brass band outside the church that blared theme music from the Godfather trilogy.

In 2019, during a trial against 40 Casamonica family members accused of mafia association, drug trafficking and dealing, extortion, usury and illegal possession of weapons, an informant testified that a matriarch tried to kill him.

The informant, Massimiliano Fazzari, spoke in court about the use of acid, which he said was held in a vat in one of the family’s villa basements in Rome.

“They threatened to dissolve me in acid,” Fazzari said of Liliana Casamonica, the female head of one of the families.

A violent standoff between Philippine police and followers of a fugitive preacher wanted by both the FBI and local law enforcement on sexual abuse and human trafficking charges entered a fourth day on Tuesday as nearly 2,000 officers surrounded a sprawling church compound.

Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, a self-styled “appointed son of God” and founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, has been on the run for at least three years.

A 2021 US indictment accuses the 74-year-old preacher and his alleged accomplices of running a sex trafficking ring that coerced girls and young women to have sex with him under threats of “eternal damnation.”

Quiboloy, who has denied all the charges against him, is believed by Philippine police to be hiding inside a 30-hectare (75 acre) compound that includes a cathedral, a college, a bunker and a taxiway leading to Davao International Airport.

Police have been attempting to arrest the preacher and five of his alleged accomplices in a raid that began on Saturday in the city in southern Philippines. But they have met fierce and at times violent resistance from his followers, who allegedly threw stones at officers and blocked a highway with burning tires, Davao police said on Facebook.

A 51-year-old Quiboloy follower reportedly died of a heart attack on Saturday. Police said his death was not related to the operation.

Police fired tear gas late Sunday as they tried to disperse the crowd. At least six officers have been injured and at least 18 people arrested during the dayslong standoff, police said.

Photos released by police on Monday showed officers with bloodied faces and wearing bandages receiving treatment for their injuries.

Police Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III, who is leading the raid, said the operation would not end until Quiboloy is captured.

“We’re not leaving,” Torre said on Saturday. “No one’s pulling out until we have him.”

Prominent preacher

Quiboloy founded the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church in 1985 and rose to prominence as televangelism gained popularity in the Philippines, a majority-Catholic country where millions also follow a plethora of Christian sects.

The church, which claims to have 7 million followers worldwide, runs businesses including a college, resort and media outlets in the Philippines, according to its official website.

Quiboloy is a close supporter and spiritual adviser of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who regularly appeared on a church-linked media network when he was mayor of Davao, a testing ground for Duterte’s controversial war on drugs that rights groups say resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Duterte’s daughter, Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, accused police of abusing their power and of harassing church members during the raid on the compound.

The 2021 US indictment against Quiboloy and two alleged accomplices accuses them of sex trafficking, including of girls as young as 12. The suspects allegedly recruited young women and girls as personal assistants that were forced to have sex with the preacher.

The indictment by the US Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California also accuses Quiboloy and his alleged accomplices of running a labor trafficking scheme that brought church members to the US on fraudulently obtained visas and forced the members to solicit donations for a bogus charity.

Former members of the church have accused Quiboloy of sexual abuse and exploitation during Philippine senate investigations into the church that began in December last year.

Quiboloy’s lawyer has denied the charges against the preacher and said the church plans to file counter charges against police for raiding his compound.

In February, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. urged Quiboloy to surrender and face the criminal allegations against him, according to his office.

Vergelegen Wine Estate in South Africa’s Western Cape is using an unconventional method to keep its 130 hectares of vineyards both virus and pesticide free. Pairing technology and nature, the 324-year-old wine estate is using drones to drop predatory wasps that control pests without the use of insecticides.

The project is being carried out by SkyBugs, a partnership between Cape Town-based FieldBUGS, which supplies the predatory insects, and agritech company Aerobotics, which works with a network of drone pilots to disperse the bugs accurately.

Predatory wasps are increasingly being used for pest control in South Africa, and other parts of the world. SkyBugs’ drones fly roughly 30 meters above the vineyard, carrying a “motor-driven mechanism equipped with a cartridge,” says Matt Davis, head of mapping operations at Aerobotics. “As the motor rotates, a plastic film unfolds, releasing wasp pupae (the stage of an insect between larva and adult).”

Each flight covers up to 20 hectares and 500 Anagyrus wasps — which are indigenous to South Africa — are released per hector, before the drone lands so the team can insert a fresh battery and insect cartridge. Data is also collected via an app.

The target of the tiny, 3-milimeter-long Anagyrus is the troublesome mealybug, which can spread the debilitating vine disease known as leafroll virus, which is detrimental to the overall grape harvest.

For farmers, spotting the virus and controlling the mealybugs can be costly, time consuming and labor-intensive. SkyBugs says aerial drone application is proving to be faster and much more cost effective than spraying insecticides, which can be detrimental to the environment and to insects, such as the cross-pollinating bees that are integral to the ecosystem.

After the pupae are dropped, adult wasps emerge and are attracted by the mealybugs’ pheromones. The wasps lay eggs inside the mealybugs, consuming them from the inside out — known as parasitizing — leaving their host hollow and dead.

“The leafroll virus has virtually been eradicated in the farm,” says Rudolf Kriel, viticulturalist at Vergelegen.

Cultivating the predator’s playground

For over 20 years the Vergelegen team has worked closely with virologist and leafroll virus expert Gerhard Pietersen. Formerly a professor at the University of Pretoria, and at Stellenbosch University, Pietersen founded a biotech company called Patho Solutions to further tackle agricultural diseases.

“Grapevine leafroll associated virus-3 (GLRaV-3) or ‘Type three’ is an extremely serious virus of grapevines,” Pietersen explains. “The virus replicates itself in the plant’s vascular system, preventing the nutrients from flowing. The virus’s weakness is that its only host in nature is the grapevine. Not all plant viruses have such limits to the hosts that they can infect.”

“The result of infestation is that the berries on the bunch ripen unevenly, failing to achieve the desired color and take a long time to build up sugar which is essential in wine making,” he adds.

Once a vine is infected, signs of the virus can be spotted with the naked eye. Starved of much-needed nutrition, the leaves turn red in autumn and reveal green veins, followed by a slight downward curling of the leaves.

“Any attempts to take out an infected vine and replace it with a new one can prove ineffective if pieces of the infected vine are left behind in the soil,” says Pietersen.

He adds that the best way to control this virus is “to remove all infected vines in a vineyard along with controlling the mealybug vector. This is best achieved over a whole estate, but this is not economically viable as the input costs to start over are very high.”

Using wasps to eliminate the virus could be a promising solution. Since they are native to the region, there should be no “unintended consequences” of releasing increased numbers to the vineyards, he says. “The wasps only feed on mealybugs and then die.”

Other farmers in the region, growing fruit such as apples, pears and citrus fruit, have been using drones to drop other predatory insects in their orchards for pest control.

A valuable industry

South Africa is among the 10 largest wine producers worldwide, harvesting an estimated 1.2 million metric tons of grapes last season, and employs nearly 270,000 people across the value chain, according to Vinpro, a non-profit that represents close to 2,600 South African wine producers, cellars and industry stakeholders.

Vinpro describes the leafroll virus as detrimental to the wine industry, which also had to contend with a decreased harvest in 2022-2023 due to weather conditions,

Rudolf Kriel, viticulturalist at Vergelegen, explains that a healthy vineyard could remain productive for well over 20 years, but if a vine is infected by leafroll Type-3 virus, the plant will last half that time and bear very little to no yield in its final years.

Vergelegen has a program of different measures to control the virus and Kriel says its records showed less than 0.05% of leafroll virus infestation in red grape varieties, and less than 0.3% in the white varieties. “The leafroll virus has virtually been eradicated in the farm,” he says.

Pietersen says Vergelegen is “regarded as the model estate worldwide, on control of leafroll disease in an environmentally sustainable way.”

Controlling the virus could do more than just improve grape yields — it could make for better wine. In a blind taste test study done by the University of Stellenbosch, using grapes harvested from both infected and healthy vines, “the freshness seems to come through in the wine made from healthy vines,” Pietersen says.

Japan says a Chinese military intelligence-gathering aircraft entered its territorial airspace off remote islands in the East China Sea on Monday, the first time Tokyo has accused the People’s Liberation Army Air Force of an airspace violation and a new irritant in frosty relations between China and Japan.

A map released by the Japanese Defense Ministry showed the Chinese aircraft, a Y-9 reconnaissance plane, flying in a rectangular circuit pattern off the eastern side of the Danjo Islands when it briefly headed west and crossed into the islands’ territorial airspace – which extends 12 nautical miles from the coast of the islands – for about two minutes.

The Japanese Defense Ministry said it scrambled Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets to respond to the alleged intrusion, but no confrontation with the Chinese plane was reported.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned Shi Yong, charge d’affairs of the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, “to protest extremely severely and strongly request the prevention of a recurrence.”

The Japanese military frequently scrambles fighter jets to confront Chinese military planes that approach but have not previously entered its territory, doing so 479 times – more than once a day – in the past fiscal year that ended in April, according to the Defense Ministry.

But the alleged incursion into sovereign airspace brings that tension to a higher level.

“In recent years, China’s military activities in the vicinity of our country have tended to expand and become more and more active,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a press conference Tuesday.

“The invasion of our country’s airspace by Chinese military aircraft is not only a serious violation of our country’s sovereignty, but also a threat to our safety, and is completely unacceptable,” Hayashi said.

The uninhabited Danjo Islands, a Japanese national monument and wildlife protection area, are in the East China Sea about 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the southwest of Nagasaki on the southern Japanese main island of Kyushu.

While this was the first reported incidence of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force aircraft violating Japanese airspace, there have been two similar incidents in the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyus and claims as its sovereign territory, in the East China Sea.

In 2012, a Chinese maritime surveillance plane entered airspace around the Senkakus and in 2017 a drone launched from a China Coast Guard vessel did the same, according to the Japanese government.

But this week’s incident is the first time such an incursion has been attributed to a military plane.

The uninhabited Senkaku chain has been a sore spot in Japan-China relations for years.

Claims over the rocky islands, 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo but only about 205 miles (330 kilometers) from China’s east coast, date back centuries, and neither Japan nor China is likely to back down over territory considered a national birthright in both capitals.

Tensions heated up in 2012, after Tokyo bought some of the islands from a private Japanese owner, which Beijing took as a direct challenge to its sovereignty claims.

It has frequently dispatched China Coast Guard and other government vessels to the waters around the islands to assert those claims, including keeping a Chinese presence near the islands for a record 158 straight days earlier this year, according to the Japanese government.

Any Japanese-Chinese incident in the Senkakus raises the risk of a wider conflict, analysts note, due to Japan’s mutual defense treaty with the United States.

Washington has made clear on numerous occasions that it considers the Senkakus to be covered by the pact.

At least 30 people have been killed following the collapse of a dam in Sudan’s northwest Red Sea State, according to the United Nations’s emergency relief agency. Hundreds more are believed missing, Reuters reported.

Flash flooding decimated 20 villages and damaged a further 50 after the Arba’at Dam collapsed Sunday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. It estimated 50,000 people had been “severely affected” by the disaster.

In the villages of Khor-Baraka and Tukar, residents were reportedly forced to flee for safety, OCHA also said, citing local officials. It added that the final death toll could rise significantly.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) footage of the aftermath shows industrial trucks buried in mud and debris, some laden with crates and personal belongings. Other vehicles are almost unrecognizable on the silty riverbank.

One resident who lived near the dam, Moussa Mohamad Moussa, described in another video from AFP how “the dam broke and… the water swept away around 40 people.”

“In the area where I’m from, the Tabub area… they told me that all the houses and everything was swept away,” he said.

Another resident, Ali Issa, was pictured saying he had helped to rescue families, elderly people, and children who were trapped in their cars when the floodwaters rose. “We came to the area to check out the situation but we couldn’t reach the Arba’at Dam because there was so much water,” he said.

Initial reports indicated torrential rains had caused the dam to breach, OCHA said, adding this had resulted in the reservoir behind it “being fully drained.”

The dam facility supplies fresh water to Port Sudan, the country’s fifth largest city, which is about 38 kilometers (23 miles) to the southeast.

OCHA said the damage was expected to worsen the humanitarian situation in Red Sea State. In recent months, aid agencies have warned Sudan is on the brink of collapse and starvation following more than a year of civil war.

Sudan’s Federal Minister of Health, Dr. Haitham Muhammad Ibrahim, promised emergency humanitarian assistance including the provision of basic medicines and medical personnel during a visit to the region Sunday, according to a statement by his office. He also committed to provide resources to support evacuation efforts.

On Monday, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) chief and head of the Sudanese Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan visited Tokhar, an area devastated by the weekend’s storms but unaffected by the dam collapse, according to a statement from the council. Footage posted to X by the council shows Al-Burhan speaking with residents of the town, roughly 170km south of Arba’at.

The region surrounding the Arba’at Dam has been wracked with humanitarian challenges. The region hosts nearly 240,000 displaced people, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.

OCHA said it is liaising with partners, including United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and WASH Cluster and local officials to reach communities affected by the collapse.

Hundreds of Kenyan police officers leading an international policing force in Haiti have not received their full pay for two months, the latest complication in what has been a rocky start to the security mission in the gang-plagued Caribbean nation.

The first Kenyan officers deployed to Haiti arrived in June, the vanguard of a multinational security support mission (MSS) that is being funded largely by the United States. There are now around 400 Kenyan police in the country, many from specialized units.

In an August 25 statement acknowledging delays to payments, the MSS announced that officers could expect the missing funds to hit their bank accounts this week.

“Therefore, there is nothing to worry about (regarding) welfare issues of the MSS officers, since mainstream processes have been finalized,” the MSS added.

In a “progress report” released Monday, Kenya’s National Police Service (NPS) said that the officers were continuing “to draw their NPS salaries” while waiting for the supplemental pay for their MSS duties.

Kenyan officers had expected to be paid a significant supplement for their Haiti deployment – a grueling assignment more typical of a military than of a police force. Officers are not allowed to leave their base in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince during non-working hours.

The MSS force is expected to ultimately grow to 2,500, with more troops expected from Jamaica, Benin, Chad, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados and Belize. The force is hoped to bolster the Haitian National Police’s battles against an alliance of gangs that controls an estimated 85% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.

The MSS is financed through a UN-managed trust fund, to which the US, Canada, France and Spain have contributed millions of dollars. The United States has committed at least $380 million overall in support of the mission, largely in the form of equipment and materiel.

They were the self-styled political “commandos” with aspirations of bringing down the authoritarian government of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. Now, the opposition says, hundreds of its activists and electoral witnesses are fleeing the country amid the fallout from last month’s contested presidential election.

“I left my mom, she’s 84… my husband did the same. My mom told me: ‘Be strong my love, everything will be alright; joy will come back to Venezuela, I’ll be here waiting for you. If I’m not here anymore by the time you come, I’ll know at least you are a free person,’” said one woman, who fled the country with her husband and son.

Her transgression in Venezuela? Helping to gather over 1,200 “actas” – the printed voting machine receipts that have become critical to the opposition’s case that the election was stolen by Maduro – the strongman leader who has ruled the country with an iron fist since the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013.

Save had been helping to oversee thousands of campaign teams called “comanditos” (“little commandos”) to galvanize voters opposed to the continued rule of Maduro. The groups were also organized to collect the actas printed out in each electoral center, in an effort to ensure a transparent election and to allow the opposition to count the votes independently from electoral authorities.

Ahead of the vote, government forces would park in front of her home as an intimidation tactic, Save said. “They would pull up on the other side of the street, a truck from the (intelligence service) SEBIN, or the special forces, with the windows down and the officers wearing balaclavas or skull masks to scare my family.”

Later, after the ballots were cast and Maduro declared victory – a claim that quickly aroused suspicions in the opposition and abroad – she and thousands of other Venezuelans took to the streets. Venezuelan security forces have since detained at least 2,000 opposition sympathizers, government numbers show, with the homes of activists in some neighborhoods of Caracas marked with black Xs. At least 24 civilians and one soldier have been killed in political violence.

Maduro himself ordered the opening of two new jails to accommodate the arrested and dubbed the police campaign to hunt down and detain as many protesters as possible “Operation Knock-Knock,” mimicking the sound of special forces knocking on the doors of opposition activists in the middle of the night to arrest them.

Save was targeted personally as the crackdown widened.

“[Trujillo’s] Governor Gerardo Marquez published a sign with my face stating that I was wanted for terrorism,” she recalled. Save denies that she was involved in terrorism or that she ever called for violence.

“I really felt they would get to me, sooner or later,” Save said.

Poking a hole in the official narrative

According to Venezuela’s electoral council, which is controlled by government sympathizers, Maduro won his reelection bid with just over 50% of the vote.

But the country’s opposition coalition, as well as electoral observers from the United Nations and the Carter Center have questioned the council’s numbers. The US, the EU and various other countries and multilateral institutions have also urged Venezuela to release granular data showing the results by polling station.

Yet, the price for disputing the government’s account of the election is high. While the publication of election tallies is admitted by Venezuelan law, the Venezuelan government has accused the opposition of releasing false “actas,” without presenting any proof. Last week, Attorney General Tarek William Saab summoned Gonzalez Urrutia for interrogation accusing him of “usurping” the Electoral Council’s functions.

Volunteers and electoral witnesses who collected the voting machine tallies have been particularly targeted by the government repression, activists say.

“Everyone who was involved in our effort is in hiding, either here or abroad,” said another opposition source involved in collecting the tallies. “The acta became like kryptonite because it proves the government is lying,” the source said.

Opposition presidential candidate Gonzalez Urrutia and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado are also in hiding. Maduro has publicly threatened them with detention.

A new life abroad

More than seven million Venezuelans have left their country since Maduro came to power in 2013, according to the United Nations. Experts fear hundreds of thousands more could follow them in the upcoming months.

The critical moment for Save took place on Friday August 2, five days after the election, she says. Moving every day for fear of arrest, she was driving in a rural area when her car broke down. Shortly after, a police patrol showed up on a motorcycle.

Several days later, she left the country in disguise.

Save is thinking of trying to make her way to the United States, where a growing number of exiled opposition politicians currently reside. But that her real hope is to return to Trujillo, where she believes that most people stand with her – even the soldiers tasked with enforcing Maduro’s rule.

“The government never imagined we could organize all our people for this. They ordered the military not to allow our witnesses to take the actas, but if we got 92% of them it means those orders were not obeyed,” she said. “The people are with us.”

Russian forces launched a barrage of drone and missile attacks aimed at energy infrastructure across Ukraine overnight, killing at least three people, as Ukrainian officials reported power outages in several cities.

Ukraine’s air force on Monday said it detected dozens of missiles and drones targeting almost all regions of the country, including the capital Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa.

Fatalities were reported in the Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Volyn regions, according to Ukrainian authorities. At least five people were injured in the central Poltava region when an industrial facility was hit, according to its regional military chief.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Monday at least 15 regions were impacted by what he called a “massive Russian attack” targeting energy infrastructure.

The country’s national energy company, Ukrenergo, has implemented emergency power cuts to stabilize the system, he said on Telegram. Power outages have been recorded in several cities, including Kyiv and Dnipro, following the attacks, according to Serhii Kovalenko, CEO at Yasno energy company.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said “the energy sector is in the crosshairs” and the extent of the damage was being investigated.

In Kyiv, the head of the city military administration said air defenses were working in the region and the outskirts of the capital and advised people to stay in shelters.

In Kharkiv, emergency services were working at an undisclosed number of sites targeted in the attacks, according to its regional military head.

The widespread aerial assault comes two days after a Russian strike on a hotel in the Donetsk region killed a British safety adviser and wounded two journalists.

Ryan Evans, a former soldier, had been working with Reuters since 2022 and advised its journalists on safety around the world including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics, the news agency said.

Residents without power

Lights were out in many parts of Kyiv Monday morning, with residents saying they lost power after hearing several loud explosions.

She had recently left the city with her child to avoid shelling and is now living without power or water on the capital’s outskirts.

“The explosions were so powerful that the house was shaking and the windows were shaking,” she said. “After four or five explosions, my husband and I decided to wake up the baby and go outside. Since the house was not new and there was no shelter or cellar to hide in, it was not safe to stay inside, because of the shrapnel from the windows.”

Anna, who lives on the right bank of Kyiv, woke up to an air-raid alarm followed by explosions.

“The bulk of the missiles were shot down in the region, but even from there I could hear the sounds of explosions and the work of the air defense. My friends from other parts of the city wrote that their electricity and water were cut off,” she said.

Russia says it shot down drones

The latest Russian bombardment also comes as Ukrainian forces occupy a pocket of Russian territory in the border region of Kursk and as Kyiv carries out its own aerial attacks on targets deep inside Russia.

On Monday, Russia said its air defenses destroyed 20 drones launched from Ukraine overnight, including nine over the Saratov region, three over Kursk and two each over the Belgorod, Bryansk and Tula regions.

On Sunday, Belgorod’s governor said five civilians were killed and 12 others wounded in shelling.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said his forces have advanced up to 3 kilometers (nearly 2 miles) in Kursk and taken control of two more settlements.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russian ground forces are inching toward the key eastern city of Pokrovsk, which could become the next major battleground of the war.

Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road that connects it with other military hubs and forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk that is still under Kyiv’s control.

In his address Sunday, Zelensky said that in Donetsk, “The most attention is on Novohrodivka and Vodiane, where the assaults are most intense. I am grateful to all our units for their resilience.”

At least one person has died and two others are missing after an ice cave partially collapsed as a group of tourists was visiting the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in southern Iceland.

In a statement posted on social media, local police said first responders received a call shortly before 3 p.m. on Sunday as a group of about 25 foreign tourists from several nationalities were exploring ice caves when four people were hit by ice.

Two people were seriously injured, one dying from their injuries at the scene of the accident, another taken by helicopter to a hospital in the capital, reportedly in a stable condition.

A large number of rescuers worked throughout the afternoon and into the evening searching for the two missing people. The operation was paused after dark due to the dangerous conditions but will resume in the morning, police said.

Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported that efforts to transport equipment and personnel up to the glacier had proven difficult due to the rugged terrain and cutting through the ice was mostly done by hand with chain saws.

Local news site Visir said the group was on an organized ice cave tour and were accompanied by a guide but most people were outside the cave when it collapsed. The ice cave is a popular destination for tourists.

The collapse was likely not related to a volcanic eruption in southeast Iceland on Friday, around 300 kilometers (185 miles) away from the glacier.

Wading through muddy floodwaters up to chest height, hundreds of people slowly make their way to safety, their belongings held high above their heads to keep them dry.

Entering the city of Feni in southeast Bangladesh, it becomes clear why it is described as the epicenter of one of the country’s worst floods in living memory. Since Wednesday night, water has inundated 11 districts, and large swathes of the city of nearly 1.5 million people are now submerged.

Bangladesh lives on its rivers and waterways — its people relying on the vital life source for fishing and farming rice paddies. The country is also well-acquainted with flooding and cyclones — especially in recent years, as scientists say human-caused climate change exacerbates extreme weather events.

But this flood took them by surprise – and people here blame officials in India.

As we waded past their homes, some people shouted, “We hate India” and “This is Indian water.”

“They opened the gate, but no information was given,” said Shoriful Islam, 29, an IT worker who returned to his hometown from the capital Dhaka to volunteer in rescue efforts.

India denied the dam release was deliberate and said excessive rain was a factor – although it conceded that a power outage and communications breakdown meant they failed to issue the usual warning to neighbors downstream.

“India used a water weapon,” Islam said. “India is taking revenge for destroying the last government.”

‘I don’t know if they’re alive’

The only way in or out of the flood zone is by boat – all the main roads are completely cut off to vehicles, and rescue efforts are being slowed by the lack of electricity and near-total communications blackout in the city.

The army and navy have been mobilized to coordinate relief operations – and a nationwide volunteering effort has sprung up in the past few days, with people arriving from Dhaka and other parts of the country to lend a hand with rescues and delivering aid.

Some of them are also returning to their hometown to search for their family members.

Volunteer Abdus Salam, 35 – who usually works as an English teacher in Dhaka – said 12 members of his family are stranded in a rural area 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the center of Feni, including his two sisters, brother, and their children.

“There’s no electricity, no gas, no internet,” he added, calling for the international community to send assistance.

Nearly 5 million people are impacted by the floods in Bangladesh, and at least 18 people have been killed – but there are fears that number could rise much higher as the flood waters recede.

In neighboring India, officials say at least 26 people have been killed, and more than 64,000 people are seeking shelter in relief camps in the Tripura region.

Not an ordinary flood

Anger is now rising among the flood victims in Bangladesh about the source of the water that flooded their homes.

Pranay Verma, India’s high commissioner to Bangladesh, told Bangladesh’s interim government an “automatic release” occurred at the dam due to high water levels, according to the interim government’s press secretary, Shafiqul Alam.

But some believe politics played a part.

“India displayed inhumanity by opening the dam without warning,” said Nahid Islam, one of the two student representatives in Bangladesh’s interim government, headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Three weeks ago, Bangladesh ejected its long-standing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after a student-led protest movement against job quotas morphed into a nationwide movement to force her out of power when she ordered a bloody crackdown, killing hundreds of people.

Hasina fled by helicopter to India on August 5, after tens of thousands of people marched on the capital and her residence. During her 15 years in power, Hasina formed strong ties with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is now serving a rare third term.

After her ouster, reports emerged of reprisal attacks against people viewed as loyal to Hasina’s party – many of them Hindus – which sparked major concern in neighboring Hindu-majority India.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in statement Thursday that it was “factually not correct” to blame the flooding on water released from Dumbur dam.

It said flooding in Bangladesh was “primarily” due to water flowing from large catchment areas on the Gumti River, downstream from the dam.

“Floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a shared problem inflicting sufferings to people on both sides, and requires close mutual cooperation towards resolving them,” the statement said.

‘They’re very scared’

As the diplomatic row builds, rescue teams are working around the clock in the flood zone – where every rescue operation is a huge logistical challenge.

What would usually be a four-hour drive from Dhaka is double that on the gridlocked roads as rescue workers and volunteers try to access the flood region from all over the country. Boats are hard to come by – so many families arrive to retrieve their relatives but then have no way to reach them.

“I’m helpless because I don’t have a boat,” said Yasin Arafat, 24, who came from Dhaka to try to reach his father, mother, grandmother and younger brother.

He has heard there are 35 families clinging to a rooftop in his village, including two pregnant women. But it’s a three-hour boat ride from the city and he can’t find a rescue boat to take him there.

“They have no water, no food, and they’re very scared,” he said. “In the last 48 hours, I haven’t had any news.”

Even when people can source a boat, there are sections of the city on higher ground – including the railway track – where the vessels need to carried manually by dozens of volunteers.

The main highway through Feni has now turned into its main waterway – and is being used as the central route for people to make it to dry land.

Some of the people able to walk out are wading through waist- or chest-high muddy water – risking water-borne diseases, snakes or drowning to try to reach safety.

For many others in the deepest parts of the flood, it’s impossible to try walking – so they are stranded in villages several kilometers from the city center. Even the boat journey to these areas is risky – navigating through dense trees and marshes risks clogging the engine or hitting underwater obstacles invisible in the murky water.

Our boat passes by a government building being used as a rescue center, where an estimated 500 people are sheltering.

Other multi-story buildings – including a flooded hospital and several schools – are being used as a temporary home for those living in single-story shacks that are now underwater. They are physically safe but lacking food, water and medicine.

Peyara Akther, 36, is trying to rescue her sister Tanzina and her sick newborn baby from the rural outskirts of the city. She said the 1-month-old hasn’t been eating for the past few days and needs to get to a doctor.

But after searching for an hour to make it to the school where she believes her sister might be sheltering, there’s no sign of them – the communications blackout compounding the mounting problems facing these rescue operations.

Akther makes her way home, in the hope her sister has found another way there.

We head further north with a different boat to witness the next rescue operation.

A Feni-born man who works as a security guard at a hospital in Qatar flew back to Bangladesh when he heard what was happening in his hometown.

He managed to source a boat in the hope of rescuing his 55-year-old mother, but her location is too remote to reach. Instead, he came to a shelter to retrieve other relatives.

The family of four – a mother, child and grandparents – struggle into the boat, clambering up with the help of people on board. They are all exhausted and visibly hungry, devouring snacks of nuts and dried fruits, and gulping down water.

“We are happy now,” said grandfather Mizanur Rahman Khan, 65. “We are safe.”

As the darkness closes in on Friday evening, rescue efforts continue into the night to try to get the families of Feni to safety.

The main hope in this city is that the stranded people will survive long enough for aid to come – or for the floodwaters to recede.