Spotlight
Multiple people were killed when a tornado tore through a small town in Iowa and left a wide swath of obliterated homes and crumpled cars, while the howling winds also twisted and toppled wind turbines.
After devastating Greenfield, a town of 2,000, on Tuesday the storms moved eastward to pummel parts of Illinois and Wisconsin, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers in the two states.

As Texas wildfires burned toward the nation's primary nuclear weapons facility, workers hurried to ensure nothing flammable was around buildings and storage areas.
When the fires showed no sign of slowing, Pantex Plant officials urgently called on local contractors, who arrived within minutes with bulldozers to dig trenches and enlarge fire breaks for the sprawling complex where nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled and dangerous plutonium pits — hollow spheres that trigger nuclear warheads and bombs — are stored.

The death of a British man and injuries impacting dozens of other people aboard a Singapore Airlines flight that hit severe turbulence Tuesday highlighted the potential dangers of flying through unstable air.
The exact cause of the 73-year-old man's death is under investigation. Authorities said he may have suffered a heart attack, though that hasn't been confirmed. Based on witness accounts, the number of injuries and the airliner's sharp descent, experts point to the significant safety hazards that in-flight turbulence poses to airline passengers and crews.

Perched on the open ramp at the rear of a British Chinook helicopter, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas flew home from the annual Spring Storm military exercises, pleased to see NATO allies cooperating. But she later said that other types of warfare were on her mind.
Her nation, which borders Russia, has seen a rise in sabotage, electronic warfare and spying — all blamed on Moscow.

Cars, trucks and SUVs in the U.S. keep getting older, hitting a record average age of 12.6 years in 2024 as people hang on to their vehicles largely because new ones cost so much.
S&P Global Mobility, which tracks state vehicle registration data nationwide, said Wednesday that the average vehicle age grew about two months from last year's record.

Leaders around the Baltic Sea reacted warily Wednesday to reports that Russia could revise the borders of its territorial waters in the region, with Lithuania's foreign minister calling it an "obvious escalation" that must be met with an "appropriately firm response."
In a draft proposal reported by some Russian media, Russia's Defense Ministry suggests updating the coordinates used to measure the strip of territorial waters off its mainland coast and that of its islands in the Baltic Sea. The existing coordinates were approved in 1985, the ministry says; adding they were "based on small-scale nautical navigation maps" and don't correspond to the "modern geographical situation."

Sustained Russian attacks on Ukraine's power grid in recent weeks have forced leaders of the war-ravaged country to institute nationwide rolling blackouts. Without adequate air defenses to counter assaults and allow for repairs, though, the shortages could still worsen as need spikes in late summer and the bitter-cold winter.
The Russian airstrikes targeting the grid since March have meant blackouts have even returned to the capital, Kyiv, which hadn't experienced them since the first year of the war. Among the strikes were an April barrage that damaged Kyiv's largest thermal power plant and a massive attack on May 8 that targeted power generation and transmission facilities in several regions.

Global nickel prices have soared since deadly violence erupted in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia last week.
The overseas territory, which has been under French rule for over 170 years, is a major global producer of the critical material that is needed to make electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, steel and other everyday items.

FIFA was urged by international lawyers Wednesday to uphold its own policy and scrutinize Saudi Arabia's human rights record before picking the kingdom to host the men's 2034 World Cup.
A 22-page document was delivered to FIFA headquarters in Zurich on behalf of Mark Pieth and Stefan Wehrenberg of Switzerland and British barrister Rodney Dixon. They offered to work with FIFA on an action plan and monitoring of Saudi Arabia by independent experts.

Israel's shutdown and seizure of an Associated Press video camera that provided a live glimpse into Gaza alarmed many journalists, who worried Tuesday about wider implications for coverage of a war largely fought out of the world's sight to begin with.
After widespread condemnation, including a call by the Biden administration for Israel to back off, authorities returned the AP's equipment late Tuesday. Israel had justified its move by saying the agency violated a new media law that bans Al Jazeera, since the Qatari satellite channel is one of thousands of customers that receive live AP video.
