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Ukraine drone strike on oil refinery deep inside Russia kills at least 13

A Ukrainian drone strike on an industrial city deep inside Russia has killed at least 13 people, according to the local mayor, as Kyiv steps up its campaign of long-range strikes on targets far from the frontline. Kyiv said it hit the Taneco refinery in the city of Nizhnekamsk, about 750 miles (1,200km) from the Ukrainian border. Footage circulating online appeared to show smoke rising from the refinery. Ukraine’s general staff said the raid was part of a campaign to reduce the “military potential of the Russian aggressor”. Russian investigators claimed civilian and industrial sites in the city had been hit. The head of the Tatarstan region, Rustam Minnikhanov, said a Ukrainian drone hit a hostel, killing nine people. He posted images showing a badly damaged building. If the death toll is confirmed, the strike would be among the deadliest Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, underscoring the growing reach of Kyiv’s strikes deep inside Russia. The Uzbek consulate said in a Telegram post that seven of the victims were Uzbek citizens. Minnikhanov declared a day of mourning and Russian prosecutors opened a criminal case into alleged terrorism. Local video footage showed Ukrainian drones buzzing above the city’s skyline, flying low over grey and boxlike Soviet-era apartment blocks. Two plumes of black smoke could be seen rising above an industrial zone on the wooded outskirts of Nizhnekamsk. The site is home to Taneco, one of Russia’s biggest and most technologically advanced oil refineries, owned by Tatneft. It also houses a plant that produces rubber and petrochemical products. Ukraine also bombed the area in June. In an address on Sunday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “long-range sanctions” against the Kremlin and its war machine would continue. In recent months Ukrainian drones have wreaked havoc on Russia’s oil export industry, even hitting refineries in Siberia, 1,500 miles from the frontline. The governor of the Tyumen region in western Siberia said on Monday that several Ukrainian drones had fallen on an industrial facility and that emergency services were dealing with a fire. There have been several strikes on warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon, as well as on oil tankers in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. Ukraine’s long-term goal is to slowly strangle the Russian economy so Moscow can no longer fund its war. Zelenskyy described his country’s remote bombing campaign as “entirely justified”. “Every Russian strike [on Ukrainian towns and cities] will be met with our response. Russia’s war will be felt more and more at their own home – in Russia,” he said on social media. “The only reason this is still continuing is Russia’s unwillingness to end this war.” Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted 456 Ukrainian drones flying above Russian territory and annexed Crimea. Ukraine says it is knocking out its opponent’s air defence systems more quickly than they can be replaced, creating air corridors or “doors” it can exploit. Overnight, Ukraine’s armed forces hit equipment depots and a repair unit in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk parts of eastern Ukraine, while ⁠Russian-appointed local authorities said the ⁠Zaporizhzhia region in south-east Ukraine was largely without ⁠electricity on Monday ⁠after Ukrainian attacks destroyed key power facilities. On Russia’s Black Sea ⁠coast, power outages were reported in ‌parts of ‌Novorossiysk, a major export ‌port, and in the holiday resort of Gelendzhik, regional authorities said on Telegram. There were unconfirmed reports that Russian ballistic missile launcher systems were destroyed inside Russia, not far from the border. According to Telegram channels citing Ukrainian military sources, the targeted high-value military assets were in Russia’s western Kursk and Bryansk regions. Both were used to launch Iskander and hypersonic Zircon missiles towards Kyiv. Ukrainian prosecutors said five people were killed on Sunday in a Russian artillery strike on a village outside Kharkiv. Several houses were flattened as a result of an “enemy strike” on Buhaivka in the Chuhuiv district, they said. Sweden’s security service, Säpo, said on Monday it ⁠had shut down a Russian spying operation that had tried to ⁠influence decision making ⁠there and discredit the Nordic country as well as its EU and ⁠Nato allies. Säpo said the operation had been planned and directed by Russia’s SVR foreign ⁠intelligence service and involved three people working under the cover of ‌diplomatic immunity. “This is ‌consistent with the threat we see Russia posing,” a Säpo spokesperson said. “We have been able to monitor what happened at these meetings between the individuals involved, what was said and what assignments were given. They are ⁠no longer in Sweden and we have been able to break up this operation.”

At least 47 dead and buildings collapsed after 7.4-magnitude earthquake shakes western Colombia – latest news

At least 47 people have been killed, according to the latest figures from officials, and dozens of buildings have collapsed in cities across western Colombia. The quake caused serious damage to buildings and prompted evacuations as far away as Bogota. Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella says he will personally oversee recovery efforts. The quake was also felt in neighbouring Ecuador.

US intelligence ‘believes Russia was behind Leipzig airport drone bomb’

American intelligence experts believe Russia was behind an attack on a German airport last week with a drone laden with explosives, US media have reported, as Berlin remained silent on the likely culprit. Last week’s security emergency prompted the interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, to break off his summer holiday in Italy and rush to the scene in the eastern city of Leipzig, as he spoke of a “new level of danger” for Germany. Dobrindt called the incident, in which a quadcopter with semtex plastic explosives attached was found next to a Ukrainian cargo plane at the major shipping and military hub, part of a “professional hybrid threat scenario” by a well-equipped foreign actor. As the German investigators raced to identify the perpetrators, the tabloid Bild reported that authorities had found DNA traces at the scene that matched a sample from a firebomb, posted via DHL, that exploded at Leipzig airport in July 2024. Five men suspected in a related series of mailed incendiary devices are on trial in Lithuania, where it emerged in court last week that the plane that was the target of the firebomb only avoided being set on fire in mid-flight because it was delayed. The suspects are alleged by Lithuanian prosecutors to have been employed by Russian intelligence. Even as MPs and security analysts pointed the finger at the Kremlin over the latest incident in Leipzig, German government officials have not levelled a specific accusation against Moscow. The Wall Street Journal, however, has quoted US officials familiar with intelligence reports about the incident as saying that the drone probably belongs to the Russian government. CNN reported that Washington had concluded the drone came from a Russian secret service, citing a US defence official in Europe noting the explosive material found on the drone suggested a military manufacturer. German officials said the drone managed to fly past Leipzig airport’s defences. It was only immobilised when an alert airport bus driver ferrying a group of late-night passengers spotted and reported it, an estimated four hours after it breached the facility’s security, averting what authorities have said could have been a multiple casualty event. The same night, a DHL cargo plane, which had been forced to abort its landing at the airport due to the discovery of the drone, then collided with an unknown object in mid-air as it was climbing away from the airport. It later landed safely elsewhere, with minor damage. Investigators now believe it hit a second hostile drone being flown that night. A day later, drones were detected above an army installation in western Germany housing components for US-made Patriot air-defence systems, which Ukraine has often requested to help fend off Russia’s aerial bombardments. In response to the increased threat, the German interior ministry said on Monday it plans to double its federal team of anti-drone experts to 300, with the number of operational bases for the unit to rise to eight from four. Germany and other European countries have long reported suspicious unauthorised drone overflights at airports, military facilities, ports and logistics companies, and accused Russian agents of spying as well as a targeted campaign of sabotage, disruption and intimidation. Moscow has denied this, and late last week its embassy in Berlin called any suggestion it had a hand in the Leipzig case a “rashly contrived provocation” that “serves only the interests of Kyiv and the militarist wing of the European political establishment”. Berlin is Ukraine’s biggest national supplier of military aid in its defence against the Russian onslaught. Next month, Germany will hold three pivotal elections in eastern states, where support for defence assistance for Kyiv is controversial among voters and fears of “provoking” Moscow run high. The pro-Russian far-right Alternative für Deutschland is poised to perform well in all three races, polls show, amid reports of Russian disinformation targeted at its principal rivals, the mainstream democratic parties. The opposition Greens have criticised the government for not naming and blaming Russia at this stage of the Leipzig investigation. Political scientist Wolfgang Schröder of the University of Kassel in western Germany said two factors could be shaping Berlin’s restraint. Firstly, Russia had been named early on as a prime suspect behind the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which German prosecutors now say was ordered by Ukrainian “state authorities”. More important, Schröder said, were the incalculable consequences of accusing Moscow of a botched military attack on German soil amid warnings of an escalation in tensions. “If it were to be defined as an act of aggression – that is, a military attack by Russia against (Germany’s) critical infrastructure – then we would be on the brink of entering a state of war, and that would have implications not only of a diplomatic nature but also with regard to Nato,” he told local news broadcaster n-tv. “A cautious approach is being taken here, precisely because the aim is to prevent being drawn in, and that would mean turning this into a matter of European security – a matter of Nato security – and that would certainly take Germany’s involvement in the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine to a whole new level.”

At least 20 dead as powerful earthquake strikes western Colombia

At least 20 people have died after a powerful earthquake struck western Colombia, collapsing and severely damaging buildings in major cities including Cali and Pereira. The US and Colombian geological surveys reported that a 7.4 magnitude earthquake had struck at 7.34 am local time (13.34 BST) on Monday, with its epicentre in the western department of Chocó. It was also felt in neighbouring Venezuela, which is still reeling from a deadly double earthquake on 24 June. Western Colombia appears to have suffered the most serious damage, with authorities reporting 18 deaths in Pereira, the capital of Risaralda department, and at least two in Manizales, the capital of Caldas. The mayor of Manizales, Jorge Eduardo Rojas Giraldo, said at least 12 buildings and 20 homes had been partially or completely or destroyed there. In a social media video, he told citizens to be “completely ready” for aftershocks. “Do not go back into the buildings yet. I know this isn’t easy but stay outside for a little while at least because there could be an aftershock,” he said. Social media videos showed citizens searching for victims in rubble in Cali and a woman sprinting from a building as it collapsed in Manizales. One video showed part of the San José church in Pereira collapsing as palm trees around it shook. Another video published by the newspaper El Tiempo captured the moment a building gave wayin Manizales. The mayor of Cali, Alejandro Eder, said at least 20 buildings had collapsed in his city and that some people were trapped inside. He did not specify how many. “Right now, we are trying to map out what has happened, firstly to protect lives and secondly to be able to push ahead with any kind of rescue that might be necessary,” he said, urging citizens to stay calm. He also told residents to check their buildings for structural damage. “If you do not feel safe, if you see very large cracks, please, leave the building,” he said. The governor of Chocó, Nubia Carolina Córdoba, said people had been injured and buildings severely damaged in the department’s capital, Quibdó. Colombia’s new president, Abelardo De La Espriella, announced he would travel to Pereira to lead the government response. “You are not alone. The state is present and acting,” De la Espriella, who took office on Friday, wrote on X. His office announced that he had ordered an immediate meeting of the national disaster management committee and said the government was “vigilant and in action”. “We will keep Colombians informed,” it said. Aviation authorities said the airports in Pereira, Manizales, Quibdó, Cartago, Armenia and Buenaventura had sustained damage. The earthquake comes weeks after Venezuela was struck by twin earthquakes that devastated the country’s northern coast, killing more than 6,000 people.

Jean hoped bird flu wouldn’t come to Australia. Then it arrived – and she saw a tern ‘trembling and swaying’

Bird enthusiast Jean Turner hoped avian flu would never arrive at her doorstep. At her home on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, bossy fairy wrens chirp at her from the deck, grey currawongs clumsily fall into her bird bath, and fluffy, hooded plover chicks emerge from speckled eggs in front of her binoculars. But online, images of Argentinian coastlines strewn with dead seal pups and researchers lining up rows of dead seabirds on Antarctic islands offered a warning of what could come. So when South Australia confirmed its first case of the deadly H5 bird flu strain, just over 200km away at Robe on the Limestone Coast, Turner was prepared to become a different kind of birder. “We had this fairytale belief that maybe we wouldn’t get it here,” she says. “But it’s here and now things are going to get harder and more confronting.” She is one of more than 120 volunteers who have signed up for the Bird Observers Network, which allows birders to contribute to the state’s bird flu response. The partnership between the South Australian government, Conservation Council SA, Birds SA and Birdlife Australia trains volunteers to identify and report sick birds that may be showing signs associated with H5 bird flu. Since the network’s first session, Turner has already reported a sick greater crested tern, which was resting at the edge of a flock. While the other birds shuffled or flew around as she tried to get a better look, the sick animal didn’t respond. “It was standing on the jetty, trembling and swaying a bit,” Turner says. “It didn’t look well, it just looked really miserable.” Compared with the non-bird-obsessed general public, birders can offer greater detail when reporting potentially infected birds, says Steven Langley, the president of Birds SA. They can often recognise species more accurately, use their binoculars to observe possible abnormalities within a flock, and notice when birds they might see on their routine walks go missing. “We all just want to be able to do whatever we can to make a difference,” Langley says. “When you see these distressing images from overseas, you’re implanting them into your mind and onto the places and the birds that you have got a great deal of affection for.” Volunteers generally don’t receive further correspondence after they’ve made a submission, but multiple crested terns found on Kangaroo Island have been tested and returned confirmed positive results for H5 bird flu since Turner’s report. The grim task of reporting dead wildlife is a familiar one to many South Australian birders after the toxic algal bloom which engulfed 20,000 sq km of coast, killing millions of sea creatures and becoming one of the worst marine mass mortalities in the world. Though Turner says the scenes from the bloom were confronting, she worries bird flu has the potential to be even worse. The first mass mortality event of the outbreak was detected last week among greater created terns at Baudin Rocks, just across the beach from Robe, where more than 80 dead and sick birds were spotted. Langley says the impending disaster makes it even more important to take other actions to protect birds, including mitigating predator risks, reducing disturbance and providing and protecting more habitat. “When you lose a huge proportion of your breeding birds to bird flu, every single bird that survives is really, really valuable,” he says. “We need to be reducing disturbance to these birds.” For now, the SA government says it is continuing engagement with the community, the agricultural industry and the wildlife sector to bolster surveillance. Environment minister Emily Bourke thanked the birding community for helping with surveillance and says other states and territories were interested in setting up similar models. Birders and the general public who come across dead or sick animals have been urged not to touch them, but instead to report them to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on on 1800 675 888, and by taking a photo and noting the location.

Dogs can distinguish between fearful and angry or sad human faces, brain scans suggest

While dogs are known to turn the puppy eyes on their owners, it seems our pets are keeping a close eye on us too: research has revealed dog brains can distinguish different types of unhappy human faces. Dr Laura Cuaya, a co-author of the study from the University of Vienna, said previous behavioural studies had shown dogs could tell apart some human facial expressions, but such studies tended to only test two at a time, one positive and one negative. As a result, it was not clear if dogs could distinguish different types of happy or unhappy faces. Now Cuaya and colleagues have revealed dog brains can not only distinguish happy faces from other expressions, but can tell apart different negative expressions, distinguishing fearful faces from those that are angry or sad. “This is the first demonstration that the dog brain can distinguish between emotions from the same valance,” she said. While the team’s previous research has suggested dogs do not have a particular region of the brain devoted to processing faces, Cuaya noted that did not mean the brain activity pattern was the same for the front and back of the head. Writing in the journal iScience, Cuaya and colleagues report how they worked with pet dogs that had been trained to voluntarily lie still, awake and unrestrained, within an MRI scanner. In the first experiment, eight dogs were shown five sets of happy faces and five sets of neutral faces. Each set contained four photos of humans that were unfamiliar to the dog but were of the same gender as their primary caregiver. This was repeated five times for each dog. The results revealed increased activity in certain parts of the brain when the dogs were shown happy faces compared with neutral ones. Cuaya said these areas were associated with higher visual processing, social processing and reward processing – suggesting the dog was processing something positive. Dr Raúl Hernández Pérez, the first author of the study, said the results raised another question, however: “We don’t know if these regions are related just to happy faces or to emotional faces in general.” The team then carried out a second MRI experiment involving 12 dogs. Each was shown new sets of unfamiliar male and female human faces, this time bearing four different expressions: happiness, sadness, fear and anger. The researchers used machine learning to analyse activity in the same brain regions identified in the first experiment, revealing such activity could distinguish happy faces from each negative expression – but could not distinguish between different types of unhappy face. However, when the team analysed activity in the whole dog brain, they found it was possible to distinguish between sad v fearful faces, and angry v fearful faces – with differences in activity in different parts of the brain – but not angry and sad faces. Hernández said different negative expressions might trigger different responses as they represented a different type of threat. The authors said it might be harder for dogs to tell apart two human facial expressions if they were both negative or both positive, and dogs might also need additional information – such as body language – to distinguish anger from sadness. The research has limitations, including small sample size; most of the dogs being border collies, and all were healthy and without behavioural problems. Cuaya said the study could have practical implications: for example, expressing happiness when training a dog could aid the learning process. Bridget Waller, a professor of evolution and social behaviour at Nottingham Trent University, who was not involved in the study, described the work as fascinating, saying it showed how dogs have been shaped through domestication to understand human behaviour. “Smiling is the most commonly used human facial expression, vital to our social interactions, and so it makes sense that dogs have developed a particular ability to distinguish this from other facial movements,” she said. “It seems less clear that they can distinguish between the other facial expressions, and again this would make sense as these are much less commonly produced in human social interaction.”

Ukraine confirms strikes on oil refinery in Russia’s Tatarstan – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. Ukraine’s ⁠military ⁠has confirmed it ⁠hit ⁠the Taneko ‌oil ‌refinery in ‌Russia’s Tatarstan region overnight (12:08) as part of its campaign to raise the Russian cost of continuing the war against Ukraine (10:08, 12:08). 13 people were reported dead with 39 injured after strikes on Nizhnekamsk in Russia’s Tatarstan region, including seven Uzbek citizens (14:54, 16:12). Russia criticised the strike as a “terrorist attack” and opened a criminal investigation (11:08). In other news, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni released a statement vowing to protect Europe’s “Christian cultural heritage,” ramping up their rhetoric on irregular migration (11:43). Several European countries continued to battle the impact of extreme temperatures and droughts affecting key rivers, including the Rhine, the Danube, and the Vistula (14:27), as the UK and France brace for the fifth heatwave of the summer (15:43). Estonia’s ruling coalition lost its majority after two MPs leaving their parties (15:52). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

From Dubai luxury to an Irish jail cell: Daniel Kinahan’s drastic lifestyle shift

It sounds like the penal equivalent of five stars: a private gym and library, daily outings to the exercise yard and a landing cleared of other prisoners. Daniel Kinahan’s first full day inside the walls of Portlaoise prison on Monday, however, marked a drastic change from his luxury lifestyle in the United Arab Emirates. The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group is confined to a cell for about 20 hours a day, and instead of presiding over an empire said to be worth hundreds of millions of euros his only outlet for expenditure is the tuck shop. The facilities, it turns out, are meagre consolation – a treadmill, some free weights and limited reading material. “The so-called gym and library are nothing much,” one source told the Irish Times. “The gym is probably slightly bigger than a box room in a house.” That is the reality facing Kinahan, 49, for months until his trial – and possibly decades if convicted. The Dubliner has not been convicted of any crime and remains innocent before the law, but his extradition on Sunday represents a victory for the Irish state and law enforcement agencies across the world. Kinahan was named a leader of a cartel said to control about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply, along with running criminal sidelines in firearms and racketeering. From his base in Dubai he had appeared impervious to such allegations for almost a decade, while becoming an influential figure in sport through his boxing management company MTK Global, which arranged championship bouts. That changed after the US offered a reward of up to $5m (£3.7m) for information that led to his arrest or conviction. The US treasury department said the Kinahan group had engaged in a gang war with another group in Ireland and Spain, “resulting in numerous murders”. The US bounty helped Ireland to secure an extradition treaty with the UAE last year, paving the way for Kinahan’s arrest in Dubai in April on foot of an Irish warrant. After failing to block extradition, Kinahan was flown in an Irish government jet to Casement aerodrome on Sunday and taken to the criminal courts of justice in central Dublin where he was charged with directing organised crime. Told by one of the three judges that a bail application would have to be made to the high court, the prisoner was phlegmatic. “I think we know I won’t be getting bail, but thank you,” he said. Observers at the hearing noted that Kinahan, wearing a black hoodie, black tracksuit bottoms and white trainers, looked older than the photographs that show a smiling, more youthful figure. He was pale, reflecting his incarceration since April. Crowds lined part of the route to watch as he was driven in a Garda car – not a blast-proof prison van, as originally expected – to Portlaoise, a high-security prison 50 miles (80km) outside Dublin that used to house republican paramilitaries and is now home to drug gang members and others convicted of serious crimes. Kinahan is the sole prisoner on a landing in A block that usually hosts eight inmates. During visits to the yard, which has wire netting to prevent contraband being dropped in, he will be alone. He will be served breakfast at 8am, lunch at 12.30pm and supper at 4.30pm and have a tuck shop account to buy personal items from the prison shop. Video calls will afford contact with his wife and children in Dubai. A glass pane will separate him from in-person visitors. Kinahan is scheduled to return to the non-jury court on 5 October.