A Polish Air Force F-16 fighter jet crashed during a rehearsal for an airshow in Radom, central Poland, and the pilot died, the army said on Thursday.
“A Polish Army pilot died in the crash of an F-16 aircraft — an officer who always served his country with dedication and great courage. I pay tribute to his memory,” Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X after arriving at the crash scene.
The General Command of the Armed Forces said that the accident involved an aircraft from the 31st Tactical Air Base near Poznan and that there were no injuries to any bystanders.
“Rescue operations were immediately initiated at the scene,” it said in a statement.
Footage obtained by Polish media showed the F-16 performing a barrel roll aerobatic manoeuvre, and then crashing in flames as it slid on the ground.
Local media said the aircraft crashed into the runway around 1730 GMT and damaged it, and the Radom Airshow planned for the weekend has been cancelled.
Typhoon Kajiki steadily intensified over the South China Sea last weekend into a category 2 storm with sustained wind speeds of 115mph. It made landfall near the coastal city of Vinh in Vietnam on Monday afternoon, having slightly weakened but still packing a punch with winds of up to 100mph and torrential rainfall.
Kajiki’s wind threat soon faded after landfall, but the flood risk continued into Tuesday and Wednesday as the system moved inland. Parts of central and northern Vietnam, as well as Thailand, experienced 300-400mm of rainfall.
Seven people were killed in Vietnam, with flood water damaging more than 10,000 homes. The area is also home to thousands of hectares of rice plantations, some of which have also been affected by the extreme rainfall. Power outages and flooding have also reached the capital, Hanoi, where the outer bands of the storm continued to produce heavy rainfall into Tuesday and Wednesday.
A damaged statue in Vinh, Vietnam. Photograph: Luong Thai Linh/EPA
The duration of torrential rains from Typhoon Kajiki led to an elevated landslide risk across Laos and Thailand on Thursday. Landslides were reported in 12 Thai provinces, including the popular tourist destination of Chiang Mai, where four people were killed. Another person drowned in Mae Hong Son, bringing the death toll to five in Thailand, with a further 15 injured.
Further rains can be expected over Thailand, Laos and Vietnam over the weekend as another system, designated as tropical depression 20W by the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre, now over the South China Sea, tracks westwards over the region. This will prolong the risk of landslides and could hamper rescue efforts.
Monsoon floods across India and Pakistan continued this week, with 200,000 people evacuated across the Punjab province of Pakistan alone. Further extreme monsoon rains fell over the region this week, as well as across parts of India, raising fears that water released from dams in India would cause flooding downstream in Pakistan.
At least 34 people died in Kashmir, adding to the wider death toll of about 800 caused by the 2025 monsoon season, which has been the wettest across the region in 12 years. Torrential rains are expected to continue across north-west India next week, before the monsoon season begins to wind down throughout September.
A giant dust storm approaches Phoenix, Arizona. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP
The monsoon season across the south-west of the US is also in full swing, as thunderstorms affected Phoenix, Arizona early this week. A spectacular dust storm moved through the area as a result of these thunderstorms on Tuesday afternoon.
Torrential rain from monsoon storms can help to produce strong wind gusts that push out in advance of the rain, picking up dust and sand from the previously dry landscape into large dust clouds. However, the heavy rainfall also caused disruption on Wednesday morning, flooding an underpass downtown, stranding several cars.
Russia condemns European move to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran over nuclear programme Reuters
The Path to a Good-Enough Iran Deal Foreign Affairs
E3 joint statement on Iran: Initiation of the snapback process GOV.UK
Acting on behalf of Israel and the U.S., the E3 have decided to maliciously pursue pressure on the Iranian people. This folly—which Iran has sternly warned against—is immoral, unjustified, and unlawful. Iran has cautioned that having been left out by the U.S. o x.com
Russia, China slam European nations over Iran ‘snapback’ sanctions move Al Jazeera
Humans inhale up to 68,000 microplastics daily, study finds
A new study has found that humans may be inhaling up to 68,000 microplastic particles every day, a number significantly higher than initial calculations.
The research suggests that the majority of exposure comes from indoor environments like home, where tiny plastic particles from everyday items like clothing are abundant in the air.
The study was published in the journal Plos One, which showed that humans can inhale as much as 68,000 tiny plastics every day.
However, previous studies showed that larger pieces of airborne microplastics do not cause a major health threat because they are not hung in the air as they move deep into the ventilatory system.
The smaller microplastic particles measuring between 1 and 10 micrometers pose a greater health risk to humans than larger particles.
Specifically, their smaller size allows them to penetrate the body’s natural defenses, and travel deep into the respiratory system.
Nadiia Yakovenko, a microplastics researcher and coauthor at the France’s University of Toulouse, said, “The size of the particle is small and well-known to transfer into tissue, which is dangerous because it can enter into the blood stream and go deep into the respiratory system.”
Microplastics are defined as tiny plastic particles that can be either added intentionally to consumer goods which are a product of larger plastic items.
These particles contain a variety of chemicals like up to 16,000 plastic chemicals of different kinds.
While many of these chemicals such as BPA, phthalates and Pfas pose serious health risks.
According to Yakovenko, concentration indoors is higher because it is a restricted environment with high levels of plastics in small areas and there is poor ventilation.
It is not possible to completely eliminate all microplastics, you can significantly reduce your exposure by making certain changes to your home environment such as reducing plastic items made from natural materials.
Hepa air filtration systems found to be effective at removing microplastics and opening windows may be a suitable approach for ventilation, but that could potentially allow in microplastic pollution from tires.
In August 2021, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces, ending two decades of Western-backed governance. Since their return, the global community has remained divided over the question of formal recognition of the Taliban government. Most countries, including the U.S., the EU, and regional countries, have refused to formally recognise the Taliban due to concerns about human rights and their unwillingness to form an inclusive administration. Another key reason is their continued links with and tolerance of terrorist organisations operating from Afghan territory, including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).[1]
However, on July 3, 2025, Russia became the first major country to officially recognise the Taliban government.[2] This development significantly shifted regional geopolitics and could lead countries like China and Iran to reassess their positions. It also suggests that the balance of power in South and Central Asia may change.[3]
Jonathan HeadSouth East Asia correspondent in Bangkok
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Paetongtarn Shinawatra
Thailand’s Constitutional Court strikes again, removing yet another prime minister from office.
The country’s notoriously interventionist panel of nine appointed judges has ruled that Paetongtarn Shinawatra violated ethical standards in a phone call she had in June with the veteran Cambodian leader Hun Sen, which he then leaked.
In it, Paetongtarn could be heard being conciliatory towards Hun Sen over their countries’ border dispute, and criticising one of her own army commanders.
She defended her conversation saying she had been trying to make a diplomatic breakthrough with Hun Sen, an old friend of her father Thaksin Shinawatra, and said the conversation should have remained confidential.
The leak was damaging and deeply embarrassing for her and her Pheu Thai party. It sparked calls for her to resign as her biggest coalition partner walked out of the government, leaving her with a slim majority.
In July, seven out of the nine judges on the court voted to suspend Paetongtarn, a margin which suggested she would suffer the same fate as her four predecessors. So Friday’s decision was not a surprise.
Paetongtarn is the fifth Thai prime minister to be removed from office by this court, all of them from administrations backed by her father.
This has given rise to a widespread belief in Thailand that it nearly always rules against those seen as a threat by conservative, royalist forces.
The court has also banned 112 political parties, many of them small, but including two previous incarnations of Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party, and Move Forward, the reformist movement which won the last election in 2023.
In few other countries is political life so rigorously policed by a branch of the judiciary.
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Paetongtarn Shinawatra with her father Thaksin
In this case, it was the leaked phone conversation that sealed Pateongtarn’s fate.
It is not clear why Hun Sen chose to burn his friendship with the Shinawatra family. He reacted angrily to a comment by Paetongtarn calling the Cambodian leadership’s use of social media to push its arguments “unprofessional”.
Hun Sen described it as “an unprecedented insult”, which had driven him to “expose the truth”.
But his decision caused a political crisis in Thailand, inflaming tensions over their border, which last month erupted into a five-day war that killed more than 40 people.
The Thai constitution now requires members of parliament to choose a new prime minister from a very limited list.
Each party was required to name three candidates before the last election, and Pheu Thai has now used up two, after the court’s dismissal of Srettha Thavisin last year.
Their third candidate, Chaikasem Nitisiri, is a former minister and party stalwart, but has little public profile and is in poor health. The alternative would be Anutin Charnvirakul, the former interior minister whose Bhumjaithai party walked out of the ruling coalition, ostensibly over the leaked phone call.
Relations between the two parties are now strained, and Anutin would have to rely on Pheu Thai, which has many more seats, to form a government, which is hardly a recipe for stability.
The largest party in parliament, the 143 MPs who were formerly in the now-dissolved Move Forward and have reformed as The People’s Party, has vowed not to join any coalition, but to remain in opposition until a new election is held.
A new election would appear to be the obvious way out of the current political mess, but Pheu Thai does not want that. After two years in office it has been unable to meet its promises to revive the economy.
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Paetongtarn during proceedings at the Constitutional Court earlier in August
For all of her youth, the inexperienced Paetongtarn failed to establish any real authority over the country, with most Thais presuming that her father was making all the big decisions.
But Thaksin Shinawatra seems to have lost his magic touch. Pheu Thai party’s signature policy at the last election, a digital wallet which would put B10,000 ($308; £178) in the pocket of every Thai adult, has stalled, and been widely criticised as ineffective.
Other grand plans, to legalise casinos, and to build a “land-bridge” linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, have gone nowhere.
At a time when Thai nationalist sentiment has been fired up over the border war with Cambodia, the Shinawatra family’s long-standing – though now broken – friendship with Hun Sen has heightened suspicion in conservative circles that they will always put their business interests before those of the nation.
The party’s popularity has plunged, and it is likely it would lose many of its 140 seats in an election now.
For more than two decades it was an unbeatable electoral force which dominated Thai politics.
It is hard to see how it will ever regain that dominance.
WARSAW, Poland — An F-16 pilot was killed Thursday when his jet crashed during preparations for an air show in central Poland, a government spokesperson said.
Spokesperson Adam Szłapka confirmed the death in a social media post. Polish news agency PAP reported that the plane was part of the Polish Air Force.
The crash occurred ahead of the AirSHOW Radom 2025, which was scheduled to occur this weekend.
