YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s Mount Merapi erupted Sunday, spreading searing gas clouds and avalanches of lava down its slopes as other active volcanoes flared up across the country, forcing the evacuation of thousands. On the densely populated island of Java, Merapi unleashed clouds of hot ash and a mixture of rock, and lava that traveled … Read more
In a blog post on Thursday, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory observed an X2.8 solar flare — making it the most powerful flare emitted from the Sun since 2017. Tweet may have been deleted Accompanying this monstrous burst of energy was a coronal mass ejection (CME), according to SpaceWeather.com, which is a massive burst of solar … Read more
BEIJING — A year ago, Li Houchen was on the streets of Shanghai, hollering “Freedom!” to protest China’s harsh “zero COVID” policy and growing authoritarianism. He was one of thousands of people demonstrating across China in what came to be called the White Paper movement, after the blank sheets of paper protesters used to represent … Read more
Republican senators tore into their GOP colleague Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Wednesday night. They’d had enough of Tuberville’s months-long blockade of military promotions. “There’s a reason this has not been done this way for a couple hundred years,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said at one point. A handful of Senate Republicans on Wednesday evening tore into … Read more
Tensions over the South China Sea escalated Monday with China filing a diplomatic complaint, the Philippines summoning Beijing’s ambassador, and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordering a probe a day after vessels from both nations collided in the disputed waters. A China Coast Guard vessel collided with a Philippines-contracted resupply boat early morning Sunday. Two hours … Read more
Comment on this storyComment JERUSALEM — In a year of unprecedented public discord, the high-holiday period in Israel has devolved into a rhetorical — and occasionally physical — battle between secular and religious Israelis, with protesters disrupting gender-segregated public prayer services and one of the country’s chief rabbis lamenting that nonobservant citizens have grown stupid … Read more