A visual look at how Washington’s relationship with Caracas has gone from cordial to ‘predatory’

• Trump ally defends Venezuela oil deal amid ‘gunpoint diplomacy’ criticism

• Nobel laureate Machado: ‘Illegitimate’ Venezuela regime has no right to strike US oil deal

Written in the middle of the last century, the US Department of State memo conveys its message in a curt and undiplomatically honest tone: the glue that binds Washington to Caracas is, and is always likely to be, oil.

“All US policies toward Venezuela are affected in greater or less degree by the objective of assuring an adequate supply of petroleum for the US,” the 1950 document reads.

US Geological Survey says massive glacial collapse caused catastrophic flash floods in the Himalayan border region of Nepal ⁠and Tibet

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At 8.37am on Wednesday, an enormous section ⁠of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 35 miles (60km) north of the capital, Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border.

Such was the force of the event, it was initially reported as an earthquake of magnitude 4.4. The US Geological Survey later determined the tremor was caused ​by glacial rock and ice collapsing, registering a magnitude of 5.2.

An 1857 decree to drain swamps and plant a monoculture, detritus from the trees and global heating combined to produce the conditions for the Gironde inferno

The ruinous fires that overran parts of France this summer have burned more land than ever recorded, forced more people from their homes than at any point since the second world war and caused what scientists suspect is the country’s first firestorm thundercloud. The smoke from France’s biggest inferno in nearly 80 years choked Limoges, a city 125 miles (200km) from the flames, with more toxic dust than Delhi residents inhaled on the city’s worst day of smog last year.

The blaze that tore through forests outside Bordeaux in late July took just a few weeks to reforge France’s relationship with fire, but the conditions behind it were centuries in the making.

Ferocious flames continue to rage in parts of France and Spain, with no sign of abating. We chart the destruction in graphics and pictures

The hellish infernos that have torn through parts of France and Spain have caused deaths, the evacuation of 330,000 people from their homes, widespread destruction and clouds of toxic smoke. Records have already been smashed and with the fourth heatwave of the European summer setting in, there are few signs of the waves of wildfires ending.

France has already surpassed the worst previous year for the size of the area burned, with August, usually the hottest month, yet to come.

The rapid spread of the virus has been intensified by misinformation and violence towards volunteers and treatment centres

Nearly two months after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) confirmed an Ebola outbreak in one province, the virus is continuing to spread rapidly, reaching more parts of the country and infecting more people.

According to government data from 8 July, 1,759 cases and 600 deaths have been recorded. The virus has also spread to Uganda, where there have been 20 confirmed cases, including two deaths.

More than 1.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes amid bombings, evacuation orders and demolitions

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel’s destruction in southern Lebanon happened in phases. Hours after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on 2 March, the Israeli military issued forced evacuation orders for more than 100 villages close to the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Bombing quickly followed. Tens of thousands of residents of south Lebanon began heading north, taking shelter in cities such as Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. Many people outside the formal evacuation zones also fled their homes, recalling the autumn 2024 war in which Israel bombed wide swathes of south Lebanon without warning.

Rights groups fear tactic of ‘domicide’ trialled in Gaza, where entire areas are made uninhabitable, is being used again

The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations.

The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims.

UN says record numbers of people could face acute hunger if conflict continues

The world has become well versed in the importance of the strait of Hormuz to the world’s energy flows, but attention is increasingly turning to its vital role in another market – the fertiliser on which harvests depend.

A third of the global trade in raw materials for fertiliser passes through the maritime choke point, which is also the route for 20% of shipments of natural gas, which is required to make it.

The Tehran regime has weaponised geography in retaliation for the attacks by the US and Israel

Global oil markets have recorded some of the biggest price swings in history this week after the US-Israeli war with Iran throttled the flow of Middle Eastern crude through the strait of Hormuz.

The narrow waterway south of Iran is one of the world’s most important trade arteries, through which a fifth of global oil and seaborne gas is shipped from production facilities and refineries in the Gulf to buyers around the world.

How the US-Israeli war against Iran exploded into a regional conflict, as Tehran retaliated with strikes across the Middle East

• US-Israel war on Iran – live updates

A US-Israeli war against Iran that began on Saturday with bombing and missile attacks that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has exploded into a regional conflict, with Tehran retaliating by launching strikes across the Middle East.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, where it has been carrying out intense strikes after Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, fired rockets across the frontier.

A halt to shipping in strait of Hormuz and attacks on Middle East refineries are threatening supplies and stoking inflation

• Nils Pratley: A gas shock – not an oil shock – looks more threatening

• US-Israel war on Iran – live updates

Iran has responded to US and Israeli attacks by launching a series of counterstrikes against states across the Middle East, with serious consequences for the oil and gas industry and the global economy.

Tehran has attacked oil facilities in neighbouring countries, while shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz – the crucial bottleneck at the mouth of the Gulf – has all but ground to a halt.

Missiles and bombs landed across Iran, hitting political and security targets in Tehran, including supreme leader’s residence

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• US and Israel strikes on Iran – what we know so far

The US-Israeli war against Iran entered its second day on Sunday, as news of the assassination of the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, shook the Islamic Republic and the wider region.

Donald Trump announced Khamenei’s death while Israel claimed to have killed at least 40 senior Iranian commanders in the first day of attacks. Both countries continued to pound Iran, conducting hundreds of airstrikes across the country overnight and on Sunday.

Despite the apparent loss of a significant portion of its senior military and political leadership, Iran did not slow its retaliation on Sunday, bombing targets in the Gulf and unleashing waves of ballistic missiles towards Israel.

Streets empty as residents shield from chaos of retaliatory attacks after death of ‘El Mencho’ in federal raid

Mexico is on alert after cartel gunmen went on a violent rampage of revenge in response to federal forces killing their leader, a notorious mob boss known as “El Mencho”.

Authorities had attempted to capture Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes in the western state of Jalisco on Sunday but the raid led to a firefight that fatally wounded the infamous leader and killed six of his accomplices, according to officials.

Communal central heating means Moscow can plunge entire neighbourhoods into cold with a single strike

Many Ukrainians are without heating in sub-zero temperatures as a result of relentless Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, while the country suffers through its coldest winter of the war so far.

Ukraine is especially vulnerable to such attacks, as Moscow can exploit a widespread Soviet-era heat system in which multiple apartment blocks rely on communal central heating.

Key maps show the growing strategic importance of Greenland as Arctic ice melts under global heating

Lying between the US and Russia, Greenland has become a critical frontline as the Arctic opens up because of global heating.

Its importance has been underscored by Donald Trump openly considering the US taking the island from its Nato partner Denmark, either by buying it, or by force.

Border conflict has roots in colonial maps and long-standing ‘sibling rivalry’

Thailand and Cambodia have been locked in a border dispute for more than a century, which exploded again in the summer of 2025. Peace efforts have had mixed results and fighting continues.

A historical dispute over lines drawn on colonial maps is often used as a pretext for simmering nationalism. The two countries have had what one historian called a “sibling rivalry” for decades, fanned by competing claims to the region’s rich cultural heritage, including ancient temples in disputed areas.

About 56,000 people control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. Here’s one way to illustrate that

Cruising around on private jets, the ultra-rich are the world’s financial elite – but how many people actually occupy this exclusive wealth club? Could they all fit into a floating mega-yacht, or is the group much bigger, possibly the size of a dazzling mega-rich city?

Thanks to an inequality report out on Wednesday, we now have a snapshot of the size of the topmost layer floating above everyone else – the 0.001%.

US has used claims of a ‘war on drugs’ to justify its attacks, which have resulted in 83 deaths that the UN has called extrajudicial executions

Amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas, the US has gathered its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

Donald Trump’s administration has steadily increased pressure on Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of running the “Cartel of the Suns” drug-trafficking organization, and placing a $50m bounty on his head.

Relatives and experts tell of the human and societal need to find and identify the dead, while images and data shed light on the scale of the job

It has been described as one of the most gruelling recovery efforts in modern warfare.

As negotiations over the fragile Gaza ceasefire continue, Palestinians have started to dig through 61m tonnes of debris, 20 times more than the combined mass of all debris generated by conflicts since 2008. Underneath, at least 10,000 people are thought to be buried.