A volcano has begun erupting near Iceland's main airport, the country's meteorological authorities have said.
The eruption is near the Fagradalsfjall mountain, 32km (20 miles) southwest of the capital Reykjavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said.
A live video feed from the site shows molten lava and smoke spewing from a fissure in the ground.
The airport remained open, and no flights were disrupted.
It comes after days of small earthquakes in the area.
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The eruption is close to Keflavik Airport, Iceland's international air traffic hub.
An eruption in the same area last year produced spectacular lava flows for several months.
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Image:An eruption in the same area in May last year produced spectacular lava flows for several months
Iceland, which is located above a volcanic hotspot in the North Atlantic, sees an eruption every four to five years on average.
The most disruptive happened in 2010, when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano sent clouds of ash and dust into the atmosphere, halting air travel for days between Europe and North America over concerns the ash could damage jet engines.
More than 100,000 flights were grounded and millions of passengers stranded.
Image:The Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in 2010 sent clouds of ash and dust into the atmosphere, halting air travel for days between Europe and North America
But unlike the 2010 eruption, this one is not expected to spew much ash or smoke into the atmosphere.
A volcano close to the capital of Iceland and the country’s main airport has started to erupt.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the eruption is near the Fagradalsfjall mountain, 20 miles south-west of the capital Reykjavik.
A live video feed from the site shows molten lava spewing from a narrow fissure in the mountain.
The eruption follows days of small earthquakes in the area along a peninsula known to be a seismic hot-spot.
In March last year, lava fountains erupted spectacularly from a 500-750 metre long crack in the same area, with activity continuing until September.
It was the first to take place in the area for as long as 800 years but the country is no stranger to eruptions and earthquakes.
The island is located above a volcanic hotspot in the North Atlantic and averages an eruption every four to five years.
Cameras set up close to the volcanic area confirm lava is pouring from the ground (Picture: mbl.is)
The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the eruption is near the Fagradalsfjall mountain (Picture: Metro)
Lava if flowing from a crack which has opened up in the Earth’s surface (Picture: ruv.is)
Fresh volcanic activity close to Keflavik Airport, Iceland’s international air traffic hub, has the nation’s airline industry on high alert.
A ‘code red’ has been issued’, preventing aircraft from flying directly over the site, but this could be stepped down after further investigations.
Eruptions on Iceland have been known to have knock on effects on European aviation.
The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010 sent clouds of ash and dust into the atmosphere, interrupting air travel for days between Europe and North America.
More than 100,000 flights were grounded, stranding millions of passengers.
Voters in Kansas have rejected a bid by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to amend the state’s constitution in a way that would have paved the way for lawmakers to ban or restrict abortion.
The referendum was the first electoral test of public opinion in the US since the Supreme Court in June stripped away federal protection for the procedure.
On Wednesday morning, with 96 per cent of votes counted, the No campaign was ahead by 59 per cent to 41 per cent, pointing to a crushing defeat for Republicans and anti-abortion activists who had backed the so-called Value Them Both amendment.
US president Joe Biden said the vote made it clear that the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own healthcare decisions.
“Congress should listen to the will of the American people and restore the protections of Roe as federal law,” he said.
The result followed a bitterly fought campaign that attracted nationwide attention, coming shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling gave states the right to regulate abortion.
Analysts said the victory by the abortion rights movement in a conservative state, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, suggested that the public backlash to Supreme Court’s ruling might be stronger than expected.
It could also energise the abortion rights movement ahead of several other planned ballots buoy Democrats in the lead-up to November’s midterm elections, they added.
“A win in a red state will help the pro-choice movement in terms of raising funding and recruitment volunteers, as they look to upcoming votes in other states,” said Michael Smith, professor of politics at Emporia State University in Kansas.
He said Kansans might normally be relied on to elect Republicans at the state and national level, but did not endorse everything the party proposed owing to a libertarian streak and a distaste for big government.
“That could be taxes or proposals from the Democrats. But this vote suggests it may also apply to regulating one’s own body,” said Smith.
Neal Allen, a political analyst at Wichita State University, said the victory was significant and suggested Republicans would struggle to win planned referendums to restrict abortion in other states.
“If you can’t win a vote to restrict abortion in Kansas, then you can probably only win in a few states,” Allen said.
The proposed Value Them Both amendment would have overturned a 2019 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that found women had the right to make decisions about their bodies, including whether to terminate a pregnancy.
The amendment was promoted by conservative lawmakers and church groups who wanted to alter the state’s constitution to enable the legislature to pass laws to restrict abortion access.
Planned Parenthood, one of the largest funders of the campaign against the referendum, said the result meant Kansas would remain one of the only states in the region that safeguards abortion and a critical access point for women from neighbouring states with bans in place.
The US has no DNA confirmation of the death of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul - but has verified his identity through "multiple" other sources, the White House has said.
Al-Zawahiri, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks, was killed in a US drone strike on a home in the Afghan capital where he had been hiding out with his family.
The Egyptian terror leader was standing on the balcony of a safehouse on Sunday morning when he was attacked by two hellfire missiles.
It was the home of a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a unnamed senior US intelligence official.
National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby, said US officials did not have DNA confirmation of his death but added: "Quite frankly, based on multiple sources and methods that we've gathered information from, we don't need it."
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He told a White House news conference that US authorities had "visual evidence and evidence collected through other means" that "led us to the certainty before that this was the guy, and that led us to the conclusion after, with a high degree of confidence, that he was no more".
Mr Kirby said the US assessment of "high confidence" included going on "what people on the ground did afterwards".
The US has said the Taliban "grossly" violated the 2020 Doha Agreement, on the terms of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, by hosting and sheltering al-Zawahiri.
Image:Joe Biden met with his national security team to discuss the operation on 1 July. Pic: White House
Mr Kirby told reporters the missile strike proved that Afghanistan "isn't a safe haven" for terrorists and "isn't going to be going forward".
He added that the US knows that are still some "core" al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan but the number "is not very large".
A report by monitors said the Taliban and al Qaeda remain close and that AQ fighters, estimated at 180-400, are represented "at the individual level" among Taliban combat units.
US President Joe Biden announced the death from the balcony of the White House Blue Room, saying "justice has been delivered".
"This terrorist leader is no more," Mr Biden added, before expressing his hope the killing brings "one more measure of closure" to families of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the attacks on 11 September 2001.
The president added that Afghanistan will "never again become a terrorist safe haven" after the strike was carried out nearly a year after US troops withdrew from the country.
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Biden: 'This terrorist leader is no more'
Mr Biden said none of the 71-year-old's family members were injured and there were no civilian casualties.
The FBI had been offering $25m (£20m) for "information leading to the apprehension or conviction" of the terror leader, whose death is the biggest blow to al Qaeda since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in 2011.
The operation to kill al-Zawahiri was many months in the planning, according to a senior US administration official.
Mr Biden was first briefed about a proposed operation to take out the al Qaeda leader on 1 July this year.
But it was much earlier in the year when intelligence suggested that his wife and children had relocated to Kabul. He and his family were believed until that point to have been in hiding in Pakistan.
The family were located to a safehouse where, the US official says, al-Zawahiri was eventually spotted too.
Image:The suspected house in Kabul that was hit by a US drone strike
He was watched for several months and his pattern of life was recorded. He never left the house but did spend time on a balcony where he was eventually killed.
On 25 July, a detailed proposal had been presented to Mr Biden who, the administration official said, requested "granular level interest" because of the focus on taking "every step… to minimise civilian casualties".
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Smoke after strike on terror leader
Intelligence allowed the Americans to study the construction of the house to ensure that civilian casualties were avoided.
The official added al-Zawahiri's death is "a significant blow to al Qaeda and will degrade their ability to operate".
The US imposed sanctions on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s reputed girlfriend on Tuesday alongside other members of the Moscow elite and businesses that it says are enabling the war in Ukraine.
“The United States is taking additional actions to ensure that the Kremlin and its enablers feel the compounding effects of our response to the Kremlin’s unconscionable war of aggression,” US secretary of state Antony Blinken said in a statement announcing the measures.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said her agency would “use every tool at our disposal to make sure that Russian elites and the Kremlin’s enablers are held accountable for their complicity in a war that has cost countless lives”.
The Treasury department said it had imposed sanctions on a number of Kremlin-connected elites, including Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast and member of parliament who the US described as having a “close relationship to Putin”.
It also listed a big multinational company, a yacht and a sanctions-evasion operation among other entities it had hit with restrictions.
Kabaeva, who is chair of the board of a media company owned by some of Putin’s closest allies, was hit with sanctions by the UK and EU earlier this year.
Putin has said almost nothing about his private life since divorcing his first wife, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, in 2013. His eldest daughters Maria and Katerina head up state-funded science programmes and occasionally appear in public under pseudonyms.
Russian tabloids, however, have reported that Putin has been in a relationship with Kabaeva since 2008, when a newspaper was shut down after claiming the two were engaged.
The US also imposed sanctions on the father-and-son chemicals tycoons Andrey Guryev, founder of fertiliser producer PhosAgro, and his son, also Andrey, the company’s former chief executive.
The elder Guryev owns Witanhurst, the second-largest home in London after Buckingham Palace, and Alfa Nero, a yacht he bought for $120mn in 2014.
The US described Guryev as a “known close associate” of Putin, whose doctoral thesis supervisor Vladimir Litvinenko owned more than 20 per cent of PhosAgro before transferring most of the stake to his wife in May.
It also said several other oligarchs hit with sanctions were “Putin enablers”, including Alexander Ponomarenko, the co-owner of Moscow’s largest airport, who it said had “close ties to other oligarchs and the construction of Vladimir Putin’s seaside palace”.
PhosAgro, fellow fertiliser producer EuroChem, and the airport were not subject to the sanctions, the Treasury said.
The US and EU issued clarifications exempting Russian agriculture and fertiliser exports from sanctions last month as part of efforts to get Moscow to lift its blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
The US has killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has confirmed.
He was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday.
He and Osama Bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks together, and he was one of America's "most wanted terrorists".
Mr Biden said Zawahiri had "carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens".
"Since the United States delivered justice to bin Laden 11 years ago, Zawahiri has been a leader of al-Qaeda," Mr Biden said. "From hiding, he co-ordinated al-Qaeda's branches and all around the world, including setting priorities for providing operational guidance and calling for and inspired attacks against US targets."
"Now justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more," he added.
Zawahiri took over al-Qaeda after the death of Bin Laden in 2011.
Officials said Zawahiri was on the balcony of a safe house when the drone fired two missiles at him.
Other family members were present, but they were unharmed and only Zawahiri was killed in the attack, they added.
Mr Biden said he had given the final approval for the "precision strike" on the 71-year-old Egyptian after months of planning.
His killing will bring closure to families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the 2001 attacks, Mr Biden added.
"No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out," said Mr Biden, adding that "we shall never waver from defending our nation and its people".
Mr Biden said Zawahiri had also masterminded other acts of violence, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole naval destroyer in Aden in October 2000 which killed 17 US sailors, and the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 223 people died.
He insisted that Afghanistan would never again become a safe haven for terrorists.
A Taliban spokesman described the US operation as a clear violation of international principles - but did not mention Zawahiri.
"Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan and the region," the spokesman added.
However, US officials maintained that the operation had had a legal basis.
The killing of Zawahiri comes nearly a year after US troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on the orders of Mr Biden, bringing an end to a 20-year military presence there.
Under a 2020 peace deal with the US, the Taliban agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in areas under their control.
In background briefings, US intelligence officers said Taliban affiliates had visited the safe house after the strike in an attempt to cover up evidence of his presence there.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri in Kabul, the Taliban had "grossly violated" the peace agreement.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was the ideological brains behind al-Qaeda.
An Egyptian doctor who was imprisoned in the 1980s for involvement in militant Islam, he left the country after his release and became involved in violent international jihadist movements.
Eventually he settled in Afghanistan and joined forces with a rich Saudi, Osama Bin Laden. Together they declared war on the US and organised the 11 September 2001 attacks.
It took a decade for Bin Laden to be tracked down and killed by the US. After that, Zawahiri assumed leadership of al-Qaeda, but he became a remote and marginal figure, only occasionally issuing messages.
The US will herald his death as a victory, particularly after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, but Zawahiri held relatively little sway as new groups and movements such as Islamic State have become increasingly influential. A new al-Qaeda leader will no doubt emerge, but he will likely have even less influence than his predecessor.
The drone strike is the first known US intervention inside Afghanistan since the military pullout last August and, despite the withdrawal, the decades-old "war on terror" grinds on, the BBC's North America Correspondent John Sudworth observes.
Days before the withdrawal, a miscalculated US drone strike killed 10 innocent people in Kabul, including an aid worker and seven children. The US said it had been a "tragic mistake" and had been aiming to target a local branch of the Islamic State group.
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The world is one misstep from devastating nuclear war and in peril not seen since the Cold War, the UN Secretary General has warned.
"We have been extraordinarily lucky so far," Antonio Guterres said.
Amid rising global tensions, "humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation", he added.
His remarks came at the opening of a conference for countries signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The 1968 deal was introduced after the Cuban missile crisis, an event often portrayed as the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. The treaty was designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries, and to pursue the ultimate goal of complete nuclear disarmament.
Almost every nation on Earth is signed up to the NPT, including the five biggest nuclear powers. But among the handful of states never to sign are four known or suspected to have nuclear weapons: India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.
Secretary General Guterres said the "luck" the world had enjoyed so far in avoiding a nuclear catastrophe may not last - and urged the world to renew a push towards eliminating all such weapons.
"Luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict," he said.
And he warned that those international tensions were "recaching new highs" - pointing specifically to the invasion of Ukraine, tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East as examples.
Russia was widely accused of escalating tensions when days after his invasion of Ukraine in February, President Vladimir Putin put Russia's substantial nuclear forces on high alert.
He also threatened anyone standing in Russia's way with consequences "you have never seen in your history". Russia's nuclear strategy includes the use of nuclear weapons if the state's existence is under threat.
On Monday, Mr Putin wrote to the same non-proliferation conference Mr Guterres opened, declaring that "there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed".
But Russia still found itself criticised at the NPT conference.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned what he called Russia's sabre-rattling - and pointed out that Ukraine had handed over its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in 1994, after receiving assurances of its future security from Russia and others.
"What message does this send to any country around the world that may think that it needs to have nuclear weapons - to protect, to defend, to deter aggression against its sovereignty and independence?" he asked. "The worst possible message".
Today, some 13,000 nuclear weapons are thought to remain in service in the arsenals of the nine nuclear-armed states - far lower than the estimated 60,000 stockpiled during the peak of the mid-1980s.
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