Northern Nigeria has been hit hardest by the floods, according to Manzo Ezekiel, who speaks for the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA). Other parts of the country however remain at risk, he added, amid torrential rains and the rising water levels of its two largest rivers — the Niger and the Benue.

“The pattern of flooding in Nigeria is such that it usually happens on the northern side before moving to the central and the southern parts… because the water flows downwards,” Ezekiel said. “In the coming days, the central parts will soon witness similar floods, and even downwards to the southern parts.”

Although parts of Nigeria are prone to floods during the rainy season, Ezekiel said this year’s flooding has been reported in areas where it had previously been rare.

Environmentalists partly blame the country’s annual floods on poor drainage infrastructure.

More than 600 people were killed in floods across the country in 2022, the worst recorded in the West African nation in more than a decade.

Authorities attributed that flooding to above-average rainfall and the overflowing of the Lagdo dam in Cameroon.

Last week, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) warned that flood waters from neighboring Niger and Mali were “expected to move gradually into Nigeria” while urging states located along the River Niger to be on alert.

The country’s meteorological agency NIMET has also warned of the risk of flash floods across the country.

When hundreds of Russian missiles and drones assaulted Ukraine on Monday morning, Victoria Novorzhytska’s power went out first. The water supply was cut immediately after that.

She knew immediately the day would turn into a struggle. She works from her home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, and no power means no work.

Russia launched its biggest ever aerial attack against Ukraine on Monday, hitting energy infrastructure across the country. More strikes landed on Tuesday morning, killing five people and raising the death toll from this week’s attacks to 12.

The Ukrainian government and the country’s major energy companies would not disclose the scale of the disruption from the onslaught, but it is clear it knocked out power for millions.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK announced rolling blackouts for number of regions on Monday, including Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk.

For people on the western outskirts of the capital, this meant six hours of darkness followed by two hours of power between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.

The scheduled cuts add inconvenience to people’s lives, but they at least allow them to plan around power outages – so that residents of high-rise apartment blocks don’t get stuck outside when the elevators are not working, and that people charge up vital electronic devices while the power is on.

That these blackouts are already needed in the summer is particularly worrying. This situation could be far worse in a few months’ time, when demand for electricity tends to be higher in the cold, dark winter.

“The key task is to get through the winter, to provide energy supply to critical infrastructure, people and the economy,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters on Tuesday.

Shmyhal said the focus now was on repair and rebuilding. “We do this all the time, after each Russian shelling billions are allocated (and) equipment is brought to Ukraine.”

Powering up

Ukrainians have become used to living under the constant threat of blackouts. Monday’s attack stood out because of its massive scale, but it was not unusual in terms of the means Moscow used and the targets it chose. Energy infrastructure has long suffered from Russian strikes.

In Kyiv, authorities have set up “points of invincibility,” tents and other areas where people can charge their electronics and use the internet during power cuts.

The frequent attacks on energy infrastructure have also led many Ukrainian cities to invest in solar power. Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said the city has been subsidising the purchase of generators and solar panels by housing cooperatives and condominiums so that they can be independent of the energy network. The government has also put tax cuts and grants into place to help people get the equipment.

The vast majority of businesses, from tiny food stalls to huge shopping malls, now have their own generators, their deep rumble synonymous with blackouts.

Maksym Holubchenko, a 25-year-old barista in Kyiv said his cafe’s generator saves it from having to shut down every time there is a power cut after Russian strikes. It happens about once a month at the moment, he said.

Kyiv was hot on Monday and the thermometer on the wall in Holubchenko’s cafe showed 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit). The generator is not powerful enough to cover the needs of a normal service in the the cafe, so Holubchenko has to make compromises.

“In the winter we have enough power from the generator. In the summer we have to switch off the air conditioner and… parts of the coffee machine,” he said.

The cafe has sockets ready for customers who need to charge up their phones and other gadgets, as well as use the internet during power cuts.

Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy grid since its full-scale invasion in February 2022 but this year Moscow began specifically targeting power generation facilities: thermal power plants, hydroelectric power stations and even energy storage facilities.

Olha Matskiv, a legal expert at Global Rights Compliance, an international NGO that is advising Ukraine on investigating and prosecuting war crimes, said the attacks are “creating conditions inside Ukraine that are incompatible with life.”

“This is a tactic that the Russian army is using to drain Ukraine’s internal reserves, both human and financial, slowing down the country’s economy, which cannot develop when businesses are closing due to lack of electricity,” she added.

The government has been trying to fortify Ukraine’s energy network so that it can withstand strikes, first wrapping them to protect them from shrapnel and then using reinforced concrete defenses that can withstand some direct hits.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Smyhal said the measures are working. “Dozens of missiles attacked substations on Monday and we lost a very small amount of our equipment out of dozens of hits yesterday thanks to the protection,” he told reporters.

He added that Ukraine is experimenting with huge protective structures the size of three football fields to cover bigger power stations.

“They are extremely expensive, and their economic feasibility is still not clear. The cost of such protection for six substations is 188 billion hryvnia ($4.5 billion). This is an incredible amount of money that partners are not ready to give and that is not in the state budget,” Smyhal said.

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is halting diplomatic relations with the US and Canadian embassies after their ambassadors criticized his proposal to have judges elected by popular vote.

López Obrador announced the move during his daily press conference on Tuesday, saying the “pause” is with the embassies and not the countries. He said relations will be reestablished once the diplomats are “respectful of the independence of Mexico, of the sovereignty of our country.”

López Obrador’s proposal for judicial reform is part of a package of constitutional changes he has been seeking, which have yet to been approved. On Monday, a congressional committee approved the proposal, and it now requires two-thirds approval in both chambers of Congress.

The reforms include a range of issues in areas like pensions and the energy sector, but they also include controversial judicial and institutional reforms, which critics say would weaken the separation of powers and see the disappearance of some independent regulatory agencies.

US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said last Thursday that he believes a “popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” Salazar stressed that judicial reformneed to ensure the judiciary would be strengthened and not “subject to the corruption of politics.”

The ambassador also said the move could impact the US-Mexico trade relations. The US and Mexico are each other’s top trading partners.

Canada’s ambassador in Mexico, Graeme Clark, has warned of investor worries due to the proposed judicial reforms, and voiced concern about the “disappearance” of some autonomous bodies.

After López Obrador’s press conference on Tuesday, Salazar posted a note on X reiterating the “significant concerns” the US has over the judicial reform.

Several US lawmakers also expressed their concern on Tuesday, saying judicial reform will jeopardize “critical economic and security interests shared by our two nations” including a regional trade pact.

“We are also alarmed that several other constitutional reforms currently under discussion may contradict commitments made in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which is scheduled for review in 2026,” read a statement from the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

The constitutional reforms include eliminating several independent regulatory bodies and merging others that the government claims are duplicating functions. López Obrador is seeking to shutter the Personal Data Protection Institute (INAI). The regulator in February launched an investigation against López Obrador after he disclosed the personal phone number of a New York Times journalist.

The Mexican leader previously hit back at the criticism of his planned reforms saying that he is seeking “to establish constitutional rights and strengthen ideals and principles related to humanism, justice, honesty, austerity and democracy.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was the first part of Kyiv’s victory plan, which he intends to present to US President Joe Biden in September.

At a press conference in Ukraine’s capital on Tuesday, Zelensky said he plans on attending the United Nations General Assembly in September, where he would meet Biden. He added that the plan’s success largely depends on the US.

“The success of this plan depends on him. Will they give what we have in this plan or not. Will we be free to use what we have in this plan or not,” he asked.

He said the plan would be presented to both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. “As we don’t know who the president of the US will be and we want to conduct this plan,” he said.

While light on details, Zelensky said the four-stage plan began with the cross-border incursion into Kursk, which he said “is already done.”

“Second direction is Ukraine’s strategic place in the security infrastructure of the world,” Zelensky continued. “Third direction is the powerful package of forcing Russia to end the war in a diplomatic way, and the fourth direction is economical.”

“Kursk region is part of our plan. The plan of our victory. It may sound ambitious for someone, but it’s a very important plan for us,” he said.

He stopped short of giving more information, saying “he can’t say everything.”

Ukraine’s surprise military incursion this month left Russia struggling to shore up its own territory. Kyiv seems to have multiple goals with the assault, from boosting morale after a torrid few months to stretching Russia’s resources.

It also raised questions on how it would end aggressions as Russia has continued to advance in eastern Ukraine and is closing in on the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, where authorities are scrambling to evacuate tens of thousands of residents

Speaking at the heads of state institutions forum in Kyiv, Syrskyi claimed around 30,000 Russian forces have already been redeployed to Kursk, adding that the “figure is growing.”

At the same forum, Zelensky hailed Ukraine’s development of what he described as a new long-range rocket drone, called “Palianytsia,” which he has previously suggested was Ukraine’s “own way to take real action” amid restrictions by Western allies on the use of long-range weapons within Russia.

“Palianytsia” is a Ukrainian word for a type of bread that is typically reputed to be difficult to pronounce by Russians. Since the start of the war, Ukrainians have used the word to identify saboteurs or members of the Russian military.

As the fighting continues on several fronts, Russia launched its biggest ever aerial attack against Ukraine on Monday, hitting energy infrastructure across the country. More strikes landed on Tuesday morning, killing five people and raising the death toll from this week’s attacks to 12.

Nicaragua’s strongman President Daniel Ortega has offered to send “Sandinista fighters” to Venezuela in support of his embattled fellow authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro, in case there is an attempt at an “armed counterrevolution” following July’s disputed presidential election.

Maduro has been under some pressure since his declaration of victory in the vote sparked widespread suspicion among the opposition and abroad. Thousands of Venezuelans have since taken to the streets in protest and political violence has killed at least 24 civilians and one soldier. The government’s security forces have detained at least 2,000 opposition sympathizers.

Ortega, speaking at a virtual summit with heads of state from other Latin American countries on Monday, offered his support to Maduro in the case of an “armed counterrevolution,” assuring him that if “battle were to come, they (Maduro’s government) will have Sandinista fighters accompanying them.”

In Nicaragua, “Sandinista” generally refers to members of the left-wing political movement, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) that came to power in the Nicaraguan Revolution at the end of the 1970s. Ortega’s party is the FSLN.

However, Ortega didn’t specify whether he was offering up police, soldiers from the military, or pro-government armed groups that rights groups have accused of conducting crackdowns alongside the police in Nicaragua, which Ortega has denied any links to.

Ortega also criticized other leaders of Latin American nations, including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (also known as Lula) and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro – both leftists – for not recognizing Maduro as the winner of what is set to be his third consecutive six-year term. The Nicaraguan strongman himself is serving a fifth term as president and has been accused of rigging elections in the past.

During the summit, Ortega said it was “shameful” that Lula hadn’t recognized Maduro and accused him of “dragging” himself before the US. The president made similar comments about Colombia’s Petro.

Petro responded to Ortega in a post on X saying, “At least I do not drag down the human rights of the people of my country, much less those of my comrades in arms and those fighting against dictatorships.”

According to Venezuela’s electoral council, which is controlled by government sympathizers, Maduro won his reelection bid with just over 50% of the vote. But the country’s opposition coalition, as well as electoral observers from the United Nations and the Carter Center have questioned the council’s numbers. The US, the EU and various other countries and multilateral institutions have urged Venezuela to release granular data showing the results by polling station.