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NATO members Estonia and Latvia said stray drones entered their territory Wednesday morning on the heels of one of Russia’s biggest daytime drone attacks on Ukraine since Vladimir Putin launched his country’s full-scale invasion four years ago.

Estonia’s Internal Security Service said a drone entered the country from Russia and slammed into the chimney of a power station, while Latvia’s armed forces reported a drone crashing onto the country’s territory without causing any damage.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said the drone was Ukrainian. Estonian officials said the the stray drones entered from Russian air space “during a Ukrainian counterattack.”

Drones and even fighter jets have entered NATO airspace increasingly throughout the war. Members of the transatlantic defense alliance reported 18 airspace violations by Russian aircraft during 2025, three times more than in 2024.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the incursions an escalation of Russia’s war, which he has always argued is against all of Europe, and he’s urged his European partners to strengthen their own air defenses.

The latest drone incursions came hours after one of Russia’s largest-scale aerial assaults on Ukraine since the war began. Starting Monday evening, Russia launched nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. More than 550 drones were launched Tuesday afternoon alone, primarily targeting Ukraine’s western regions, near its borders with NATO member states.

Amir said he was anticipating “hellish weeks to come,” with both the Iranian regime and the Trump administration falling back, in his view, on “brinkmanship.”

Meanwhile, opposition groups in Iran “do not have [a] viable and functional coalition to move even a finger,” Amir said, casting doubt on calls by the Trump administration and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Iranians to take advantage of the ongoing strikes to rise up and topple the regime from within.

In Amir’s view, it appears that Mr. Trump “cannot find an exit door from the mess.”

In a rare occurrence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, twin mountain gorillas were recently born in the Virunga National Park, renowned for its biodiversity but threatened by conflict.

“The twins, believed to be a female and a male, are approximately two weeks old and are being closely monitored by field teams,” the park authorities said Tuesday in a statement.

A video posted by the park showed the young twins with their family in a dense forest. The park called the births an “exceptionally rare event among mountain gorillas.”

A similar event was reported in January in the park with the birth of male twins in the Bageni family. The new twins were observed in the Baraka family and marked the seventh gorilla birth recorded in the park since the start of the year.

Despite the recent events, twin births among gorillas, and particularly the threatened mountain gorilla species, are considered highly unusual by experts.

“The arrival of twins among gorillas is a special occasion given their rarity,” Tara Stoinski, CEO and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, told AFP.

“From our nearly 60-year mountain gorilla database… we know that they occur in less than one percent of births.”

The survival of gorilla twins poses a challenge because “not only must the mother carry two infants, which makes walking more difficult particularly in the first few weeks… they must produce more milk, which is energetically very expensive,” Stoinski explained.

Virunga National Park is the oldest nature reserve in Africa, inaugurated in 1925, and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But intensified conflict in the eastern DRC, where the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has seized swathes of territory in recent years, poses threats to the site.

Virunga’s forests are also believed to have been used as a hideout by fighters from the ADF militia, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State jihadist group.

Globally, the mountain gorilla population is estimated at 1,063 living in the wild, with some 350 gorillas recorded in Virunga in 2021, according to park authorities.

Eight mountain gorilla births were registered in Virunga in 2025, according to the park.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has declared the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway through which around 20% of the world’s crude oil supply flowed until the war — closed to any ships not explicitly granted permission by Tehran, warning of a severe response for any violators.

The global price of crude oil jumped over $110 a barrel on the news Friday. Before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran one month ago, a barrel of benchmark Brent crude was trading at just over $70 a barrel.

The IRGC Navy appeared to make an example of three Chinese-owned commercial vessels this week that tried — but failed — to make it through the strait and out of the Persian Gulf.

“This morning, following the false statements of the corrupt U.S. president claiming that the Strait of Hormuz is open, three container ships of different nationalities moved toward the designated corridor for authorized vessel traffic, but were turned back after warnings from the IRGC Navy,” the Iranian military said in a social media post.

Early Friday morning, data from the MarineTraffic website showed that two ultra-large container ships owned by China’s biggest shipping company, COSCO, made a sharp U-turn after apparently trying to sail past Iran’s Larak Island. The two ships, CSCL Indian Ocean and CSCL Arctic Ocean, remained in the Persian Gulf later Friday.

A third ship, the Hong Kong-owned Lotus Rising, was forced to make a similar turnaround further out from the same island the previous day.

Larak Island has been described as Tehran’s “toll booth” by analysts at maritime intelligence company Lloyd’s List. It’s just a few miles off Iran’s coast, and Tehran has been forcing ships to pay fees to pass safely — as much as $2 million for one vessel, according to Iranian state media.

Lloyd’s List says it tracked 33 transits via Larak Island in the second half of March, but no transits at all via the more common route further south through the strait. Put another way, while the Strait of Hormuz has been described as a chokepoint for oil coming out of the Persian Gulf, the route past Larak has become the specific chokepoint of Iran’s chokehold on the passage.

Adding further pressure, an Iranian military official was quoted recently by the Islamic Republic’s state-run media as saying another strait vital to world oil supplies could be targeted next. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is the southern gateway from the Red Sea into the Arabian Sea and all points beyond. An estimated 10% of the world’s oil supply flows through the passage, which is bordered by Djibouti to the south and Yemen to the north.

Pope Leo XIV urged residents of the cosmopolitan Mediterranean principality of Monaco on Saturday to use their wealth, influence and Catholic faith for good, especially to uphold Catholic teaching on protecting the sanctity of life.

Leo made a one-day trip to the glitzy enclave, becoming the first pope to visit since Pope Paul III came in 1538. As a cannon boomed in a ceremonial salute, Prince Albert and Princess Charlene met Leo at the Monaco heliport, just down the coast from the marina that is home to the megayachts of the rich and famous.

At the palace, members of the royal family stood in the courtyard waiting for Leo, the women dressed in black and with lace head coverings. Charlene wore white — a protocol privilege granted by the Vatican to Catholic royal sovereigns when meeting popes, known in diplomatic terms as “le privilège du blanc.”

In his opening greeting from the palace balcony, Leo urged Monaco to use its wealth, influence and “gift of smallness” for good.

It was important, he said, “especially at a historical moment when the display of power and the logic of oppression are harming the world and jeopardizing peace.”

Speaking in French later in the cathedral, Leo urged Monaco’s Catholics to spread their faith “so that the life of every man and woman may be defended and promoted from conception until natural death,” he said.

Such terms are used by the Vatican to refer to Catholic teaching opposing abortion and euthanasia.

Police in Nepal arrested former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli early Saturday over the deaths of dozens of people during violent protests in September that toppled the government and resulted in new elections.

Authorities arrested the powerful Communist Party leader at his residence on the outskirts of the capital, Kathmandu. They also arrested Ramesh Lekhak, the former home minister, who has been accused of ordering authorities to fire on protesters.

The arrests come a day after a new government headed by rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah took office following a landslide win in a parliamentary election by his Rastriya Swatantra Party.

“No one is above the law. We have taken former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and former home minister Ramesh Lekhak under control,” Home Minister Sudan Gurung said in announcing the arrests on social media. “This is not revenge against anyone, it is just the beginning of justice.”

An investigation by a commission established by the recent interim government called for punishment of up to 10 years in prison for Oli, Lekhak and the chief of police at the time of the protests.

Several trucks of police officers in riot gear conducted the arrests at the men’s homes before taking them to the Kathmandu District Police office.

The arrests triggered the anger of Oli’s supporters, and hundreds gathered near the prime minister’s office later Saturday to protest and demand that Oli be immediately released from custody.

They chanted slogans against the new government, burnt tires and scuffled with riot police who used batons to try to clear the road blocked by the protesters. No major injuries were reported, but police said they detained seven protesters.