India’s space agency has released latest images of the Moon as its third lunar mission starts descending towards the little-explored south pole.

The pictures have been taken by Vikram, Chandrayaan-3’s lander, which began the last phase of its mission on Thursday.

Vikram, which carries a rover in its belly, is due to land near the south pole on 23 August.

The lander detached from the propulsion module, which carried it close to the Moon, on Thursday.

The black-and-white images show close-ups of rocks and craters on the Moon’s surface. One of the photographs shows the propulsion module too.

Chandrayaan-3 and Russia’s Luna-25 are among the two spacecraft headed towards the Moon’s south pole and both are expected to land next week.

Luna-25 – Russia’s first Moon mission since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union – was launched last week and is expected to make history by making a soft landing on 21st or 22nd August, just days before the Indian touchdown. If it succeeds, Chandrayaan-3 will have to settle for being a close second in reaching the south pole.

India, however, will still be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said on Friday that the lander module had begun its descent to a lower orbit.

Chandrayaan-3, the third in India’s programme of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.

It comes 13 years after the country’s first Moon mission in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime.

Chandrayaan-2 – which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover – was launched in July 2019 but it was only partially successful. Its orbiter continues to circle and study the Moon even today, but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown.

Like many in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Poul Osted has been relying on social media to keep in touch with loved ones as they scramble to evacuate from nearby wildfires.

But Mr Osted said he has been left frustrated by his inability to share news articles on Facebook during the active emergency situation, due to Meta’s ban on news content for Canadian users.

“Instead we have to screenshot parts of a news story and post that as a picture,” Mr Osted told the BBC.

“Oftentimes this means you don’t get the whole story, or have to go searching the web for verification.”

Mr Osted, who lives in the small hamlet of Fort Resolution, said this has affected his family members who were forced to flee Hay River, which is threatened by a wildfire is burning nearby.

“The state of the highway system is one example,” he told the BBC via Facebook messenger.

Several people were inquiring on the platform whether it was safe to drive out of town but couldn’t share that information on the social network.

Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – began blocking access to news for its Canadian users on 1 August, not long after Canada’s parliament passed an online news bill that will require platforms like Google and Meta to negotiate deals with news publishers for content.

It has called the law “fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work”.

As Meta rolls out the ban as part of its campaign against the legislation, a growing number of Canadian users have found themselves unable to view news shared by media organisations on its platforms.

Large parts of the UK are braced for heavy rain, thunderstorms and gales later on Friday evening.

Storm Betty, named by the Irish meteorological service, is set to bring more severe weather as it moves in from the Atlantic.

Half a month’s rain is expected in some parts and warnings have been issued for thunderstorms and high winds.

The forecast is expected to improve as the weekend continues and many areas can expect sunny spells and showers.

A yellow warning alert for wind will come into effect at 18:00 on Friday, with Betty expected to bring very strong gusts lasting until midday on Saturday.

The strongest, of around 60mph-70mph (97km-113km), are expected along the south-western coasts of England and Wales. Gusts of 40-50mph could also affect much of south-west England, Wales, the east of Northern Ireland, south-west Scotland and the Cumbrian coast.

A second thunderstorm warning, covering the East Midlands, the east and south-east of England and London, will come into effect at 20:00 on Friday and last until 05:00 on Saturday.

Heavy and thundery rain will spread across many parts of the UK on Friday night with the potential for some large hail, especially in East Anglia, Kent and East Sussex.

The United States on Friday finalized a decision to impose import duties on solar panel makers who finished their products in Southeast Asian nations to avoid tariffs on Chinese-made goods, according to a senior Commerce Department official.

The decision, which largely mirrors a preliminary finding the agency made in December, was opposed by buyers of solar panels that rely on cheap products made overseas to make their projects competitive.

But it is good news for the small U.S. solar manufacturing industry, which for years has struggled to compete with Chinese goods and is enjoying renewed investment due to subsidies in U.S. President Joe Biden’s landmark climate-change law.

The Commerce probe found that units of Chinese companies BYD (002594.SZ), Trina Solar (688599.SS), Longi Green Energy (601012.SS) and Canadian Solar (CSIQ.O) were dodging U.S. tariffs on Chinese solar cells and panels by conducting minor processing to finish their products in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam before shipping them to the U.S. market.

Those countries account for about 80% of U.S. panel supplies.

The agency will also impose duties on New East Solar because it refused to cooperate with an on-site audit of its operations in Cambodia, the official said.

Other companies operating in those nations have the ability to pursue a certification process to show that they are not circumventing tariffs. To become certified, solar cells and panels must contain non-Chinese wafers and three other key components.

The U.S. has had anti-dumping duties in place for a decade on Chinese-made solar products after a Commerce probe found Chinese companies were receiving unfair government subsidies that kept their prices artificially low.

The companies and others will face the same duty rates the United States already assesses on their Chinese-made products.

They will not kick in, however, until June 2024 thanks to a two-year waiver from Biden that was intended to ensure ample panel supplies while domestic manufacturing ramps up.

Trina Solar, which says it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in cell and module production in Thailand and Vietnam, criticized the Commerce decision on Friday, saying it will “increase the overall costs of virtually all U.S. bound solar products because it will constrain supply at a time when the demand for solar is skyrocketing.”

California peninsula on Friday morning, threatening to bring “significant flooding” to parts of the region as well as the Southwestern United States, a U.S. government agency said.

Hilary was moving west-northwest at nearly 13 miles (20 km) per hour, packing maximum sustained winds of nearly 145 mph (230 kmh), after being upgraded to a Category 4 overnight, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.

Hilary will still be a hurricane when it approaches the west coast of Baja California over the weekend, but is expected to weaken to a tropical storm before reaching Southern California on Sunday afternoon, it added.

A storm surge could produce coastal flooding and destructive waves along the western Baja California peninsula of Mexico, the agency added.

Rainfall of 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15 cm) is expected across portions of Southern California and southern Nevada, which “would lead to significant and rare impacts.”

India is heading for its driest August in more than a century, with scant rainfall likely to persist across large areas, partly because of the El Niño weather pattern, two weather department officials told Reuters on Friday.

August rainfall, expected to be the lowest since records began in 1901, could dent yields of summer-sown crops, from rice to soybeans, boosting prices and overall food inflation, which jumped in July to the highest since January 2020.

The monsoon, vital for the $3-trillion economy, delivers nearly 70% of the rain India needs to water farms and refill reservoirs and aquifers.

“The monsoon is not reviving as we had expected,” said a senior official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), who sought anonymity as the matter is a sensitive one.

“We are going to end the month with a significant deficit in the southern, western, and central parts.”

India is on course to receive an average of less than 180 mm (7 inches) of rainfall this month, he added, based on rains so far and expectations for the rest of the month.

The weather authorities are expected to announce August totals of rainfall and the forecast for September on Aug. 31 or Sept. 1.

India received just 90.7 mm (3.6 inches) in the first 17 days of August, nearly 40% lower than the normal. The month’s normal average is 254.9 mm (10 inches), he said.

Earlier, the IMD had anticipated a rainfall deficit of up to 8% in August. The lowest August rainfall on record was in 2005, with 191.2 mm (7.5 inches).

Monsoon rainfall is expected to improve over the next two weeks in the northeast and some central regions, but dry conditions in northwestern and southern states are likely to persist, said another IMD official.

“Normally, we experience a dry spell of five to seven days in August,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

“However, this year the dry spell has been unusually prolonged in southern India. The El Niño weather pattern has begun to impact the Indian monsoon.”

El Nino, a warming of waters that usually stifles rainfall over the Indian subcontinent, has emerged in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years.

This monsoon has been uneven, with June rains 10% below average but July rains rebounding to 13% above average.

Summer rains are crucial as nearly half of India’s farmland lacks irrigation.

Farmers typically start planting rice, corn, cotton, soybeans, sugarcane and peanuts, among other crops, from June 1, when the monsoon begins to lash the southern state of Kerala.

The lengthy dry spell has led to extremely low soil moisture, which could inhibit growth of crops, said Harish Galipelli, director of trading firm ILA Commodities India Pvt Ltd.

“Crops are in dire need of rainfall,” he added. “Any further delay could lead to reduced yields.”

A massive wildfire in Canada’s western province of British Columbia prompted evacuation orders early on Friday while residents from the remote northern city of Yellowknife scrambled to get out of town before flames block their exit.

A state of emergency was declared early Friday in Kelowna, a city some 300 km (180 miles) east of Vancouver with a population of about 150,000. The Pacific province says the next 24 to 48 hours could be the most difficult.

Some of the hills around the city blazed in the predawn light after wildfires that had been burning since Tuesday jumped Lake Okanagan and spread into parts of Kelowna.

“Residents under Evacuation Alert are advised to be ready to leave their home at a moment’s notice,” the city said in a statement, adding that people should prepare to be away from their home for an extended period.

Some 885 miles (1,425 km) to the northeast, the massive blaze threatening Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories’ capital city, made little progress on Thursday, but changing winds meant it could reach the outskirts by the weekend, said Mike Westwick, the territories’ fire information officer.

“The next two days are absolutely critical and will be some of the most challenging of the season,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp early on Friday.

“We’re going to be putting everything we have into slowing that progression down. We’re going to be throwing aircraft at it and when it’s safe, we’re going to be throwing people at it,” Westwick said.

The fire is about 15 km (9 miles) northwest of the city, but changing winds are expected to drive it closer. Fires have been burning on either side of the only highway out of town, but it remained open.

“Leaving Yellowknife, you’re driving into the smoke,” said Brent Saulnier, who had been visiting the city from neighboring Alberta. “It is on fire on both sides of the road. … It’s a very surreal experience.”

Many still must leave the city of around 20,000 with the deadline for evacuation set at noon local time (1800 GMT). Some 10 evacuation planes ferried about 1,500 people out of Yellowknife on Thursday, and about 22 flights were due out on Friday, authorities said.

“Nobody envisioned an event of this scale. It’s still really stressful. There are a lot of people still left in Yellowknife that are freaking out,” said resident Tebbia Teoncey, who was evacuated to Edmonton, Alberta.

Around 65% of the 46,000 total population of Northwest Territories looked set to be evacuated.

Teams including members of the military were cutting down vegetation to create fire breaks, setting up sprinkler systems, and setting deliberate fires to eliminate fuel before the bigger blaze approaches, Westwick said.

The expanse of fire risk and disruption to life and land underscores the severity of this year’s worst-on-record Canadian wildfire season, with more than 1,000 active fires burning across the country.

Tinganes is the historic location of the Faroese landsstýri (the Government of the Faroe Islands), and it is also part of Tórshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands.

It is a tip of the low ness or cape that divides the harbour of Tórshavn into an eastern and a western part.

Because of its position in the middle of the Faroe Islands, the settlers that came from Western Norway in the ninth century A.D. chose these flat cliffs to be the place for their main ”Ting” in 825, where they met for their annual gatherings.

Here they came to trade and to settle their quarrels and under the guidance of the Løgmaður (the Lawsayer) to decide on matters of common interest.

So, from the very beginning, this was the nest of the Thing and the centre of political life in the Faroe Islands.

Along with Tynwald hill in the Isle of Man and Þingvellir in Iceland, it is one of the oldest parliamentary meeting places in the world. The outermost point of the peninsula in the capital, nowadays is the current main building of Government of the Faroe Islands.

There is one small street which is called Gongin on that same peninsula which has some of the oldest parts of the city.

Many of the houses in Tinganes were built in the 16th and 17th centuries, but still are in use today.

Not easily accessible from the European mainland, and of course expensive to get there, it is a major touristic destination for everyone who would like to meet the traditional Faroese culture.